ZeroPage Homebrew

Nice update Muddyfunster, the wind adds a lot to the gameplay! Looking forward to playing it on the Twitch stream next Wednesday!

Here are the full videos for Part One & Two of the ZeroPage Homebrew Trak-Ball cartridge releases! Enjoy! TRAK-BALL GAMES PART ONE: TRAK-BALL GAMES PART TWO:

Just got my ColUSB in the mail the other day as well, looking forward to using it! I did a quick unboxing at the beginning of my Twitch stream yesterday. TIMESTAMPED LINK: https://youtu.be/qEob-gg1gow?t=508 SKIP TO 8:28 TO WATCH:

This is a great discovery and I hope I'll be able to replicate your success. I'll give it a try in the next day or so and report back what happened!

Maze level editor added to Wizard of Wor!! Amazing work John! :-) Does anyone know if this is the first instance of being able to save user created information (other than high scores) in an Atari 2600 game? I can't think of another instance off the top of my head.

Today is PART TWO of our Trak-Ball Games Special LIVE on the ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch stream (Jan 4, 2019) at 6PM PT/9PM ET. Hope you can make it to watch us play the other five of ten of the trak-ball cart releases on the show, if not it'll posted to our YouTube archive tomorrow. Today's Games: Millipede (2015 Trak-Ball Hack) by Jeff Johnson Reactor (2015 Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch Challenge of Nexar, The (2015 Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch SpaceMaster X-7 (2016 Trak-Ball Hack) by Jeff Johnson Missile Command (2002 Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch Twitch Livestream Channel: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew

I think your reasoning fell along the same lines as ours in terms of what we tried to focus on when selecting the categories this year, the games. There are definitely a lot of ways to divide and categorize games related to the programming tools (Assembly vs bB) and hardware (Extra ROM, extra RAM, extra processors) side of things and we'll look to incorporate those into next year's event based on the feedback we get this year. I know in the end it's difficult to make everybody happy as you start getting into multiplexing the categories out into dozens of different qualifiers (Best assembly, non-arm, 4k ROM, paddle only, single player game Award!) but we'll do our best to celebrate the amazing work that everybody in this community puts into the games we all enjoy! :-)

Not at all! I love the feedback, it means people care about how the homebrew community and the hard work being put into the games are being represented on the Awards Show. Thanks Karl G! :-) We'll be taking notes on all the suggestions and adjust for next year's event.

Interesting, thanks TJ! We will watching the comments and will be adding/adjusting our categories next year based on feedback from this year's awards show. We added a separate category for bB games under the assumption that non bB homebrew (assembly + arm) might dominate all the other categories such as graphics and music. I never thought that people would think that bB games would overwhelm the non-bB games. It will be interesting to see how public voting goes this year. :-) We are a little limited in the number of categories as the costs are coming out my pocket for the physical trophies and equipment setup to do the live broadcast of the award show. Hopefully people will enjoy it and we can expand the categories next year to celebrate more of the diversity of Atari 2600 homebrew out there! :-) We'll be keeping notes on the suggesting as they come in.

We are really hoping as well that the AtariAge forums will be able to handle the community voting requirements needed. We will update as we sort that out! :-)

Specific definitions of what qualifies for each category for the 2018 awards will be released in a few days, stay tuned!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2018 is finished and the time has come to check over our list of games released in 2018 in preparation for the 2018 Atari Awards! The 2018 Atari Awards will be broadcast LIVE on February 23, 2019 at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT on ZeroPage Homebrew's Twitch Channel! Award Categories: Best Homebrew Best bB Homebrew Best WIP Homebrew Best Game Hack Best Demo Best Programming Best Graphics Best Music & Sound Best Packaging Technical Achievement Award After we announce the nominated games in each of the categories the community voting will take place between January 23, 2019 and February 18, 2019 so get ready to make your voice heard!

Today is PART ONE of our Trak-Ball Games Special LIVE on the ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch stream (Jan 2, 2019) at 11AM PT/2PM ET. Hope you can make it to watch us play the first five of ten of the trak-ball cart releases on the show, if not it'll posted to our YouTube archive tomorrow. We'll be playing the other five new trak-ball releases LIVE on Friday's stream. :-) Today's Games: - Plaque Attack (Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch - Centipede (Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch - Colony 7 (Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch - Missile Control (Trak-Ball Hack) by Thomas Jentzsch - Star Wars The Arcade Game (Trak-Ball Hack) by Jeff Johnson aka Omegamatrix Twitch Livestream Channel: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew

So all the problems reported with Stay Frosty 2 were all with the limited edition Holiday Greetings 2014 cart? That is certainly strange as I'm experiencing the exact opposite! Finicky hardware, hahah. At least I know that the carts are fine as they play on my Atari Jr. every time without fail. I'll get in contact with iesposta as it looks like he modded his sixer to fix the issue, I'll see if he had any long term effects or other issues from doing it.

Thanks so much for the fun competition Lid! Hope you host another one in 2019 with more great homebrew games. :-) P.S. Hope you can squeeze in my score for Stay Frosty 2! I got the score during the live ZeroPage Homebrew broadcast on Dec 28, 2018 but was busy with the holidays and just posted it today (in the Stay Frosty 2 round thread)!

Heya LidLikesIntellivision, sorry for the late posting of the score. These scores were achieved live during the ZeroPage homebrew livestream on December 28, 2018 Not the greatest score and I wish I had more time to play it but... holidays were taking up all my free time! :-) Cimmerian (James): 16037 (see video @ 2:20:27 for end of game score) Darcy: 6792 (see video @ 2:30:00 for end of game score)

Another interesting side note... I also have Stay Frosty II on the Holiday Greetings 2014 cart and the game plays perfectly on my six-switcher. I didn't see anybody make the distinction between the two releases in the thread. Is there something different in the code or cart hardware that would allow this version to work but not the later release of the game?

You can probably ignore the red 262 flash at the initial load of the game. You're right, a lot of other games do that as well in Stella when you load them. I haven't yet programmed a 2600 game so I can't speak from authority on this and I'm not sure it's an issue with Stella but you probably have to put in a bunch of effort to make sure to have a 'stable' 262 line picture immediately after turning on the machine. Sometimes there is a lot of setup to do before the first thing on the screen is shown and maybe a frame or two will slip by while that's happening resulting in the red flash. I'm doing some testing today of some other games so I'll pop yours in my Harmony Encore and make sure there's no game breaking issues and report back! :-) EDIT: Just tried it on my system (RGB modded light sixer + Harmony Encore -> Framemeister) and it played without dropping out the picture. There was a slight blip when starting the game for the first time, as expected, but it didn't roll the screen so we're good to go for the Jan 9th broadcast.. :-)

Thanks so much Darrell for the link! I will try out both Stay Frosty 2 and Toyshop Trouble on another system to make sure the carts are okay and it's the problem stated in the thread. UPDATE: Just tried Stay Frosty 2 and also Toyshop Trouble and they both worked perfectly on my Atari 2600 Jr. :-) Yay, I don't need to exchange them! Thanks Darrell!! Near the end of the thread Al starts offering to swap carts for fixed ones but never outright states that there was a fix. I'm assuming there wasn't a software fix/workaround ever found for the issue? This also may point to an issue that I've been having while doing some beta testing for the 2600 Uno Cart! I've experienced the same symptoms of the cart working fine on an Atari Jr. but not on my modded light sixer. I'll run the Uno Cart through a couple more of my VCS consoles and check my results. I was always assuming it had something to do with my modded system but maybe not. With the audio clipping, that's a tough one. Thanks for letting me know as I rarely listen back to the whole episode, just bits and pieces to make sure it all recorded okay. I try to keep the microphone as close to us as possible to reduce the sound of reverb in the room and also to try to prevent the mic from picking up the audio of the game that we hear on our end. Unfortunately the tradeoff of having the mic so close to us is that if we get a little loud we'll go over the dB rating of the extremely sensitive shotgun microphone I'm using. I'll do some more experiments to see what might be a better alternative, possibly a less directional microphone with a higher max sound pressure level (dB). My current one allows sounds up to 125 dB but I have a condenser microphone that can allow up to 156 dB. Hopefully that will capture the yelling without distortion! :-) Thanks so much for the tip on why the snowman sometimes falls through the gaps, that makes perfect sense now with the changing width depending on how melted he is.

Thanks for the quick update, it's much more stable now and should be playable on real hardware. The game only jumps twice away from 262 lines when it starts up and when you press the fire button for the first time, those should be a quick fix. Once you're past that, it seems solid. Thanks for the background information on the game, that will be very useful when discussing it on the show!

We had a lot of fun trying to figure out the math for Point Procurer on ZeroPage Homebrew yesterday, thank so much for making it BJ! I also got the patch for Space Cactus Canyon and opened the letter on the show! Here's the archived version of the Twitch stream for anyone who couldn't catch it live:

We had a ton of fun playing Dragon's Descent on ZeroPage Homebrew yesterday, thank so much for making it Revontuli! Here's the archived version of the Twitch stream for anyone who couldn't catch it live:

Yes, I noticed this too while playing the new version of the game, the first version was good in that it didn't seem to stray from the 262 lines. I was planning on playing the game live on the January 9th ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch stream but it'll have to be rock solid at 262 or else the screen will have dropouts on real hardware. I'm sure you'll have a new version by then though. :-)

Thank you so much Stephen, I just made a donation to Stella in honour of your new release!! Thank you for everything you and the rest of your contributors do! I use Stella all the time for testing out homebrew games before I stream them on the show, it has been an invaluable tool for what I do.

This WIP is well worth the download even though there isn't any gameplay to speak of yet. There is such a variety of movements from block to block it's unbelievable and it will get you in good practiced form for when the blocks start falling! The smooth animation is something to behold for sure. I'm very looking forward to showing new versions of the game on upcoming shows of ZeroPage Homebrew!! :-)