Albert

The September 2010 issue of Retrogaming Times Montnly is now on-line. Here is what's happening this month: Redefining Retro One More Time Show Report -- 2010 Big Bang Retrogaming Smackdown Apple II Incider - Oregon Trail Gaming Studies With The Tomy Tutor - Traffic Jam Dual Perspective - Dragon Warrior Mutated Output: Triumphs & Perils Of Rush-Deadline Programming The Homebrew Sleuth: King's Quest I VGA A Pixelated 21st Century! +More! You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 156 months in a row! You can also browse the RTM archives to catch up on past issues.

Here are some iPad shots using the default mobile skin, but you can always go back to the normal skin anytime you'd like. It's the same skin used for the iPhone (and other mobile devices), but the skin takes advantage of the extra space afforded on the iPad. This skin is very fast compared to the standard skin since it's much "lighter". Forum index: Atari 2600 forum: Individual thread in the 2600 forum: User profile page: User control panel: Search results: Adding a reply to a topic: ..Al

I will consider this. ..Al

Here is a direct link to your Atari-related auctions: eBay seller: Light and Water, Atari Auctions ..Al

Yeah, it's interesting how they've limited it in that fashion, which I imagine was done for performance reasons. I'll probably remove that, after I do some testing when the forum goes live. Should be okay with the Sphinx search engine. ..Al

The new "My Content" page: ..Al

Here's a shot of the new notifications settings: IF you use the Invision iPhone app, you can actually receive these notifications on your phone. ..Al

i'm making good progress on getting the main AtariAge skin updated for the new forum upgrade: There are still various changes that have to be made, so please no critiques yet. I have a solid day or two's worth of work on the skin before I can do the upgrade. ..Al

Sorry, I'm not releasing the binary at this time. A large sum of money was invested in making this game a reality and I'd like to recoup that first. ..Al

Thanks! ..Al

It's on the front page of the store, but here's a direct link to the game in the store: http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=960 ..Al

Atari certainly has to be commended for attempting games like this on the Atari 2600. It's not a bad port, either, all things considering. ..Al

I've considered deleting all your posts.. ..Al

Here are some screenshots I took earlier today on my phone of one of the two new mobile skins for the forum: The first is the main forum index. Ignore the "0 Active Reports", that's a moderation feature. If you click on your username, you get a popup menu with some choices. Clicking on the "1" brings you into the Messenger. You can easily search and "View New Content", which is much nicer in this new version of the software. These are iPhone 4 screenshots, so they are pretty high resolution (for a phone): "View New Content" -- ignore the "Aqua-Soft.org", that's before I changed that image out for "AtariAge": Here's a view of the 2600 forum, scrolled down a bit: View of a specific thread. Clicking the gear icon pops up a menu that lets you "Reply", "Edit", etc. Scrolling down a bit in a thread: You can even view videos posted to YouTube: This skin is still a work-in-progress. I'm sure all the icons for the iPhone 4 will be high-resolution when it's done. Will post some iPad shots tomorrow. ..Al

Great review, thanks for taking the time to put this on paper. Yes, we spent much time discussing the lack of movement on the road itself. Nobody involved in the project liked that, but it would have required a complete rewrite of the game in order to facilitate showing some type of movement on the road. And at that point, what we would have had is a homebrew version of Turbo, as opposed to an "Enhanced" version of the prototype. And that very much went against the grain of what I wanted to present. We (and by "we" I mean Thomas Jentzsch and Nathan Strum) really squeezed as much as possible into an 8K version of the game without rewriting it from scratch. I'm glad you like the physical materials (box, cart, manual)--Nathan Strum gets top honors for his work in creating all the designs and artwork and mimicking Coleco's original releases as closely as possible. And the printing came out great--the boxes and manuals were printed printed professionally and I printed the labels using custom Coleco die sheets (the labels are a different size and shape than Atari's labels, for instance, they are tapered at the end where the label wraps around the cart). If you hold up an original Coleco release next to Turbo, you'd be hard pressed to tell Turbo from the original release. The main giveaway would be the glossy sheen of the paper--both are glossy, but they are a touch different. The only way to get the labels to look EXACTLY like Coleco releases would be to use the same exact paper they did and run the labels on an offset press. Not really feasible. It would be fantastic if you and Cafeman could put your reviews in the store. Thanks! ..Al

Soon. ..Al

I saw this on another site a few minutes ago. This really deserves its own thread. ..Al

I'll do this overnight once I'm ready. It'll likely take me a few days to get the skins all square, so perhaps late Sunday. I'm doing all the work locally, so downtime will be minimal. If everything goes smoothly, the forum should only be down for an hour or two. Here's a rough list of what the tasks involved in doing the upgrade on the live server: Take forum down. Do immediate backup of database (in case things go horribly awry, I can at least restore everything). Update backup of forum file system (again, so I can restore in case things go wrong and I need to revert the upgrade). Upload new source files and images. Run several upgrade scripts. Delete old forum skins. Install new forum skins. Do some simple testing to make sure things are working. Put forum back online. Realistically that shouldn't take more than an hour. Could take longer if I run into some snags. Any big snags that would require a significant amount of downtime to correct would likely result in my reverting everything and trying again at a later time. ..Al

It's September and I'm working on the forum now. I just posted a detailed update today: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/168656-forum-upgrade-coming-soon-some-details-here ..Al

I'm surprised it lasted this long. I love this quote, "The broadcaster said that the judgment does not prevent them from taking the issue further in the courts. 'The BBC will not be deterred from protecting such information from attack no matter when or by whom it should arise," the broadcaster said in a statement." LOL, a bit late for that now.. ..Al

Yes, send me a PM with your wife's email address. ..Al

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/20679-the-time-has-come-for-atari-2600-dragons-lair/page__view__findpost__p__727101 ..Al

Yes--if you look at the third screenshot I posted, you'll see this text underneath the box you type your search query in: "Tip: Search for a specific phrase by "enclosing it in quotes" ..Al

http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/sinistar/sinistar.htm ..Al

Many of you probably do not have much interest in what goes on behind the scenes to keep AtariAge, and in particular, the forums up and running. It's a fair bit of work, time and money. Every now and again I need to perform a significant update to the forum software itself, as opposed to the minor updates that come along every now and again. Time has come again for me to do a major upgrade of the forum software. Several months ago Invision released IP.Board 3.1.0, along with updates to the other forum modules (IP.Blog, Gallery, Downloads, etc). Two days ago I started working in earnest on the upgrade. There are over 1,000 source files to the forum, and because I have made various modifications to the source code, I have to manually merge these files. It's a very time consuming and somewhat tedious task, and I was able to finish that yesterday. A more difficult task is updating the various forum skins (which control the visual appearance of the forum) to work with the new software. The default, "AtariAge" skin is the one that requires the most work since it is heavily customized. The latest software has a "Template Merge" tool that supposedly makes upgrading existing skins easier, but I have to say it was a catastrophic failure when I tried to use it yesterday: There is a new, default Mobile skin created by Invision that looks quite slick on mobile phones. The current mobile skin we're using, which is a commercial skin, has a significant update coming along that is greatly improved on cell phones and has been enhanced for the iPad as well. At least three of the other skins installed (CleanCut, Splat!, and Deflection) have also been updated for 3.1.x. The remaining three skins (Classic Blue, IP.Board Pro and IPSBeyond) are still being worked on and will be removed until they are ready (I believe Classic Blue is nearly complete). The new software has many improvements over what we're running now. The user Profile page has been completely redone and has much stronger support for integration with Facebook. You can even set a background image for the entire page. You can easily see all of a user's posts, blog entries, etc. with the "Find My Content" link under a user's profile photo. There is a new "Recent Status Updates" tab in the profile that shows you all your status updates, as well as replies to them. Here's an example of such a profile on Invision's site ("Matt" is their chief software architect): http://community.invisionpower.com/user/62-matt/ Regarding status updates, you can now directly reply to status updates on the front page. There's also a new page that allows you to view all status updates, as well as updates from your friends: http://community.invisionpower.com/statuses/all/ You can also view all the status updates for just a single user: http://community.invisionpower.com/statuses/all/page__member_id__62 Moving on, the search system has been completely rewritten from scratch in IP.Board 3.1.x. Search results should be more accurate, returning results as "Posts" is MUCH better than before (and the search terms are properly highlighted), searching within forums and topics works properly, and searching other modules (members, blog, gallery, downloads, etc.) has been greatly improved. This has always been a weak area in the software in my opinion and I have been pretty vocal about it over the years. I was thrilled when they announced a complete revamp of the search system earlier in the year. Invision has also added native support for the Sphinx search engine, which is what we are using on AtariAge to make searches fast and not a huge resource hog on the server. There are over 2,000,000 posts on AtariAge now, yet searches still return very quickly. As Sphinx support is now built into the forum, its use has been greatly expanded, making other searches more efficient and further reducing load on the server. The software now has the "My Posts" functionality built in. This page shows you all the threads you've posted or started, so you can easily keep tabs on those threads. I had to add this feature to the forum myself, and maintain it over the years as IP.Board has evolved. Now that it's (finally!) built-in, that makes my life easier and is one less modification I have to maintain. Here's a screenshot showing how this works on Invision's forum: The Advanced Search page has been revamped, and each forum "module" has its own unique search parameters to help you further narrow down results: The Chat room has seen some improvements, most notably the addition of private chats between two individual members. I'm expecting Invision to make some more significant enhancements to the chat soon, as this is still a relatively young product. Once I get the new software live on the forum, I will be adding the "Downloads" module. The primary focus of this will be to server as a repository for homebrew and hack binaries and related files, from development all the way through release. It supports file revisions, so authors can upload their latest binaries to the same "entry", and a history will be maintained of previous releases. It's fully integrated into the forum, so you can (for instance) use the search system to see the latest games posted, easily find obscure titles, and so forth. Here's an example of an entry on Invision's site for a forum application by a third party: There's an entirely new "Notifications" system that allows you to customize the notices you receive from the forum. Right now the there are only a few notification options, such as when someone sends you a PM. With Invision 3.1, there are many more events that trigger notifications, and you have four options for being notified: Email, Personal Conversation, Inline Notification (these are new), and Mobile. Here's the page in the user control panel where you can adjust your notification settings: I'll touch on more later, but these are some of the major improvements that have been made. There have been many, many minor improvements and a great deal of bug fixes as well. And there have been enhancements to moderator-related functions that aren't really appropriate to discuss here. If you have any questions, please fire away! ..Al