CharlieChaplin

Well, the PCS Color Converter by Matt Trimby (published by Page 6 and mentioned above) converts black and white + artifacting Gr. 8 (NTSC) pinballs into 4 colors Gr. 15 (PAL) pinballs. Thats it. You know, PAL TV`s are unable to display color artifacting, so the Gr.8 pinballs will only be black & white on a PAL tv which looks very boring. with the PCS color Converter you can convert these b/w pinballs and add some color. The original Atari Basic program was quite slow (10-15 minutes to convert one pinball program), so I speeded it up, by using the TB XL Compiler and later run it as a CTB File with Runtime (now it takes approx. 1 minute to convert one pinball program). Of course there is also a cracked version of the PCS available that already has colors / creates 4 color pinballs (with a resolution of Gr. 15). It was made for the PAL users in mind, alas it converts the whole pinball into Gr.15 making the scores and highscores unreadable (the PCS Color Converter does not do that - at least the scores are still readable here)... So, here is my "small" collection of 93 pinballs created with PCS (only 2 or 3 of them have been created by me)... -Andreas.

Well, let me present the results of the ABBUC software contest 2004. There were 13 programs by various programmers and since there were only 7 prices (money!), it was a real contest! Here are the results: 7th place: Jelly Beans by Chris Martin won 50 Euro; 6th place: Atari Greed by Winried Piegsda and Carsten strotmann won 75 Euro; 5th place: RMT-Player XL/XE by Raster/Radek Sterba won 150 Euro; 4th place: Atari Hardwaretester by Florian Dingler won 200 Euro; 3rd place: MyPicoDOS by HIAS/Mathias Reichl won 275 Euro; 2nd place: BOSS-X by Mirko Sobe won 350 Euro 1st place: Dynablaster by Tomasz Biele/MadTeam won 750 Euro; This year ABBUC payed off all prices/money (the winners will receive the money in a few days). And: There will be a new software contest 2005!! So, you have the chance to write a) a game or b) an application / tool / utility for a 64k or 128k Atari and win some money. All rules can be found in german and english language (and soon in polish language) at: www.abbuc.de - and of course there is time until October 2005 for the new contest. So, happy coding and my congrats to the winners of this year ! Regarding the programs, well, there are programs some people like and some don`t. Me, I personally wondered why BOSS-X made the 2nd place, since there already was an ABBUC Jahresgabe 200x of BOSS. I would have liked to see Jelly Beans in a better position - but hey, that`s not my fault. Approx. 100 ABBUC members voted for this contest, so don`t make me responsible for the results... Anyway, hopefully we at ABBUC can see your program taking part in the contest 2005... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Hello, I also made 2-3 pinballs with the PCS some years ago. recently I am collecting the pinballs created with PCS - at current I have 12 disksides each with 7-8 pinballs (all packed with Superpacker to save disk space)... So, if there is some interest in these pinballs, just e-mail me and I will return some ATR images to you... -Andreas. P.S.: Mail: abbuc#abbuc*de PPS: Other Pinballs: Night Mission by Sublogic, Pinball Simulator (?) by Codemasters, David`s Midnight Magic by Broderbund (and later Atari);

Well, in the A8FAQ by Michael Current you can find a huge list what kind of ramdisks exist for the 800/XL/XE (subject 8.10), what programs support a ramdisk (subject 8.11) and what programs require a ramdisk (subject 8.12). I am currently writing the update for all these subjects and will post it in a few weeks at comp.sys.atari.8bit maybe I will also post a copy here at atari-age... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, even 3 programs if you count all XL/XE unZIPpers: 1) Unzip by Tom Hunt 2) X-Unzip by Epi/Allegresse 3) (Sparta-DOS only) Unzip by the Gatekeeper Afaik Epi is working on an update of his X-Unzip program to support more compression alg. and other neat stuff (subdirs, splitted ZIP files, etc.) - this new version should require an Atari XE (min. 128k) then... -Andreas.

Well, afaik (the author told me) Tower Toppler had been developed on a NTSC system. And yes, I have it in my collection, but I do own a PAL system. The problem with TT is that it crashes completely after level two on a PAL system (it should be fine on a NTSC system the author said, since I don`t have NTSC I could not test it). Anyway level 2 is fully playable, but when it comes to the interlude (where you drive a submarine) the game crashes, which is very sad, because you cannot play the remaining six towers then... After all, the XL/XE version is poor compared to the great 7800 version (high res. with many colors and sprites; XL/XE: high res., no colors / only bw; fewer sprites and some of them appear as garbage at least on my PAL system). So, if you like TT, then buy a 7800 and the 7800 TT cart... -Andreas. P.S.: I do have Montezuma (16k) on cart. Here in Europe this game was also available on tape - and the cart version is a port of this tape. I also have Jinks on disk, it was developed officially by AMC for Rainbow Arts (who should do it for Atari). In my eyes it is a boring game and requires a 64k Atari to run. Video 61 burned this AMC version on a cart - without asking for permission. Hey Lance, since I am the copyright holder of all AMC programs nowadays, what about sending me at least one of those Jinks carts ?!?

Hey Steve, how about porting "Winter Challenge" (also known as Winter Olympiad 88) by Tynesoft (4 disksides, no copy protection) and "Winter Events" by Anco (2 disksides, copy protected) to the flashcart...?!? Or "The Brundles" by KE-Soft (3 disksides, medium/enhanced density; Lemmings clone)... ?!? -Andreas.

Well, since this is a port from the disk version to the flashcart, I guess a) it may or may not save highscores (the XE cart by Atari did not!) and most important b) it supports up to 8 players (the XE cart by Atari merely supports 3 players - e.g. every player could win a medal: gold, silver or bronze; in the disk version if more than 3 players, some will not win a medal). Finally c) the disk version had some (easy) copy protection which prevented it from running ok under certain OSs (like QMEG-OS, APE+OS, etc. - the score and highscore/final score would be randomized or garbage then), the XE cart runs fine under the mentioned OSs (don`t know about the flashcart version)... So, if you already have the XE cart, there would be no need for the flashcart version (except if you are a collector and/or you want to play SG with more than 3 players)... -andreas.

Well, I remember several type-in listings of various german, english and american magazines that had those tank games. I also remember Tank Commander by Thorn EMI (the ones that also did Submarine commander) and a Tank Battle game by Alan Reeve (Reeve Software)... After all, these old tank games are not very interesting for me... I prefer the vector tank-battle game "Battlezone", but heck, why is the A8 version so lame ?!? You search the CPU tank, shoot at it and a few inches (or centimeters) from where it exploded, it will re-materialize again. So you just wait, move a few inches/cm (to left or right) and shoot again, thats it. Why didn`t they use the great vector game of the Lynx cart ?!? (I really mean the vector version of the Lynx cart, the other version would be impossible for the A8; but the vector version with different tanks, fuel, ammo, etc, would have been possible - if they used a bigger supercart.) -Andreas.

Well, I am no programmer - not at all (and I have never programmed anything). But I guess the reason why most programmers ignored Emkay in the late 80s (and early 90s) was simply the way he was talking to them - guess he used the same critisizing/unkind words, he uses today. So as a kind of revenge, they did not listen to him or just did the opposite of what he was talking about... Taking a look at MK`s software (from an absolutely non-coder view), well he gave us great new gfx with lots of colours - but combined with old pix (converted from C64 and Amiga I guess) and a quite lame game (a german version of "Wheel of Fortune"). It is no wonder that almost no-one was impressed by this - when I saw the game Admirandus, I said "nice gfx, but a lame game, I already have various clones of it". (It would be like doing another Pong, Breakout, Pacman, Tetris, ... with G2F or MCS gfx - the people would say: nice gfx but we already have 1000 clones of that game and as a result they would lose interest fast.) And er, if I remember correctly, Admirandus does not have any movement (or does it?). I guess it is not so easy to do a "moving" game (e.g. a jump & run game, a formula one racing game, an olympic game) with G2F or MCS gfx and RMT music - if so, you soon get troubles with CPU time, framerate and other things (I do not know much)... So, MK as a kind of result - if you behave rude to programmers, don`t expect them to take you serious or to put your words/ideas into consideration. And please do not always say "I did that game (Admirandus) and those pix (converted from C64) in the past, now it`s your turn..." - these things were not very amazing then and they are not now (and most especially the behaviour behind that argument is a one-way street). Show us the techniques that you use in your msx and gfx - BUT please do also accept if not everyone uses / imports them in/to new software (just like you should accept different religions, opinions,) skin-colours, etc. - simply "live and let live")... We could do jokes like - why did you not promise yourself to leave the A8 scene, why did you not promise yourself to keep all the secrets (behind your gfx and msx techniques), why did you not promise yourself to be quiet for the rest of your life, etc. etc. - but we don`t do these jokes here, see. We are *nice* Atarians and we respect and accept other peoples lives and views. We can critisize them, but only in a kind (not a rude) way. If not, it will all end in a kind of flame-war - and you can be sure that you will not reach your goal/target this way (convincing others, to use new gfx & msx techniques)... nuff said - out of memory, Andreas. P.S.: Nope, I will not learn coding for anyone! But I like testing programs...

Well, - Berzerk (proto-cart "humanoid must not escape" and other speech), - Ghostbusters ("Ghostbusters, hahahahaha") - Whomper Stomper ("Welcome to Whomper Stomper") - Deflektor (proto-cart. says "Deflektor" and then the music starts), - Castle Wolfenstein ("Halt! Ausweis!" and a few more german words), - Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (afaik same words as Castle Wolfenstein), - E.T. ("ET phone home, ET phone home"), - 180 (well, what does it say?!?) - Mirax force ("Mirax force", "the battle begins", "Game over"), - the last Guardian ("Guardian", "Game over"), - Grand Prix Sim. ("3-2-1 go!") - Herbert 1 & 2 ("Get ready", "Game over") - Nadral ("Spieler 1 los!") - Dynakillers (by GMG, Slovakia - not Germany!) - SAM and many games made using it (software added mouth; I have a version of Eliza with SAM speech somewhere) - Bingo! (by Page 6) - and a lot more A8 games... (note: some games use 2Bit samples, whereas other games use speech synthesis to save memory!) -Andreas.

Well, my favourite packers are the DJ packers. they have better compression results than the Flashpacker or Superpacker (they both depack faster than the Superpacker). They do also accept Init adresses, they (de-)pack segments (not full programs), so a program can be much longer than 30kbytes... but alas, they both use afaik more than 128 bytes for decompression / overhead and most of all, one packer uses (part of) page 1 and page 4 and the other packer uses (part of) page 5 and page 6... -Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: Has anybody found out how to reboot the APC packer (and load the linker) ?? well, RESET does not work and I have no clue which key-combination does...

Well, the Bloodfighter sound is 44,1 khz - on my Audio CD of course;-) In reality it is a digitized / sampled sound. The demo version of Bloodfighter can be found at the atari demo page by Sven Gleich (thats where I got it from). There is also a demo called "Best of Liebich Demo" that contains some Bloodfighter sounds (as well as other T.Liebich sounds)... -Andreas magenheimer. P.S.: You know, I recorded 180 Atari 8Bit game sounds and 140 demo sounds to Audio-CDs (as "simulated stereo") and then converted them into two MP3 CDs... available at the ABBUC shop soon (Alas, Koronis Rift, the Eidolon, Schreckenstein and a few other well known game sounds are mising, since I do not own these games and could not find their sounds in any sound demo...)

Well, Dynablaster is an official entry for the ABBUC programming contest - so stay tuned until the ABBUC JHV in October 2004. Of course the authors then have the right to do whatever they want with their program (release it as Freeware/PD...). greetings from ABBUC, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, there is a "simple" german version of Wizball available by Oliver Cyranka. and since it is german, it is called "Zauberball". It was published by Power per Post her in germany a long time ago (it could be found on one of their commercial Player`s Dream disks). But, since I do not know the original game, I cannot tell if the clone/conversion was any good. furthermore I have not found out what to do in Zauberball or to be more precise - how to do it (allthough I have a manual for the Player`s dream disk and Zauberball)... I get killed dozens of times... -Andreas. P.S.: If you are interested in a copy of Zauberball, send an e-mail to: amp#abbuc*de and I will send you a (zipped) ATR image in return... more clones/conversions by O.Cyranka: Break it (great Arkanoid clone), Super-Dash (good Boulder Dash clone), Agent 08/15 (simple, but unplayable Spy vs. Spy clone) and maybe a few more...

Well, I did not ask/nor complain about the mario game, only the games Elite, Int. Karate + and the few (3 if i remember correctly) games that are listed "under development" here. Looks like we have a good chance to see the Mario game being finished within this year ?!? whereas Elite, Int. Karate + and a few other titles seem to be dead... And for Space Harrier, well, I will wait and see (I love that game, so it must be finished)... -Andreas.

Well, I have two versions of YAKF at home, one comes as a bootdisk and shows only a title picture and nothing more. the other version is a file of approx. 800-900 sectors, but when booting it with/without Basic, with a DOS or Gamedos or Bootloader (and several other things I tried), it crashes after a few seconds. Someone told me that the file version would work fine on Atari 800 Win emulator and not the real machine, but since my 486 PC with 66Mhz is so slow I cannot test this (even Atari 800 DOS version does not run on this 486 machine)... So, if you are interested in examining any of the two versions, feel free to e-mail me at: amp#abbuc*de and I will send you two (zipped) ATR images in return... -Andreas.

1) International Karate + ??? This was a conversion project by some polish programmers. Alas, the polish website has not been updated for many months. Is the conversion project dead ?!? 2) Elite ??? This was a conversion project by some american guy. Have not heard nor seen anything (released) in the last years. The demo version had only the title screen and some b+w pics. Was there any further development in that project ?!? Besides these, Atari Age also lists some other A8 titles "under development" for years now. Are these titles still in the making or are they already dead/stopped/cancelled ??? greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, call me impatient, but it has been years (2 or 3?) since the first downloadable version of Space Harrier appeared. At that time we all agreed, that Sheddy should only make one demo/test version (with 1 level) to save time for programming and testing the rest of the game. Now, years later the game still is not finished and afaik Sheddy wants to make it a Mega or Super Cartridge... Sounds like I am complaining here... no I am not !! Ok, I think no-one thought it would take that long to finish the game - if I remember correctly Sheddy reached level 5 before he restarted the work for the cart version. So, how about releasing a new downloadable 130XE disk version with these 5 levels...??? I love that game and I cannot wait to have a version with some more playable levels... And er, right now I cannot see if the game with its originally 18 levels will ever befinished, so a new downloadable version with more than just 1 level would be great !! And hey, Sheddy you have done great work so far - please don`t take my impatience too hard... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Yep, Sega gamepads can be used. But normally you have only one trigger / fire button. Only the game "Gem Drop" by Bill Kendrick / New Breed Software (PD/Freeware) is coded in such a way, that it can use more than one trigger / Fire button... -Andreas Magenheimer.

well, there once was a type-in listing in Analog or antic - for exactly this purpose. You boot an Autorun.SYS file and convert the tape to disk (using CLOAd to load the Basic file from tape and then CSAVE to save to disk, yes disk!). Loading the disk then is also quite easy: boot the disk with Basic, when the READY prompt appears, type in CLOAD and press RETURN (you will notice, that the program loads very fast from disk not from tape)... This program can also be used to transfer files from various DOS versions... Well, I have the program in my collection - so e-mail me if you are interested. I will return a zipped ATR image with the program file(s) and some docs to get you going... -Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: email amp#abbuc*de

Well, a 3D game - alright. with monsters or aliens - alright. with nazis or nazi background - no way. I will not buy/get nor play such a game (even if your goal is to kill nazis, free prisoners, kill hitler, etc. etc.). I don`t like dungeon shooter games with nazi background (like Wolfenstein and such)... But if you do, include an editor, where one can change nazis with vietnameses, iraquis, russians, us-americans, ... - you will get your kinda feedback then (if this is all you want)... -andreas magenheimer.

Well, the 1st of May is over (welcome to the EU!) - where are the results ?!? -Andreas.

Well, the game speed can be increased or slowed down on IK as well as WKC. Guess Epyx and System 3 simply used different speeds when the game first started off (as kinda pre-settings)... So, press 1, 2, 3 or 4 to alter the game speed manually... -Andreas.

Well, concerning the topic - Multiloaders on disk are ok, but multiloaders on tape do really suck !! Just my opinion - Andreas.