1NG

Awesome project! I am also in for a cased one

If have to revise my voting, as BlowSub is 2016 and not 2015 My vote: 1. The real Star Raiders II (Always liked Star Raiders for my first 800 and now this!) 2. Dimos Quest Lurch Edition (Demake is wonderful) 3. Jim Slide (OK, obviously I like that a lot too. This is for all people who helpedbuilding it - see the credits) 4. Sprint 1 5. AtariNet 6. D.I.T.C.H. (I am too slow for the game and nearly exploded because of the "unfair" collision detection. But nice idea and nice graphics!) 7. Lost In Space (Multiplayer games are awesome) 8. SlideTen (based on the time I spent playing the 6 levels) 9. Bomber (very nice graphics!!!, but not my type of game.)

My vote: 1. The real Star Raiders II (Always liked Star Raiders for my first 800 and now this!) 2. Dimos Quest Lurch Edition (Demake is wonderful) 3. Jim Slide (OK, obviously I like that a lot too. This is for all people who helpedbuilding it - see the credits) 4. Sprint 1 5. AtariNet 6. D.I.T.C.H. (I am too slow for the game and nearly exploded because of the "unfair" collision detection. But nice idea and nice graphics!) 7. Lost In Space (Multiplayer games are awesome) 8. SlideTen (based on the time I spent playing the 6 levels) 9. Blowsub (I had great fun with that. Can't explain exactly. Would like to see an enhanced game with more levels.) 10. Bomber (very nice graphics, but not really my type of game.) I would have had some more games, but since 10 is the constraint, these are my favourites.

Looks like the cart entry on demozoo consists of pictures only of a beta for testing purpose. It was not released until now. Looks like time for an update there :-)

Download the car file above! Or do you mean the blue collectors cart like on facebook? (https://www.facebook.com/JimSlide)

I hope you like the new entry levels to get into Jim Slide XL. It should be possible to master the game on first difficulty. About the sound: I experienced a kind of static sound in earlier versions of altirra when switched from mono to stereo or back and not restarting Altirra. In the actual version this is not happening any more. So maybe this is what you hear. On the other side, the game is developed for stereo music as you already said. So normal mono pokey works fine, but stereo pokey is what you want! Even the played samples get better with dual pokey because of the 6 bits used instead of 5. (In other games 4 bits are often used, wich makes sense because of memory limitations. But this is a cart with 1MB.)

Just released Jim Slide XL. Full version of Jim Slide for ABBUC Contest and Full version of Jim Slide XL available for free. Ment for collectors only: The real, very limited nice box and cart is available for real money. (Preordering is nearly sold out. First carts were delivered yesterday) See http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260299-christmas-present-jim-slide-xl/?p=3656844

This is Jim Slide XL! It took 4 months to develop Jim Slide until the deadline of the Abbuc Software Contest 2015 and then another 6 months for the collectors edition in a nice box. Then I wanted to make a cart. For the Atari 8 Bit Systems a cart is cool. Since the game needs more than 8k, why not use 127 times more than 8k? 1MB it is! But this needed some extras. Turned out, the development took another year. It was fun doing a lot of different tasks. Trying to get some people on board and developing a big version of Jim Slide. Sometimes not so much, but this is normal. On the way: I tested different modes: Time Attack Mode, Adventure Mode, Arcade Mode (Same as in Jim Slide) and Story Mode. I planned to have totally new levels, but there was only very little support. I developed for PAL and NTSC, but had to face the truth: Nobody with NTSC was interested in Jim Slide. So I dropped waisting much time on that. I works though, but it is not tested much. Jim Slide has a problem: It is judged by the graphics screen shot or 5 minutes testing. This means, that a super simple old game like Pong with new graphics always gets better votes. This means for developers: Don’t waist time on content, just do cool graphics and redo old simple games. What about this: A cart like The!Cart with 512MB can hold 512 games with 1MB size. This means, games can be big. They can have cool graphics, can have sound or anything without loading times. Of course more content means more time to develop and more support needed. I planned to do a big version of a racing game, but I have dropped my plans 4 months ago. I have spent a lot of time and some money on that, but I had the same problem like with Jim Slide: No graphics artist. The development would have taken so much time, just to see a new pong getting better votes after 2 years work. Doing a game that takes 1000 hours of work means, that you can not watch 700 films or soccer games. Of course, this is the same for the little games that easily take 100 hours time for development. Just think about that for a moment, when you watch your next movie. Back to Jime Slide: There were some great people! They invested their time and the result is awesome! I was totally flashed by some levels. And I have played lots of hours testing a lot of them. A problem came up, when people were playing Jim Slide (Abbuc Edition): They couldn’t get past level two. The arcade mode is fine, but for some people it needed to be less difficult to get into Jim Slide. This lead to the new difficulty selection in Jim Slide XL in the new Story Mode. The levels were easier and had a different focus. The level Move Your Finger was a lot of work for the joystick, but very easy. In fact, it was near to torturing :-). But 10 levels in difficulty Easy can be done very quickly, if you got into Jim Slide. Time for Fair levels. Getting more experienced, you will face a few levels that look similar and easy, but they are not - until you got even better. Hard was always what it says. Crazy! What should I say? It is what everybody expects. There is a different screen awaiting after that. Easy -> Fair -> Advanced -> Hard -> Crazy! Why took the development of the cart so much time? - Telling a story was not as easy as I thought. - Developing Jims and Jessicas sentences was a lot of work. And then I had to find good voices for them and change all again to catch the feeling that it has now. I am quiet happy with the achieved result. - The graphics of Jim and Jessica is based on only 5 pictures drawn with pencil on paper. A real artist made them for me. I wanted to have them posed like heroes, but both with own style. Brother and sister, boy and girl. Gamers, but less and more wise, ... This lead to this sketch: In fact another two artists tried the same before and the result was not nearly as good as Darsys work. (I payed for it.) The result was THE base for all the graphics in the game. Colouring and pixeling took a lot of time, as I am only a designer and not an artist. - As the program got bigger and bigger the 64k where filled up multiple times and needed revision, remapping to rom and more. - The player program for the music had a fix location in memory. That was no fun for the memory layout. Later I used an Excel map to better plan every byte. (BTW: The music is great and Poison did a great job providing 7 different titles for the story and game.) - I decided to write my own linking application (in c#) for graphics, sound and game. In the end, all the different banks were much easier under control - The graphics were converted by mario130xe. He is a master in converting graphics and spends hours and hours doing preparations and rendering. - I changed the games message font completely and pixeled a lot here and there - For the story, I wanted to have good readable characters. That lead to a proportional font rendering in real time on high res and a full colored picture on one screen. For good readability every char has two pixels width for each stroke. This approach gives about 60 chars every line instead of 40 with better readability. Developing fast rendering of the text with automatic newline on space characters took some time too. And there had to be a font converter written. It’s output is the binary structure had to feeds the renderer and the multiple 8k design. - Dumb bugs fixing! Of course I had lots of them and they took a lot of time. - Developing good stereo digitized output. Jim Slide XL has stereo music and therefore had to have samples played not only on one side. And I wanted high quality for Pokey / dual Pokey. Getting music and samples in a game flow with fitting intensity was quiet some work. Samples where not loud enough, music didn’t play further in a good way after speech, weird sounds appear sometimes, ... - Doing 3 different versions of the door screen. The first ones where not bad, but they missed the style of the other graphics, that had been developed in between. Later I had to drop that approach. The final door had a very intense focus and works without raster program. So digitized speech was made possible in good quality with graphics on. - Timing! Getting VBI and main program right took another chunk of time. There is no easy answer for all the stuff that happens when everything comes together. - Booting from cart sounded easy and was easy. Until something did not work as expected :-). Like not resetting, booting breaks out of nowhere, crashing after booting correctly, ... - Saving in Adventure Mode. And erasing the save state. This was a story of it’s own. With help from the TheCart! Developing Team member Hias and Altirra developer Phaeron it was a lot easier. Thanks to them for the help! - Putting in easter eggs. They had to be there. So a little bit was spent doing that. - Building a 3D case for the cart and designing a 3D Logo for it. - Trying to get the 3D case and logo printed. That failed for several different reasons. Another story, that ended in the actual case with two high quality stickers. I learned a lot and developed some tools. I did this for me and for the fun of others, otherwise the poject would have been canceled early. Doing development without help is slowing down a lot. Add some trolls and no more developing takes place. But fortunatly it didn’t happen. A lot of different games where done and will be done with nearly no budget at all. I like the small and the big ones. It does not matter, if someone is doing basic, assembler or anything else. Or paint graphics, do sounds or configure disks or anything. If the community wants to support all the developers / artists / ..., then they have to motivate them a bit. Motivation is the key engine driving people forward. So I want to say again here: Hey Atarians! Keep up the good work and help others in doing so. While writing these lines a thought came up about my good friend, who stops me every time I want to make the world a better place. He said: “When I grow old, I become a people hater. I will report all the people that are doing things wrong!”. So don’t get old and try to keep your Atari youth while enjoying your machine. But back to the game and the Jim Slide claim: “Sliding is fun”. Have fun playing Jim Slide! PS: The cart and box etc. is for the collector. Both are very limited and therefore a bit expensive. You can play Jim Slide or Jim Slide XL for free. Only if you want to collect a nice copy you have to spent money. The actual box has a numbered hologram with a nice logo on it. For collecting reasons, the box size is the same for Dimos Quest, Dimos Dungeon and Jim Slide. The collectors cart has a Jim Slide blue case and two unique stickers. The new “Very Expensive Collectors Edition” with sources, sketches and T-Shirt is ment only for the rich collector. [Yes, I made that up ] PPS: See the credits for all the people that have been into Jim Slide and Jim Slide XL development. JimSlideXL.car.txt (rename without the .txt) The car works with Atari800 and Altirra emulator - Even save and erase! JimSlideXL.atr.txt (rename without the .txt) The atr is for flashing an AtariMax cart (tested only on a new one!) Edited: Just one more thing: You have to use Atari OS V2 for some reason. (See Firmware in Altirra menu)

I have implemented writing to the cart for the Jim Slide Cart (which is final since saturday). I think it is easier than that: Writing is done like the flash chips documentation. But because of flash chips availibility there are different chips for Atarimax carts over the time. So you have to adress the two (!) chips of 512KB on the cart like in the documentation of the manufacturer of the flash chips. Since the chips ar nearly all the same (except for some minor details like erasing block size), Implementing a write is not Atarimax specific. It is done like in the flash documentation of the manufacturer. Basically the chip listens to the adresses and values, that are written to itself. If they form a specific code, then it is activates writing, erasing etc. A wait is necessary after each write and reading of the status result. It may happen, that writes to the chip fail. I got that Information from the The!cart team, especially hias. And I have downloaded the documentation for the actual used flash chips from the manufacturer. Writing from MADS Assembler looks like this: ; copy a byte into the flash at adress (source) to (dest) ; dest within A000-BFFF. ; source outside A000-BF00. ; Bank select in X WriteByteSST39SF040 ldy #0 jsr SigWriteCommand ; Send Command for writing a byte lda $D500,x lda (source),y sta (dest),y jsr WriteData ; Write to flash via DQ7 algorithm bne WriteError1 lda #0 writeError1 rts ; DQ7 polling algorithm WriteData lda (dest),Y and #$80 ; Highest bit sta AtariMaxBit7 WriteDoneLoop lda (dest),Y eor AtariMaxBit7 bpl WriteOK ; done if bit 7 is inverted and #$20 ; check Bit 5 beq WriteDoneLoop lda (dest),Y eor AtariMaxBit7 bpl WriteOK jsr SetReadMode ; error accured! lda #$FF rts WriteOK lda #$00 rts SetReadMode ldx #5 jsr Wait lda AtariMaxModuleType bne @+ ModulePokeA $80000,$F0 ; write $F0 to any memory location ($80000 means second chip only!) rts @ jsr SigIntroCommand ; write common signature intro ModulePokeA $85555,$F0 ; lda $d500 ; set bank (for reading ID etc) rts ; send common signature intro SigIntroCommand lda AtariMaxModuleType bne @+ ModulePokeA $80555,$AA ModulePokeA $802AA,$55 rts @ ModulePokeA $85555,$AA ModulePokeA $82AAA,$55 rts SigWriteCommand jsr SigIntroCommand lda AtariMaxModuleType bne @+ ModulePokeA $80555,$A0 rts ModulePokeA $85555,$A0 rts Wait ldy #0 ; wait X times 5 us @ dey bne @- dex bne @- rts .macro ModulePokeZP ; ModulePoke $5555, a ; ModulePoke :1 cmp $D500+(:1/$2000) ; 8k = $2000 "high" as banks access sta $A000+(:1)-((:1/$2000)*$2000) ; 8k low as store .endm .macro ModulePoke ; ModulePoke $5555, constant ; ModulePoke :1 :2 ldx $D500+(:1/$2000) ; 8k = $2000 "high" as banks access ldx #:2 stx $A000+(:1)-((:1/$2000)*$2000) ; 8k low as store .endm .macro ModulePokeA ; ModulePoke $5555, constant ; ModulePoke :1 :2 lda $D500+(:1/$2000) ; 8k = $2000 "high" as banks access lda #:2 sta $A000+(:1)-((:1/$2000)*$2000) ; 8k low as store .endm The documentation for the used chips is all over the internet. http://www.metatech.com.hk/datasheet/sst/standard_mem_pdf/398-39SF040-03-DS.pdf Similar other chips are there too. If you put in write support, then Jim Slide+ can save to the cart. This means, that playing adventure mode a second time on another day can be continued. Jim Slide also has support for erasing the saved data - Not the game of course :-). And BTW: Altirras emulation works perfectly, it even asks to save if the cart has changed (because Jim Slide+ had saved data) And I would like to have one cart of these!

Sorry! Yes, Basic has to be off in that old special version of Jim Slide for the level editor. I totally forgot that. (The later versions disable Basic themself, but are incompatible due to compressed level techniques) Please disable Basic in Altirra in the Options. System - Firmware - BASIC should not have the marker.

I need your help! I have been working the past year on the cartridge of Jim Slide. But I need some levels in the next three weeks to finish it. The release date is Oct. 22nd. There will be 4 diffent difficulties in the story mode: easy, medium, hard and insane. You can use the attached level editor on a Win7 System or up with a resolution of at least 1280x800. After installing you need an emaulator for the Atari 8 Bit too and need to link the default ending XEX to the emulator. Editing is easy. Pick and draw with the left mouse button and erase with the right one. Press F5 to test a level (If that does not work, then the XEX is not started with your emulator yet. Just locate a xex like the one installed with the level editor and double click it. Now choose your emulator application like Altirra and make it permanent. Post any new level here or send it directly to me. Configuration of Altirra: Use the Atari XL OS. At least 64KB RAM are needed. Audio can be stereo. The 1MB catdridge image will be released, when it is done. Hopefully it is done on Oct. 22nd. There will also be a collectors box available (but only a few. If you are interested, then give me a hint :-) If you can help me with testing of the cartridge it is also very welcome! Just leave me a note and you get a rom image for testing soon. -> The newest images of Jim Slide on disk and cartdridge will be freely available after that release!. And this level works too :-) Thank you! SlideLevelEditor.zip level.zip

Cool! I had the same problem with Altirra and the prompt. But I need to build a cart every time after compiling. And because the many data has to be placed at the right positions I needed to write my own program for that (A ROM Linker). If you have a command line version of the ROM Maker, then I could use that in the build chain and reduce my own tools. I could pass the type as a parameter (like in Altirra).

I love the MADS! And I stumbled over the same thing and would like to suggest a maximum number as a parameter. But I use the ins command a lot and don't need to have that bytes listed completely So maybe something like -l or -l100 or -l+ That would leave the actual -l as it is. More bytes are possible with -l<number of bytes listed> or -l+ (all bytes listed, no matter what) Another way: For looking at the generated bytes, I use Altirra. I just open a memory window and put the label in the top edit field In your example: MyDataABC .BYTE 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',$00 Just put the MyDataABC in the top line of a memory window and see the bytes! This works if you compile with something like mads main.asm -o:main.xex -t:main.lab -l:main.lst Now Altirra knows all the labels!

Altirra is way beyond others. I have just tried to build Jim Slide for the ST. That is a scale down. It is doable of course. But if you once had Altirra, then it is kind of unfair :-)

Changing the char is a good idea. Identifying bombs by animation. Only that there is no ram left in Disk Edition for another 1K font (Lots of music and levels use most of the memory and are already packed). But in Module Edition it should work.

I changed the bomb. I also worked on a skull, crossed bones and dynamite some time, but in only 4 pixel width nothing really good came out. And there is another thing: The Jim Slide Limited Disk Edition Box comes with a very cool poster from a talented (and expensive) english artist (In fact there are two posters in every box). He worked over 30 hours on that. So the bomb should be a bomb. I also thought of doing a zooming game. Zoomed in eveything has nice graphics, but you can't see the whole level, so it is a bit more difficult to solve. Zoomed out (Fullscreen like now) only limited graphics is possible on the small Atari. But an ST Version may follow. That will give 8 Pixel width and 16 colors, so no problem there. Since nobody wants VBXE and only 200 (IMHO) of them were sold until now, that is not an option either. Overall I am not an artist, only the designer and programmer. So doing everything alone is not as easy as doing games in a developing team. I am very happy with the support of Poison and the level designers that used my level editor. At the moment the costs for doing Jim Slide for material, postage, posters, holograms, disks, sleeves, sticker, cases/boxes, glue, round-corner-pucher, box package and the nice professional Jim Slide boxes are not covered by the sold Editions. So it seems, that no further development will follow like this. All the time for designing the game, programming and testing is done for zero money of course. This is done as a once in a life time thing. It was fun and I am happy with the result. My family does not care much about expensive projects though Because back in 1987ff I programmed on the ST (and I liked it very much!), Jim Slide ST is a cool project, because I always wanted also to do a complete game for ST some time. So I hope I can also check that point on my want-to-do list some time I have another project in development since 2010, but it may be a little to big for me. We will see Doing TenLiners for the Nomam is also much fun and way easier. Next thing is the Module Edition. Estimated release is april this year. Projects have to have an end some time. Everyone who wants to support Jim Slide can contribute some levels for the module edition. Credits in the game and a legal, personal copy of the rom is included. Box Edition is already cheap available, considered the limited amount and the costs I had. No second run is planned, as I had a lot of work for glueing all the sleeves, stickers, ... after cutting them out of the fine printed coated paper, punching round corners, folding and so on for weeks. And the mess of all the stuff...

To simplify things: The Abbuc Version V1.09 and the prototype V1.12 is hereby given free for all. This does not mean later versions are free software. They may be givven free in a few years, when Jim Slide is not available anymore. Until then please respect the work of all people that took part on Jim Slide. Sliding is fun! PS: If you want to contribute a level for the Limited Jim Slide Module Edition, then there is still time until March 2016. Be part o it!

The video is awesome! The actual Jim Slide has already some things changed. (The shown version is a prototype with bugs and made available on a known page illegally) The Jim Slide Module Edition, also in a nice Box, will be done in April with new features. So you are not late :-) I think I will address the "bombs problem" in it too :-) And I will release the small introduction too at the facebook page. So look for an update... and like Jim Slide if you want. Jim loves you :-)

Count1ng Zoo from 2014. Integration of Multijoy is quite easy in every language. I wanted to show that in a Tenliner

Do you want to contribute a level for more sliding fun?

I would also take one.

Just played it and it totally rocks! Much better control and even better graphics now. I had a small bug. After I died, there stayed some graphics of the pm-graphics of popeye. Maybe there will be a PopeyeArcade_v5.xex without it?

I think level 12 is a good example of getting into Jim Slide. And there are quiet some levels left :-) Yes, that is a good idea! It would change the kind of play a bit and the points and crown for every level would have to be saved separately. A challenge in the actual version is to beat the highscore by playing every level from the beginning and never go back. This is a bit old style like in the good old times. The change would support the style of solving the complete puzzle in a kind of adventure mode. This is more like in modern games. I would like that too. But it is a bit different. In that version you can get a percentage of finishing levels and would go for 100%. I will test that some time. First I am working on the boxed limited editions and the stuff for that. But I think I will give the "adventure mode" a try and build a prototype for testing.

Yes matosimi, Jim Slide needs some levels to get into it. The real cool stuff is in later levels. Very cool, that you have shared your experience here. Thank you! And NTSC Version is up now (Works on PAL too) - Inroduction pdf / Anleitung.pdf - Better NTSC colors - Start via Trigger - Better Font for the title (still not a very nice one) - Minor bugfixes - One extra level Use the link on the Jim Slide facebook page. Sliding is fun!

If you are really stuck on a level, then you can ask me for a solution. In Level 22 "Apple vs pear" is apple or pear, so you can not get all fruits. In level 41 "GIERIG" you can get many many fruits, but not all In Level 46 "Bonuslevel" you can not get all fruits. But a lot! Feel free to post your solutions as a direction string: L2: RULDRULUL. Sliding the shortest solution is not a goal in Jim Slide. And there are some different solutions available. While watching testers competing at level 13: "KEYMAN" I was surprised that 2 other solutions existed. So Level 13 has at least 3 possible ways to solve. I think you got the feeling of the level design and the different kinds in jim slide. So please try to make an own level. Sliding is fun!