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1NG

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Posts posted by 1NG

  1. Posted

    An Atari 800 XL with 1MB in a notebook-alloy-case with 10 mm height and under 1500g weight. Connections for HDMI, midi, usb, ... A special Keyboard with Atari layout and some extra-keys. VBXE of course. A ssd as mess storage. This thing should work for more than 10 hours on battery. I would like to connect my beamer for games.

    Some nice atari design of course would be fine.

    Unfortunatly only a dream A8 setup!

  2. Posted

    Try this

    SETCOLOR 2,0,0

    in the "Notepad" and the background will go black.

    1st parameter is the color register. 2 is for the background in text mode

    2nd parameter is the color. try values from 0 to 15

    3rd parameter is the luminance and should be zero but can be anything between 0 and 15. (Only even values are supported for text mode)

     

    So there are 16 different dark colored designs. Blue looks good.

  3. Posted

    I worked with this doc for a few months now and it is excellent stuff. It is deep to the hardware and not for beginners but a very well made reference (as said in its title).

    The dma pattern in the graphics modes is presented very well. I im totally impressed of Altirra and the documentation.

    I first saw the values of the randomgenerator from 0 to $429 in that documentation. Most information is very short and precise.

    Very impressive.

  4. Posted · Edited by 1NG

    I like these demos a lot, too.

     

    BTW: they need more than 64k. In fact they need more than 1000 times 64k. They only need 64k on the filesystem.

    On an Atari you can use a 256 bytes on disk to use 1MB Ram also. The modern PC-System has GB of installed libraries and tons of hardware. That powerful army only waits for commands. 64k of packed commands on disk.

    But to get such fine art from that is not done very easy

  5. Posted

    On the old 800 (and not later A8 XL/XE) I played with my Brother and my Friends Mule a lot (with 3 or 4 players)

    And Archon was a great party game too.

    Of course RoF and BallBlazer where time consuming as well.

    And I played Star Raiders a lot. I think I always played very much at that time :)

    And if Turbo Basic counts as a programming game then that is also a good candidate.

    If I have to choose only one: Mule!

  7. Posted

    As I mentioned breakpoints I thought of the feature of setting a breakpoint in the WUDSN IDE and see it in Altirra when debugging.

    Fully integrated IDE has not much more to offer then the good cooperation of WUDSN and Altirra.

    In Visual Studio it is possible to alter the source code while the debugger remains running. This is a very cool feature but with breakpoints (and even better conditional breakpoints) it is near to the integration. Maybe the same is possible in cooperation too, if the current state is saved (stack, registers and memory of variables) and restored after recompiling.

     

    We are still speaking of developing 8 Bit which is and was a lot harder on the real machine. It has become way easier since I used WUDSN/Altirra/Mads for the Atari. Still developing software remains a lot of work. It is often said: Easy to understand but difficult to master. So everything that helps is welcome! (That’s one small step for man… one… giant leap for atari developing :) )

  11. Posted

    Well, the CIN pictures that were created or painted in the past by polish users on PAL Ataris are not that bad, they do not flicker that much.

    Flicker is a problem on PAL. If tiles (characters) are used it is not possible to switch every line like don in the CIN above. I don´t know how 128 colors are counted there. I see 4 greyshades and one red, green and blue. But for that the pictures are not bad.

    Tiles are useful if a game should do something on the screen. Scolling is possible, Cpu-consuption is small.

     

    For better anti-flicker a graphics mode is the better choice. Switching the mode every line is possible. Great for watching pictures.

    For games like jump and run this ist not the best choice. the ICE uses 2x128 tiles for the hole screen of 1000 tiles. If scrolling is used then there are a lot more tiles. A 2x128 tile screen only needs 2k ram for the character sets plus 1k per screen of the game.

    A full colored interlacing graphics screen needs 16k.

     

    I will work on more modes for pictures and more modes for games. Right now I have finished exporting XEX, asm and bin-files. Picture loading and saving is extended to tiff, gif, jpg, bmp and png. The palette is corrected. A few days and the next version is available...

    There is never only one solution and there is never one solution for all.

     

    I would like to see games done with ICE-graphics. I think it is great that ICE enables the graphics even for Turbo Basic! I am sure, that ICE will bring us new games with good graphics. I hope it gets the credit it deserves on Abbuc contest.

  13. Posted

    Well,

    the program Graphics Tile Master works now on my PC and it would be very good to have a program (on PC or A8) that shows the result with A8 palette.

    OK, thanks for the Info. I think it loads a lot of files, but saving is limited ti png by now. It is Version 0.02 and it is far away from beeing ready. Icons are bad and functions are disabled.

    The xex shows a CIN-mode and that is not working on Atari800Win but on real hardware and on Altirra.

     

    ... Maybe Graphics Tile Master should also be able to load other PC picture formats like e.g. BMP, JPG or GIF(87a)....?!? Just some suggestions, no complaints...

    Yes. I will save other formats if the top priority points are made. It will save XEX and asm first, both for CIN.

    Work is going on. And if others are interested in Saving Turbo Basic or other modes, then contribute! We can do it together!

    GraphicsTileMaster can have different modes, why not?

    I will do everything if it is fun for me :)

  16. Posted

    Next step to real pictures: I did a program to show the result.

    And I found some bugs and things that are not assumed right. So the program GraphicsTileMaster will save pictures or sourcecode directly but it will be somewhat less good as shown until now. :woozy:

    There is a lot of work to do. But to keep you busy :-) hier is the very first xex space_ace.xex

     

    For twiddling with the colors etc I also put the source here: gtm_first.asm

    I am still learning CIN-Modes (and MADS-Assembler and Atari).

     

    Let´s work together! :)

  17. Posted · Edited by 1NG

    1) Highest Number is 8800 and should fit in 256 ( 2^8 )

    2) 2^N as factor for shifting would be nice

    this means DIV 32 or DIV 64

    In DIV32 the 8800 would get 255 instead of correct 275 wich is only 255*32=8160 but you have one mor bit for accuracy

     

    maybe a simple DIV 256 MUL 65536?

    simple DIV 64 MUL 256

    or DIV 32, Max(value,255), MUL 256

     

    You can interpret the resulting numbers as 13.3 or 14.2 fixpoint arithmetic (without using a sign, because all numbers are positive)

  18. Posted

    Great discussion here! And so many people bringing so many life in the old machines.

    I had the "typewriter" ATARI 800 with 48k as first machine and never sold it. I never use it and it is not my favorite.

    Without a floppy and the basic instruction book I learned progamming. In that time there were no german books available and the english ones where about other computers.

    This was adventure! I wrote the programs on paper and tipped them in next day. Later on I got a 810 floppy and a "Atari Dateikasten" to put in adresses.

    I like the 800XL and the games for it. I spent a lot of time of my life playing them, so I remember a lot. If I think on how the brain works: My brain has saved all the important stuff of the day - and it was always atari-related :-)

    In 1985 I bought a 520ST+ with extra floppy, metacomco assembler and thomson RGB monitor.

    So I missed a lot of good stuff on the A8 that came out late, maybe the best stuff.

    On the ST the basic was not very good. Without roms in the ST and after loading basic i had only a few (37?) k free ram from 1MB. I was shocked!

    But the ST had 16 colors and lot of programming was about finding out how to deal with them. The 68000 assembly is absolutely great! I love the processor!

    I bought my ST too early and on top I should have bought an amiga.

    But the ST-times where good times. I learned how to code demos. And then (while studying) I got a job of programming 6809 Code on a PC with 20DM/h. So I boaught a 386DX with 25 Mhz and was about to buy a mercedes or jag - but bought a 486!. I never felt I had that much money again!

    The A8 is bringing my life in computers

    The ST is doing assembler

    the PC is only feeding my kids :-)

     

    Two years ago I recoded a basic game "the sheriffs job" from about 1985 in 1 day as a network game with server and clients. It had better graphics and digitized sound. So it was better but not the fun it was in 1985. Every good game today is a big project. Handy games are going the same way: Handys are getting faster and the games are getting complexer.

     

    I always liked the competition on A8 and ST (and the demos on PC).

    If I have to choose the smallest hardware to do a game I would never choose an amiga or ST. That is to easy! A8 or 2600 is a challange. Or doing it on a even smaller hardware.

    So I would always choose an A8 with 128k. That is a good base for doing all things.

     

    I thought of building my dream machine for that as an Atari 800XL with a 68000 processor, 8Bit digitized sound and 128 4color 16x16 hardware sprites. But is that really the solution? With more power, ram, colors etc the platform is better but the a8 is perfect for me in doing things with minimal hardware. And that is why it is interesting for me!

     

    Every platform has it´s gold! Even the PC with Doom, wich was the beginning of digging the 16Bit 2D computers.

     

    And if a hardware is capable of doing a lot then you can´t do programming for that because every aspect needs to be pefect and that costs to much time and talent to do it alone. BTW: I read about "demon attack" and them having an artist instead of doing graphics by a programmer was the major advantage.

     

    A8 is favorite for me. But there is somthing more that concerns me: I would not do any of the old stuff if if there was no internet. Every quirk/obsession (deutsch: Macke) is OK if you find some people on the internet. So if I am carrying wellies all day it is OK too :-)

     

    I would be fine with a new A8 with HDMI-outbut in a small laptop. (Even if it is a PC with Altirra but an original keyboard-layout and connectors of course) But I know that a lot of people are not OK with that. Original Hardware is original hardware and I can unterstand that.

     

    I am very happy that the good old times are still going on. And more: All people are doing without looking for money - So it is all about fun!

  19. Posted

    Found it. Name is "Combat leader". Found a lot of Graphics and the old doku on atrimania. Have played one game and lost at beginner. But second game was better. forgot how to play it in 25 years. I think it is a cool game, but nobody knows it, so it looks that I am wrong.

  20. Posted · Edited by 1NG

    There are some frames captured using Steem (all in BMP format). Feel free to play with them.

    It is possible to build each frame with 1 tileset, but I thought of this:

    - The people (the word characters is misleading here :-) ) have to be of better quality than the rest of the screen. That can be achieved by differencing between pictures and converting the differences between them with higher quality/priority. The rest of the screen would be of lower quality then of course, because it has to share more tiles.

    - The given pics are mostly the same so maybe tiles are not the best idea. If the screen is in normal graphics, but is updated with some kind of "software-tiles", this could lead to a better quality with the same bytes per screen.

     

    I have never played Space-Ace, so I don´t know the game. I think it is like dragons lair the laserdisk game, right? I have seen that once, but didn´t played it.

    Is there an "action tree" of the game available and all the pics?

  22. Posted

    What about reusing tiles (by calculating optimized ones) for one picture to reduce memory usage?

    Like graphics 7 this would be using 128 tiles for a Screen of 40x12 tiles?

     

    Don´t kill me, but I did a first and ugly version:

    these are the 120 tiles:

    post-31072-0-24489300-1319151676.png

     

    And this is the picture:

    post-31072-0-12553500-1319151723_thumb.png

     

    This can be improved. Dithering is simply possible but not implemented. And some things can be done better ...

    CTP only.

     

     

    (BTW: It takes about a minute on my 2600k at 4,2 Ghz with Parallel.Foreach of .net 4 in use to calculate the tiles. This can take a while for films ...)

  23. Posted

    tried installing this software yesterday - did not work. What OS does it need ?!?

    I have Win XP with SP3, also Java, .NET framework versions 1, 2, 3, 3.5, 4.0 but still it did not work. When executing the setup program under Win XP it showed that it would

    -Andreas Koch.

     

    Hi Andreas!

    Thank you for your feedback. I made a new version, but it is 16 MB in size. I will test it and look for a place to put it.

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