ZylonBane

February 5, 2003

"I suppose that hating the 2600 version of Pac-Man is the vogue thing to do these days."

As far as I know, people have been hating Pac-Man since the day it was released. And the dots go "bong", not "bonk".

The sad fact is that it diverged from the arcade game in several aspects that had nothing to do with the 4K ROM limitation. Todd Frye should have been smacked, but instead he got millions in royalties.

February 4, 2003

Who hated Crystal Castles? I've heard nothing but good things about it.

February 4, 2003

Umm.... she chased Ripley half way across the colony, including getting in and operating the lift (elevator).

And that was, in the truest sense of the term, a scripted sequence.

The Queen moves and attacks the same as any Alien. It works in the confines of her chamber, but loose in the ship it would likely come across a tad silly (and rapidly lethal).

February 3, 2003

It would have been really cool if upon entering the chamber a group of Aliens grabbed you and carried you to the queen. Maybe they could have even formed a circle around for you to fight in.

This would have been utterly ludicrous. Aliens slaughter, they don't set up cage matches. :roll:

And Tyrant, what you describe is a) VERY commonly known, and b) not a bug. It's not even an AI issue. The developers specifically limited the Queen to the egg chamber. Having the Queen chase you all over the ship would have just been stupid.

Killing the Queen in this manner just isn't fun anyway. In fact it's downright tedious. If you want a real exploit, try this-- Run into the egg chamber and save your game. Then reload. Apparently the Queen isn't "activated" until you cross the egg chamber threshold, and this isn't recorded in the save game. So you can pump the motionless Queen full of lead, and she won't even die until you wander over to the door.

February 3, 2003

I actually had a chance to buy an Atari Video Music for cheap at an Atari swap meet about 10 years ago. Didn't get it because seller wouldn't take a check and I didn't have enough cash on hand.

(weeps)

February 3, 2003

The monitors of the 8-bit/16-bit era were manufactured before "S-Video" even existed. Back then they called it split video (or chroma/luma or Y/C), and used two RCA jacks-- one for color, and one for luminance. So your S-Video cable is useless for this purpose.

A small S-Video equipped TV would probably look quite sharp though. Just make sure it doesn't have (or lets you disable) a comb filter.

February 3, 2003

I say ALL games Coleco made for the 2600 - they stink and were probably part of a deliberate effort to make it look bad.

WTF are you on about? Sure there were some duds, but for the most part Coleco's 2600 games were solid, technically-excellent efforts.

And I liked Donkey Kong, BTW. Sure it only had 2 screens, but they both played well.

February 2, 2003

Atari published Ms Pac-Man, which is the basis for Pac-Man Arcade, so I think they already know how good it could have been. :roll:

February 1, 2003

Have you looked the articles? The "digitizer" is just around 4 simple component parts.

Doing range-compression sounds like it would significantly complicate the circuit. Or it might be as simple as adding a resistor. Electronics isn't really my forte.

February 1, 2003

So when are they going to fix the WinAmp SAP plugin so that it plays tunes at the correct speed (60Hz) and doesn't crash on a lot of the SAP files?

February 1, 2003

I'm guessing that was probably on an Atari computer rather than the 2600. While you might be able to do it on the 2600, I suspect that it would consume too much processor time to display much if anything.

Yes, it was for the Atari computer. They didn't publish a lot of type-in 2600 programs back then.

I don't know why you think it would take any more CPU time than any other paddle application. In fact it would take less, since you'd only need very coarse precision to drive the video effects. Just sample ~16 times per frame, then keep a rolling average of ten or so frames to derive the current volume level.

Yes, being responsive to intensity and frequency would be cool, but better to set your sights low and actually get something out there.

Ah, found the articles--

http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n4/talkischeap.html

http://www.atarimagazines.com/v8n8/anticsa...mplingproc.html

January 31, 2003

I still believe that every 2k is possible

This says more about you than it does about the problem.

What it says isn't very flattering.

January 30, 2003

Hmm, I only had the base ATR8000.

Pretty cool being able to use dual DS/DD drives years before the XF551 came out.

January 30, 2003

It's possible to sample audio through the paddle port using a fairly simple circuit. I vaguely remember an article in Antic or ANALOG on how to build your own.

January 29, 2003

reprogram mule to use the paddles.

Ugh.

January 28, 2003

who knew there were so many possible combinations of zeros and ones in a piddly little 2k

Anyone who's actually programmed. :roll:

How old are you anyway?

January 28, 2003

Ok, I officially give up on attempting to clue-ify you. You are clearly failing to grasp the magnitude of the numbers involved. Go drink your apple juice.

January 28, 2003

Actually I used 31,556,925 seconds (number of seconds in a "tropical year").

And parallel processing is irrelevant. Adding CPUs only increases your computing power arithmetically (linearly)-- adding bits to the ROM increases its complexity geometrically. Make it a million CPUs instead of one, and you've only divided the total time by an insignificant million.

January 28, 2003

No-one said that it was impossible. Just that the Universe would have either collapsed or undergone total heat-death long before it was done.

Perhaps you aren't grasping the scale of the numbers we're talking about here. Let's assume a much-improved case-- instead of a 2K ROM, a 128-byte ROM. And let's upgrade our computer to process and validate a TRILLION (U.S.) permutations a second, complete with an A.I. incarnation of Nolan Bushnell to determine if the result is playable or not.

With this smokin' setup, our algorithm would achieve completion in only

569666764065990557612728486945107843561429695365535955336047

733287488168779122056831292901074510700966967199370253576220

302801267279421624549437027338608322508507699735843987575792

697169467855690797132331762381058478133348995388116788670349

0306081380342048874679212193201563394991106272389 years.

By comparison, the projected lifespan of our own sun is a paltry 5 billion years.

January 28, 2003

Stella also works fine with Supercharger roms. In fact, it even gives the video effect of the Supercharger load screen.

If it's using the Supercharger boot ROM, then of course it does.

January 28, 2003

Boo on Warlords. A good while-drinking game (as opposed to a "drinking game", which is something entirely different) should, for obvious reasons, provide a large margin of error for successful play. For example, Val d'Isere Skiing on the Jag is a perfect "drunk" game-- it lets you veer all over the course, and even if you crash you just get right up and keep going.

Warlords, OTOH, requires pinpoint precision. After a certain amount of drinks it's just miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss... hardly fun.

January 28, 2003

Eh, just a little basic math and this.

January 28, 2003

Hozer's gone. It ain't coming back. I think that Randy was most likely getting tired of it (reasonable after 8+ years) and the whole conversion debacle was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

I guess I wasn't paying attention when this happened. What debacle?

January 28, 2003

Just in case you don't realize how stupendously impractical this idea is--

For the simplest case of a 2K cartridge, that's 2048 bytes... which equals 16384 bits... which gives 2^16384 possible combinations.

Now let's say we have a decent supercomputer that can run through (and heck, even validate) 1 BILLION full 2K combinations per second. You'd finish up your calculations in a jaunty

3770112250662039362471975094620300079185296688750599868246588

7320556782962233604411852187609300083576429434664018731522760

7780980342250528615993065972544855394139839152897469421416456

6476396058380061890407516371912144949055812582451282185979291

7533583390787866843367118478332578767929977207851708938889230

1173455703722964441029572037568391284450837717051761324638020

9352112309793721253293328318731168454446786631503075486023621

2200343073472800583053027176925295578650067066387659928371143

7706420949849114223903599103738811634067027576113606949948063

8950449149027272055347193807132105547048524865275583572463853

8596324480230218706200727744056745971831478333562151313810632

5339737771549094768862823258406097786245725972425728762038593

9616533422645002615884220294686554053261957487610590693910215

7441981797708524444579153036172912753368862021667328399713907

7024465339383809402042603232602058433003087965450995497324122

9882731777770749293938493842610298082592020803653821407623283

5039555580264144015219570298395836984565658198224744185499634

0962216268659668711390031906649245376816416935088484606408229

4901247215725158327843659892730415012527166978367150820126648

1408659737549339618291255569351081100140546446000518311818639

7607464954294087627144754062287003704002822706170624932819922

8211761693152492089039228183845975271846197017579792285993846

9921186793304207288051693915525595700387570716507756084710985

5125046447553453876799022174974698457301912107761390089521706

9709918330651620365615632912639886957837191160547389644158412

6849601250973404792851014590668095490235367040739697000303632

3580906672659216670190595302814418283666030140960927745766707

7560168529515935903365131130770410919711125428591851876446446

1098966339321485277758338694667189825199526430007513292808160

4948256483809726791174136605979891149582486488916366122058709

3412207799800285183212715197153867305350932626297904108111017

8148702520029168097147770100735576130906511991875496679582030

4304580090096374776677853405736816791085728034840258381658377

9592028595366431986416283837450764216874909653405483732175120

6701797633824459161862254406962251548577078032918799371217281

8451465766490571566137665072429530295910006710779432862782106

0877484527029773816749430952819083278605133820624795248197313

6132093222471438146045507220468070751780760466135174802890811

6714919601666307332903067568494249614816075598405039496394668

6627711428348069017855512392953744027018788134085180090216551

6460029075366922071540696433178095591368321262327479645680058

7190264376784821045523789808932862833477312670139786203729749

5647439053845995471664733190712395941021590253261884223807382

0597211119256398428680295459288672906318548598879314448648907

4330797022062776256486820426573418054397643124061392471200810

6061606540135093374626668981493201492911635468716650530556845

3279546915061154207845558327369338876433955676122479407332432

4728578818179603972726104315913019877670025803808931880333689

5277002361080315553266201693608719946104838701258406147454169

3799045644719859562913264840425907844662741217401875531805334

9338108800389272976025258145029361222680885532612625058356780

0112612494040833986469974731469063689096462241353637949135586

2776696996206489592638994452220514188752013697978226572291707

0255620633643950671493218275035520469935139178935427586291507

4263633013190281345455135942149610501638524055493008119013816

7146014980905805240529992328275673283462864000532475804151544

4949068064888681735037232087762814142782008729858159186233578

3972365347438015804358135038417528564534221878098101211710284

4232334585689393606609924522885691869460091783290805006206752

8868570178890473991972194021166564988249665834556046979926196

9230209627073929705964908147861874086494604216354691336518554

1989740381926854969910556821567018732747070191918650043803046

3071881068818780393698720407268934281755712258945119658488556

0914780525268165339813777215171592007652770710145026987100837

3136546935332758032767999585886312433507046323763294623737807

1720122333803814438908207268287896819207306859493004726521097

1975613015762315296915565593693704552075514891733649360947425

4755320467285939882537919003849791571384831132277992605021754

1432073234300962078024351154264162262082104214504403677225715

6453005076872180545996170008459415421319218600566527628373844

7995049397009646088512111291341261833986757136956533200808542

4814521925746602084754854853397690077717264494686186015256193

2916546411312007928003776647430599891401510994747151024967440

3473607744492069816269710009051948310369907345568744409411279

9351865545032673188414190997407569715693466459395288506808810

1329618042274598685594798977521451820532129782441175587342253

8283980804134764898617345492566767480111345419186471341213977

4894425914453514111046131511725074780159674485380214640176988

0127826817676762163879890087783471703059917864050510019811770

0388133674891330322799159807567264021142442553654670067761412

691950634870022339545755587797621188 years.

January 27, 2003

"Modulation"? Uhhh...you mean, "emulation"? :ponder:

Sign In

Profiles

Member Map

Forums

Blogs

Gallery

Calendar

Store

Posts posted by ZylonBane