SpiceWare

$62,184

Met up with some friends in Austin on Saturday to attend Maker Faire. We had a blast. I took a few photos that you can find here. The photos were taken with my iPhone, the quality is much better than I was expecting(my old phone took crappy photos). Ok - now that I've slept, more about Maker Faire Maker Faire is a giant Craft Fair, Science Fair, Hacker Fair and Art Show all rolled into one. I should have taken more photos, but was so wrapped up in everything I didn't think to pull out the iPhone very often. It's been held twice before in the Bay Area, the Austin event was the first time it was held outside of California. We plan to return next year if they bring it back to Austin. I did take photos of two performances - the Life Size Mouse Trap, which is based on the children's game, and the Diet Coke w/Mentos fountain show. They did have a hiccup with Mouse Trap, a bowling ball jumped the track at one point so the MC said "Let's pretend that didn't happen, la la la la la" while the helpers reset the portion of the trap prior to the snafu. Even with that, it was impressive to see in action. I'm sure you've seen Diet Coke w/Mentos on You Tube before - seeing it live was much more impressive, the smell of Diet Coke just permeates. As you can see in the photos, the kids went nuts playing in the coke fountain! I'm sure their parents had a fun drive home To create each fountain they use a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke and 6 Mentos in a custom dropping mechansim that sits over the top of the bottle. Using strings they release the Mentos and a stream up to 20 feet tall erupts out of the bottle. They said it took about 3 hours to set up, for a show that lasted about 3 minutes. They also said regular Coke works as well, but the Diet Coke is less sticky and was the deciding factor as they get drenched doing the show. There were a lot of neat tools demoed at the show, I just added a photo of a piece of wood that was laser etched. The machine ran a laser beam back and forth over the wood at a resolution of 600 DPI. The laser strength could be varied, enabling it to etch different depths, including all the way thru the wood(the original piece of wood was solid, no cut out sections). There were also computer controlled wood working machines, 3D printers and so on. One section had a number of do-it-yourself kits, including video game systems, solar powered toys, LED clocks, and craft kits. Even saw a game kit from Joe Grand's Grand Idea Studio. All the kits are available online. I picked up a kit for one of my nephews for Xmas. Would have picked up more, but they didn't take American Express and I don't use other credit cards anymore(since doing this my balances have finally been dropping, the AMEX bill must be paid in full each month). They had a bunch of work areas set up so you could build your kits after purchasing them. Sony had a displayin this section for their eBook. The display on it is very impressive, but no Mac software yet. The haker section had some pretty fun stuff on display. I liked the bike tire LED displays. The interactive demo with Theremin "guitars" sounded really good. There was even an Atari heavy-sixer in one project. The guy hacked it up and merged it with an old Realistic(Radio Shack brand) keyboard synthesizer where the control switches and paddle controllers interacted with the sound generated by the keyboard. They had a few Art Cars on display, but that's nothing new to somebody from Houston.

$31,909

20,021 for my second game!

Sounds like a must-buy! The first text adventure I played was in cartridge form, Pirate Cove on the VIC 20. I was sucked in big time, so much so that I had to force myself to not play text adventures when school was in session.

$6613 on the first try - fun game! I recall reading somewhere that this was originally going to be titled Bonnie and Clyde.

Works for me at the office under Firefox on Win XP. Performance is really bad. Have you seen JStella? I used it to put my game, Medieval Mayhem, online for play.

Nice

I suspect somebody at Planet Virtual Boy would know.

Rolled it! 114,020

Reindeer Rescue, by Bob Montgomery 5/5 Ho! Ho! Ho! It's Christmas Time once again at Atari Age and, like last year, you've been tapped to take on the role of good ol' St. Nick! This year your reindeer have been kidnapped(fawnnapped?) and you've got to rescue them in time for Christmas Eve! Reindeer Rescue is the holiday cart for 2005. This was the third year of what's become an annual tradition here at Atari Age. Don't fret if you missed out as luckily for you Reindeer Rescue is now available as a non-numbered homebrew. When you power on the game, you're presented with a title screen with a decent rendition of Jingle Bells. A variety of Christmas tunes play play in-game, though you can turn off the music if you like using the right difficulty switch. Hit RESET or the joystick fire button to start the game. For the first level you start out at the North Pole and must make your way past Santa's Workshop and across the frozen tundra where you'll find 2 of your reindeer. All the levels scroll by themselves, so you must keep on your toes and jump over the obstacles else be crushed against the edge of the screen. Controls are well done, so if you do screw up you know it's your own fault. As you make your way across the level you'll be using up energy, which is cleverly represented as a tangled string of Christmas Lights that dim and go out. Scattered across the levels are items such as milk, cookies and candy canes that will increase your energy level. Other items can be found for extra points, lives, or even a spring to boost you up and over obstacles. There's also as dangerous things to avoid, like the Abominable Snowman. There are three additional levels, in a variety of locals, each with 2 more reindeer. Each level is progressively harder than the prior. I can easily beat levels 1 and 2, and have squeaked by level 3 a few times, but have yet to beat the game. As such, I wish there was a level select so you could practice levels 3 and 4(but still require playing the full game for the "bonus ending"). The in game graphics are designed by Nathan Strum, Santa is well rendered in multiple colors while all other sprites are single colored. While some sprites seem out of place(was that a Star Wars snow speeder?), all are well done. There's even some sprites showing up at the top of the screen, outside of the gaming area, just to add atmosphere. David Exton did the label and manual art, which are also well done. Next up, 2005 Minigame Multicart

99,810 almost

88,400

not really

still valid?

77,830

From the wiki article The 16 colors are not fixed, like the Commodore 64, but are selected from a larger color palette. The Fleetwood Mac album shows a lot of gray scale photos, the Information Society CD+G(screen captures) uses primary colors, changes the 16 colors on the fly for color cycling effects, as well as gray scale photos.

forgot there's a good chance people here will know what recursion is. have to check into that, though I'll have to admit it brings back memories of gagging down minty cod liver oil as a kid. While Houston's flat, only hills around are man made, I went ahead and got a mountain bike as I like to take it off road.

Thanks, I do that all the time. Fixed both instances of it. No ETA. Quite frankly, the Cannonfire hack has taken quite a bit more time than I expected. Plus, I've been riding my bike after work most evenings in an effort to get my cholesterol levels under control. Had some blood work done today, should know the results in a week or two.

Thanks! I've updated the review to reflect the clarification.

I think there's "ChronoColor" and "Interleaved ChronoColor". "ChronoColor" flickers between 2 colors,with the end result being 3 colors. "Interleaved ChronoColor" uses striped RGB and rotates the colors each frame. I've dropped Andrew a note asking if he has the time if he'd care to clarify it for us.

Univega here, apparently they've been mergered upon. It's been seeing a lot of action of late in an effort to improve my cholesterol levels, part of why work on Cannonfire has been slower than I'd like. I had a follow-up blood test this morning, should know the results in a week or two.

S.U.P.E.R.* Upgrade Program Execution ROM * along the lines of GNU = GNUs Not Unix

- looking forward to your FlashBoy. Anybody doing OS X software for it? If not, care to send me the specs?

thanks - updated the review.