SpiceWare

At the start of last year cd-w figured out the TIA tricks required to generate a 128 pixel display, it was first seen in the 32 character text topic, prior 32 character text routines had pixel gaps in the middle, so couldn't be used to show reverse field text. Due to how the 2600 works, the height is not limited to 192, it can be whatever physically fits on the display (so quite a bit higher on PAL). The above was done using DPC+. Later in the year cd-w and I were working on BUS Stuffing and ported the 128 pixel display routine to it for some of the demos. Using Chronocolour results in this, though it's quite flickery in person: Lastly, cd-w figured out TIA tricks to generate a 96 pixel display with a color change every 8 pixels: This display requires the use of BUS Stuffing.

Aha! After rereading CPUWIZ's comment, post count is what unlocks the feature. Looking at a few replies in the Draconian topic, I see a Quadrunner with 5123 posts and a River Patroller with 4890 posts, so threshold's 5K.

Looks like you signed on in 2009, so doubtful it's tied to age of account. Could be due to # of posts (94's not that many) or due to being a subscriber. I don't see it in the Subscriber Benefits list; though, it might not show all benefits, just key ones.

Looks like it's already possible, I just changed mine to Draconian. The field's Member Title and is found just above the entry for birthday. If you don't see it then there's something that enables it - could be because I'm a subscriber, the age of my account, how many posts I've made, or some other reason.

A little something from Nathan's been added to the initial post

Actually, I'm in the planning stages for the Spice C * framework which will use CDF instead of DPC+. CDF was designed for C development, and has better features than DPC+. DPC+ was designed for 6507 development, C support was just an afterthought so isn't implemented as well as in CDF. When you create a new project in Spice C you'll specify which kernel to use, at which point it'll create files for you to edit: game logic (in C) graphic data sound effect data etc. It'll also have prebuilt routines for handling as many sprites as you need, defined like this as in Draconian: #define MAX_SPRITES 159 #define MAX_MISSILES 50 #define MAX_STARS 128 Of course more sprites = more overhead, so there is a limit to how many can be handled. For kernel options I plan to start out with 3: multiplexed sprites & missiles, with the playfield (like Frantic & Timmy) multiplexed sprites, missiles & ball, without playfield (like Draconian) 128 pixel bitmap. Each kernel option will have prewritten functions, such as software based collision detection for sprites/missiles/ball kernels, line drawing support for the bitmap kernel, etc. Besides those I'll have a couple score display options. Like batari BASIC, new kernels can be added. * pronounced Spicey of course! I think the logo will be stylized something like this

Yes, it's the full game. I just downloaded it and it works OK in Stella. Draconian's using a new bankswitch scheme called CDF which has undergone a few revisions, so check the version of Stella you're using and compare that value with the version specified in the blog post.

see reply #7

Don't know, Al would have to tell you.

Some of the boxes we put together for PRGE used double sided tape.

I see a couple of the pre-order games already have a review from having been purchased at PRGE - thanks Froggo Gamer!

Neither. I'm not into the 8-bit Atari computers so seldom follow the topics in this forum. This topic happened to be most recently posted to in the 8-bit forum last night and I spotted it while scanning down the main forum overview, so I decided to take a look. The original plan for Draconian was to use DPC+ with an AtariVox for speech. With DPC+ the station shots were little squares, and the station cores just alternated between two rectangle shapes: I wanted to do more things like diagonal shots(reply #100) for the player, but couldn't with DPC+, so cd-w and I started to create the Bus Stuffing driver for the Harmony/Melody. That didn't pan out, but we took what we learned and applied it to DPC+ and created CDF (Chris, Darrell, Fred(batari)). Using CDF let me shift the missiles & ball left/right which allowed for diagonal shots for the player, snazzier looking station cores: and rotating shots for the stations:

It's not using Bus Stuffing - that lets us generate output like this, but ended up failing on a number of systems (mostly juniors): For Draconian I'm using CDF (as is John's excellent Super Cobra Arcade). CDF is an updated version of DPC+ (used in Stay Frosty 2, Space Rocks, and Scramble) which is an updated version of David Crane's DPC (coprocessor used in Pitfall 2). I talk about CDF in this blog post, with some additional information in this one about the Fast Jump feature. Fast Jump is basically the ARM processor overriding JMP $0000 for 3-cycle flow control in the kernel.

iesposta did a great job converting the sample data to the format I needed. I'm not familiar with the Atari 8-bit computers, does its digital audio top out at 4-bit as well?

As always, developing for the 2600 is all about trade offs. The 2 players are used to draw the multicolor radar and formation indicator, so were not available for the typical 6 digit display. All that was left to draw the score and lives was the 40 pixel playfield, so the digits could not be made narrower. They could have been shorter, but we used the height(which was dictated by the size of the radar) for a more detailed alphanumeric font as the original plan was to use the AtariVox for the voice alerts, with scrolling text as a fallback for those without one.

Draconian auto-detects your console and will automatically switch between NTSC, PAL60 and SECAM60. There's a menu option that allows you to override it if the console is detected incorrectly. If you'd like info on how that works check these two blog entries: menu's back in place Progress on game screen

Thank you! I plan to look into Sinistar, but have a few other things on my plate I'd like to take care of before then. Look into support for larger cartridges (more space for better sounding samples) Convert Frantic to CDF Convert Timmy! to CDF Create a framework for CDF development and write up a tutorial on it. The framework would be sort of like batari BASIC in that you specify a few options that will configure the game to use prebuilt kernels and their supporting C code, after which you only have to worry about the game logic (which would be written in C, not BASIC). Converting Frantic and Timmy! first gives me 3 sets of kernels to start the framework with.

We need more info on the larger board, but once we have it we're going to look into updating CDF to support it. I'm sure we could do the same for DPC+.

Thanks!

Apparently this guy thinks a little game written to experiment with the VDC chip, and released into the public domain, should have AAA production values

Do note that YouTube also has an issue of downgrading 60fps videos to 30 fps when viewed at lower resolutions like 480p. You can see that in this video of Juno First @2:28. When viewed at 720p60 the titlescreen looks good, but it's mangled when viewed at 480p: One way to help with that is to use Stella's Phosphor Mode like Nathan Strum did for this video. Phosphor Mode makes it look better than it does on real hardware, but is still much closer to real than the exaggerated flicker seen in your recording. Stella's Phosphor Mode has seen some recent changes (see notes for release 5.0) to make it closer to real, so you'll probably have to play around with the settings to find what works best for a YouTube recording.

Based on the funky looking numbers across the top, the video capture software is only recording at 30 frames per second which greatly exaggerates any flicker in the game. It looks significantly better in person.

Thanks! It did go on hibernation from October 2014 to March 2017 while we worked on BUS Stuffing and ultimately created the new CDF bankswitch scheme. CDF is what allowed me to add voice, diagonal shots, rotating station cores, etc. which I couldn't do with the original DPC+ version of Draconian. CDF's also used for John's new Super Cobra Arcade. It is out on cart, was sold at PRGE a couple weekends ago, and will be sold at FPF a couple weekends from now. It'll soon be added to the AA Store for shipment in December. Not Rally-X as the kernel does not update the playfield in the game area, it's only used for the score/lives. The radar display is based on Ed Fries' Rally X though (have you seen that?). I could see using it for Sinistar, though need to figure out something else for its radar as it shows a lot more info. I'll be rebooting Frantic to use the new CDF bankswitch scheme, its kernel updates the playfield so could be used for Rally-X.

We had fun with the manual for Draconian