johnnywc

I probably should have mentioned that on the livestream. Good idea avoiding clumps of cars ahead of you! I just checked the code and the enemy speed reduces to 0 in about a second (or at least it should), but I did find a bug where the enemy car moves a bit too fast if your car is going really slow, so hopefully the fix corrects that. Congrats! You found the "other" bug! (like there is only 2 ). This is strictly a "not implemented feature" that I had on my to-do list but ran out of time. The car/side boundary is done using software collision (not PF collision) because of Nathan's 'red bridge' and I need to put in the proper deltas for detecting the collisions on the wall scenes. (right now I think it's checking for the collisions using the medium road width by default). Should be easy to fix! Thanks for the feedback James! John

Hi TJ! Agreed on cheap deaths; I don't think Nathan was listing his examples as "cheap deaths" but quoting James during the livestream and explaining why they AREN'T cheap deaths. Certainly there may be some tweaking that needs to be done, but IMO most of these 'cheap deaths' can be avoided (thus, not making them 'cheap'). The biggest issue James seemed to have is the enemy cars crashing into each other and your car colliding with the accident. A quick peek on the top of the screen you can usually tell if two cars are close together, and just like real driving, you should move to the other side of the road if you think they're going to crash (they don't 'crash' when they're far in the horizon). With that said, I can have the crashed car not slow down to speed 0 so fast so it doesn't appear to come at you so fast after an accident. After you crash and start from the bottom, we've already added in a few seconds of 'invincibility' and unlike the arcade we've also added in logic so if you pull over to the side of the road (which you probably should do anyway after a 'crash'), the enemy cars will only enter from the bottom on the other side of the road, so I think with this strategy you can safely avoid any cheap deaths in this situation. I have already modified the ambulance 'shoving' code so, like the arcade, you can safely follow the ambulance and they will plow through the enemy cars. There was a bug James experienced in the "After Hours" livestream where his car crashed for no reason when on the hill; this is because my code was incorrectly checking for collisions with enemy cars even when they're 'hidden' behind the crest of the hill; this has been fixed also. I'm sure we'll get more feedback after the ROM is released and I'm sure we'll be able to make sure the game doesn't have the "quarter eating" vibe that the arcade has. Agreed, we plan on adding in a CHALLENGE mode with some of those elements, different race types, weather, etc. Lots of options to give the game more re-playability. Thanks! John

Hi all! Last night on @ZeroPage Homebrew's Twitch stream, Champ Games revealed the "secret game" that we've been working on the last few months: Turbo Arcade for the 2600! Turbo is a 3D racing game from the early 80's (1981 to be precise) that featured state-of-the-art scaling graphics. @Nathan Strum has done an amazing job bringing these images to life on the ol' 2600, including full screen four-color scrolling backgrounds (inspired by @cd-w's Zeviouz kernels) and managed to capture all of the iconic scenes from the arcade game, including the city, tunnel, wall, bridges, snow forest and many more! Nathan also stepped out of his comfort zone and provided the sound effects , but if anyone is interested in 'checking his work' we'd appreciate the help! The game currently supports joystick for control but we are hoping to add in driving controller support. There are two modes of shifting supported: automatic (the game automatically shifts from high to low and vice versa when necessary) and manual (the player manually shifts to low or high gear). Due to the large number of data needed for the 150+ scenes and 300+ frames of animation in Turbo Arcade, the game uses the new 64K CDFJ backswitching scheme. Currently this is not supported by the Harmony or Harmony Encore but Fred aka @batari was gracious enough to send a loaner development 128K Melody board to myself, Nathan and James so we could develop, test and reveal the game on real hardware. Thanks Fred! The game does run on the latest version of Stella; I will need to test the ROM on other emulators to confirm whether it works or not. A demo ROM is expected to be made available in the next week and will be available on Champ Games ROM Demo Download page. If you haven't already, be sure to check it out for the latest demos of RobotWar: 2084, Lady Bug Arcade and Gorf Arcade (all expected to be released in 2021), as well as final demos from the released versions of Galagon, Wizard of Wor Arcade and Mappy. The full version is not expected to be released until sometime in 2022. We will post updates here, on our FB site and on our webpage as they become available; in the meantime, here are some screenshots from the current build of the game (which we estimate to be about 70% done): Title screen: Start of race in the city: Limited visibility in the darkened tunnels: Be careful on the slippery surface in the snow / forest scene: You lose sight of the opponent cars as they dip behind the oncoming hill: Slow down around the sharp curve overlooking the ocean! Avoid the ambulance as it travels through the streets with it's sirens blasting!

Hi TJ, apologies for not replying a bit sooner. My QT tests with the Retron77 all had issues, whether connected to the front ports or through the 2600dapter/Stelladapter with USB. 😕 Perhaps. I would assume with the paddles it has to somehow tell the paddles to charge using dumpports through pins 5 and 9; perhaps a similar approach could be used to 'switch' the QuadTari? I'm not a hardware guy but I would think that at some point those pins would have to be set high for paddles to work. Actually, I got it to work with 2 joysticks hooked up to the front ports and 2 joysticks hooked up to a USB OTB hub using 2 2600dapters. There is a bit of slowdown on RobotWar 2 player co-op on the high levels but overall it runs pretty well. True, the QT does work best on consoles, but certainly if there is a way to get it to work on the R77 that would be a cool bonus! See above; you can use 4 joysticks using the 2 front ports and 2 USB ports through a hub, so I don't think there would be any savings for 2600dapters, unless you could get two joysticks to work using one half of the QuadTari which could save for 1 2600dapter, but I'm not sure if that would be worth it. What would be best if we could get the QuadTari to work through the front ports and not need any 2600dapters, but I'm not sure if that is possible. I'm not sure if it's the R77 or Stella that is detecting paddles when they are connected to the front ports (if pin 5 and pin 9 are high are on startup). If there was a way for it to detect that pin 5 is low and pin 9 is high (which identifies a QT), perhaps that would work. I'm not a hardware guy so perhaps it's possible. Do you mean the SDL for the 2600 dapters, the front ports of the R77, or both? Just curious... Also, this is probably not the thread for it and I tried to create an issue in GitHub but was not able to, but one small change for the QuadTari configuration in Stella. Currently, when you click the "QuadTari" button, it labels the 2 controllers for the left QuadTari port as P1 and P2, and the 2 controllers for the right QuadTari port as P3 and P4. The physical QuadTari itself is labeled as Joystick 1/Joystick 3 on the left and Joystick 2/Joystick 4 on the right. Would it be possible to change these labels to match the labels on the QT? Also, perhaps it would be helpful to show what Pn it maps to in the configuration (Joystick 1 -> P0, Joystick 2 -> P1, Joystick 3 -> P2, Joystick 4 -> P3), so perhaps something like "Joystick 1 (P0)", ... or "J1 (P0", ... Thanks! John

Yes, we made the change so you don't have to create an account to view the store. No, you don't have to create an account to make a purchase (any more). Hi James! Yes, you're correct that each binary is individualized to the buyer, but it's not tied to your Champ Games account (just your name and email, which ARE required to make a purchase), so you were half right. Thanks everyone for the feedback; we haven't managed a website in about 23 years or so (1998 ) so we'll do what we can to make the online buying process as easy as possible.

Wow - apologies for not replying to this sooner! 😕 That weird "green thing" is the "Gosenzo" cat-coin! It appears if you take too long to clear a level and will track down Mappy. Unlike cats, it CAN and WILL kill you on contact no matter where you are, including trampolines, so if he show's up, avoid him at all costs! I looked into the code and I was able to find and fix the Hurry up/caught cat bug. I have sent Al a new ROM (with some other changes and tweaks to the UI but no game play changes) for any future Mappy purchases. Since we cannot obviously do a mass-recall without putting AtariAge (and Champ Games) out of business , Al has graciously offered to re-program Mappy carts with the latest ROM if you are willing to send him your cart and pay for the shipping. As another alternative, we have also just added the Mappy full ROM to the Champ Games website online store which is also the latest version, and we offer a 50% discount for people how have previously purchased the cartridge. Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated! John

Hmmm, good question. I'll reach out to my web guy 🕸️ and get back to you soon!

Hello all, For those interested in purchasing the full ROM of Wizard of Wor Arcade, Champ Games has relaunched our website and added a store to do just that! For now, we are offering full ROMs for sale of Galagon, Wizard of Wor Arcade and Mappy, with plans to add more in the near future. If you have previously purchased the cartridge for these games and are interested in purchasing the ROM, we have partnered with AtariAge to offer a 50% discount on ROM purchases with proof-of-purchase of the cart version. We have also posted updated demo ROMs for most of our games, including the latest demos of RobotWar: 2684, Gorf Arcade and Lady Bug Arcade. Have fun!

Hello all, For those interested in purchasing the full ROM of Galagon, Champ Games has relaunched our website and added a store to do just that! For now, we are offering full ROMs for sale of Galagon, Wizard of Wor Arcade and Mappy, with plans to add more in the near future. If you have previously purchased the cartridge for these games and are interested in purchasing the ROM, we have partnered with AtariAge to offer a 50% discount on ROM purchases with proof-of-purchase of the cart version. We have also posted updated demo ROMs for most of our games, including the latest demos of RobotWar: 2684, Gorf Arcade and Lady Bug Arcade. Have fun!

Hello there! We are currently doing final testing on the game and the artwork for the physical release is being reviewed (excellent work by David Exton) and we're hoping for a cartridge release in the AtariAge store in late May/early June. A digital download option will be made available sometime in 2022. Thanks in advance for your support!

You are correct, the game is called Champ Sports Baseball and it's an original title (well, as original as you can get since baseball has been around for 150 years or so ). We also have numerous other original games that we are considering (including some other sports games depending on how CS Baseball is received). Thanks! Robotron has gone through a few name changes, and last fall we decided on RobotWar:2684. David Exton is working on the artwork (manual/label/box) and we are planning on releasing it sometime in May.

Thanks for the quick reply TJ. I'll try with a few more carts and see if I can get it to work. I assume if there is a cart plugged in when you power up, it *should* just load up that game and not go to the Stella menu?

Champ Games and AtariAge are working on making digital downloads available soon! Hmm, I just tried with the cart version of Avalanche (special throw-back super exclusive collector's edition ) and the cart reader on my R77 doesn't seem to work (I don't think I had ever tested it). I tested with Combat but it goes straight to the Stella menu. Does the cart reader get disabled if you install the latest community build?

Thanks Christopher, I'm glad you're enjoying the game! Since the game was an exclusive limited collector's edition, we will not be releasing the ROM. The good news is that the original Lady Bug and Lady Bug Arcade do not have this restriction and can be purchased by everyone! (well, you can't buy Lady Bug Arcade until the end of the year when it's released)

That's great news, thanks so much for confirming! You may inspire me to get into 7800 programming now... It would be nice to add some 7800 games to the Champ Games list someday. Thanks again! John