Mr SQL

The SuperCharger is a 6K RAM expansion board with a cassette interface, so it expands the VCS in a very similar manner to the RAM board for the 1975 Altair, which shipped with a similar small amount of RAM to the Atari, 256 Bytes vs 128. But we don't need all of the RAM, just more than 128 bytes. So how much? In practice an extra 256 bytes of RAM for a total of 384 is enough extra RAM to do most SuperCharger Fx as per Tunnel Runner and Escape from the Mind Master. Based on these principles I have written a converter that turns 6K SuperCharger games into 7K CBS RAM+ games and vice versa. A few could be converted to the 8K Sara chip format following the same principles. In the 80's it made a very big difference just weather we had 4K or 16K or 32K - what was possible was largely based on the memory footprint and on the same systems, the memory size created a clearly defined category - the VCS could usually match or surpass the 16K or 32K games on other systems with just 4K and 8K games because it's unique design racing the beam and accelerator hardware for graphics and sound (TIA) conserved memory by design when it was more expensive in the 70's.

That's not to far off from their vision for the Atari Pong Challenge contest in 2012: In the first phase of the contest, Atari received nearly 90 submissions from independent developers looking to remake Pong. After a comprehensive review, seven finalists were chosen for consideration by a celebrity judging panel made up of Nolan Bushnell, one of the original founders of Atari, Dave Castelnuovo of Bolt Creative (Pocket God), David Whatley of Critical Thought Games (geoDefense), and Mike Schramm of TUAW. In addition, the Atari community weighed in on the final ranking, with over 200,000 total votes logged for the various finalists. Ultimately, the winners announced today represent the top choices from Atari, the Atari community and the judging panel. I think if you have also used Melody to previously host the SARA chip games selection or any legacy formats from the early 80's it's an ambiguous indicator. Does Aria support CBS RAM+ games too? How about SuperCharger games? I'm also curious if you've ever reprogrammed an actual CBS RAM+ cart like you have with SARA carts - this has been discussed in theory, but the dumper example was defective and I have not heard of anyone actually reprogramming one. The Atari Flashback Portable had it's own version of CBS RAM+ that was a little different and interesting to figure out, but it would be nice to see someone reproduce a functioning example of the old CBS RAM+ tech like you have done with the SARA carts to have a phsycial model to compare and better understand.

Excellent perspective Tim! The pioneers ideas for the translations in the early 80's included a lot of creative influence from the artist. I made a similar observation on contemporary 80's pacman ports with some examples on the other pacman here:

Alright, here are several Pacmen close that emerged on just one systerm in the early 80's and a recent port that is different - what do you think of them? Some of these are variations where there are no power pellets, some have a smiley face or even a Rocketship and they all use different graphics and styles that abstract the arcade in different ways as much to fit the hardware as to fit the artists vision. You might enjoy Ms Maze as the closest port above; Grabber is arguably the most different changing the genre like KC. I enjoy them all having played them except for the 1992 entry and that one looks fun too! Packetman 1981 16K: Pac Droids 1982 4K: Scarfman 4K: Pac-Tac 4K: Munchman 16K: Ms Gobbler 1983 16K: Grabber 1983 32K: Ms Maze 1984 32K: Pacdude 1992 (512K CoCo III): GPAC on the C64 (recent homebrew):

There were tons of different Pac ports in the early 80's on the other systems that were all interesting for being slightly different - some even ushering in changes to the pac genre like KC. And the home computers of the time saw many ports of the genre emerge with a wide range gameplay; some that you would really like and some you would never load again. I liked Atari Pacman. I also liked the watch port of Pacman which moved like Atari Pacman never looking up and down and added an interesting variation in gameplay; Pacman always looked to the left and you had to backup over the dots to eat them if you were going the wrong way.

That would be awesome, you wouldn't have to blank the screen between moves to get the computer to move in a reasonable amount of time. You could also create a Video Chess tribute mode with demo visuals displaying between moves. I would think of it as a distributed computing Atari game if the Chess engine was running on a server like Stockfish.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing because it makes competition more challenging, but it can be frustrating to the programmers if no one realizes the difference except the programmers. The demo scene may agree however; I had expected Galagon to be competing in the SillyVenture2019 Games category and was looking forward to competing using the contemporary 80's technologies John mentioned earlier in the thread, the SuperCharger and CBS RAM+.

The display has improved a lot, it would be great to have another Chess program for the VCS with an even stronger engine than Video Chess, something closer to Chessmaster 2000. imo this would be more fun than network Chess, I only want to play against the VCS or Player 2. I was playing Chessmaster 2000 on my 800Xl the other day and noticed it did not compare to Chessmaster 2000 on the PC or even to VCS Video Chess on level 4; likely it just has a beginner setting as the default. There were several other A8 Chess programs to choose from though and some were pretty challenging, so far on the VCS we only have Video Chess, likely this is because the display rendering requirements were so difficult with 8 pieces and no flicker, and because Chess engines are so challenging to program!

Cool project! Your characters sound like these ones, which is also cool.

Yes I had alot of fun playing this game with my cousin and KC on his O2, making it to the second chiptune took awhile and felt like reaching the green screen in Mrs Pacman. Outhouse was awesome and a hillarious concept, the gameplay really gets intense at the end when the characters start running away with the rolls trailing!

I want to make a port of Grabber for the Atari VCS - for anyone who doesn't know what Grabber is: Grabber is an incredible game by Mike Huey that takes the PACMAN genre to the next level like Ed Averett did with KC Munchkin. Imagine a split screen pacman, one screen blue and one screen red, both mazes stacked on top of one other. Next imagine jumping back and forth between both to clear the mazes but the Monsters keep taking the dots and bringing them back to the center - oh year, you collect the dots and bring them to the boxes in the center of the mazes. Interesting note for programmers: This game was programmed like an Atari game with critical timing loops so the programmer could render the inspiring multi-voice music not otherwise possible simultaneously during gameplay on the Color Computer! Conversion notes: I want to make this Atari port scroll side to side with double wide mazes, two different ones. No scrolling up and down though because it would obfuscate Mike concept creation of the double playable maze. I plan to get rid of the rectangle placeholder, the game grids are small enough you can tell where you'll get transported to. Custom controller for Grabber: This custom controller will (obviously) be required for optimum Grabber gameplay: The Grabber controller was introduced when Grabber was released as a generic advertisment for Pacman as an add-on to existing Atari Joysticks with precision to handle mazes. This concept is based on the idea that a Joystick can control maze turning better than a gamepad; I agree and in the past I have disallowed Sega gamepads, but I will allow those to be used as well since some players, simply prefer the pads. Thoughts and ideas are welcome!

That was the WIP, the finished version released in 2019 has all of the audio trax - watch the playthrough video above and see! If you review this one, you should ask one of the Champions of Pong to guest star on the show who can reach the abstract cut-scenes and play through them to the ending scene. Note: This is a modern themed port so it's got trippy visuals and the epic audio Stardust describes above, this is not meant to be an exact port of Space Invaders. In my next comment on the linked thread, I talk more about the potential of modern themed ports - technologies like the ARM and even the SuperCharger and CBS RAM+ making it possible to create these modern themed ports for the Atari VCS as well as making more exact Arcade ports.

This is a great idea, there should probably be three main categories to make it clear what type of Atari game it is, and a year to go by to gauge the retroness. Classic - Classic Atari game, subcategory can indicate year of the technology; 1977 2K/4K, 1980 Sara, 1981 Starpath SuperCharger, 1983 CBS RAM+ ARM and TIA - ARM driven or assisted Atari game, subcategory could indicate DPC+ bB or if the gameloop is also running on the ARM. Retro feel - written to run on any platform using any VM but must feel like an Atari game; these were Nolan Bushnell's rules for the Atari Pong Challenge contest in 2012; I was the only programmer to write code for the VCS, but the contest was tremendous fun and it was plain to see they were all Atari games in spirit.

Yes I thought it was cool for a text adventure:

Hi John very cool thoughts! CBS RAM+ and the SuperCharger have a lot of potential, even up against a modern chip - I was hoping to compete against a couple of your ports using those technologies at SillyVenture this year in the Game category when I read that Al was submitting them! Great thoughts btw, I was thinking similarly but wondering the opposite - what kind of Atari Space Invaders port could be done with the ARM to compare to my CBS RAM+ version below; we already have one, the ARM only version that uses a different video system on the Atari Flashback to be more like the Arcade, similar to Frogger. But it cannot run on a classic Atari console, only the Atari Flashback and some do not consider it a genuine Atari game because it does not use the TIA. There are plenty of awesome 6502 Space Invaders ports, SPACEINV21 done with the semigraphics being one of my favorites. But with the ARM, you could really push the graphics like some of the more modern trippy ports of space invaders we've seen released over the years with lots of mesmerizing graphics Fx and chip tunes to make a demo graphics type game - I'd love to see what can be done with the ARM! Here is my CBS RAM+ modern themed port pushing the TIA with a 14 minute play through and two cut scenes, it's only 7K, the third bank is unused I've been trying to optimize it to run on the SuperCharger too:

This is an interersting design limitation in the BASIC RT, I'm curious because there is a similar but different design limitation with if's in SuperCharger BASIC - In bB this has to be two statements - if e=3 or f=8 or g=9 then goto myroutine SuperCharger BASIC allows multiple or's to be in one if statement like that, but you cannot mix or and and in an if statement, I imagine bB would have a similar limitation mixing them if it can only have one or per line.

Good point browser based emu's can suddently change - I don't think they will vanish though because they are the prime candidates for a subscription model; they turn any device with a browser into an Atari or a VIC-20, while the disconnected emulators you install are static and not subject to change until you revise them. The CRT/TV effects are not well emulated yet and can break some games.

Great observation! I think the VIC-20 Denial forum shows a direction we will see more of where games are played in browser based emulators: https://sleepingelephant.com/denial/

Brand recognition increases in the future after Atari is embued with Sang-froid

Nice version of Space Invaders! Initially I thought it might be an 8K version of the INV21 homebrew, another great version. Who wrote these ports? If these are "cuttle cart" only games, Harmony emulation can be made more compatible by simply initializing the RAM like the cuttle cart and SuperCharger do; that wouldn't break any existing games just make more of them playable. 4K games could be made instantly compatible by using the SuperCharger format for the ROM provided it doesn't hit the hotspot, but why not use architecture with the broadest compatibility?

You might like SuperCharger BASIC for writing Atari 2600 games - it supports classic basic format with line numbers, or an IDE with ASCII art GUI designers for sprites and virtual worlds - the IDE is already built into Windows: http://relationalframework.com/Atari2600gamesonline.htm The idea is similar to the SmallBASIC concept design you listed - here is an example of a BASIC game written in 9 lines: http://relationalframework.com/9LineBlitz.txt SuperCharger BASIC outputs real Atari 2600 game ROM's that you can play on Windows, Linux or the phone via the bowser based Atari emulator Javatari!

Two more for 2019 from the SillyVenture Party in Gdansk!

SillyVenture Fluid City is a demo and game demonstrating SuperCharger BASIC's strengths for pushing Atari graphics and music Fx! https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=84256 SillyVenture2019_Fluid_City_B_PAL_20191202.txt SillyVenture2019_Fluid_City_B_Side_PAL.bin SillyVenture_Fluid_City_ImpressionismII_PAL_R3.bin More processing time for BASIC - SuperCharger BASIC is a great BASIC for the demo scene for new programmers and advanced bB programmers who really push bB, because it exposes both vertical breaks to run BASIC code. Graphics - Imagine ANTIC on the VCS; the soft blitter brings the Atari 400/800 display list technology to the VCS allowing blitter games and demos to be written with very little code - the game component of this demo is only 9 lines of BASIC and competed in the 2016 International 10 liner BASIC contest: http://relationalframework.com/9LineBlitz.txt ASCII text in data statements for full screen text scroller - The larger program shows display lists being used for the full screen text scrolling which reads standard ASCII text from data tables. Music Fx - tracker sequencer and resequencer - The tracker sequencer is built in for mashalling patterns, but I added an algorithmic resequencer like with BREAKOUT2002 LASERBEAMS which does interesting things to revise the melody and the player driven interactive harmony. Hoping to focus on the ease of writing small programs with graphics Fx via the soft blitter on this thread! More information on the Music Fx designs is on the thread here: Here is the DIZ from the contest with instructions on unlocking all of the demo's including the extended demo scene shoutout: https://www.pouet.net/prod_nfo.php?which=84256 Fun Experiments - make your own resequenced chip tunes: I've also included the unreleased B-Side. To hear your own resequenced chiptunes, just drop them in place in the chiptunes section of the code. The Music Fx thread above shows how, you may be surprised at the tune variations that emerge!

I used the makewav utility, it's bundled with the SuperCharger BASIC download on my site - SuperCharger BASIC has an IDE with a play button that builds a ROM binary and launches it in the emu, but to turn the ROM into a .wav you need to run the makewave utility from the command line: makewav -ts program.bin Will create program.wav for the SuperCharger - you can also turn standard 2K and 4K bB and Assembly programs into SuperCharger wav files if you don't hit the hotspot (just avoid the last few bytes).

BREAKOUT 2000 should be in the WIP category, BREAKOUT 2002 R3 is the finished and latest version available here: You need to set it as a PAL60 ROM in Stella to get the right colors. What show did you review SuperCharger Space Invaders for Girls in?