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Tin_Lunchbox

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Everything posted by Tin_Lunchbox

  1. Tin_Lunchbox
    I didn't mean to sound like a smart aleck! I don't think I could ever program like you have here!
  2. Tin_Lunchbox
    It's only tricky if you think about it. I would just throw random english at the ball when the space bar is pushed. The player typically bumps the pinball machine as a panic or save move. He or she is not thinking about relative velocities and colliding surfaces.
  3. Tin_Lunchbox
    Good luck, RobS!! You devoted a lot of hours and this is something worth sharing. It's been stored away for 22 years like you said, at risk like it or not of vanishing or being lost or being damaged or being thrown out. Put it on the Internet, the more user-friendly the better, and archivists will do the rest. People will perhaps be able to enjoy it 222 years from now.
  4. Tin_Lunchbox
    Ah, well, shift (both for left) and inverse video (for right) would work well on an XL kb.
  5. Tin_Lunchbox
    Phaeron, wow, this is a new thing in the Atari 8bit world I think: a pixel-perfect conversion of a 2600/Video Arcade game. Coincidentally I had recently played the 2600 version. It really is exactly, or close enough to exactly, the same thing. It could be my imagination but I think your version on my NTSC 600XL w. 320K is a tiny bit slower (which is not a bad thing, in my case). You've obviously worked hard and I don't know if you're entertaining modification suggestions, or if modifications defeat the purpose of an exact port, but it would be cool if you mapped the flipper buttons to left shift and right shift (and maybe right inverse video key too). And it would be majestic if you programmed a bump/tilt feature to the space bar. You've opened a new area of possibilities really. What other 2600 games would be nice to have on the 8bit? Combat/Tanks Plus, Air Sea Battle/Target Fun, Casino/Blackjack Plus...
  6. Tin_Lunchbox
    I agree with Mr. SQL, and I don't think the sarcastic and belittling and snide comments help the other side be more convincing, except to itself. It's an absurdity to claim that the perspective in Enduro is more like Donkey Kong or Combat or Pitfall than it is like Star Raiders or Tunnel Runner or Skeleton Plus. Yet that is what they so aggressively tell us to accept. To the person who acknowledged the term "modified first-person gets the point across but [he doesn't] like it," what are you trying to be diplomatic at my expense?
  7. Tin_Lunchbox
    Actually that's one of the few comments that's been on topic.
  8. Tin_Lunchbox
    I saw scans of the Atari pages of the Sears Christmas catalog (Wish Book) for 1978 and 1979. Chess was not advertised in the 1978 catalog but it was in the 1979 catalog. It threw me off a bit because the Video Chess cartridge is labeled © 1978, but indeed it seems that MicroChess for TRS-80 preceded it.
  9. Tin_Lunchbox
    According to what I'm finding, the only MicroChess from 1976 was on the Kim-1 with a six numerical character LED display, not video. Moby Games has screenshots of a TRS-80 video display version that it says came out in November, 1978 (http://www.mobygames...s-80/microchess). Edit: But if we go by Moby Games, it is accurate that it says Video Chess for the 2600/Video Arcade as well as Atari's Chess for its 8bit line came out in 1979. Edit: Sports Illustrated magazine said at the time that chess programs for Atari video game, TRS-80, Apple, and Pet computers were available no later than December 17, 1979 (http://sportsillustr...26396/index.htm). Edit: Might be closing in on the answer. Radio Shack was advertising MicroChess on cassette for TRS-80 on 22 February, 1979, strongly implying its availability at that time (http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LucgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FW4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=6389,3955402&dq=microchess&hl=en).
  10. Tin_Lunchbox
    I couldn't have programmed it, but if I'd designed it, in hindsight Id've made it like Legend of Zelda. Cute and basically tile-based. I think even without knowing about Zelda Id've gone for a more accessible maze-like design. Not like Adventure really (except perhaps for the mazes in Adventure) but more like Gauntlet.
  11. Tin_Lunchbox
    MrFish, those cards are magnificent, certainly the best I've seen on the 8bit. The casino chips look nice, but it could be awkward to implement those. I mean the game is not going to be mouse-based, so how exactly do you propose to implement the chips. I was pondering whether your cards leave enough space to split an hand, and I noticed that the design of your cards make it easy to overlap them. Looks really super!
  12. Tin_Lunchbox
    Ken Uston's is the most advanced. You can play different casinos and set up computer players at your table. It seems so far very smooth and bug-free. It's a great trainer, honks at you when you make a decision against the odds and accepted gambling wisdom. I'd say yes it's the best, but it would have been so nice to have some colorful cards with all that technical greatness.
  13. Tin_Lunchbox
    I would like a Blackjack that, firstly, plays realistically with the full set of choices: hit, stand, double, split, and insurance. Secondly I would like good graphics and big cards. Atari's original Blackjack has big cards, it looks great, and it sounds good too, but shocker I tried it and I didn't seem to be able to split. Plus, it's OSB only from what I've been able to tell, however I found a modified version that seems to run on XL: http://gury.atari8.info/details_games/5785.htm. I tried Keypunch Software's Blackjack but it apparently won't let one double! It looks okay graphically, but has one of those stylized computerish fonts that is incongruous for Blackjack. I haven't played Manhattan Software's Blackjack yet but from the screenshot (http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/casino_blackjack_counter_4.gif) it looks to have all the choices, though the graphics are sparse. Ken Uston's Professional Blackjack no doubt has all the choices, but I haven't located the download yet. Any ideas for a decent Blackjack simulation? It's really too bad about the original Atari one's limited play capability, because it looks and sounds so good.
  14. Tin_Lunchbox
    Great reading. I hadn't heard about this before. Ultima IV is shoulder to shoulder with Alternate Reality and Star Raiders as among the greatest Atari 8bit games ever. Of course the obvious questions are 1) is it playable, and 2) can you finish it, or release the code to someone who can, but never mind that; please continue the story in your own way.
  15. Tin_Lunchbox
    Bah, there's no need to be rude. Conversation over as far as I'm concerned, unless you can troll me bad enough to force a response. By the way: "research," not "read search."
  16. Tin_Lunchbox
    It's okay, just don't expect me to agree with you, or whatever someone quotes from The Video Game Critic like it's the Bible or Quran. Bah, to expound on it, the kind of games I consider modified first-person are those where you could basically remove the representation of the character and it looks and plays the same or nearly the same way. You might see the hood of the car or the head or the back of the person (ala Night Driver, Aztec Challenge for 2600/Video Arcade, or Tomb Raider for DOS, etc.) but you're still basically seeing through the character's eyes. It's totally different from an overhead view like Combat/Tanks Plus or some side view like Donkey Kong or whatever. Those are third-person perspective in my view.
  17. Tin_Lunchbox
    Thought I'd let you know that I played Chess for the Atari 8bit line of computers yesterday. It has eight levels, just like Video Chess. It has other similarities, like the control mechanics are near identical. However its level 1 is much easier than Video Chess' level 1. I beat Atari 8bit level 1 almost right off. I must now admit that 2600/Sears Video Arcade Video Chess at level 1 beats me more often than not. This just goes to show that if one wants to pit one chess program against another, one must set each program to its highest level for it to be meaningful, because the lower levels are basically degraded functioning levels and are set arbitrarily.
  18. Tin_Lunchbox
    People, this is getting tragic. Looking at a dude or lady walk into the bookstore on the other side of the street is third person. If I'm holding a joystick walking four steps behind the person, controlling him or her left right and forward with the radio neural implant and the person jumps each time I press the trigger, that's modified first-person.
  19. Tin_Lunchbox
    I can't believe more than one person is saying Cosmic Ark is among the worst. Cosmic Ark is great! The action is furious and fast and the graphics are great. It even has something of a humorous whimsy in that you're vaporizing those comets east and west and north and south, and then you descend in the suborbital module to tractor beam up funky critters and then zip back up and blast more space rocks and you have no time to take a breather, ever.
  20. Tin_Lunchbox
    FujiSkunk, blargh, Fatal Run in my view does not have as good graphics as Enduro, 32K or no. Rex Dart is correct really. In Night Driver you're really looking out over the hood of your car. So, still first-person. However I think the proper term for Enduro and I think Pole Position is "modified first-person."
  21. Tin_Lunchbox
    I'm aware of Night Driver, Pole Position, and Enduro. Those are the three first-person racing games for Atari 2600/Sears Video Arcade that I know of. Night Driver is a real classic, it's good but a little limited (at 2K) and not very smooth. Pole Position was okay, more advanced but it never quite "clicked" at least not for me. Now Enduro is smooth and varied and seems pretty darn good. The landscape changes colors, the horizon scrolls around quickly, and there is a night-time sequence that is a little like Night Driver. Anyone agree that Enduro is the best, or know of a first-person racer I missed?
  22. Tin_Lunchbox
    Well, this is very interesting and very cool. This hacks "Pesco," eh? I guess that was an homebrew? I tried it on an oldish version of Stella and it ran a bit slow, but I haven't tried adjusting the novice/expert settings or anything. I read where someone else said it played too fast. The way it's playing slow for me at the moment means it's pretty easy. I think the slowness probably also worsens the flicker. I don't know about buying the cart for this, beacuse Ms. Pac-Man is just TOO good, however I'll have a look in the shop. I played the 10/04/06 version.
  23. Tin_Lunchbox
    Fascinating stuff, but the lawsuit story reportedly originated in the March 1983 edition of IEEE Spectrum, in which Larry Kaplan (who didn't program Video Chess, but I'm pretty sure did other great stuff, not just Bridge) told an anecdote (http://2600connection.atari.org/faq/faq_atarivcs.html#general19). Bob Whitehead and Larry Wagner had teamed up for Video Chess, but Whitehead says he knew of no such lawsuit, but heard repeatedly from corporate executives who said there had to be a chess cartridge because there was a chess piece pictured on a common version of the 2600 box.
  24. Tin_Lunchbox
    I've only played Starmaster, Outer Space, and Star Voyager, but I've seen online video I think for the others. I think Starmaster is the best too. You're talking about not only shooter but shooter/simulator which to me means there's a strategic element involved, with the map or whatever. Outer Space, Star Fire, don't really have that. I think Star Voyager has it but it's been a while. Starmaster was very smooth, with a lot of that trademark Activision style, and did the strategic element well without needing a keypad. Outer Space, heh heh. Well, it tries. It was 2K after all. Little known fact: Outer Space has a distinct lunar lander implementation among the 17 or whatever it was numbered "games" stated on the cartridge.
  25. Tin_Lunchbox
    I can't find that. If this is accurate, please link it.
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