snicklin

A PD game called "Surfs Up", which really should have been produced commercially.

Please note that the scores that I gave in the previous response were in POINTS. So the 10 points for Isora is my favourite game of them all.

And 2.13.1 is out now... " I'm proud to announce version 2.13.1 of cc65. cc65 is a complete cross development package for 65©02 systems, including a powerful macro assembler, a C compiler, linker, librarian and several other tools. cc65 has C and runtime library support for many of the old 6502 machines, including - the following Commodore machines: VIC20 C16/C116 and Plus/4 C64 C128 CBM 510 (aka P500) the 600/700 family newer PET machines (not 2001). - the Apple ][ and successors. - the Atari 8 bit machines. - GEOS for the C64 and C128. - the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). - the Supervision console. - the Oric Atmos. - the Lynx Console. The libraries are fairly portable, so creating a version for other 6502s shouldn't be too much work. This version is a bugfix release against 2.13.0. Changes have been made in the following areas: * Added a missing external declaration for ser_load_driver. * Fixed an error in the 32K linker config for the Commodore VIC-20. * Fixed a problem with bit-fields. * Fixed a problem with initialization of local arrays with unspecified size. * Function designators are now handled correctly when dereferenced. * Corrected a problem with qualifier handling in arrays and structs/unions. * Passing structs by value was never possible but is now correctly refused by the compiler. * Ignore unknown preprocessor directives in an #if group that is excluded. * Apple ][ target makes use of bit-fields in dirent.h. * Documentation improvements. Precompiled binaries are available for the most common platforms. On many other host platforms, the sources compile out of the box, so you'll able to create your own binaries. For RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, ready made RPM packages are available. These packages may also work on other rpm-based Linux systems. Please note that there are separate RPMs for the compiler proper, the docs, and the target specific libraries. To develop code for one of the target machines, you need the compiler RPM package *and* one of the target machine packages. Be sure to download the documentation package if you're new to cc65. For windows users, there's a user friendly installer package (the one with the .exe extension). All subpackages are selectable from within the installer dialogue. The installer will also setup the necessary environment variables and start menu entries. It is recommended that Windows users choose this package instead of the .ZIP files. Precompiled binaries for DOS, OS/2 and Windows are available in ZIP archives. As with the RPM packages, you need the package for the development host system (Windows or whatever) *and* one or more of the target machine packages, plus optionally the doc package. All packages are available from the MU software FTP server: ftp://ftp.musoftware.de/pub/uz/cc65/ More information on cc65 can be found on the cc65 web page at http://www.cc65.org/ There is also a mailing list for discussing cc65 related issues (programming, suggestions, bugs, ...). See http://www.cc65.org/#List for information on how to subscribe to this list. While I'm the main developer of cc65, it is actually a joint effort. I would like to thank the target library developers, all the people on the cc65 mailing list, all those sending suggestions and feedback, and even those bugging me for a new stable release:-) The CREDITS file is probably incomplete, but you know who you are. Thank you! Uz "

I've bought an SIO2SD unit. £49.95. ... and 2 6502 Programming books, but they were off Amazon, not eBay.

It's a pretty good language. I was programming with it back in the 90s and enjoyed every moment of programming with it.

Hi Kaz, here's my votes. I'll only vote for the games that I've played. 10. Isora 09. Kolony 2106 08. Nightshade 07. Loops DX 06. Tempest Xtreem 05. Sssnake It! 04. H3x0r (for 1K this is amazing!) 03. Space Binvaders It's a shame that I do not understand Polish. If I did, I may well be voting for some of the other games.

... a few jiffies perhaps?

It's been a while... any news?

No idea - he may the be the Father / Grandfather of one of the programmers though.

Try this, I think that it's roughly what you wanted. There are some rounding problems and I've multiplied the fraction part through by 100 so that a Hex value can be created. Is this what you are after? It may not be precisely as you want it, but should be a good base for you to work from. I hope that it works, I created it in OpenOffice Math and saved it as an Excel spreadsheet. sine2.zip

You can use Microsoft Excel (or OpenOffice Math) to create your tables. Then export your data as .csv (comma separated values).

It's awkward to use!! Picture Painter

Thanks, it looks a lot better without it. I've not had time to work on it tonight apart from 5 minutes or so, so here's the new version with no "popping". Thanks for that Shawn, it's a good (and quick) improvement. AtariFormula1.zip

I've got that game on cartridge! It's not a bad game at all. One thing that I didn't like with the game though was the resolution that it used. I can understand why though with the playfield being so large. I am a fan of the scenery in it, oh, and his gesture after crashing! I shall add some more scenery into my game when I've done the more important parts of the game.

I just took a look at it on Youtube and it looks a good game, though maybe a little out of Atari's league.

Thank you all for your thoughts here. I will see what I can do next... One thing that I am a little disappointed with is that I wanted my car to be at every 5 degree angle. I've had to have it drawn at every 15 degrees though due to the car looking very odd at certain angles (and not representing a car at all!). I only have 8 bits width to play with for the PMG for each car. I've taken a look at Project TLC which is work in progress from Thomas "Levi" Lewandowski and I'm very impressed and inspired by his work. His huge graphic of a car is very impressive. I'm after a sort of "Micro Machines" feel to my game though, Atari's have missed out on that game, so if I can make something similar, I'll be happy with that. Now back off to work...

Thanks! Previously it was using >1 velocities but the car was speeding off over the screen which was annoying and I had to slow it down. I'll use 2 bytes thanks to your suggestion but in a slightly different way. I'll use 1 to indicate the velocity in any one direction and the other will simulate fractional velocity by saying how many times it has to try to move the car before it actually moves. Effectively this is exactly what you say. I'm avoiding FP. I've pondered over collision detection a lot. The problem with it is that I will have to set aside one colour for slowing down (green). I'm thinking of redesigning the graphics and so green may not be 100% reserved. I was thinking of operating a 2x2 character check of which characters are underneath the car (will this be slow?). I also want to design some wooden huts and don't want to have to reserve another colour.

Hi Shawn, thanks for this, I'll test that out to avoid the "popping" when I get back from work later on. I've seen that popping in other games and always wondered what it is from.

OK, well, here's the latest code revision as attached. Unfortunately it's nowhere near being finished, there's glitches all over the place, my graphical ability still sucks and there's only 1 car on the screen at the moment. I will have 4 later on. Added in since last time is a moving car (that was hard work), a scoreboard at the top, a modified title screen and and a timer. To get off the title screen, press the joystick fire button. Use your joystick and it's button to accelerate (left and right to turn). I'm going to add inertia later on and all the obvious stuff that the game needs like extra levels, starting in the correct position, other cars and detection of what surface the car is on.... plus all the fixes needed for the DLI's (which I did have working at one stage but not now) and getting the graphics priorities right. Thankfully I've managed to get it all tied into the VBI which means that the scrolling is a lot smoother than previously. AtariFormula1.zip

I think that we definitely have far better development environments now. I wouldn't even consider coding natively on the Atari as it was always a pain in the bottom with having to save files and then compile them, they ran crash so I then have to reload the original source file. I love the speed at which I can do everything now, and in more than 40 or 80 columns. There are also some good tools available as Freeware which I can use to develop with. There's very much a balance out there, in the past there were far larger numbers of Atari coders out there and therefore there would be a higher number of the very best coders. They were also employed to work with Atari's. Nobody makes money out of it now, so it's always a "strange little hobby" which we all enjoy and people around us cannot understand. The coders now are not working in isolation as they can use the power of the internet to get a lot of information on quite complex techniques. I suppose that the main problem now is that we're all a bit older than we were and I guess our minds aren't quite as flexible as they used to be. It'd be interesting to know people's ages out there. I guess that at 31 I'm one of the younger members on here. Overall, games are better now but tend not to be so in-depth (there's a lot of puzzle games, but not long adventure games which take ages to solve). However, there were more great games back in the day just by the sheer numbers of professional developers.

A mockup done with G2F is just a static picture. It doesn't mean that you can do a game which looks like that. True, but can I dream!

With very quick estimations (which I'm probably way out with!), I'd guess that people that come here are: (in predominance) 30% coders 25% hardware / mod specialists 45% Atari / Games fans I'm quite a fan of the work of Jose's in that he's the main person on here looking into graphical design which doesn't really fit into any of the above groups. Fandal is quite right in saying that it's quicker to create screenshots than actual games from them. I agree with this as a coder myself. However, I look at Jose's screenshots and he gives me ideas. It's just a shame that I'm not yet a good enough programmer to implement his screenshots in a game! And I also do not have enough time in the day to implement the many ideas that he has. I believe in leaving everyone to do what suits them best, and I'll stick with the coding, it's my form of brain exercise.

Everything is just black or white with you!

Ooh, I could just imagine Draconus in an 8 way scrolling world, with an almost realistic looking lizard Draconus, some atmospheric coloured lighting and water with splashing effects. What a beautiful game it would be.

I've found that if the .col file is locked (as I had a hex-editor open examining it) when creating a new output image of the same name, quantizator will crash. It's a great bit of software though, we need more and more of these PC based Atari development utilities as they really do help our software to become more professional and quicker to develop.