Cafeman

Stretched-out indeed. Pyro the stormcloud is starting to look like a weiner dog!

I have a newer Radio Shack RF for use with my 5200, and I sometimes need to jiggle it or its connecting chord to remove static. It's fine once it gets going, though the strange 'patterns' can be seen in solid colors (do you know what I mean?). The Colecovision I just got had no RF, so I'm using an auto-detecting RF that I got with my SNES. It didn't seem to work, then I disconnected the cable TV chord from the auto-detecting RF's cable port, and then I saw the (rather poor) Colecovision image. It's way worse than the 5200's on that Radio Shack RF. I cannot use the Radio Shack one with the CV since I'm missing a chord (the one from the CV to the RF -- the 5200's chord is attached inside the machine). Any suggestions or comments on how I could get better RF connection for my Colecovision? I just assumed that the auto-detecting RF was not calibrated to read the weaker CV signal when the cable was plugged into it.

I just checked it out, OldGuru. Very nice. I wanted to do something similar! When I started out in May 2001 (I seem to be about a year behind you), I couldn't find much that was specifically about the 5200. Dan's site was really the only resource for me at first -- thank goodness I found AtariAge and started to get info from Debro, and Tempest started at the same time so it was educational seeing his progress & problems posted as well. I always thought "when I get my first game done, I'm going to make it available on the net". Well, with Dan's and your site already on the net, there is little sense with me doing the same thing, although I wouldn't mind offering some files/text to you guys eventually. I plan on releasing the ASM file, commented of course, for my first game "Koffi" when it is done, and a generic "Antic mode e" starting file too which will basically have a pre-defined display list and the 4k boundary already resolved. Those are annoying problems when you don't know what the heck to do about them! Am I the only one using Antic E? What is CastleBlast using? I was just coding the SpreadFire, DouseFire, and Collisions routines for Koffi this evening. I'd love to show some people what I've got going, but I'm going to show some restraint and hold off until it starts looking more professional. So far, so good. In fact, I was just referring to your address file to get the Collision Registers addresses, tonight was the first time I experimented with these. Pretty easy, just check a GTIA register for a value! The problem pops up when I reuse colors via a DLI -- sure I want the Red Fire (which are '11' pixels) to kill off Koffi, but I don't want the tree trunk pixels (lower on the screen, also '11' pixels) to harm him! Well, I'm monopolizing your thread here with my Koffi experiences! I will finish for now! When can we play CastleBlast?

Very cool. I have not tried these out yet, hopefully I will have time tonight.

I thought that you were quoting from Adventure's manual, but since I don't have it, wasn't too sure! I can't recall seeing the red dragon ... I've been Cafeman since I first logged onto the net. I was actually "[email protected]" at first. Keeping the same ID for so long has simplified things, although I get IMs from people I don't recall.

I noticed AtariAge's Berzerk ROM, that the speech doesn't work. DOn't know why -- there are muffled sounds, no voice. Bad Rom or soundcard incompatibility?

That is a very good avatar, 70s. As are pretty much all of you guys' avatars. Rhindle, that is the red dragon in Adventure I assume? Is there a red dragon in Adventure? My avatar pretty much sums me up.

http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/5200s...tarraiders.html I like Star Raiders too! For 2600, River Raid is my best game ever. For 5200, I'd say a close fight between Ballblazer, Rescue on Fractalus, Joust, Defender, and Berzerk. I'm giving it to Berzerk. For coin-op, well they were pretty much ALL excellent. Centipede, Asteroids, Star Wars Arcade, Battlezone, and Missile Command come to mind first.

Hey, Dan! I just tried out Vss .80! It works good so far! The sound finally works for me; VSS .77 was really giving me bad loud, bad sound before,it's nice to hear sounds & music. I don't know which games don't work well with it yet, but I played a couple and they were fine. I need to get a joystik for my PC though, the keys are hard to use for gaming. I noticed that you also added some bells & whistles for developers -- very cool, I will be looking into those soon. I really like being able to just type "5200 mspacman.bin" instead of "5200 mspacman.bin -limit -nosound" as I've been doing. Nice to put the limit on by default. I do think that it runs a hair slower than .77 -- do you think that it does? I have a PIII 1 Ghz, and the speed with no frame skipping seems pretty close to being right, but I did notice that Koffi (in my homebrew) flies slower now, just a wee tad. Well this is just cool, as I have never gotten the atari800win thing to work.

The answer is "yes", the games look better on a TV. It's got to be the PC monitor's resolution vs the TV's lower resolution -- these games weren't coded with high rez in mind.

ORA it is then! Thanks... I'm using this routine to change bg graphics pixel by pixel -- there are 4 pixels in a byte of screen memory so I must use ORA and a mask. Thanks.

In an effort to keep the number of posts down here, I want to just add my newest question to this post. It involves bit manipulation, similar in a sence. Could somebody explain or point me to a description of the 6502 uses of AND, XOR, EOR, etc and exactly how they work? For example if I want to change the right 2 bits of any of these bytes: (10101010 or 10011010 or 10001010 etc..) so that the right 2 bits are 1's, I suspect I can use one of those masking statements so that it would change either a 0 or a 1 in a bit to a 1 everytime. Something like this: lda %10101010 AND %00000011 would that work? (or) lda %10101010 XOR %00000011 how bout this? (or) lda %10101010 EOR %00000011 which one will work? Again, my goal is to change those 2 right bits to 1's regardless of what the actual value is. I hope this makes sense!

I'm a bit unsure of where RAM ends and ROM begins. Could one of you help to explain it to me? For example, RAM seems to start at $0000. I use Zero Page for many variables; $1800 starts my Player area; $2000 starts my screen RAM , which extends beyond the 4K boundary at $3000. So where does RAM end? Speaking of ROM memory, I have stmts like "ORG A000" in my code -- this must be ROM. So at which memory address does RAM end and ROM begin, for 16k and 32k roms?

a young Cafeman used to breakdance (badly) to Herbie Hancock's Rock it .... ugh!

Heh, this reminded me of something. I had 'designed' some new 2600 games and queried Atari in Sunnyvale if they ever accepted ideas. They wrote back that sure they did, mail the demo or packet to them. So I did -- several pages of poorly drawn sketches! ugh, what an embarassing memory, but I was only about 12 or 13. One of the games (there were 2) I called "Poacher" (this unfortunately reflects the Pennsylvanian redneck practices of the area I grew up in) where you had to go pull vines and shoot the squirrels that came out, and run thru bushes and shoot the rabbits that came out. Can you image what they thought of that? Bwuahaha! (groan). I wish I still had that letter for laughs.

Rockwell. Forgot about that song. I was in 10th grade, a friend of mine and I were nuts over the tune and the video which played on the new Friday late night show, "Friday Night Videos". Remember that? "When I'm in the shower I'm afraid to wash my hair Because I might open my eyes And find someone standing there" (I always feel like) Somebody's Watching Me ! And I have no privacy! with MJ singing backup of course (how the heck did Rockwell swing that one?!) ----- Okay, I rarely listen to music while playing games. I usually listen only to the game sounds & soundtrack.

I got the 2600 after it had been out for a few years, so I actually missed the earlier games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, and even Adventure. I think the first game I bought for the system (well, parents bought it) was Haunted House. Either that or Defender. Whichever one was released the earliest of these two, that's the first I bought.

sorry bout that -- it happens to me at work, too. But several people have been able to download these, and it works on my home PC. It must be a firewall kind of thing. Hey, maybe 50megs deleted them, I don't know. (50megs is getting more and more strict). Well, shoot me an email and I'll just send you the small one. [email protected]

I haven't understood half the things stated in this thread. I must not be nerdy enough!

Heh, I just checked my site and sure enough, 50megs deleted these. SO much for 'free hosting'.

quote: Originally posted by khryssun: None of you guys are playing in a band and have some tracks to let us listen ? Well, since you mention it. I'm not in any bands anymore, but I play out as a solo/duo every now & then, mainly acoustic stuff lately. I only have 2 little demo songs on the net on this test page -- the first is a very brief 40 second blues thing; the second is just a barebones (2 guitars w/reverb) quickie track of a song I wrote called warmday. But you can get an idea of my acoustic playing from both, even though neither is good enough to make anyone want to hear them over & over. (Worthless link to crappy 50megs page which was deleted by 50megs geeks, REMOVED. Move along, nothing to see here...) Once I get some more experience with my PC package that I use to record, I'm gonna put stuff out on mp3.com. But with all my game playing, and coding that 5200 game, I haven't even touched the recording side of things for about 2 months! [ 09-26-2001: Message edited by: Cafeman ]

Although I haven't played it for a year, I own an off-white Strat, running thru a 1980's Fender Sidekick 65Watt amp and a ROland soundboard. Also own a Washburn 12-string, but last fall I bought a Takamine acoustic w/hot pickup & EQ built in, that's all I play anymore. But I feel the need to get back to the electric soon ...

I played a whole bunch of 5200 games last night, and I'm still wondering what Antic modes and techniques were used to some things. For example, Pac-Man vs Ms. Pac-Man. Pac man probably uses all 5 Players for Pac & 4 ghosts, with bg graphics for dots and fruit. Pac and the ghosts are all 1-color -- a perfect fit for using a player. I think Pac uses Antic 4, I got this from the VSS debug. ANtic 4 is a redefined character mode. Now, lets talk about Ms. Pac-Man. To me, the movement is a bit less fluid than that in Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man, I believe, also is in Antic 4. However, the ghosts have white eyes; the fruit bounces around this time; Ms. Pac-Man has a bow of a different color than her body. Looking at it, I almost suspect the coder didn't use players but redefined characters for the ghosts. How many colors can a redefined character be, without any kind of DLI hocus pocus going on? I have not dabbled with character modes yet, only with the pixel modes such as Antic E. But then again, there is more ghost-flicker in Ms Pac-Man, although I think Pac-Man has no flicker at all. Flicker means that the Players are being used & switched very quickly. Perhaps the coder use missiles for the eyes? Another game is Galaxians. It is extremely colorful, and I doubt that it is a simple case of changing color registers on a scanline DLI, because as the Galaxians descend, their colors do not change. Is this another example of using redefined characters to get more colors per "sprite"? Or could the coder have used bg graphics as software sprites? Any guesses or ideas? [ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: Cafeman ]

Good think you have that "@Activision" thing after your name, to get their attention & replies!