[Ability to make a modern cartridge with audio line-in/headphones-in jack and/or microphone usable in a 2600 game?]

Just for giggles and memories, here's a gimmicky voice thing. I wish I had bought one.

 

 

[An Old Man's N00b Questions]

23 minutes ago, Reaperducer said:

Thanks for the link to the ROM archive.  I wonder if anyone has done a better treatment of Pong, Golf, or Miniature Golf. !

+1 on Atari Golf. I always enjoyed that cart.

[It’s a miracle the nes sold like hot cakes]

All this thread needs to become authentic classic internet is some dial up noises. You're welcome. ?

 

 

[Combat AI]

I liked it better when we called it "the computer". Also, I am not interested in a high quality Combat computer opponent. When the computer scores its first hit in ricochet tanks, it will often mark the end of the game; new missiles will arrive as the user's tank stops spinning from the last hit until the game ends. In the planes, the computer will hide in the underscan in the four corners of the screen and use screen wrapping to confuse the human. I can use both strategies to great effect, but the computer could do it almost perfectly. It wouldn't be much fun. 

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

1 hour ago, Nathan Strum said:

River Raid was a favorite of mine for some time when it was released. But my ability to play it topped out at some point, and I lost interest.

True, but you're describing the common experience with most any "classic arcade" game with no specific finite endgame goal. Those designs (simply) repeat similar (and often identical) gameplay and apply an increasing "difficulty" curve. For many, the allure of a high score won't be enough. In my case, I would have to play River Raid for a very long time to even challenge my personal best. I understand.

 

On the other hand, it's not necessarily any less satisfying than a pure test of patience, concentration, and staying awake. Pitfall! is a game that simply tests the player's ability to be consistent and pay attention. Desert Bus is a fantastic parody of what Pitfall! does to gamers. Pitfall! is more varied, but at this point navigating Harry is all cerebellum. It's autopilot. Certainly not inherently more satisfying for me. Desert Bus is a perfect description of why I don't play Pitfall! anymore.

 

Then, there are game designs with a set ending and experience. While satisfying the first time, they simply require memorization of the gameplay. And, that brought us the "beat the game" mindset that really gained steam over the years. Once the game is played, the content is no longer fresh. It becomes an exercise in learning to win with a better score/time. Once again, not necessarily more enjoyable or appealing for everyone.

 

I think River Raid is the best of the bunch and it has aged better than most Atari software. For players that come in fresh, there's a great experience there and it holds up remarkably well.

 

Outside of The Incredible Machine, the Civilization series, Pirates!, and Masters of Orion 2, I have found few games that are consistently entertaining to replay (without a stream additional content from the mod community, that doesn't count).

[Intellivision Amico’s trademark changed to ‘abandoned’]

I would argue that good investment is about storing your wealth and shielding it from inflation. Making a little extra is gravy. Shopping for unreal returns or investing with your heart is the road to regret.

[SMB1 level compression]

https://www.romhacking.net/documents/76/

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

There a lot of shareware games that were free to download, yet we still have difficulty archiving them. Having the public download stuff for free did not archive them properly.

 

I also appreciate packages that contain the actual roms. It gives gamers an opportunity to purchase the games legitimately.

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

1 hour ago, DaveM said:

I think you showed the wrong game today. You played Swordquest Fireworld instead of Swordquest Earthworld.

 

They both suck. ?

Agreed. I do see a grain of inspiration in there. It's just not realized. Needs to be revisited.

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

Lock 'n' Chase is a really good one. 

 

Berzerk is great, too. It's still fun to "dodge" bullets by letting them pass through the player's neck.

[TIATrackerPlus: A continuation of TIATracker]

33 minutes ago, RushJet1 said:

Turns out this isn't as good as I'd hoped.  The undo/redo functionality added by lonestarr actually crashes the program sometimes when I try to add frames to percussion or instruments (and the qt debugger doesn't seem to know why either).  The audio is "more accurate" timing wise but sometimes just stops working entirely and I have to restart the program (at least I can save).  This one is true even if I use an older version without the undo/redo functionality... the last track I wrote recently I restarted the thing 50 times at least.  Furnace now supports TIA as a target and the second it gets .bin output I'm switching to that since it won't have these problems.

Thank you for pointing out Furnace. I had no idea it was supporting TIA.

 

Looks like I'll be throwing my own crude TIA music tools away. :-)  Too late for my current project, though. Soundtrack has been done for a long time.

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

20 minutes ago, youxia said:

Yep, whatever. I'm not interested in arguing with a person who clearly has a bone to pick with some of the "MiSTer people". I'm simply posting to present another take on this for the sake of lurkers and newcomers.

 

 

And, trying to obfuscate what was already said in the process. That's why I keep quoting it.

[ARM based/enhanced Atari development, MISTer FPGA, and preservation]

Emulating proper hardware behavior while using physical carts is not a moving target. That's FUD.

 

Edit:  I didn't say it's easy. I didn't say it's even possible. But, emulating the existing hardware behavior with accuracy does not qualify as a moving target. And, that's the context of the latest discussion on this. We were talking about emulating with real carts. 

 

That removes the need to emulate the Harmony. I also don't care if the MiSTer runs new roms. That encourages bad behavior.

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

Let me grab my laughing shoes.

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

What did they say?

linky:  

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/321006-arm-basedenhanced-atari-development-mister-fpga-and-preservation/?do=findComment&comment=4831102

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

I do not agree that all people purchasing units will be fully educated on the technical details of legacy and new Atari carts. Buyers should be told what works and what does not.

 

If accurate emulation support for both legacy and new Atari 2600 carts and hardware add-ons can be implemented, I would be very interested in purchasing a unit. A true 99% 2600 FPGA emulation replacement unit with plug and play HDMI output and support for real physical carts would be very appealing to this community. Hooking up an Atari 2600 to a modern television is not easy and old machines inherently develop reliability issues. Without digging too deep, I think the MiSTer people made their feelings for new Atari software and supporting physical media very clear, so this probably has to happen outside their circle.

 

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

26 minutes ago, Marlosrob said:

So, trucco has a video where he tests the Multicore system with UNOcart, but in fact he told me that with HARMONY he had not done any pilot test.

Well, it's a hobby project, so I understand if he doesn't support flash carts. That's fine. He's never obligated to do more work. It's his project.

 

On the other hand, he is obligated to transparency for his customers, so Trucco should do some testing--or partner with someone else to investigate. Harmony cart technology is ubiquitous with Atari 2600 gaming these days, so saying "untested" isn't enough information for paying customers.

[Atari 2600 FPGA and Harmony Cart Encore]

Did you ask Trucco if his fork of MiSTer and the cart add-on supports the Harmony?

 

Ask Victor what his machine supports first. If he can show you that it does, that's when you should start asking about troubleshooting. And, the most likely problem is Trucco's machine and the ported FPGA core software emulator, so he should be your first stop for support.

 

 

[Best version of Frogger]

[ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch Stream]

Yeah. Defender was very disappointing. Using a sprite instead of the playfield to draw the Defender ship's lasers was an odd design choice. The invisibility and invincibility when the player shoots completely changes the game. It doesn't really feel like Defender.

 

Still better than Pac Man, though.

[Bug Report Thread]

30 minutes ago, Karl G said:

I would think that in the case of malformed conditional statements we should expect undefined behavior, unless I'm missing something here?

Given that it is Basic, I think users would expect the parser to catch it and throw an error. It's a hobby project, so it may or may not ever get patched, but I wouldn't expect Basic to trust users to know what they are doing.

[Neolithic Compiler - WIP - alpha/beta release with source]

It's a really cool coding experiment and as accomplishment as it is. It's been fun to play with.

 

With that said, do you have any specific ultimate mission statement and/or development use case in mind for the project?

 

It's (also) fine if this is for fun--and there doesn't have to be any ultimate goal, targets, or pressure. I'm just curious where you see it among the other available options to make games, given the capabilities of the AtariAge chips most people are using (if that even matters).

[Was the Atari 7800more powerful than the NES?]

1 hour ago, Muddyfunster said:

It was called Maria!

Joshua

[Was the Atari 7800more powerful than the NES?]

Move Zig for great justice

[DEMO - Pitfall (not WIP or Game) BIN attached]

42 minutes ago, rsiddall said:

Is there a way to slow the debounce code down:

 

;rem debounce jump
current = INPT4
temp3 = ((current ^ %10000000) & previous) & %10000000
previous = current
if temp3 then gosub harry_jump

 

As it is currently implemented, Harry jumps up/down instantly. I need to be able to add some hang time for him.

I can't figure out how to work a counter into this code example.

 

Since I'm not relying on collision with playfield, I can't have player0y=player0y+1 acting as constant gravity.

You might consider using fixed point variables for the player sprite. Good news, the feature is built into batari Basic and easy to use.

 

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#fixedpoint

 

When used, you can position the player sprite on "grid" that is more dense than the Atari's coordinate plane for the five VCS objects. That will provide more flexibility with jumping and gravity--and allow you to implement "hang time".