wiseguyusa

I am sure that it is common knowledge in these circles, but Electronic/New Age pioneers "Tangerine Dream" recorded 2 albums/cd's exclusively on Atari ST computers, sporting the Atari logo and thanking Jack Trammel in the liner notes. Check out "Optical Race" and "Lily On the Beach"

Back in the days of CompuServe, The Source, Prodigy etc General Electric had a dial up online service called "GEnie" or General Electric Network Information Exchange. To my knowledge it was the only commercial online service to support Atari 8its (and ST's) Is there anyone here that used to post on the GEnie groups?

Kyle, care to share the code? I am curious to know how it is done.

What about money? Your FAQ (or whatever you would call it) say's programmers are working for "pennies an hour" wouldn't that get a "idea peddler" who is willing to pay (for discussion sake) minimum wage on the short list? What if you are not asking for it to be done for free, you are willing to pay? No, I don't have $20K to throw at it as one programmer suggested in another thread, but I can damn sure pay more than "penny's an hour" to someone who is willing to collaborate with another fan, to make something unique. Someone said that the ones that do it, do it for the "(sic)love of the hobby" so why do you think programmers have a love of the 2600 that a non-programmer does not? Were you a programmer in 1977 when there was a brand new VCS under the Christmas tree? Seems to me that a couple of nostalgic Gen Xers could see things the same and work together respectfully and god willing break even.

"....pays programmers $4K to $6K for completed games" It seems that the way to go for a completely original game would be to make your development deal with a programmer, then try to sell the game to the publisher. again bringing up the question of the level of competition, how many submissions does the homebrew publisher get in a week? a month? a year? is getting a 2600 game published like trying to get your band signed? So the idea of repurposing those old Pac-Man & Combat cartridges is moot? Just to understand the manufacturing end, and only educational purposes at stake, what is the cost to copy an existing cartridge to a new ROM, insert it into an old Combat/PacMan whatever shell ? Not that I intend to do this, just want to know what the manufacturing costs are not including the cost of the programming. For instance, lets say that I want to turn 5-6 commons into 5-6 Kool-Aid Man carts =AGAIN STRICTLY HYPOTHETICAL= This doesn't need to turn in to a thread about piracy. What is involved? Does it involve a clean room and a bunny suit? Or can it be done in a garage relatively cheap?

I was lead to believe that hacking existing games was easier than building one from scratch, many of my ideas came from that belief. When I was learning BASIC for the TI 99/4A in summer school I wrote a game "The Who's Ticket Stampede" since "Custers Revenge" had set the bar pretty low for tastelessness and there were jokes being told in the wake of the Cincinnati tragedy that gave me the idea. I never finished writing the TI version, so needless to say it was never ported to 2600, even though that was my intent as a starry eyed pubescent. I had not seen the original "Mario Brothers" when I wrote WTS but when I did see it, the premise was about the same. Rather than jump over turtles the player would dodge other concert goers (like a football game) to buy tickets from the window before they sold out (timer expired) The synth riff from "Eminence Front" played in a loop inspired by "Don't Stop Believin'" used in "Journey Escape" for the 2600 I want to point out that the real 1979 tragedy in Ohio occurred not when fans were rushing to buy tickets, but with general admission tickets in hand trying to get inside of the arena on a bitter cold night. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster My idea was a hack of Mario for 2600 to become WTS since it was so similar in concept to my game (or vice-versa)

Glad I made someone laugh today, seems I've only been stepping on toes everywhere I go. and that was kind of what my programmer friends response was. If I got an "A" for 10mins work and some smoke & mirrors that I too was a genius... just with a different aptitude. I didn't understand much of what you said about calculating Pi but I infer that you concur with my friend who said it was beyond the capabilities of the 400 (?)

Loon I hope that you will unblock me and we can discuss further in private, I really would appreciate the input, I never meant to imply otherwise. There is a "home-brew game producing company" ??? "yer sh!tt!n me?!?!" There must be a bigger market than I imagined. Who wrote the hacks & homebrews that were included on the Flashback II? any idea what there compensation was (if any) ?? one might think having your work actually become an Atari product would be some cool bragging rights... but I'm not going to make any more assumptions on this subject LOL. How big of a "run" are made of homebrews? (typically) how many units, what keeps pirates from making a $5 knock off?

understood, thank you for the info. I am on the go, but will look them over when I am at home.

Loon I get it, you are the expert, I came here to seek your counsel, not piss you off. I would welcome an opportunity to work with you on this, but if not, why must you flame me for having an idea and wanting to find someone to help me with it?

Since I have never done this before (and apparently no-one has "commissioned" a homebrew before) I don't know what "offer" to throw out there, which was why I came in here to ask, only to be flamed. There are plenty of underemployed programmers in the world with plenty of free time, that isn't to say that there are many that can do this specific project, but coming in to a hobby forum, and asking if anyone would be interested doesn't seem like "fightin' werds" to me.

I think we got off on the wrong foot, and for that I apologize. I was hoping that my ideas + a small investment might make it a reality, I don't know why the first replies were flames, totally unnecessary. Either someone would like to collaborate or not, but if you aren't interested, why discourage others that might be? Is the homebrew market that competitive? I figured we were all hobbyists sharing our love of the Atari platform together. Since most homebrew programmers lose money on the project, I thought that "commissioning" a project would help defray the overhead that might otherwise discourage programmers from undertaking such a project. I just don't understand the rub here.

It is essentially a job posting, if someone wants to collaborate on the project, shoot me a number, it is called bidding on a project business PROFESSIONALS do it all the time. If you aren't interested in it, don't make a bid. Obviously I value the skillset or I wouldn't have sought someone in here to help. If you didn't want a job in the real world, would you contact the companies HR department to tell them that the job sucks? Or would you simply not apply for the job?

One year, around 1983 I entered the Science fair with my Atari 400 a color TV, and a pack of lies LOL. I plastered the walls of the cubicle with a long string of numbers that appeared to be Pi and on the screen the 400 generated random numbers that I claimed were the 400 carrying out Pi indefinitely. In reality the program did nothing more than divide 22 by 7 as far as it could, then just generate random numbers. My fraud was never discovered, I got an "A" Last year, I offered a programmer friend of mine a reward if he could write a program that could carry out Pi for real but after a couple cases of Redbull, he threw his hands in the air and declared that the 400 could not handle the task. Was he right?

Well one of the ideas was a "hack" of "Night Driver" to make it "Datsun 280 ZZZAP" with a speedometer at the bottom, use the driving controller in one controller port and a regular joystick in the other to "shift gears" like the original. Since it is a hack of an existing game, I didn't think that I could " relinquish all rights" that I never had to begin with.

yes, and there is such a demand for programmers of Atari 2600 games, how can I compete with all of those software giants chomping at the bit to sign a new Atari 2600 programmer.

Did I mention that I would pay for the services of said programmer? I bet that doesn't happen often!

I would like to "commission" a couple of homebrew carts that I envisioned as a kid. I lack the programming skills as well as the hardware to make them on my own, so I would like to find someone who has made homebrews before and tell them my ideas, make them in to reality and then purchase the finished products "wholesale" and sell/gift them myself. How much does it cost to make one? Who's with me? LOL