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MantaNZ

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Posts posted by MantaNZ

  3. Posted

    4 hours ago, LePionnier said:

    Astrosmash Comparison.

     

     

                                              AUGUST 2019                                                                                       January 2020

    image.thumb.png.08ecd6c91a38c3917822dfd7211c8d94.png image.thumb.png.111dbe2012863919d0521605c04f669a.png

     

    It's much better now. Clearer, and the view is further away than before.
    Maybe it's the size of the bigger asteroids that make me feel like we're too close!??

     

    I stopped the video in the most identical place as possible to compare with the fraction of a second of the 1st trailer.

    In reality it is even better now with the movement of the moon in the background, etc. :)

    The biggest change from these pictures is the vehicle.

    It's coming well ! 

    
 

    I hope they ditch the static asteroids as they look weird and out of place. The trails are very cool but I'd like to see the asteroids rotating as they fall.

    The bg is just stunning. Not sold on the vehicle design, but I guess it has to be a throwback to the original game.

    All in all it looks cool but I'm more excited for Night Stalker. That looks friggin' amazing.

    • Like 6

  5. Posted

    1 hour ago, fiudr said:

    This definitely has the potential to be a big seller this Christmas, I think. It's a very cool-looking system with very innovative controllers, and the screen should feel familiar to anybody who has a modern cell phone. And the price is very reasonable, especially since you're getting two controllers in the box, which is fantastic. Most systems these days come with one controller (or none).

     

    I was going to say "name one system that comes with no controllers" and then I remembered the Analogue consoles, hahaha.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    2 hours ago, MarioMan88 said:

    Now that the FE sale has concluded I begin to wonder what # I have. I literally placed my order 30 seconds after I got the email. Hoping for under number 100!

    I was sitting there refreshing until the email popped up and then I pounced but sadly Paypal didn't work for me and I had to keep trying for several minutes. Still, happy to get one at all! I'm interested to see what my number is too.

     

    Now, I wonder when these will start showing up as pre-orders on eBay? 😂

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    25 minutes ago, Loafer said:

    Lol you might be right but it’s weird. I’ve got a PayPal notice to complete the transaction and a PayPal notice about my payment to Intv so I’m gonna let the dust settle a bit and then will Inquire on how to cancel to free these up

     

    i def got a confirmation right on the site for the credit card purchase (can’t remember congratulations or whatever) but nothing on the 3 PayPal purchased until these two emails (one to complete and one purchase)

     

    This might be an iOS thing 

    Probably. Tommy hates Apple 😂

    • Haha 2

  10. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    2 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

    I love ETA Prime teardowns! Probably because I have had a tendency to crack open electronics since a young age too. I can also recommend the YouTuber Big Clive although he does more terrible quality, often dangerous imported home/industrial appliances type stuff. Hilarious and educational.

    Haha used to be the first thing I’d do when I bought a new console - open it up! I think I stopped after the Jaguar as stuff started getting too hard to put back together after that. Lol.

    • Like 4

  14. Posted

    On 1/19/2020 at 2:35 PM, Tempest Nut said:

    Thanks, It's the only game I play! 

     

    But I'm always looking for another great game I can use my homemade spinner with, The game just needs to have mouse support because if it can be moved with a mouse I can move it with my spinner!

    Have you played Tempest 3000? I’ve never even seen a Nuon but I REALLY want that game, lol.

  16. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    22 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

     

    If that's the typical rainbow screen, something along these lines: 

       ldy #192
kernel:
   sta WSYNC
   sty COLUBK
   dey
   bne kernel

     

    then that's not a two line kernel. What you'r actually seeing is that the color palette on the 2600 ignores bit 0, so each color is repeated for 2 values. If you check a TIA Color Chart:

     

    645479509_ScreenShot2020-01-11at2_25_11PM.thumb.png.759e140d65b069d21db935e6f2c847d2.png

     

    the top row is the high-nybble of the color value, while the the left column is the low-nybble.  So colors $86 and $87 are the exact same shade of blue.

     

    In a two line kernel certain things are updated on one scanline and other things are updated on the other.  I cover that in Part 4 of my Collect tutorial.

     

     

     

    Oh, right, I think I get ya. So to get single lines of colour I’d just decrement by 2?
     

    Thanks for the info!

  17. Posted

    1 minute ago, JeffJetton said:

    Hey MantaNZ, you might want to check out my beginning Atari programming notes that I've been (slowly) putting together. Actually, I'd really appreciate your feedback--I could use some guinea pigs!

     

    https://github.com/JeffJetton/atari-examples

     

    Still very much work-in-progress. I'm rethinking some of the later stuff, but I think the first section is pretty solid.

     

    It's coming from the same angle as your C beginner's course idea. It's at the super-noob level and explains a lot of the things that puzzled me early on but seem to get glossed over in a lot of other tutorials. It goes very slowly. (I'm certainly not an Atari assembly programming master myself, which I think actually helps!)

    Cool, will check it out :)

  19. Posted

    4 hours ago, zzip said:

    And this is the infuriating thing about console/computer wars!   Both are better than anything you ever owned,  but because one can show a few more colors on screen or run a fraction of a Mhz faster,  the other one is "obviously" a piece of crap.

    I had an Amiga 500 (but was late to the party - it was 1992) but was always interested in the ST, same as I was interested in the Amstrad and Speccy when I had a C64 and saw all the reviews of various game versions in magazines (I think I only ever saw one Speccy and one Amstrad in NZ). I don't get the 'wars' over it - though we did have a few debates at school over which was better, C64 or Amiga (pretty much the only systems kids in NZ owned, other than Sega consoles). Silly really. I've still never had an ST and I really want whatever model it was that had the awesome sound - proper chiptunes, unlike the Amiga's cheating use of samples, haha.

  20. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    6 minutes ago, Mikebloke said:

    No I don't think that is just you, though he does do a good job of explaining some concepts, I do believe he glossed over some details which if you've programmed in anything else before you might not even notice. I've got through the whole thing now, I think it abruptly ends as there is no videos directly on missiles specifically but a lot of the concepts are explained by that point. I'm glad I paid for it, its been incredibly helpful.

    Awesome :) I look forward to finishing it. TBH I'm using it as a stepping stone to get into C64 development, then I'll pick up 68k asm and get back into Mega Drive dev. I've done some stuff on the Mega Drive in C but I really prefer the idea of asm. I like to know what's going on under the hood.

     

    But yeah this course has actually got me thinking about making an absolute beginner's course for C programming. Now, I'm no C master - far from it - but I more than know the basics and as someone who struggled for a LONG time to get to grips with programming I think I could really help other people like myself. So many 'beginner's courses' seem to be very difficult unless the beginner is a natural. So I was thinking a total noob friendly course that introduces variables and maybe moves no further than for loops (hard to believe I struggled with them at one point) so people would be able to then move onto other 'beginner' courses.

  21. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    24 minutes ago, Mikebloke said:

    Probably the same one! Its by Gustavo.

    Yup, same one :) I just made the 'rainbow'.

     

    I feel there are a few things that aren't quite explained (or possible I missed them as I have the attention span of a gnat) - like he talks about using # to denote a literal value and $ to denote hex but there's no explaination about #$ - I assumed $FF on its own would be an address and #$FF would be a literal hex value and I was right but I could see people who'd never touched on coding before getting very stuck in a few areas.

     

    He also uses a few higher level language examples that people simply wouldn't understand if they hadn't coded before and doesn't explain them (like != and ==). It's fine for me but the course is supposed to be for total beginners.

     

    Also, we draw 192 scanlines but only half of that are 'painted' - 96 lines of colour fill the screen. I googled this and found it's what's known as a two line kernel, so an explanation of that would be nice - I was scratching my head, looking at the code and wondering why if I'm looping over something 192 times, I only see 96 lines. As I said before though, it's quite likely I just missed said explanations! LOL.

     

    I also wish the slides etc. were available as a download for future reference, but other than these points it's a pretty solid course and I'm stoked it exists.

  22. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    4 hours ago, Mikebloke said:

    Fellow "I learnt assembly on udemy" here! Good luck with your projects! 

    Oh cool. Same course or one of the x86 asm courses? Or are there other 'retro' CPU asm courses on there I missed?

    4 hours ago, JeffJetton said:

    Awesome! Congrats and good luck!

    Thanks! It's super interesting hardware. The way things are drawn is totally different from anything I've worked on before. It's really fun :) I think it will even help with might higher level language stuff.

  23. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    1 hour ago, Tommy Tallarico said:


    Yes... that is one of the perks of the Founders Edition.  But it would be a few days before... not weeks.  :)

    If you don't give me one I'll send you a truckload of Marmite. I know where you live :P

     

    EDIT - Actually I've thought things through. I could buy many Amicos for the price of a truckload of Marmite. And I like Marmite, so I'll just buy my own Amico and Marmite. AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!

    • Haha 3

  24. Posted · Edited by MantaNZ

    On 12/25/2019 at 1:54 PM, hobbyhands said:

    So by now many of you have seen the released TheC64.  I am hoping that it is really popular. So the company might be interested in moving on to another machine. The Atari ST would be a great option. I think anyways. 

     

    Having the originals is great, but as they get old and older the harder it will be find ones that work. So a replacement while not the exact same thing would be nice. Your thoughts?

    I have one and it is amazing. Also, I heard a rumour that they will be giving the Amiga 500 the same treatment... here's hoping...

     

    EDIT - if there is an Amiga coming, I hope it's a mini first, like with TheC64 as I don't have the desk space for a full sized Amiga!

    IMG_20200106_153911.jpg

  25. Posted

    On 12/25/2019 at 8:19 AM, tman03 said:

    I’ll do it on 7800 then. I’m actually thinking of having Ys style combat, with swords simply enhancing attack and shields enhancing defense, and you can buy better and better equipment throughout the game. I just don’t have a 7800. Not until I buy one that is! I’ve been saving plenty of money working for my father, and I haven’t spent a cent of it.

    First question - do you know how to code in 6502 assembly? I assume you don't as otherwise you'd know what is and what isn't doable. If I'm right, learn and start with Pong or Breakout. Every game developer needs to start somewhere. I've been making games for years and I've only just started with assembly coding and there's no way I'd start on a project that ambitious! If I'm wrong and you can code and have the skills to get it done, then do it and impress us all :)

    • Like 1
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