SpiceWare

I have a page that goes into detail on this - Atari NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM Long story short, if your TV can handle 60 Hz then NTSC games will work just fine, they'll just appear with the wrong colors.

Its possible to bypass the stack and use a few functions to set/get values directly to/from Display Data RAM to keep track of hundreds of extra values. Check this topic for more info.

Using Stella's built in debugger, I found the funky 8 at 987C - 987F. Hit the ` key to enter the debugger. Right-click near the 8 in the image in the upper left. After selecting Fill to scanline the program should in the area the graphics are being updated. The alternating stores to GRP1 and GRP0 are a key part of the 48 pixel graphic routine. From that I can see the graphic data is coming from tables located at 98AF, 9AA7, and indirectly from 987B (it gets stored into RAM address EC first). Scroll to 98AF and we can see the 2 from © NAMCO 1982 Scroll to 9AA7 and we can see O from NAMCO and part of the 1 from 1982. Scroll to 987B and we can see data, but it's not in graphical representation. What's up is that data's getting stored to RAM, not to GRP0, GRP1, or a playfield register, so Stella and Hack-O-Matic think it's just numeric data as opposed to graphic data. We can tell Stella it's graphic data by typing in the command GFX followed by an address range. once we do that we can see the 198 from 1982.

Impressive! I didn't know Stella was emulating those. As alex_79 say's, they're definitely there. I even cover that in the blog entry for the Draconian logo.

Due to the evil 7800, I've learned it's best to periodically test games by flashing them else we'd be scrambling at the last minute trying to resolve a problem.

There's 2 startup paths - one if the Harmony's menu is used, another if the game is flashed directly to the cart. Draconian runs fine on my 7800 if it's loaded from the menu, it doesn't run at all when Draconian is flashed to the cart. So the problem's in the "flashed to cart" startup procedure, which is the same that will be used for stand alone games from the AtariAge Store.

I think CDF is finalized, but we still have the issue with it not working on my evil 7800. That might require a change to CDF, I don't know. Have no eta for when we'll get that resolved as the turnaround time between builds has been long due to RL obligations for both cd-w and myself.

Thanks! A, B, Γ,and Δ are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. higher levels are unplayable as the difficulty ramp up isn't finished yet.

phosphor mode's been updated in the 5.0.0-pre builds, it's closer to what you see on a real display so flicker is noticeable even when using phosphor mode, whereas it wouldn't be in an older version of Stella.

I used the radar Ed Fries did for Rally-X in Draconian.

Yep, have to get squeaky cheese while in Wisconsin! By the time it's shipped to Texas the squeak is gone so it's just chunks of regular cheddar.

Don't feel too bad, I originally pondered "why Bonnie and Clyde?"

The groom is armed as well. Follow that link and you should be able to figure it out Hmm, thought I'd posted other portrait photos like that in the past without any rotation issues... Well that looks correct - let's try the cake again... Weird.

Thanks! Alpha = Midway arcade levels Beta = Namco arcade levels. B-8's a favorite for stress testing parts of the game. Gamma = tributes to contributors. I won't be doing a credits Easter egg as the space is needed for digitized samples. Delta = reserved for forth coming level design contest. I believe they currently show a few A and B levels, hard to tell on my iPad

Hmm the titlescreen's fancier

Don't know why it's rotated, it looks correct in the photo app on both the iPhone and iPad, and it posted correctly on Facebook.

I've given presentations in Houston, Austin, and Portland. I'll be on a panel this year in Portland with one of the Atari programmers from the 80s and, I believe, another homebrewer.

Family fun is going well. Last night my oldest nephew tied the knot If you look closely you'll see the cake ties into something I did with him years ago.

Thanks! The routines would lend themselves well to Sinistar. May have to look into that in the future. Frantic will show up in my signature when it's finished. I plan to reboot it again next year. Using CDF will let me add the speech back into it. Only thing I'm familiar with Disturbed is their excellent cover of Genesis' Land of Confusion.

That's my tutorial, RT reformatted it for his site (with my permission).

Sprite image data will eventually be run through Thomas' DOOD, which will save a bit of space. I need to hard code all the heights before I can do that.

That's much nicer than eyeballing the function sizes like I've been doing.

I've pondered on flipping station orientations when they're replayed on later levels. Hadn't considered random offsets - some of the levels, like A-6, have stations that are next to each other. Those will need to be reviewed when trying the x/2 and y/4 to make sure they still work as expected.

That's one I don't play - it doesn't generate VSYNC correction, it holds it for 14 scanlines , which causes my C=1084S to roll.

That's one of the things I was looking at, though I was planning on station count followed by a bit pattern for station type as there's a max of 8 stations Also the X values would be divide by 2 as their range is 0-511.