tep392

The collision detection doesn't compare pixel level x,y coordinate, like a bounding box method. It's just checking if they occupy the same square in the grid. The fix is as simple as changing the time when the collision detection is performed. No additional CPU cycles necessary.

It's worth practicing because it gives you a small chance of escaping when you get cornered.

This is an interesting debate. I totally understand what you are saying about it be a consequence of the collision detection method, and not a necessarily a coding error. But I still tend to consider it a bug. The question in my mind is whether or not it is an intended "feature". If it's just an accident that they didn't intend, then I would personally call it a bug. I not convinced they want the player to be able to pass thru the ghost. They may not have even known about it when it was first released. Who knows. It would be a fairly easy fix though. Instead of check for collisions after all ghosts and pac-man have had their positions updated, they could check for collision after the ghosts have moved, but before pac-man has moved. Bug or feature, I just consider it a quirk of the game that has been a fun part of Pac-man lore.

Great work as usual. I love my ultimate cart. If you were to design a 7800 cart with Pokey support you would get a ton of orders.

There's an XEX and binary here. The binary only runs on the Atarimax 1mb cart. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/196992-8bit-pac-man-arcade-final-version-accepting-orders/page-1?do=findComment&comment=2507336

No problem. If you not familiar with it, I took the Ms. Pac-man game and updated graphics and reprogrammed the AI to replicate the arcade version.

The game was absurdly easy (due to how less unpredictably the pink monster moved in certain positions relative to the player), as well as other behavior oddities, including more 'safe' zones where you could simply go AFK (the arcade version only had one or two, and it was not always reliable). Although most are still recognizable, the strategy is completely different for some of the ghosts. The only two that act like their arcade counterparts are Blinky and Sue (Clyde). While pinky still tries to cut you off and will move in the direction you are moving if you are close to him (meaning, you can make him run away from you if you approach him closely at an intersection), certain tricks (or bugs) that are present in the arcade version will get you killed here. One example: when Pinky is moving north, approaching him from the right (moving left) on the arcade machine will have him keep moving up or left (forgot which). However on the 5200 version, he just comes right at you instead, if he can't turn left. This behavior was fixed in MS-Pac-Man, which is a better port, although it is still plagued with inconsistent slowdowns when gobbling pellets. Also, Inky does not move anywhere near like his arcade counterpart does. The Ms-Pacman version is more authentic. I still loved pac-man to death on the 5200, until I got the ms pacman version! Do you know I was responding to a question about "Pac-man Arcade", my homebrew?

Who is rjchamp IRL?

LOL. Looks like no skill is required to be on this list. 600 points for Luke Darlington!

Is the keyboard needed to boot an ATR to flash the cart? To keep things simple he should just get the Atarimax programmer. Once programmed, he can navigate the cartridge menu with the joystick. But then a lot of games do use the keyboard for various functions, so it's not a bad idea to get one eventually.

I tend to go with the simplest theory. The input file/save state technique is pretty complicated and tedious. He's good enough to play thru to the kill screen, so he really just needed some help with the odds on the points. It would be pretty easy to hack the ROM to improve the odds. It would really only take a few bytes of code changes. I'm no pro coder, but I could do it. For either method to happen, I'm guessing he would have needed help, so there is probably some others involved in the scam. I also wonder if it couldn't be hacked to reduce the odds of barrels and firefoxes going down the ladders. I saw lots of times in his video were he did risky moves going up ladders when there was a firefox moving across the top. Almost like he knew they wouldn't go down. The logic uses probablility so there is no way to know. I checked out the current champs 1.2M game and he really is much better than Billy at generating points on the barrel screen. He has amazing reflexes.

You should read this post. The first couple topics will be very helpful. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/176545-topic-for-newbies/?do=findComment&comment=2199612

The ROM in the first post is the latest.

I just thought I would mention in this thread that I was able to copy my 1985 SynCalc disk using the Bitwriter Replica. It took some time to figure out the process, but it was fun.

480i is an interlaced video format. It doesn't matter what input is used, it needs to be de-interlaced in order to be displayed as a full video frame.

I wouldn't mind doing a PMP "arcade" version. But I need to finish the project I'm currently working on first, and it's going to take a while.

I just read a craigslist add from a guy offering up to $50 to buy a Sony Trinitron. He only wanted a Sony. Craigslist and Facebook marketplace are still good sites for finding cheap or free CRT's.

This question made me flashback to the early days of HD when I would spend a lot of time comparing the quality of the deinterlacing from my cable STB and upscaling DVD to my HD set, trying to decide if I should send the 480i material as-is to the TV or let the STB do the deinterlacing/upscaling.

I remember when our recycling center had tubs sitting outside that you would put your electronics in. There were plenty of CRT's for the taking. Has anyone tried to get one from their local recycling center?

Although the Happy doesn't produce a true copy, it's a good option for someone who is just looking for a way to run off a backup to keep the original safe. The speed boost is of course very welcome. If I had a second 1050, I would put a happy in it just so I could have both. I have two 810's, one Chip and one Happy. Now I'm wondering what's actually on the Happy backup. I created one on my 810 Happy drive. What do the long tracks look like on the Happy backup? Looks like I have something to do tonight.

This has been very educational. I can see that backing up the more sophisticated copy protection schemes requires knowledge, analysis and some trial and error. Happy was smart to do the up front work and provide files to their customers to make it user friendly. I feel like CSS kind of left people out to dry with the Archiver products by making them figure out the details needed to make a backup on their own. While the SA and Bitwriter are a powerful hardware and software, it is far from user friendly.

Are those two sectors with the same sector number? I'm not familar with the FDC. If two sectors with duplicate sector numbers were spaced so closely, it would not be reliable to read the second sector unless it was done at just the right time. If duplicate sectors can be read by the application, then I don't know why it would be difficult for the archiver program to use an algorithm that would find the duplicates. Seems like that would be a very fundamental requirement of any sector copier. edit: thinking about this more, I guess I don't understand how that second header can be read reliably. 2nd edit: I found some documentation on the FDC so now understand it is scanning every byte in a track until it finds the header with matching track#, sector# and crc. So I'm back to thinking it should not be difficult to find all the sectors by sequentially requesting the same sector number. Looking at the sector scan I posted yesterday, it appears that is how they are actually read as the program is loaded.

I did a few track and sector traces that might be helpful. The track trace counts how many sectors have been read from each track. It is the sum of booting syncalc and booting the SA trace progam, which is necessary to download the data from the drive. Tracks 16,17,20 are the tracer program. Tracks 5-14 are the main program for Syncalc, (Axlon version). You can see that some tracks have 34 sectors read, but when you look at the sector trace I did, it appears some sectors are read multiple times, or they could be duplicate sectors numbers. There is limited space to store the sectors, so I didn't quite get the entire track 7 traced.

Is there a program I can use to make an image file that I could then upload for you to inspect?

The template book is dated 1985 and the main manual is dated 1983, 1985. I don't think these are unique. I see them on Ebay all the time. I re-checked using the 3.02 editor program and it confirmed the sector counts from the bitwriter program. An interesting observation of this disk is that it loads from different tracks if I boot on my 800 with Axlon RAM (tracks 5-14) than it does on my 800XL with U1MB (tracks 29-38). Also, it only supports 64K extra RAM on the 800XL (84k free) while supporting 256K Axlon on the 800 (245k free). So the 800 is the superior machine for SynCalc.