Herbarius

As far as I know there are two "types" of NES Cartridges, and only one of them has screws, while the other one closes another way... But you are sure yours all are supposed to have screws, i.e. there are empty screwholes?

The same seems to apply here from what I've heard, so I decided not to try that. Well, today finally my SuperCard Mini SD arrived, but unfortunately I still can't use it... I ordered a 2GB Mini SD card with it, but they shipped the wrong item , I just got a plain old SD card (2GB) - And No, it's not an Mini SD inside an SD adapter, I'm not stupid . At least the SuperCard Mini SD is what I wanted, genuine and seems to work - But all it does is print "not find the SD Please turn off GBA" ... I wrote an angry E-mail to the online shop I got that, stating I either want to return the SD card and be refunded or to immedieately get the difference between the Mini SD price and normal SD price (in their shop) refunded while keeping the SD card. I'll see how it turns out and meanwhile I'll try to go buying a Mini SD "the old way" - from a store

Well, whenever I see the opening section of the C64 manual I wonder about these two sentences, which are referring to what you can do to avoid RF signal interference. Those are two of the measures given: Well, and the difference between the two is? I guess the second sentence is for those of us who thought, putting the computer closer to the reciever could be of any help... or who just don't understand such "big" words as 'relocate' and 'respect' (those two groups may be very much the same)

Yes, you can - provided you have a parallel port - rumors are some of the new machines don't... When looking through the printer drivers you've to choose the Standard "manufacturer" and you get those choices: There are also a whole bunch of drivers present for printers you could easily consider vintage, like the NEC Pinwriter P6.

After much thinking I've finally decided: Amiga it is. Strange choice? Not for me. On the Amiga there are all (or most of) the cool games from the "Golden Age of Video Games" (going by my own definition - I think everybody has their own... might start a thread about that later... ) I considered having an old (IBM compatible) PC, but I remembered all those hassles you had to go through to free enough "conventional" memory to finally run your game. I also thought about keeping my current PC, as it could be considered "last generation" already, but I decided not to take Emulation into account - Emulation is cheating Yes I know, you didn't state a rule about that, but I'm not the first one who made that decision. So sure I'd keep my PC, but I wouldn't be allowed to play games on it. I considered the SNES too, but I didn't like the idea of never playing any Strategy games ever again. The C64 was in tie with the Amiga for a while, but I finally decided in favor of the more powerful machine. Let me add, I never owned an Amiga myself! I play Amiga games through Emulator though, and my father once had an Amiga 500.

Not wanting to nitpick, but... german "aktuell" = "current" "tatsächlich, eigentlich" = "actual"

What program did you use for the voice?

Looks more like short clips to promote the DVD, they even have the URL onceuponatari.com at the end...

Well I think both (duct tape programmer vs. MIT programmer) are extremes, and I wouldn't trust any programmer that is too far to either of those extremes, especially if that programmer particularly loathes the opposite style. In my opinion, a good programmer should be able to do both styles well but for "real-world" programming (like applications that are beyond say 1 or maybe 2 pages of code), he should be able to combine the methods of either of those extremes to get some code that's clean enough to be maintainable, but without holding off development for lengthy times just for the sake of elegance.

@bogax: Sorry if you felt as if I meant your actual code when I said "There's lots of potential to optimize your (CBM)BASIC code today!", I wanted to put it as a general statement, caricaturing what they do in ads.

I'm actually impressed by that... I expected only a minimal speed improvement by this, but it's gone from 11 seconds to 3.75! The machine code version is of course still much faster, but a improvement by like 66% is more than expected. To answer your curiosity about the multi-statement lines: Yes there is a speed difference, little but it can add up. I tested with this same code as above, but each command into its own line. The result was 4.3 seconds to finish the loop, compared to the 3.75 above. Well, I guess those are just some hints that something's seriously wrong with (CBM)BASIC... Or to put it positively: There's lots of potential to optimize your (CBM)BASIC code today! Well, now that I think of it, shouldn't it be FASTER if you leave the constants in? [EDIT: Yes, it is.]

Wow, thanks! This works like a charm. Even if I add the overhead of POKEing the procedure to RAM, it still does the trick in 0.2 seconds total! Compared to the 10-11 seconds with the pure BASIC approach that's wizardry!

I'm doing some C64 project for fun again, and I run into some problem I couldn't figure out: As we know, in text mode you can change the color of individual characters on screen by POKEing into the Color RAM (55296-56295). However, if you want to change the color of all the characters on screen and try something like this (line numbers omitted, N is the target color number): FOR I=0 TO 999 POKE 55296+I,N NEXT I You'll notice it is extremely slow. It takes like 11 seconds for the whole screen. If you think you're smart and try checking every character first, and if it's a "space" (32) skip it, that won't help anything, it'll even make it slower. (Apparently there isn't a very big speed difference between PEEKing and POKEing, at least concerning these parts of RAM). So I wondered, is this really the fastest way this can be accomplished? Think about it: In the time it takes to do this, the screen has refreshed more than 500 times! So I thought: Palette Swap? Is there some way to alter the internal color palette, maybe switch two of the colors, so the next time the screen refresehes it will come out as the other color, while in the Color RAM it still "looks" like the old color? I am flicking back and forth through my Programmer's Manual, and I searched on the web, but I didn't come up with anything. Neither with a way to do it, nor some definitive statement that it's impossible. So can anyone help me out here? Maybe it's without the reach of BASIC but can be accomplished with some machine code routine? If it's impossible, exactly what's the reason? It doesn't seem logical that it can't be done. EDIT: Oh, and yes I already tried "blanking" the screen during the operation via POKE 53265,PEEK(53265)AND 239 , figuring that because it's manipulating what's currently on screen that slows it down, but it did only help marginally.

It's not like I really hate the Tribal design, it's just that it's this "forced cool" style I am loathing. How can I describe that... It's like those type of teenagers who start smoking cigarettes because it's sooo cool. The Tribal design perfectly fits to those guys. Well, it could be that it's just me who makes this connection, though Is Powder Blue the same as Surf Blue?

So, I now got my GBA SP, AGS-101. Got it from eBay, was a little pricey, but not too much, and delivery was faster than expected. Everything works fine, there are some minor scratches on the outside, but not on the display, and that's perfectly acceptable - what do you expect from used hardware... Unfortunately it's the "Tribal" design, but it seems those are the most common AGS-101s (at least here in Germany). Battery charger/power adaptor and even the manual were included. My SuperCard should arrive over the course of the week.

Wow, that's crazy...

Yes, it's the same as in the recent movies... I REALLY hope it's just a fad that will die off... the sooner, the better!

It sounds like you are talking about raycasting engines. Real 3D engines don't have that effect, it has been like 15 years since there's been a commercial game that still used a raycaster. But I can really understand how those make you sick, good example: Play Doom using zDoom, which adds the ability to look up or down, which wasn't in the original game - and for good reason... Want to see why? Okay, move to the edge of pit, still while looking just straight ahead, then stop... then slowly look down.... Uh...uh... looks as if you are floating above the pit instead of standing at the edge, doesn't it? Now slowly look down and back up (straight ahead) again, and vice versa... feel it? Please stop if you get the urge to throw up! And don't blame me for anything that happens, use these instructions at your own risk

No I didn't change any of the footage I just sped it up by 20%.

So, finally, as promised, the whole game, as an animated GIF and in PGN notation. White player is Atari Video Chess, Black player is the Chess Champion Super System III. I decided to count the final illegal move of the Super System III (King from G7 to G8) as resigning, so Atari Video Chess won. (click thumbnail to see animation) You may notice some moves they make are just plain stupid, especially towards the end of the game. I used the superb tools at this site to create both the transcript and the animation: Caissa's Web Online Chess Tools. If there's any interest I will do other matchups, using different settings...

I just watched the trailer after a friend of mine told me, how great this game was and thought "Well, yes that looks pretty nice, return to the classic gameplay with better graphics and some new twists..." but then I wondered... "Well, but something is not right here..." It took me a while to figure out what it was and then it struck me and I created this new version of the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5KQ6xL6HBg See what I did there? I think somehow this seems much more appealing. Please keep in mind I don't know the game itself, it's only the impression I got from the trailer. I uploaded it to Youtube as I couldn't think of any better spot right now. I guess it's in danger being deleted, but what the heck...

I don't think refresh rate has anything to do with it, it just doesn't add up... If you said "eye strain", yes sure, but not "motion sickness"... I'd recommend trying sitting further away from the TV and/or reducing the screen size. Messing around with some video settings might help as well, but I don't know what you can do, especially on a console. You also said "last night", have you been very tired?

Well, I did, and the outcome was quite strange... I started it with these settings (using Stella as an Emulator, as I don't own Video Chess): Atari Video Chess playing WHITE on mode 1 (<=15 seconds per move as per manual) Super System III playing BLACK on 10 seconds (default setting) I actually expected the Super System to win, even though it had the shorter computation time, because it has much more RAM. However, to my surprise the game went very balanced, and both sides ended up having only the king, one rook and a couple of pawns left and then engaged in that typical "dance". However I continued the game and eventually, in the 66th turn, the unexpected happened: Note the move the computer is trying to do (see display)! To be sure I've verified the pieces' positions (there's a function to do that, in case you mess up the board), and they match up with the actual pieces - and the positions in Stella as well. I even forced the computer to take back the move and compute it again, but it turned out the same. I don't understand it. The computer never did an illegal move before when I played it, or in that game vs Stella. I can post the transcript of the whole game tomorrow, I don't feel like typing it all now. I'll maybe do another match of Super System III vs. Video Chess, setting the Super System to 15 seconds that time to see how it performs if given the same amount of time as Video Chess.

Mhh, I just realized I forgot about the Start/Pause/Reset buttons... Okay, so here the updated picture:

Yes, maybe I should have clarified. I used an image of the black version of the Nunchuk for better aestethics, if it had been the regular white one it propably would have been more obvious. The Nunchuk has, as you can see in the picture, an analog thumbstick and also, not that visible, two buttons. The Keyboard Controller then is for the numerical buttons, I thought you'd put that on a table, on your lap or next to you on the couch, while holding the Nunchuk in your hand. On the plus side, you can hold it in either your right or left hand, the other hand remains free for the keypad. Naturally this wouldn't make use of the motion sensors also included in the Nunchuk.