Marius

March 16, 2023

Hey TRBB,

Dinky and I are so enthusiastic about this high score club season! We are wondering whether you update this list once in a while, or after every round.

We were wondering whether our attempts to improve our gaming skills, will be visual in this chart.

So whenever you have time, we hope you see an opportunity to update it.

Greetings from the Netherlands!

March 15, 2023

71650!!

March 14, 2023

67050 yeah!!!

March 13, 2023

61500

March 11, 2023

Slight improvement: 60550

March 5, 2023

We are playing like our lives depend on it.

58350 points

March 4, 2023

Wow thank you all so much! This is interesting and inspiring!

March 4, 2023

Sorry for bumping my own old thread, but the question is still open for me.

Let me be more specific:

Joystick cables are vulnerable parts. I think it is not too difficult to replace or repair a joystick cable but at some point it would be nice if I could simply install a fresh new cable on a joystick, even when I have to create the cable myself.

But the standard DB9 connectors do have these 'ears'

When I would create a joystick cable from a RS232 cable with a female DB9 connector, It won't fit in a 130XE. And it does not fit very nicely in an 800XL as well (although it works).

So do these DB9 female connectors exist without the ears? Or is there a trick to remove the metal ears without damaging everything?

Or are there any other suggestions? Or is there a source of joystick cables that is not sold out?

March 2, 2023

Oh yes, here at home we love this game. Dinky2008 already started right away and went lightning fast to point E, 58 secs although she even had 57 a few days ago. This game is amazing and we are really happy with this round: it is a good game for every skill!

February 26, 2023

New score! 137000

Still playing with one joystick. Quite a challenge, but I love this game.

somehow I have the feeling that I must be able to get a higher score, but it is definitely a trial and error game, hit or miss. Anyway there is still improvement.

One of my more favorite games of this moment. Pretty cool.

February 24, 2023

12 hours ago, McKong said:

All good games, we seem to have played Boulderdash and Moon Patrol recently though

Was that also the newer Redux version (I know it is the same game but still)...

For what it's worth. My 14 year old daughter loves Moon Patrol and she hopes it will be that game so she can score some more points than with the previous games

She has no vote, since she has no account on AtariAge, but if there is a way to let her vote, her vote goes to the Moon Patrol game ( @therealbountybob )

February 21, 2023

On 2/18/2023 at 8:48 PM, Crazy Climber said:

34,700

Just a quick try until I can figure out a comfortable way to play with two sticks...

Is there a way to lock your fire in 1 stick mode? (Like llamatron, etc)

If not then 1 stick mode sucks lol

Wow it is amazing INDEED!

Great setup!

Don't you miss the tube television? I find most retro games so much better on a tube TV. The only downside is the space that such a tv consumes...

But awesome your setup! So great.

February 21, 2023

I wished I was able to play this game with 2 joysticks. Could be easier. With one joystick it is still lots of fun though.

February 20, 2023

Wow I like this game.

Score from daughter Dinky2008: 16900

My Score: 105725

One thing: @therealbountybob: My name is Marius, not Marus (in the list of scores from previous 2 rounds)

February 14, 2023

1 hour ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Are these Chaos tunes already floating around for the community to enjoy? I'd think if you found them, they were buried treasure and might enjoy the sunlight.

Haha actually I am still enthusiastic about them, and most of them were already floating around somewhere.

On the other side, as soon as I sit behind the atari, I want to do other things than moving CMC files from my harddisk to the Mac and post them online.

I will try to find some time.

(By the way, I love seeing this old thread again, but is there a reason why you are bumping so much old threads? It's not a problem, but I was curious... you seem to bump a lot lately).

February 12, 2023

Dinky2008: 15570

February 6, 2023

2 minutes ago, Sikor said:

15420

Do you play with a real joystick on the emulator or with the keyboard? I haven't used an emulator for gaming in AGES. (Last time was with an emulator called XL-it or something like that).

February 5, 2023

9 hours ago, McKong said:

57340 Not a game I've played much before

I must say I have always been a huge fan of Ms. Pac-Man on Atari 8bit. Before Pac-Man the Arcade remake came, it always was my favorite Pac-Man creation. It is quite challenging, and that is good. Not too hard, but definitely not easy. The variation in mazes is really cool, also for the eye and the game behaves very well (well that is my opinion). The three different animation scenes make it a really nice package.

I also love Pac-Man Jr. on atari 8bit... that is even harder.

February 5, 2023

I am surprised that I have such a hard time this time with Ms. Pac-Man. I remember a few years ago I had more than twice my current score. Is this due to getting older haha? I have to admit, life is currently quite challenging, and asking a lot of me. I notice this most in concentration and energy. So I blame it to that.

But the round isn't over yet, so prepare for some good scores

February 4, 2023

I used to be extremely good at this game (if I may say so MODESTLY haha). But I have to exercise more.

First try: 54980

screenshots will follow when my score goes up.

February 2, 2023

44 minutes ago, ivop said:

That's not enough. If you did not understand the above explanation by danwinslow about distribution and all, consider a sequence like this:

1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6

1's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

2's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

3's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

4's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

5's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

6's -> 5/30 = 0.166...

Your metric would say it is perfectly balanced, even though it is completely predictable. Generating pseudo random numbers is hard

My question is impossible for me to ask jn English. You are Dutch, I will send you a private message to explain my question in Dutch. I do not want to write in Dutch on a forum where one is supposed to write English haha.

The answer you give is not about what I asked, so probably I wrote the question wrong haha. Is it okay for you to get a private message in Dutch?

February 1, 2023

On 1/31/2023 at 2:27 AM, _The Doctor__ said:

The original poster was talking about random numbers like in yahtzee and dice games, or role playing games etc. straight up random numbers, not the lottery so maybe we can do a lottery picker thread... oh there is one already, maybe we join that one.

Yes! But everything that happens here is very educational for me (but goes beyond my comprehension too haha).

The answers are so expert level that I now can not find the answer on my question I asked in my last post above this one.

What will result to a more balanced randomized output:

From the "Random" generator picking just the 1-6 and ignore all the other values (leading to a new PEEK) or using almost all the results from 0-251 and then divided over 6 equal sized groups. I am typing on my phone right now, but with RANDOM I mean the memlocation that gis peekable to get a random number.

I did the last thing which gave after millions of "throws" very balanced result. But I am slightly afraid that I have a "biased" eye. So can someone shine some light on this.

And yes: for me it is just the goal to simulate the throw of a die where the results are as random as possible (I am aware by the way that throwing a die in real life will in real life practice also not as random as it seems, but I am talking here about a theoretical situation where every result (1-6) has the same frequency.

January 30, 2023

19 hours ago, danwinslow said:

Python is ok, but it depends on what you want to do. It's really good at manipulating large arrays of data, and it's a great 'glue' language to script infrastructure bits together. It has a really large ecosystem of libraries, and is used for a lot of scientific and AI/ML work. That said, I don't like it much from a formal language perspective, it is at heart a script language and suffers from the usual oddities. A good next language for you might be pascal or C, both are available on the Atari. If you want employment as a developer then C++, Java, or javascript would be a way forward. If you use Windows then C#/.Net is a nice environment.

Well...

I would lie if I said that I am just wanting to do some hobby coding. I am a professional musician and educator, and yes I would like to develop an app, or perhaps a web-app where students can learn music stuff, and perhaps in the far future I hope to create something to make a little money with (next to my paid job). But that is only in the far future.

If you think that Python is most definitely not suitable to create an app (for a smartphone, or for a website) then I should pick a different coding language. If it might be possible with python, it might be a good choice for me.

Can you see what language is used to create this:

www.playxylo.com

That is pretty cool, and one can even download it as an app for offline use. I would love to create such things.

I am very grateful for all the support and help I get here on the AtariAge forum. It is always a pleasure to read all the comments. People are really sharing their points of view, which are very educational for me.

January 30, 2023

This is so cool! You people are so helpful and I learn a lot from you. I came up with a much more complicated routine in Turbo BASIC which I compiled and I let it run without screen output. It did run for millions of throws and it gave around 16,67% for each of the 6 numbers, so my conclusion was that eventually the results are indeed random enough.

When I compare my code to what is presented here, I feel not very bright haha. I will share the code soon. Perhaps you can give some feedback on it and tell me whether the path I chose is neeeded or not.

Without having the code here, this is what I did:

I read the RANDOM memory location by X=PEEK(RANDOM) and then I check the result and do a few If Then instructions.

X >=0 and X<42 then R=1

X>=42 and X<84 then R=2

X>=84 and X<126 then R=3

X>=126 and X<168 then R=4

X>=168 and X<210 then R=5

X>=210 and X<252 then R=6

X>=252 then no result, reread random

I thought: by using almost all possible results from 0 to 255 divided by 6 (so that leads to 6 blocks of usable random results) it gives a pretty good random image.

Will checking for just 1-6 and ignoring all other results be just as reliable (as in random) as the method I chose now?

I will have to try to get my code here. But the most important part of it (the concept) is in this post....

January 29, 2023

50 minutes ago, danwinslow said:

I don't think you'll find one as such. The two languages are very different. It might be better to take it on a functionality basis and google for things like:

How to open and read a file in python: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-read-files-in-python/

How to create an array in python: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-arrays/

etc. There really isn't a one to one mapping as far as individual keywords go. A good place to start would maybe be https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/

Thank you so much! I thought it would make sense for people who know basic, to have some documentation where you can see how the commands you are so used to, are described in Python.

I think I should study some simple Python programs. That is more my way of learning. The links you send look very useful. Thanks.

If you have other good suggestions for me, please let me know. I am all ear!