[Quick Questions for Atari 2600 Programmers Thread]

16 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

Thank you, @SpiceWare.  Do you think that's because you made the games and you know all the tricks?  (Or do you score high in games made by other people, too?)  

 

I tracked down a couple of final standings posts:

• #18 for season 4 
• #36 for season 6

so making the games appears to have helped me to score higher than I usually do on average.

[Quick Questions for Atari 2600 Programmers Thread]

On 3/16/2024 at 2:25 AM, Living Room Arcade said:

Do programmers generally always get the highest scores on their own games that they made?  You know, because they know all the tricks to win at it.  Or is that not true?  Do the players score higher than even the programmers could?  I've always wondered.

 

As seen in the 2600 High Score Club while I do get higher scores, they're not necessarily the highest.

 

HSC Space Rocks:

 

1. 108030 - Captain Classic (+50) (+2)
2. 98670 - Spiceware (+49) (+3)
3. ...

 

HSC Stay Frosty:

 

1. 236,862 (darthkur) [+11]
2. 232,439 (SpiceWare) [+10]
3. ...

 

HSC Stay Frosty 2:

 

1. 378,853 McCallister (+27) (+2)
2. 182,641 SpiceWare (+26)
3. ...

 

[Whisky - run Windows games under macOS on Apple Silicon]

Ran across this video on YouTube last night about Whisky. It uses Wine and Apple's Game Porting toolkit to run Windows games.  The example video walks thru installing and running games from Steam.

 

I don't have many games in Steam, and most of the games I have do not run (denoted with 🚫) on my current Mac (a Studio with Apple's M2 Ultra CPU):

 

 

So I installed Whisky, then install Steam in Whisky. The 🚫 symbol does not show up by any of the games:

 

 

Haven't played Peggle in years so decided to install it. When I launched it the program displayed the Loading screen for long time:

 

 

Long enough that I thought it hung.  I let it be though, and it eventually finished loading. I started a game:

 

 

and while it did run the audio and game both stuttered.  Did a little research, found this, and did the following in Whisky which resolved the stuttering issue:

 

1. File -> Kill All Bottles
2. Click on Winetricks...
3. Select DLLs tab
4. Select dsound
5. click Run...
6. Run Steam
7. Launch Peggle

 

[Red Viper - Virtual Boy emulator for 3DS]

1 minute ago, Asaki said:

Oh, gotcha.
I didn't have any problems with the menu, but I always use a stylus, not my fingers.

 

I suspected the stylus worked better. The handles I use on my 3DS, else my hands cramp, block access to the stylus.  Wish it'd been designed with either a cutout to access the stylus storage, or a new place to store the stylus.

[Red Viper - Virtual Boy emulator for 3DS]

4 hours ago, Asaki said:

I don't know if you figured this out already, but there's a much easier way to do it:
Open FBI -> Remote Install -> Scan QR Code

 

That's how I've been installing it since the beginning.

 

On 3/6/2024 at 1:30 PM, SpiceWare said:

I decided to try the "remote install" method, hadn't used it before:

 

 

 

I only did the 3DS-FBI-Link method that one time because the original touch-screen interface to select a game was very finicky, it kept launching games while scrolling the ROM list up/down with my finger.  It was so annoying that when the commits were done to add support for physical controls I wanted to try it out ASAP.  It wasn't yet part of the official release, that happened about 2 weeks later, so the QR Code method wouldn't have installed it at that time.

[New Starpath Prototypes]

@Tempest - I think it should it be "get hit by" in this:

 

"If you get by four bricks you fail the test."

 

 

[One year with my 3]

On 4/5/2024 at 2:40 PM, SpiceWare said:

extrapolates to 294 miles at 100%

 

294 miles of range confirmed. Didn't check it earlier as we were heading out of town that night for the eclipse in my folks' Model Y and it's not good to leave the battery sitting at 100%.

 

 

The new V3 Superchargers that went online 5 months ago in Luling, TX made a big difference for the trip - plug in, walk in to use restrooms & get drinks, walk back to car, unplug, resume trip.

 

 

In past trips to Bandera the older V2 Superchargers in Flatonia would require additional time, so we'd use the stop as a meal break even though the food options weren't the best.

[Red Viper - Virtual Boy emulator for 3DS]

 

Red Viper 0.9.3 was released yesterday:

• Run 3DS displays at 50Hz (thanks to everyone in #46 who knows much more about this than I do!)
• Improve frame pacing by rendering on VBlank
• The image is now displayed in full 24-bit colour
• Various renderer optimizations, significantly improving performance in Elevated Speed
• Improved audio clarity
• Fixed issues with various sound effects in Wario Land
• Fixed compatibility hack for Virtual Lab's English patch
• Improved performance in Nester's Funky Bowling
• Compatibility fixes for lots of homebrew
• Add a confirmation prompt to Reset and Quit menu options
• Game progress is now saved when entering sleep mode

 

I ran Wario Land before installing it to see if I could spot a difference - yep, the scrolling landscape on the title screen no longer judders on the new build.

 

 

 

[One year with my 3]

On 5/7/2023 at 11:34 AM, SpiceWare said:

I now have 288 miles of range, down 7.1% from the original 310. Cumulative mileage is 46,419.

 

My most recent update included a change to the Estimated Battery Range:

 

 

My car just finished charging and is at 80% with 235 miles of range, which extrapolates to 294 miles at 100%. That's 5.2% down from the original 310 miles of range. Cumulative milage is 50,151.

[Autopilot beta program experiences?]

FSD Beta is now FSD (Supervised).  Got v12 earlier this week and it's a major improvement over v11. Issues I'd been having like the blinker turning on too early when leaving my neighborhood, and waiting too long to change lanes for an upcoming turn, have finally been resolved. 

 

 

[Tesla Electric]

Hmm, looks like both rates went down by 1.6¢ per kWh

 

  

 

 

[A remake of Frogger in 4k.]

24 minutes ago, Zoyx said:

I appreciate the effort and I am impressed with your coding chops.

 

You should have ended there.

 

Quote

But we don't need another Frogger.

 

because that's pretty shitty.

 

Quote

It is possible to make a cartridge out of the SuperCharger version if that is the goal.

 

The goal was clearly stated.

 

On 4/1/2024 at 12:54 PM, splendidnut said:

It has always been on my want-list to have a nice cartridge version of Frogger; a version that doesn't require the Supercharger, nor any other extended hardware.

 

[Red Viper - Virtual Boy emulator for 3DS]

Interesting - the Virtual Boy has a 50 Hz refresh rate and they've figured out how to get the 3DS to refresh at 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz.

 

More info in Issue #46 and these 3 commits:

• True 50 Hz support #46
• add code for running display at 50Hz
• 50Hz improvements incl. 2ds support
• enable 50Hz by default

 

 

 

[Atari Recharged sale]

Another Playstation Plus sale. I picked up the rest of the Atari Recharged games, they were $3.99 each except for Berzerk which was $5.99:

• Berzerk
• Black Widow
• Breakout
• Gravitar
• Missile Command
• Quantum

 

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

52 minutes ago, Bomberman94 said:

Aargh - you have the same phone as me at my workplace 😧

 

I work from home, think I've had that IP phone since 2008. My treadmill desk doesn't have room for a 3rd monitor, so on special occasions I'll setup the ladder-monitor so I can keep up with something during the workday.

 

 

Historic SpaceX launch:

 

 

Stella-thon

 

 

 

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

22 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

the EXCLUSIVE WORLD PREMIERE of the very first Atari 2600 homebrew made by the host of ZPH! James has been working on the game for the last month and is ready to reveal this early WIP of his brand new port!

 

Oooh - middle of the workday so I won't be chatting much, but this is ladder-monitor worthy!

 

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

18 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

Eliminating that AA to C adapter might help

Looks like AA is 0.5 mm taller than C

 

 

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

Eliminating that AA to C adapter might help, I use these Amazon Basics Rechargeable C cells in the Galaxian tabletop that @keilbaca gave me back in 2006. Looks like Amazon's changed the label design since I bought them.

 

 

 

[When does adding a Raspberry Pi to retro hardware become questionable]

18 hours ago, scorpio_ny said:

 

To be fair, this use is in line with the classic C64. Commodore produced the REU module (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_REU)

 

for the C64 and 128 with a custom MMU chip they developed to handle memory DMA externally back in the day. So this functionality was available decades ago. Raspberry PI is just emulating that hardware for the Sonic game.

 

 

 

yep, for Sonic that Pi's just emulating Commodore's Ram Expansion Unit from the 80s.  This video shows an actual C= REU and does an overview on how it works, and how it's used for Sonic, in the section REU Required that starts at 1:07.

 

 

[List of 2600 games with boss battles?]

On 3/24/2024 at 7:56 AM, Living Room Arcade said:

Stay Frosty 2 (Looks like a giant blue fireball)

 

The boss starts out blue and changes color as it takes damage.  The Story of Stay Frosty 2, Part 14 goes into that behind the spoiler tag.

 

 

[Red Viper - Virtual Boy emulator for 3DS]

Heads up! - Red Viper v0.9.2.1 was released an hour ago.  It replaces v0.9.2.0 from yesterday, which had some critical bugs. 

 

Quote

Emulation improvements

• New audio engine allowing for sample playback
• 16MB ROMs can now be loaded on o3DS
• Fixed music speed in Golf
• Faster affine layer drawing
• Various other emulation bugfixes (including #41 and #43 by @pizzarollsroyce)

UI improvements

• Button input in GUI (#47 by @JeffRuLz)
• Zip file support
• Improved debug dumps for easier crash reproduction
• Allow mapping face buttons to the triggers on N3DS (#39 by @vaguerant)
• Button to turn off the touchscreen backlight (#48 by @vaguerant)

 

I scanned the QR Code and the new version was installed over the version I'd manually installed last week using 3DS FBI Link.

 

I noticed the cursor position indicator has been revised for the button input in the GUI, and noticed the new support for audio samples right away in Galactic Pinball.

[Screen comes from the top and slowly goes down in Stella]

4 hours ago, atari2600land said:

So why does that happen in the first place? Wouldn't the CLEAN_START macro not make it do that? It seems to do it with professional games as well.

 

Launch the game in Debug Mode:

 

 

Then repeatedly click Frame +1 while watching how many scanlines are output for each frame.  For Adventure I see 14, 51, 333, and 211 before it settles on a steady 262.  With my real Atari I see a screen bounce when I turn on the console with Adventure plugged in. The bounce isn't exactly the same as what's seen in Stella, but the change to Stella wasn't to emulate that exactly^*, rather it was to provide visual feedback to a developer that their scanline counts are changing over time.

 

^* it can't because each type of TV can behave differently when this occurs. Some TVs go so far as to suppress the image until the scanline count has stabilized, so you'll never even see the Atari's power-on-bounce on those TVs.

 

 

 

[Tesla Electric]

Hard to believe it's been 5 years since installing solar panels.  My net-metering plan was on a 5 year contract, so it was time to renew or pick a new electric provider.

 

I checked around and the rates have gone up quite a bit.  Decided to go with Tesla Electric, which is a TOU (time of use) plan:

• $0.124^* / kWh during peek usage, which is 4pm - 7pm.
• $0.077^* / kWh all other times

 

^* add another $0.055 for grid and delivery fees for $0.179 and $0.132 respectively. These prices are what appear in the app:

 

  

 

 

The rates were lower than other options, but instead of net-metering any excess solar production is bought at the 90% of market price, which varies every 15 minutes based on demand. This also shows up in the app:

 

 

 

This time of year demand isn't very high, as temperature's nice outside so AC usage is low, so the market price is low. It even goes negative on occasion, though it looks like I'm not charged for them to take it:

 

 

I did see some instances of higher rates, such as getting paid almost $0.30 per kWh for a brief period on the 18th.

 

 

If the selling price goes above $0.30 then energy stored in the Powerwall will be sent to the grid. I have that set to only use the upper 70% of my Powerwall for that.

 

  

 

 

Bill for first 11 days, note that it lists $0.124 and $0.077 for Tesla's rates, with the grid charges broken out further down:

 

 

Not great compared to my net-metering plan due to how low market prices currently are for my excess solar. I'll be evaluating how this turns out over the summer when increased electric usage raises market prices.  If it works out well I'll keep this plan, if not it's a month-to-month plan so I can easily switch to another without any penalty.

[Screen comes from the top and slowly goes down in Stella]

14 hours ago, atari2600land said:

It's been driving me nuts and I can't find a way to stop it. I'm using the developer settings.

 

That was added to Stella to help programmers without an Atari to see what occurs on a real TV if scanline counts in their game are not consistent. From my blog entry Jitter 3, Recover Time:

 

Quote

Last time around I added jitter emulation to Stella, which became part of the official build with version 4.6.5. The jitter emulation basically moves the screen up/down in response to inconsistent scanline counts, similar to that which occurs on a real TV. I added it because people without an Atari would often write games with variable scanline counts, but not realize it until others play-tested the game on real hardware.

 

One thing it didn't emulate was a recovery time - if the difference in scanline counts is large a real TV will take multiple frames to recover. Instead, the original implementation would recover in just a single frame - blink and you might miss it.

 

You can control it via the Jitter/roll effect options on the Video tab of Developer settings.  This link should take you to the section of Stella's online manual that covers it.

 

 

You can turn it off by unchecking Jitter/roll effect, but since you're developing games I highly recommend increasing Recovery instead.

 

[Techniques for drawing player sprites]

A lot of things about the Atari were figured out back in the day via the Stella Mailing List.

 

The site MiniDig links to a lot of useful info found in the mailing list.

 

MiniDig's Tricks page has a link to @DEBRO's explanation of @Thomas Jentzsch's SkipDraw routine, which y'all might find helpful.

 

Note: Users are notified if you @ them like I did above for Dennis and Thomas. They might be able to provide more information.