DanOliver

Tweaks were done by me. I was the only programmer on the project. I'm not sure where I picked up my version number scheme. I do like using dates as version numbers, I assume I just hadn't learned of that scheme yet. I do remember spending way too much time worrying about such silly things. The sequential scheme has the advantage in theory that you have some idea about how many releases were made. I assume there was no 0.x version numbers. I would have started with 1 or 2, I'd guess 2. That scheme would mean at max I would have burned ROMs for 2.x, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, so 6 sets max, maybe some for release to manufacturing. It's very likely I skipped some of those numbers altogether. Just something I would have dreamed up, like "this seems pretty far along so I'll call this 5.3" type silliness. The minor number, after the decimal point, could likely be totally made up or if I screwed up a EPROM. Version numbers are more useful as the game is close to release when getting ready for release to manufacturing, don't want to screw that up. Did that on Space Cavern. However, I think collectors and Archivists like Scott actually have a better handle on all this by looking at the carts themselves and comparing features. After all I thought Robert Wheatherby did the music for Final Legacy and it's been proven to me that it was Brad Fuller. Human memory is crap.

Yes, those are the video links. His channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ScottithGames He found many more differences that we discussed via email a month ago, don't know his plans for that info. It was very interesting for me to see the tweaks made.

Small world. I lived a couple of blocks from the 2012 The Alameda location. I lived at 2201 The Alameda for several years and 1088 Chapman St for 14 years.

It is indeed a legit cart. EPROM was burned by me and label written by me. It was personally owned by me up until a couple of months ago when I traded it to Scott Stilpen. Scott did a lot of analysis to compare the Rev 5.3 cart to the known Rev 7.1 versions and we exchanged many emails on the carts. I'm now nearly 100% sure the 7.1 carts were made for a focus group test and if that's the case there would be 12-15 of those. Someone could tell for sure if 2 copies were found because the carts made for focus testing would each have a slightly different ROM image because I put a serial number in each which turned out to be useful. I now believe Rev 5.3 would have been made for maybe a magazine editor for review or something like that and I made an extra copy for myself. I didn't normally make copies and would have only done so if asked to do so by my boss Chris Horseman for a specific reason. In that case I think there would be just a couple copies (say 2 or 3) of Rev 5.3. There would be very few made because we were very concerned about it being stolen. There wasn't any internal testing group for Legacy or Final Legacy so there weren't a lot of pre-release carts made. I had recently thought my Rev 5.3 copy was part of the set made for focus testing, but after discussion with Scott I now believe 5.3 was earlier. "Legacy" was the title I originally wanted but turned out to have been used by something else so the name was changed to "Final Legacy". I never used the terms "beta" or "alpha" for games because games aren't speced like apps so there's no way to know when a game is "feature complete". If I would retroactively assign those terms I would call Rev 5.3 an alpha version and Rev 7.1 a beta. Alpha being something still in development and beta being feature complete but still being tweaked. So terms like "beta 1" etc would be something other people came up with later as a description like "proto", strictly a term used by collectors. I can't speak to value because I'm not a collector. I traded the cart to Scott for some VCS equipment for developing a new game mainly because I thought that was a pretty cool use of the Legacy cart. After learning about collectors for these I figured it was probably better the cart be available to collectors instead of banging around my house. Scott being an Archivist seemed a perfect choice to document the cart before it going to a collector and I think he did a very through job.

That is definitively the same attitude I saw on the Eclipse project, which is fine, it's their code. But for profit companies allowing that kind of silly crap in a market as large as Windows....never seen that. Bugs sure.

Just tried to install the Open Source project Eclipse. I try Eclipse every few years...would love to get away from MS. Can't install it on XP because filenames are too long. Been a known bug for 6 years. Developers on the project just say its a Windows problem, not their issue. Open Source...free and worth every penny.

Side note...tried to install Eclipse...won't install on XP because path names are too long. Checked their database and it's been a bug for more than 6 years.

I can offer my C++ programming services if there was a decision to do some kind rewrite. I've been writing C++ professionally since there was C++. Any kind of Assembly is also OK. I don't know anything about emulating anything, no experience with Stella code, so I could only be a programmer being directed by someone or group. I can give 1 or 2 months full time and then part time maintenance. I have no idea how large the possible projects being discussed would take, but I can complete projects pretty fast. I don't mind taking a crack at something even if it fails if someone is willing to provide direction and answer questions along the way. My interest is solely in an emulator for development. The backward compatibility with old games doesn't interest me, but I assume that would come along for free. I've done projects like this before, working with an Electrical Engineer or other expert describing what's needed. I don't think I'd be much help changing current code because it would take too long to come up to speed. But if you need eyes for code review I'd being willing. What I'm reading in this thread, and I've read it a couple of times, sounds like some very interesting project ideas to me. I've seen the same type of discussions on other older projects. They create a lot of experience about what could be done better but have to deal with legacy code. It's a tough tradeoff. I'm always in favor of a complete rewrite and have done such projects many times. Stella UI One other thing I can offer is a better UI framework. I assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the Stella UI looks the way it does because it's being drawn in a OpenGL, or maybe DirectDraw, window so you can't use standard Win32 controls and such? I had the same issue many years ago when doing PC games and developed my own UI framework which can do a Windows, Mac or custom style UI that's as good or better than the OS. I only use basic OS calls to access whatever bitmap the system provides. I draw and manage windows, dialogs, buttons,scroll bars, menus, the works. I render any TrueType font to my own bitmap font structure with different anti aliasing effects. Uses UTF-8 (Unicode) and is has localization support. Allows for non-programmers to create pretty advanced skins including layout. Notes on setting up Stella development for Windows XP. I just setup the Stella project and built successfully and wanted to share what I learned. Went pretty smooth thanks to the Stella development page. 2010 Express requires Service Pack 3. Installing that on one computer caused it to not boot. System recovery fixed that, but I could not get SP3 to work on that computer.. I already had SP3 on another computer so used that. The TortoiseSVN site requires a 4.5 Windows installer be installed for XP. I had no way to tell if I had it already or not so I installed that. The TortoiseSVN site has two download buttons for 32 and 64 bit versions. I clicked 32 bit and didn't notice a note on the next page saying the 32 bit file wasn't available and so it decided on its own to download the 64 bit version. The file you want is here, at least for some period of time: http://sourceforge.n....0.msi/download I found it searching around the file directory links below the down load button at SourceForge. On the Stella development page, step 1 for "Compiling the source code:" shows several files named "Stella", the file you want is "Stella.sln". Double clicking it did not launch 2010 Express on my computer. But loading it from inside 2010 Express did work. In step 4 if you first change the "Configuration:" drop down from "Active (Debug)" to "All Configurations" you save not having to do steps 5 & 6. Wish I had a dime for every time I forgot that...PITA. Build failed right off with error MSB8008. To fix this right click "Solution Explorer -> Stella" and select "Properties". Same dialog in steps 3-6. Select "Configuration Properties" -> "General" and then in the right pane change "Platform Toolset" from v110 to v100. People using VC 2012 need v110.

Hatred? Where did you read that? You'll have to forgive me but if you're reading things into posts that aren't there I'm not sure I would be able to trust your interpretation of licensing for my projects.Wish I had time to read the rest of your rant.

I kind of miss those days. I loved the idea of doing battle with crackers. I respected their work. On the other hand the people who traded/sold cracked work to me were just thieves. I worked with a manager once who had a big CD collection of stolen software he was very proud of. At meetings we would say we needed XYZ app and he'd proudly say "I have that". Scum. And this was inside a software company. This was a manager they expected me to work with. My problem is how dump this guy is to not see the issue with stealing other people's software while expecting people to pay for ours. If you're that stupid I don't want you on my team. He got put onto some other crappy project and surprise surprise that company went out of business. It's not so much the act of stealing I have a problem with, it's the indicator of stupidity. Being proud of their theft like it was some kind of accomplishment or right just increases their stupidity factor imo. But luckily the market for software is so much larger now that 50-75% theft still allows an author to stay in business. And the bigger markets allow for reduced prices which further reduces theft. So these days an author hardly has to be concerned with theft.

Don't want to start another subtopic...the app is for non-CAD users to design stuff. I didn't use the Open Source code in my project because I couldn't figure out the rights. So I wrote my own code by looking at how their code worked. Source code is protected by copyright. It's illegal for me to copy and paste other people's code into my app. Open Source licenses are used to give some rights to others. But if you don't understand the license and make a mistake you can end up doing something illegal. However, copyright does not protect how code works, algorithms. Those can be protected by patents, but most Open Source code tries to stay away from anything covered by a patent. It's basically reverse engineering and is legal as long as you only use public info. So now I have a copyright on my code and can do whatever I like with it. Morally it gets a little weird. I used another engineer's hard work to create something I can profit on without any requirement to pay them anything or even give them credit. However, it was their choice to publish the code and paper on the algorithm without getting a patent. So in essence they did give me permission to do what I did. I assume they'd be OK with this because it's an older algorithm and they'd never tried to profit from it. The impress I get is they'd be happy their work was being used. And of course I will give them credit in my app so at least it isn't plagarism. Never the less I wish there was a better system. I did email the owners to try and see if my use would valid their license and/or buy a license, but I never heard back. And I think that's a very common problem. Email addresses and URLs for contacting many owners are no longer valid. On the other hand I may have had to rewrite all the code even if I had obtained some license. I didn't need most features, so my code was maybe 20% of theirs. That makes it easier to reduce bug risk. Like most Open Source I've seen the code itself isn't normally very good, they don't normally seem to do a lot of testing. It's fun to write code to the point it does this really cool thing...but getting it rock solid isn't as much fun. When you're not being paid it's very hard to push thru that stage and deliver something solid. And that goes back to why I think money and software have an important relationship. When someone pays me for software they're not paying me for writing the software...they're paying for some higher standard. Tested, factored for future maintenance, documented, and most importantly they're paying me so I'm able to stay with their project for as long as they need me. When working on an Open Source projects most programmers have to pull out at some point, or scale back, because they have to earn money some other place to pay rent. And that's the flaw with the system. Why the Star Trek model of no money will never work imo. Money only represents resources like rent, food and time. You could in theory at least give everyone a free place to live, free food, but time is always going to be limited. Say you want to build your own star ship and all materials, energy, workspace is free. Well, start building. In 500 years you might be done. What you really want is a bunch of workers to help. Unless they're slaves the workers are giving you time. They may donate their time, they may want to trade their time for being able to use the finished star ship or something else. And someone is going to own the ship. We can say money was taken out of the equation but everything associated with the evils of money remain.

I should say I do understand there certainly are many and diverse valid reasons for Open Source. My problem is it's so complex. I still benefit greatly from it. I never would have been able to write this 3D modeling engine without being able to read their source code. The authors also wrote a paper on their algorithm using math symbols which I would have had a hard time understanding. Code I understand.

FujiSkunk, thanks for the explanation. For using software I've never felt I needed to understand the license since I never thought I was close to running afoul of anything. But for using Open Source code in my projects I feel like I have to understand the details or I put the entire project at risk. That's been the problem for me. I was just reading a thread on the Stella emulator and the programmers trying to get permission to use code from another project. They tracked down one programmer who gave permission but he thought another programmer had code in there too and he had to be tracked down. To me it seems very complex. The opposite of what I think they all were trying to do. The no money Star Trek concept is very compelling...right up until you want to buy some tribbles. My guess is human greed existed before there was money and greed will exist should money ever go away. As Chakotay said, it's our nature.

I didn't have a clue how the Open Source stuff started, so thanks. Makes sense. The biggest problem I have with Open Source is I'm a bit dyslexic and have a hard time understanding the licenses. Before Open Source programmers either added a copyright notice or "public domain" which I understood. Even the Open Source licenses that seem to say "public domain" go on and on with legalese that lows my confidence that I actually understand it. I assume most people don't understand the licenses either and just use the software however they like. I can't imagine that most authors ever track down and kill any abusers. Also, I've tried to get into a few Open Source projects but I don't have any experience with the tools and lingo. I've done almost no Unix or Linux programming. So I never have a clue what's going on. Huge barrier to entry for me. It took me a long time to just figure out TAR balls. Everything in that world seems like a kluge and the tools very primitive to me. I'm sure if I worked in that world I'd understand it better. I started out with command line compilers, make files, etc. But wouldn't like to have to go back. And the IDE projects never seem to have the same IDE version I have so that's a mess. So far what I've had to do is use Open Source code to understand algorithms and rewrite the code from scratch. While that sounds pretty dumb the code I've used had pretty cool algorithms but the code wasn't too hot, so I end up with a better understanding and better code. And since I sell the software I really have to support it and understanding the code and making it less error prone has value to me. If I released my code as Open Source I guess I could just wish users good luck, but I wouldn't feel right (proud) about that.

Rescue Terra I used a single piece of cardboard, no folds, similar in shape to the TeamPixelBoy box. You really just need a piece long enough so the cart top is against the box's top, and tabs to keep it from moving left and right. However, putting the cart back into the box is a little tricky.

I got a die quote for $175 from another printer. Not sure if that's a lot, but sounds good to me. The other quote didn't break out the die, I wonder if they laser cut them?

These aren't the game box...just samples of the printer's work to see if the quality is OK Mostly boxes for makeup type products. Very high end stuff. I want to make sure I have everything in place before starting to program. I was interested because a friend is in that business and told me digital was every bit as good as offset. It was just a question of run size. Offset is cheaper for 10k runs, digital for small runs. For what I need offset was $16 per box, $1.75 for digital. I was concerned about quality. The printer sent like 20 sample boxes of different colors and what not. I used a magnifying glass and I couldn't tell it was digitally printed which surprised me.

I've stayed away from Open Source because of that very thing. Users talk about greedy developers but some demand free service as their right. I don't understand it. You're no doubt right about kids thinking the games were lame. That didn't help. And bins of discounted games sure doesn't help with coolness. I think the glut just focused the problem to come to a head really fast and sudden. Otherwise the 2600 could have just faded over the next year or two. In the fall of 1983 we couldn't find any distributors that would even talk about buying any games at any price. Sure seemed done to me. I never heard about Atari missing payroll at least in the Warner days. When Atari was bought by Tramiel pretty much everything was up for grabs. Was that the time? The 800XLs would have been stolen imo as no one threw out inventory. There were lots of dumpsters full of office supplies however. A few of us were in there pulling out stuff. I got so many staplers I haven't reloaded a stapler in 30 years. I just toss it when empty. Great staplers too.

These are just samples of what the printer can do. Looks really great. I now have sources for the box, manual, label, cartridge case and game design. The last missing piece is the board. I'm really hoping to be able to get some Melody boards but that's a problem, not enough of them. I'm starting to worry about the longer term and not being able to get Melody boards. Risky. I may have to go with 32K ROM instead. Have been thinking about it and maybe this wouldn't be so bad. A little less horsepower for the graphics which is a bummer, but really maybe the game itself should be the focus. I'm thinking of developing the game for the PC at the same time, so that could have the better graphics for people who want that. Seems like most people play on the Stella emulator anyways. Hopefully I'll hear something about Melody availability soon. Worst case I guess I could just do future games on Melody. I'm getting very eager to start writing code.

There's already a thread on this here.

What company was that? Those were wild times. I don't think it was only about the money, lots of people just thought it was cool to do games. Like Apollo was making film strips for schools...how boring is that? Getting into games was very exciting for them. Like the sales people seemed to love selling games, plus they were selling a lot. Everyone's jobs there I think got really exciting really fast. Hard to separate out the money though. It's part of the excitement, part people really liked making games. I always thought the crash was because of crappy games too, but I just saw a video of David Crane talking about that. He had a slightly different take and he changed my mind. More games than the market could handle. Companies started going belly up and the problem was their inventory was sold for a few dollars and all dumped onto the market at $5 in the bargain bin in front of the store. I remember those. And that Christmas parents bought those instead of the $40 games. That was the big whack. Then everything went into the bargain bin. The glut of inventory was just too big to wait out. Even Demon Attack ended up in the bargain bin. I do still blame Atari's problems on Atari's management of ET, Pac-Man, but really just their lack of understanding the market. A company of their size could have weathered the storm. At Apollo they ended up with something like 25 programmers. Ed Salvo was the only one I knew that had any experience, though I wasn't around for most of the hires. I had like maybe a could of dozen hours experience with 6502, maybe 100 hours of Apple BASIC. One guy was a COBAL programmer. The joke was you only needed to be able to spell 6502 to be hired. Maybe not bad programmers but we sure were inexperienced.

Not sure if there are any developers in Phoenix but they're have a video game exhibition for a few months including VCS stuff. Chris Melissinos of Past Pixels is giving a talk at 11 am today. Should be interesting.

Thanks Darrell, that's a great site. I had run into a scaned Stella manual some place else, but the PDF looks better. Plus the other info.

Yes that's it. Thanks, been bugging me. Ed Salvo at Apollo had learned to program the VCS using the Magicard and he taught us based on that. At the time there was kind of a joke that CommaVid sold 20 Magicards, one for every new company creating VCS games. Apollo was offered a Stella manual stolen from Atari, but it wasn't obtained as far as I know. I think management thought there must be some secret registers that could be used to make great games and were very interested. Over the past month I've been reading some 2600 code and see labels like GRP0 which I assume are from the original Atari Stella manual. I have to translate into what we, or I, called the registers.

It's pretty much a full time job worrying about myself. What other people do is not really any of my business. For myself here's how I look at it...My work is my portfolio. It's how I get the next cool project. For my first programming job I could show an Asteroids ripoff on an Apple II written in BASIC. Back then that was good enough to get me a job. That allowed me to create Space Cavern, a little more original. With that I could convince partners to start a company that allowed me to try and do more original works. That got me into Atari. And on and on. That's been fun. What if on Space Cavern I'd done a complete Demon Attack ripoff? Would I've still been able to been a part of VentureVision? Maybe, maybe not. What if my ripoff also stole some Demon Attack code? I certainly could have done that, Apollo sure wouldn't have checked. Maybe Imagic sues Apollo and puts them out of business. You think I'd ever have a chance to work on interesting projects again? Maybe, maybe not. I just don't see the up side to the risk. Everyone has to find their own path. I'll say this too...when we do these projects it never seems like that big a deal. But these things can stick around a long time. Many times I've been in interviews or working with people and they say "Hey, you're the dude that did..". At that moment that obscure dumb little app carries more weight than anything else as far as whether you get the next cool project or not. So for me, I'd stay away from cracking any DRM. There are lots of other machines to write for. Plus I wouldn't want to support such a machine even if it is 100 years old. That doesn't mean I think every single person in every single case who has crossed some kind of line and they should burn in hell. That's their business. The only times I've ever had to judge other people was when hiring people. Faced with two programmers, one having done original work and one doing ripoff after ripoff and proud of it, I'm hiring the original thinker. It's more fun and more profitable potentially. I'll take that over a degree or even experience. But of course that's because of the industry I've worked in. Plenty of other industries where degrees and experience are more important.