Arcadenut

Yeah, I found my Robotron at a Thrift store for $200. Brien

You should submit your score. There are a lot of games out there that do not have any scores, or very few. Until someone beats your score, you will be considered the World Champion for that game http://www.twingalaxies.com/cgi-perl/submit_scores.pl

Talk to a lawyer. You will need a copy of the NDA and you'll want to find out who owns the copyright on the source. NDA's are usually limited to a specific time-frame (like 1 year after leaving the company). If Epyx was bought by another company, then it is likely that they own the Copyright to that source code. If that is true, you could get in legal trouble for publishing it, no matter what your justification is.

Actually, that may be incorrect. In all the BASICs that I have worked in, that puts aside enough room for 20 Strings. Depending on the flavor of BASIC, that would be around 5,120 Characters (255 Characters + 1 Byte for Length = 256 x 20 elements in the array).

Like others have said, you need to start out simple. I highly recommend Blitz Basic. It's a BASIC language designed specificly for writing games on the PC. The Blitz Basic community is excellent and there are A LOT of resources available to you. Since you are just starting to learn to program, that will be very helpful. I just finished my first game in Blitz Basic called FrostByte Freddie. I've been writing software for 23 years, and know more programming languages than I care to remember. What I like most about Blitz is, is that it makes writing games fun because I don't have to worry so much about the language and I can concentrate more on the game.

Thanks There is no need for a Frame Limiter as everything is based on time. The FPS is just an indicator of how fast the screen is updating and how fast the game is executing. Movement, Animation, Control Polling, AI Logic, are all based on time. For example: The SnoBee's position is updated every 23 milliseconds. This means that the SnoBee will only move 3 pixels in any direction every 23 milliseconds. As long as your computer can process everything in less than that amount of time, the game runs normally. If your computer is too slow, things will be "Catching UP". If the game is seems too hard, you can go into Setup and adjust the difficulty settings. You can also adjust the number of lives, extra men, etc... If anyone thinks the game is too easy, they can set the difficulty to HARD So far, on Normal, my high score is 330+K on level 17.

I'm a FrostByte Freddie! Ok, I'll got take the test now.... my shameless plug is done

Has anyone tried it yet? Just currious as to what people think about it. Thanks

That's the 2600 Version Actually, yes, it's Windows 95 or Higher. (Notice I didn't say "Better"). Recommended PII/400 or better since it uses DirectX 7 or Higher. It might run on a lesser machine if it has a good video card, I just want to make sure they don't expect it to run on a 486 It crawls (3 - 5 FPS) on my P220 Laptop, but I think that is because it doesn't have a very good video chip. I would be interested in hearing what kind of systems are out there and how it runs on them. The FPS (Frames Per Second) are shown in the Upper Left corner of the screen.

I finnaly finished writing my game. This is a remake of the classic game Pengo (that is why it's posted here). It will be released tonight at Midnight (Phoenix, AZ time). Check the Software page after that time to download it. The game is absolutely free. Feel free to use this topic to make comments or ask questions about it. Good or bad

Ok, My Pengo Remake is almost done! I need help with the Sound Effects. If anyone would like to help out in this area, please drop me an email! The game is currently in BETA and the final touches are going to be the sound effects. The game will not be released (for Free!) until I get the sound effects done. There is no money involved as the game is being released free of charge. The only thing you'll get is fame

There are several reasons I don't own an XBox. 1) The controllers suck. Even the 3rd Party controllers suck. 2) The console is WAY too big. I have a limited amount of space. 3) It was too expensive at the time I was considering it. 4) Most of the games for it suck. Yes, even HALO. I don't "Hate" MS as a whole, but I despise some of the things they do.

Ok, what is the problem? What am I missing?

Actually the Main game has two modes, the first mode is "Story Mode" which I haven't played yet, and the other is "Challenge Mode" which is just like SMB1's main game.

Ok, there, I've said it . Monkey Target 2 is horrible. They should have stuck with the first one with new islands or something. They total screwed this one up. Top speed now is around 150+MPH (give or take) and the Ramp with the pipes going accross it is just stupid. Now with the slower speeds, it's hard to manuver where you want. The three targets are pretty boring and your choices of targets is extremely limited compared to Monkey Target 1. In Monkey Target 1 you could land on one of 4 targets. In Monkey Target 2, I think the max is 2 targets. Bowling is another one that isn't all that great. The new "Special" lanes are OK, but nothing to write home about. Anyway... just wanted to vent. The rest of the game is excellent.

Flexured, I came into this thread a little late, but thanks for the laugh. I have looked at the "Screen Shots" and your description here and all I can say, is that you are full of it. There are several flaws in your arguments, lets start with the video card choice. First off, the ATI TV Wonder VE is ATI's lowest capture card they make. They also make USB Capture devices, which I would consider lower quality than the VE, but that is another story. The VE stands for "Value Edition". So you're statement that "This is not a simple video capture card." is wrong. It is the simplest video card ATI makes. Here is the link to ATI's page about the VE ATI Wonder VE Second, the "...gold cabled for 0 static interruption." is naïve at best. The gold connectors have almost ZERO effect on the quality of the single coming into the capture card. What makes the largest difference is the device generating the video signal (in this case it would be the Atari 2600), the length of the cable, and the quality of the cable (Type of wire, gauge, shielding, etc..). What gold connectors will buy you is a better connection to the RCA Jack, but even that is streatching it. This also brought another question to mind, which is, “How did he use gold connectors with an Atari 2600 that has the cable built in?” The obvious possibilities would be: 1) You didn’t. 2) You used either the 2600Jr or 7800 which allow you to hook up external RCA cables. Ok, let me give you a little background about me. I have been doing video capture for 3+ years now professionally. I currently own 5 Video capture cards, including an ATI Wonder VE. I have tested numerous cards from the cheap $49 cards to the mildly pricey $300 cards (there are higher end cards than that, but not necessary for my needs). I’ve been working with computers and electronics for 23 years. Based on that, I don't feel that my opinion on this subject is "Baseless" Ok, so now what we have here is this: Atari 2600 hooked up via "Gold Connections" to the ATI Wonder VE. You then capture a single frame. Which produces a single image and allows you to save it. It has been awhile, but I'm betting that it would not allow you to save that image as a GIF. Chances are, it would allow you to save it as a JPEG. Maybe you used a 3rd Party app to save it as a GIF from the video stream, who knows. If however, you saved it as a JPG image, then converted to a GIF, your image would look something like this: If you look at the picture, you'll notice the image has pixelation around the guy. This is because JPG (and MPEG-2) are a "lossy" format. That means it discards information when it compresses. If you use JPG or MPEG on a picture that has very few colors (such as a 2600 screen shot) then the loss becomes very apparent. Putting that aside, let's imagine that you are capturing video and saving it in an uncompressed AVI file. You still have a problem. Here is why. You are going from Analog to a Digital. In other words you are going from the 2600 NTSC RF Signal to a video clip on the PC. Anytime you go from Analog to Digital, you are going to introduce some sort of noise. Even if you can't see it with the naked eye, it will be there. Thanks too tools like Paintshop pro, these defects are much easier to find. One final note, the Screen Shots are 320x195 in 24 bit color. Video Capture cards do not capture at 320x195, they can capture at 320x240 or the next lowest is 240x180. The color depth is important to note since the screen shot only USES 8 colors. If it had been an actual video capture, the number of colors would have been any number higher than 8. Ok, I've rambled on enough... I'm going to go play some video games now and unwind...

Thanks! You just cost me $108! I picked up Mario Sunshine and Super Monkey Ball 2 at lunch because of this thread .

Cool! What is the largest size they can do? Also, please let me know how much it cost to do your side art. Thanks,

If you're looking for the part that holds the Marquee in on Kangaroo, then almost any one for that style of cabinet should work. Try Al Gross at (602) 254-4376. He might have one that will work for you. As for the back door, you could just paint some high quality playwood glossy (or semi-glossy) black.

It's not cheap! Its $50!

I'm afraid you are not going to have very good luck in finding anyone to do your side art for you. The cost of doing Side Art is extremely high (in the thousands of dollars). Your best bet is to hope that someone has NOS side art for the game somewhere. If they do, you can expect to pay around $100 - $300 for the art. You might be able to find it on eBay, but again, it's not going to be cheap. Unfortuantly, factors such as eBay, higher demand, and a dwindling supply has driven the cost of parts for Arcade games through the roof.

My Favorite by far is "Super Monkey Ball" by SEGA. I would stay FAR FAR away from "Smash Driving" by NAMCO. I wasted $50 on that POS. I gave it to a friend because his kid liked it. Pac Man World 2 isn't too bad, but the camera work on it sucks sometimes. Sometimes you wind up looking at a tree instead of your character with no way of adjusting the camera. Other than that, I like it. Lugi's Mansion is a great title and probably my second favorite so far on the GC. It's kind of short and not much replay value after you complete it, AND it has some annoying issues, but never the less it's still a great game. The annoying issue is that when you are fighting the last "Boss" character, if you die, you have to go through the whole cinematic display again, and again, and again...

Hey Wolff, I had a question about your calculations. What is the TOTAL distance from where the plane starts to where it finishes? The figure I saw of 8,470 appears to be from the Fence post in FRONT of the Windmill. Is that correct? Thanks,

Please be a little more specific. Do you get a picture at all? Do you hear the high voltage whine? Does the neck of the tube glow? What brand of monitor is it? How old is it? Chances are, it needs a Cap Kit. Those are fairly easy to do (although Dangerous). Sounds like a board problem. Try reseating any socketed chips. You may also want to check the voltages coming from the PS. They should be fairly close to spec (+5, -5, +12). If they are off a little, it shouldn't matter (+-.2 Volts is probably acceptable for most games). Some games have what is called a "Watchdog Circut" which monitors the board and if it finds a problem resets it. Your best bet is to test your cabinet with another JAMMA board. If that board works fine, then you know its a board problem and you can look for a new board. If the other board doesn't work in that cabinet then you know you have a cabinet problem.