Christopher Tumber

You think? Has nobody on this website heard of three card monte? You guys also figure there's a chance that "untested" hardware listed on eBay might actually work? Chris...

I learned assembly in high school on an Apple IIe... Well, okay, but pretty much everything has some quirk or other and compared to the 2600, Apple's are pretty straightforeward. Yeh, the Supercharger is a good way to go. However, if you really get into it, particularly if you plan on ever manufacturing carts, you're going to eventually need an EPROM programmer anyway. So unless you can get a Supercharger cheap you almost might as well go right for the programmer - If you're going to be paying eBay prices for a Supercharger, an EPROM programmer's not a lot more. The Supercharger is really handy for quickly testing stuff though, much more convenient than burning and erasing ROMs. If you're not afraid to spend a little money, getting both is not a bad idea. Even once you get past 4K the Supercharger's still really handy for testing in the early stages of a project, testing new ideas, running chunks of code... (Obviously a Cuttle would be ideal, but...) You don't even need to do that much! I plug my Supercharger right into my computer speaker's headphone jack. Chris...

No and unlikely to happen any time soon. Atari 2600 code tends to be very task specific and highly optimised. Abstracting it out would introduce serious limitations and you might as well take it one-step further and do a Game Maker type program. The results of which would likely resemble first generation 2600 games. If you need GUI, do yourself a favour and stick to Visual Basic (&etc). There's really no reason to be writing code for classic systems unless you really, really love assembly language (or you're some kind of masochist [smile]). But if really do want to shed the training wheels, the 2600 is actually a really tough way to learn assembly. You might want to consider starting with something like the ViC-20 or Apple II where the CPU is (basically) the same but the hardware is a lot easier to deal with and there's tonnes of documentation. Learning on the 2600 you will be taking on both learning assembly and some pretty unforgiving and esoteric hardware. (That being said, for anyone well versed in asm and particularly if you're used to real-time, cycle count specific IO handling (ie: Vectrex, raster interupts on anything from C64 to Gameboy) the transition to the 2600 is not really as horrible as everyone makes it sound. Going from VB to 2600 though - Ouch!) Since no one's mentioned it, you should join the Stella mailing list at: http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/ The mailing list archives are a huge resource as well. Not really, well under $100 if you get a used one (ie: eBay). Chris...

Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. Repeat after me: Vectrex is NOT in the public domain. All rights to the original Vectrex system and games is still owned by Jay Smith who has graciously given permission for non-profit distribution. However, that could change AT ANY TIME. Particularly, if, say, Mr. Smith became annoyed with people misrepresenting his property as being in the public domain. Chris...

I've always assumed that Space Invaders was originally intended to be a clone, sold under some other name (Like INTV Space Armada et al) or even just a game put together on the developer's own initiative. Then when Atari got the license, they either changed the name of the project (the game having already been completed) or the developer said something like, "Oh, by the way, I already have this ready to go..." That's complete supposition, and I have no evidence whatsover except the game itself which IMHO looks more like Space Armada than the arcade Space Invaders. Someone would have to ask Rick Maurer... I can understand them wanting to add colour, to show off the 2600's capabilities. Except they didn't really, since the rows of invaders are all the same colour. I absolutely can't understand why the bitmaps would be so different. Or it could just be that since it was the first licensed coin-op, they didn't realise the importance that would be placed on accuracy (Which seems self-evident, but hindsight is 50-50..). If you think about it, the previous conversions like Pong were always trying to outdo the original or previous conversions (adding more paddles, game options, colour). Likewise the various Computer Space clones... So maybe they thought that "enhancing" Space Invaders was equally important (witness all the Space Invaders game variants). Thinking about it, that's probably it - They treated it like previous coin-op conversions by making it "better" and adding a bunch of game variants.. (A lot of the earlier conversions don't look nearly as much like the originals as they could - Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command...) Chris...

The TIA colour chart is here: http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archiv...9/msg00285.html

Now that you mention it... ... It's a little earlier in the development curve than I'd wanted to go public with this, but just in case someone gets all inspired to start working on something, they should be aware there's already a project in the works. This is a collabrative effort between Andrew Davie, Paul Slocum and myself. Working title is currently: DiscoTech The original idea is to incorperate the Dancing Baby demo and Paul's music into a dancing game. Controller's would be joystick, keypad or (hopefully) NES Power Pad (with interface, obviously). Though Eduardo's design may be a better option to a Power Pad interface (which looks like it may need an external power supply). There would also be a variety of levels with the Dancing Baby as the penultimate level (or something). The attached binary: - Uses only joystick control. - Isn't synched to the music. - The main display (ie: dancing baby) is not integrated yet. - It also may or may not work on real hardware. Chris... disco.zip

I *think* the problem is that I forgot to set the stack pointer so if the state of the stack is maintained for a short time even once powered down (ie: until capacitors discharge) then eventually the stack may work it's way down into and overwrite the wrong RAM locations.... Crap! Crap! Crap! Chris...

No. I've written some GBA stuff (including an unreleased port of my Vectrex game, Zap). It's a really straightforeward* system to write for (Hell, almost everyone codes in C). IMHO, successfull projects on the GBA depend a lot more on game design than technical ability though with the added emphasis on graphics and sound inherant in modern consoles. Chris... *Like any other console if you want to push the system's performance specs then of course it gets tough, but for "day to day" coding it's a pretty simple to work with.

Shows what you know - Crush Roller is a pretty good game... Chris...

There is a PC curling game out called "Take-Out Weight Curling": http://www.globalstarsoftware.com/mini_sit...00308/index.htm I've seen it at Future Shop but haven't played it.... I'd think a curling game could work as well as a golf or bowling game.(Except of course not many people outside Canada and Scotland know how to play it) I think foosball or maybe table hockey or bubble hockey might work well as a 2600 game but a more realistic team sports sim has real challenges - From the free-range mobility needed of the player's to the AI... Chris....

Please keep in mind that as far as 2600 technobable goes, this is pretty extreme/obscure/hardcore stuff... "Bleeding edge" stuff on any console (or any skilled activity, really) usually gets pretty complicated, regardless (or else it wouldn't be "bleeding edge", would it?)... Chris...

Ah! Now that explains some strangeness... Ah, okay. Good to know - Is there documentation available (ie: Is your table posted somewhere?) Ah, okay, that makes sense. My assumption, obviously, was that all such positionings showed the incompatibility problems. Yeah, but since Kool-Aid Man (Thunderground? Anteater...) is about the only game affected by this, and presumably no new games are going to do this (at least on purpose) given the compatibility problems it introduces between the two flavours of consoles it's information of dubious value. Thanks for all the info! Chris....

You have to select infinite lives during a game (ie: Start the game, then hit select). Chris...

Heh, thanks Eckhard! You'd think I'd know better by now since the last time I was whining about z26 it was also user error.... While I'm normally a sucker for "put up or..." even after this experimentation the result would still be "wrong". According to the Stella documentation, modifying the HMxx registers within 24 cycles after an HMOVE is "unpredictable". And it truly is - it varies by machine. While z26 "cheats" to run Kool-Aid Man "right", the other emus are actually "right" too because some consoles show the same behaviour. Originally it was thought only PAL 2600's exibited the bug while Kool-Aid Man was thought to run properly on NTSC 2600's. However, when I tried to use the bug as a NTSC/PAL autodetect, it turns out that many (all?) NTSC 2600Jrs exhibit the bug while some PAL 2600's do not. My theory would be that Atari changed (fixed? Since the behaviour of later consoles is predicted by the emus and not exceptional as with earlier consoles) the TIA at some point (perhaps when the 7800 was introduced since the 7800 shows some other incompatabilities with the 2600?) and consoles from before that point run Kool-Aid Man properly and those after exhibit the bug. Chris... (Which also implies that exploiting the effects of changing HMxx illegally is a bad idea since it will behave diffently on different machines.)

There shouldn't be, reading the paddles is really straightforeward. However, it does overlap with the joystick (ie: Moving the joystick right is the same as pushing paddle0's button) so I _think_ the emulators only allow the paddle for pre-determined games. Let me just check that I haven't got paddles disabled completely... Yep, when I run Super Breakout, z26 automatically configures Left/Right arrow keys to the paddle. StellaX automatically maps the mouse to the paddle. Pcaewin, I can't get to function at all with the paddle. But the hacked Tacscan, which should be identical does not work. I'm suspicious that the emu's are "fixed" to only recognised paddles on certain pre-determined games because there are other similar "cheats" - In Kool-Aid Man there's a bug in the code which causes most emulators to go bonkers (but works okay on many real machines). Except z26. z26 runs Kool-Aid man just fine. However, if you replicate the bug in a different program, z26 goes nuts too. So z26 isn't really dealing with the bug, it's just thinking "This is Kool-Aid Man, better skip that bug". I think the emus are doing the same thing here, except with paddles... Chris...

Yes, it would. Chris... (BTW - Haven't been able to configure either z26, StellaX or PCAEwin to read the relocated paddles, but it's fine on my Supercharger. Do the emulators only "activate" paddles for specific known games? Anyone know?) tacscan.zip

But in Space Invaders you're playing a role too! They're ALL role playing games! Chris...

Actually, the missiles and ball can be set to 1, 2, 4 or 8 pixels in width but you've hit on a good part of why I'm not using missiles. Using the players's bitmaps is much more flexible. The other big problem is that I'm using 3 copies of Player0 and 2 copies of Player1, spaced evenly across the screen and changing their bitmaps mid-scanline - Every place where there's a diagonal that's a Player. Because the Players are 8 bits wide, I can arbitrarily set the appropriate bits for (say) a diagonal. In order to make a diagonal using Missiles/Ball I'd need to actually reposition the Missile/Ball each line. Doing this while using duplicate Missile copies (which would be needed to get enough sprites) would be a problem since if you move one, you move them all... It might be possible to do, but it would probably lead to a much more limited background scroll because all instance of Missile0 would have to diagonal in the same direction. Likewise all instances of Missile1 would be the same. It'd probably wind up looking like: //////////// Instead of: ___/`//``__/``_/_ Chris...

Yeah, it definately needs to be retitled, "History of home video game console RPGs" Which leads to awkwardness like: "Adventure, credited by many people to be the first video game RPG." Follwed by: "The first console RPGs were actually E.T. and Raiders." "First video game RPG" implys home computers, PCs, arcade machines, micros and mainframes, (And after you'd just mentioned Hack and Dungeon so you're contradicting yourself). But then you narrow it down to "consoles". So you're really comparing apples to oranges (Or apples to granny smith apples if you prefer.) Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord predates both ET and Raiders, btw and is far, far more recognisable as an RPG.. Chris...

Who'd win - Philip Seymor Hoffman or Jack Black? Chris...

I have a similar problem very, very occaisionally running z26 in Win ME where I'll get an intermittent static sound (it's not regular click-click-click or anything, just occaisional "bursts" of static. Like listening to a Walkman on a set of headphones which are going bad). I haven't really looked into it because it happens so rarely, but my impression is that it ocurs when I have a bunch of other windows open and running. Try loading it with only a minimum other processes running and see if it helps (including virus shields or whatever else you may have running in the background)... (hey, worth a try) Chris...

Yeah, I'm not sure how much a selling point hombrews would be. I mean, if someone wants to play new PS2 games they're presumably going to want ones which take advantage of the PS2's hardware, not the 2600's hardware. Though maybe as unlockable bonus games, some kind of "look at these freaks still programming for the 2600, so don't feel so bad when your buddies tease you for playing 2600 games on your PS2..." But at the same time, if Activision wants to talk licensing I know I'd be happy to listen! Chris...

8K bankswitching is fairly simple and DASM handles it no problem. If you check the Stella list there have been a couple 8K templates posted recently (One by Manuel and a revision by me) Chris...

The Space Instigators binary is now available at: http://www.capitalSsoftware.com/SP-DL.BIN The only difference between this and the cartridge version is the addition of two credits screens. (There was no room to put credit screens in the 4K cart version). Cartridges are available for me personally, $25.00 for the standard edition and $50.00 for a signed and numbered collector's edition. The collector's edition is a limited run of 50 copies and includes an optional infinite lives trainer. Once those 50 copies are gone, that's it but the standard edition will be available in perpetuity. You should also be able to order the standard edition from the AtariAge store by the time you read this (or shortly therafter). Chris...