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MAC-42

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Posts posted by MAC-42

  1. Posted

    Still, there was always something about 5200 Ms. Pac-Man I didn't like... probably the halting way Ms. Pac-Man eats dots. Kind of ruins the game's flow.

    I tend to agree with this, though I think as the game progresses and speeds up this is mitigated somewhat. (I haven't played it in a while, so I can't be sure.)

     

    This modification, though, is splendid. Love the sounds, Aking. They're much, much nicer now.

  2. Posted

    I grew up with a stock Aquarius and was always gently envious of my best friend's C64 for all the RAM he had. (I didn't understand about sprites and sound and stuff that would have turned me positively green!) So, I'd always bang out these tiny little BASIC programs that never did much. (This was a small relief, actually, as I never had a cassette drive for this machine.) You just never could do anything of great substance with the base machine.

     

    When I reacquired an Aquarius, Jay sold me one of the prototype 32k modules he described above. Good heavens, does it change how you look at this thing! For 30 years, I'd always thought of the Aquarius as the 1k wonder and kept things as spartan as possible. (Not hard, btw, when you're dealing with the inbuilt BASIC.) With this module and the Extended BASIC in the Aquaricart, I can actually make the Aquarius do things of some substance. The Aquarius, its other constraints aside, is actually a rather more usable computer than people give it credit for when you actually pack on some RAM.

     

    All of this to say that you should buy one of these. If you play the cassette games, if you write your own programs, you should buy one. It really makes a difference in how you view the machine, especially if you're running a stock one.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    I had assumed, maybe incorrectly, that I could take a cable from a proline and wire it up into the Genny pad somehow.

    You may be able to, along the lines of the NES gamepad conversion. I've never seen any such plans before, though. I like this one because I don't have to maul my daughter's controller in order to make it work with the 7800. It should be usable with the 7800 and also preserve its natural functionality.

     

    I'll scrape up some free time tonight to finish my adapter and post pictures. I think the 7404 chip is all ready to go, and the only thing I should have left to do is to solder the wires down to the DB9 connectors.

  4. Posted

    One question -- what did you use for the connectors -- the one that plugs into the 7800 and the one that accepts the Genesis plug?

    You're very welcome. I picked up male and female DB9 connectors from these folks. You can pick them up around the internet pretty readily if you want to purchase from somewhere else, and I'm sure you can pick them up very cheaply directly from China. You plug the Genesis controller into the male DB9 and connect to the Atari with a female one, of course.

     

    That's a neat little site, the project site. Lots of neat things that are (mostly) not too hard to put together for a variety of systems. The Jaguar controller adapter is...astonishing. I'd love it, but I'm in no hurry.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    Also if your interested in an arcade stick instead of a gamepad, making your own using an arcade stick and cherry switch buttons is easy as pie if you use the proline's harness. You don't even need to solder anything, but use crimp connectors. :)

    That's my down-the-road project. I'm planning on building a MAME unit next month and plan on picking up extra buttons and a joystick. A good idea, this.

  7. Posted · Edited by MAC-42

    Funny you folks should mention this. I've been using guides from over here to make adapters. This linked page gives you a variety of adapters that allow the Genesis pad to work with two buttons on the 7800, and you don't have to open up or hack up the Genesis pad to do it. I'm actually in the middle of assembling the one on the bottom of that page. I, too, have poor electronics skills, but it's been a simple solder job so far. So far, I've built the adapter that lets you use a Sega light phaser in place of an Atari XG-1, and it works well. After the Genesis adapter, I plan on building the digital-to-analog adapter for the 5200.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Just curious if anyone else plays this and what are their thoughts and comments.

    I'd been putting off getting around to this game for a while now. Don't know why. But the advent of this thread made me load it up and give it a whack. A fun game. Took me a couple of days to beat it on Difficulty 1. (Squeezed it between Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, which are busy times.) It's a neat game, but I think there's something wrong either with it or my joystick's x-axis pot. When I turned my gunstar right, it would move at what I assume is a normal speed. I could turn it into a destroyer, for instance, or some deck fighters and have no problems. Turning left was a different matter. I could do it, but, for instance, I could never catch up to a destroyer in a left turn. I think it's the game, though. This is an odd one. When I'm moving into a left turn and I then press 1 to bring up the star system map, suddenly I have free movement left and right at the same rate in either direction. I don't understand it, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this. At any rate, I've used this to overcome the problem.

     

    Anyway, it's kinda fun. I do like it. Never played Star Raiders II, so I don't know how similar to or different from this it really turned out in the end.

  11. Posted

    There doesn't seem to be much interest in this.

    Are you serious, CPUWiz? This has to be about the neatest thing I've seen. (I mean, aside from the part where you made an Atari 7800 sing like the great divos and divas of the opera house.) This really is a pretty sweet setup. Price and timing of availability might matter a little, but I'm pretty sure I could find a use for this.

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    I haven't had a chance to load the 8-bit version up on my XEGS yet, so this conversion was my first look at the game. Haven't even seen the video of it yet. Wow! This game is worthy of any version or clone of Tetris to be found out there. Thanks very much for converting it over to the 5200, Aking.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    Well, I suppose you can just program a game to use the C button on a Genesis pad and modify the A button on that pad to get three button controller for the 7800.

     

    Is this possible? I thought it was only possible to get two buttons out of the Genesis pad. (I was going to throw together a little unit this weekend to do just that, in fact.) That'd be super-cool to do. Can you point me in the direction of directions?

  14. Posted

    Bob, thanks for the code example. Gosh, gang, he just cranks that stuff out of his head like it's English. No wonder he's so good!

     

    Pressing both buttons at once on the joypad is probably not the most practical thing.

     

    For an inventory select type function, something like holding the second button then using a stick direction is probably more practical.

    Well, I guess I have an excuse to play Zelda this weekend now, to see how it works out. :lol: But the practicality of it was my main concern, too. I know that there have been times where I'll clear out a room full of bats by firing sword and boomerang at the same time over and over again; this would inevitably lead to problems, though the solution is to not bombard a room like that. Nevertheless, I had worried about this very point. But your solution here is very interesting indeed. Gives me something to chew on....

     

     

    Interesting idea MAC-42, and man, Bob, that is real quick with the code for it...Sweet!

     

    But I think I agree with Rybags that a simultaneous button press is not the most practical thing. Especially considering how finicky the controllers can be overall for some (many?)

     

    Aces of Aces employs a method of one press to a button fires guns, and a double click serves as a different function.

     

    Along similar to Rybags' thoughts perhaps holding down a button severs one function and once or rapid fire serves another.

     

    In the case of a "Zelda-type" game, I think the most practical and best method to ensure you don't waste a 'special' or secondary item would be:

     

    Left Button - One quick press or rapid pressing = Use Sword/Main weapon.

    Left Button - Held Down = Bring up Inventory Screen.

     

    Right Button = Use special/secondary item.

     

    Also, within the inventory screen a selection is made by pressing the right button, and you exit the inventory screen with the left button.
    Or/And...Have an option to look to the second control port for additional input. If it's just the one additional function (Inventory Screen), any input (Up, Down, Left, Right, Left Button, Right Button) can register that function.
    It then provides the player the ability to choose what works best for them. :)

     

    Thanks, Trebor. It was just something I'd been aimlessly noodling around with for months. My assembly skill is...well, fifth-rate coders point at me and laugh as I pass. 7800basic has finally given me a way to try these ideas out.

     

    The second controller port is another option, yes. Hadn't thought about that. A particular weakness of mine is trying to build up complexity when the bleedin' obvious answer is staring me in the face. There are some other good ideas in your post, too. Nice stuff to putter around with.

     

    Thanks for your thoughts, folks!

  15. Posted

    I have no way to test this on actual 7800 hardware as yet, so I thought I'd throw this out there to see if anyone has any idea. (Or to see if it's been done already and I'm just not aware of it.)

     

    I've long wondered if a game could be programmed to respond to pressing both controller buttons to activate a "third function" of sorts. Using NES Zelda as an example, the B button activates your selectable weapon, A activates your sword and Start brings up your inventory. In this example, the 7800 lacks a third button, but I wondered if a game could be programmed to act on a simultaneous button press. In this case, the 7800 left button would activate the selectable weapon, the right button the sword, and both buttons together would bring up the inventory. Using 7800basic, I was able to get a third function out of such a setup--in my case, a simple background color change to test it out. I would think that this should work on hardware, but does anyone know? Or can anyone try? Or has this been done already?

     

    Of course, I guess the next question is how practical this is from a user-interface perspective. Would it be too easy to trigger this by accident in a Zelda-like game? I haven't played Zelda properly in years so I'm drawing a blank on how much button overlap there might be.

     

    Anyway. Just some questions. If this is workable, maybe someone can make use of this idea.

  18. Posted

    I love it when people decide to get a new LCD TV and part with their old boob tubes.

     

    Yeah, it's a nice thing, isn't it? My CRT is a 27 inch Trinitron that my dad gave me when he finally went LCD last September. There was a huge Trinitron console--a 37-inch-screen job, I think--at the local Salvation Army for $35 a month or so back. I'd have snapped it up but...good grief, I'd have needed the 3rd Infantry Division to move the thing! :lol:

  19. Posted

    Until recently, I had my 5200 plugged into a halfway-decent LCD TV. Looked okay. I was able to reclaim one of the rooms in the house, though, and plugged my Ataris and Intellivision into a CRT I kept aside. Boy, did the 5200's colors pop when I did that. I was really pleased with it.

     

    I agree about emulators, though. I just chalk that up as a cost of doing business with them.

  22. Posted

    Here's a question. I'd like to use a PNG to create a number of identical sprites. (Think, for instance, a line of bug ships in Galaxian or a group of robots like in Berzerk or Robotron.) I know I can create as many copies of the PNG and call them individually in the code, but it seems that using a single file would be more efficient, at least on account of the fact that I'm lazy and don't feel like copying the image and renaming all the copies. :) Is it possible to do this or something like it at this point?

  23. Posted

    My Pole Position II cart, over a couple of months, started getting flakey. It eventually conked out in the middle of a game and never came back. Tough as they are, they can go bad--my daughter's Genesis Gauntlet IV cart never did work correctly, for instance. I, too, picked up a copy of Dark Chambers recently and mine works well. Sad to say, my first bet would be a bad cart. Someone please correct me if I'm overlooking something.

  24. Posted

    I'm having a hard time deciding if I will work on Dig Dug XM or Castle Crisis. I have Bryan's blessing, and source code :D , for the later.

    Well, Perry, for what it's worth.... I'm soooooo totally tired of listening to the 2600 music when I listen to Dig Dug. But it's up to you, of course. :)

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