sack-c0s

I'm impressed because I wrote an ARM CPU emulation (and half an acorn archimedes) for my comp sci final project in university last year and I wrote a few pages discussing the potential for a 'digital dark age' where big chunks of knowledge would be lost to undocumented hardware, filesystems and formats and proposed that something similar to this ought to be done. Good to see I wasn't *completely* crazy with that idea

Explain yourself why it's the best and we can see the rationality behind it if it's not just your emotional ties to the Commodore. Atari uses only about 4K and runs on original Atari 400 from 1978. I suppose originality plays a role although playability would play a bigger role. Simple controls unlike modern games with 10+ buttons on a joystick. What's a EACA ColourGenie? I know EACA is 60106 in decimal, but I doubt that has anything do with that. I'm not sure to be honest about the EACA - I know it's got 16k, Z80 processor and probably one of the off-the-shelf VDP chips in it, but I don't have any more information about the machine. As for why that version of space invaders I dunno... It's one of those games like breakout - everyone thinks they can write it (I've had a go) but that's not the case. Sometimes it feels wrong, sometimes it's a bit clunky but then someone gets it right and it just plays really well. And for me the EACA and C16 versions I had fell into that latter category. It's nothing to do with tech specs - both the Atari and Commodore could both do the game so long as someone nailed the play mechanics.

For me the best version of space invaders was on the commodore, but it's probably going to get ruled out of this thread because it was the commodore 16/+4 and not the C64 I also had an eaca colourgenie for a while which had a damn good version

I suppose if you had the tape as an mp3 or ogg file the emulator could start and stop it in the same way that the tape would, but that would require an emulator fix to do it.

I always thought dragging arguments across forums was bad form, particularly if you invoke Godwin on the first post in the new thread?

Thanks - I've had a quick skim through the forum and to be honest I don't think I'll need to ask any questions for a long time there because a lot of the kinds of things I wanted to know seem to be in threads there. Anyhow... this is spain so you get christmas and april fools at the same time more or less. But like I said - at the moment I'm just playing around to relieve a bit of boredom and pass some time - this isn't exactly a promise to release something groundbreaking or anything like that. But if I do get something worth looking at up and running I'll post it up here or at atari forum for feedback

sorry - there doesn't seem to be an ST coding forum further down the board so I thought I'd try here. feel free to move if I'm in the wrong place. anyways... In a moment of boredom (and because during the amiga vs ST war I was an archimedes user) I decided it might be a bit of fun to try a bit of 68kasm on either the Amiga or ST, but I managed to get something drawn on the screen using the ST first so it has my attention at the moment. I've made my first steps by getting devpac up and running in steem and got a small framework going where I can draw on the screen and with the aid of google and an ST coding tutorial I'm kind of up and running. Now I'd like to do something meaningful with it. What I'm looking for now is more practical and games/demo oriented articles/tutorials and advice because the ST screen looks like a royal pain in the ass to scroll and update at a decent rate but there's plenty of solidy written stuff out there that does it, so I'm guessing there's some tricks to doing it well. Can anyone point me towards anything I should be reading at this point? Google is great, but sometimes you need to know what you're looking for to find it. All advice gratefully received and being a C64 coder I'm not scared of a few hellish feats of cycletiming

only vaguely familiar with the specs of the jag from skimreading the docs and no practical experience, but I'm guessing that with a lot of storage space for art and music the jag CD should be able to pull off the kind of detailed and beautiful shooters that you would normally expect from a neogeo. that would be cool

There's no way he's going to call it Tempest from what I've heard because there would be a rights related nightmare there although I think possibly it won't be called space giraffe either - reading his stuff it seems he's in 2 minds that this was a half-joking working title that seems to have been adopted so might stay. He doesn't seem to like people saying 'It's another bloody Tempest, isn't it?' but is more than happy to cite it as a big influence. Generally speaking blue screens with STOP codes are a giveaway To be fair neon rarely ever looked good in static screenshots - it's the smooth, flowing of the effects which makes it nice. The interaction with the music (especially when it appears to 'like' a tune) makes it even better and for those people who had the fortune to see Yak and his 'flight crew' (3 mates who would spend weekends chilling out and manually controlling the visualiser to the music) back iwhen he was doing Unity 'perform' the thing then that was something else altogether. The thing is like an instument - there's playing it and there's REALLY playing it and you really can appreciate a good performance. Neon has to be seen running really so I'm trusting him when he says the game is the same. One shot he took was from a TFT which blurred several frames together and the result of that was that you could pick the game elements out quite nicely, although I still have no idea what was going on. He did say in one post that one thing he is acutely aware of is the balance between layered effects working together to create something cool looking and a visual overload that means you don't know what is going on. I'm assuming from that he's working with playability in mind. End of the day I think due to the stuff hes done being varied very few like everything he's done but its very rare you'll find someone who doesn't enjoy something he's done so this game may or may not be for you (although I get the hint that tempestheads are more likely to get it) but either way - it might be best to let him finish the thing and play it before forming a decision eh? (sorry if that post was a bit toss - i'm half drunk and being one of Yaks forum residents trying to not come across as a flippant fanboy here, but if I'm going to be biased I might as well be honest about it )

possibly not an Atari forum? (okay - actually I can see the logic to asking here - just messing around there ) could try asking around on www.lemon64.com i suppose?

Just a bit of background - I've been doing 6502 since I was 12 (makes it around 13 years now), handy with a C64 and have branched out into the 8-bit atari on occasion but been thinking of doing a VCS game for ages. I'm aware of what the hardware is capable of (well.. i read the docs anyhow) and although I think nothing of border removal and extra colour modes on the C64 this looks like its going to be a world of pain needing 'advanced C64 coding tricks' just to *survive*. But if it doesn't kill me it'll make me stronger now the one I've been toying with is 'Bounces' by Denton Designs. http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/bounces.html has a good description if you haven't played it. my first feeling is that its a pretty static simple playfield, 2 players, a ball and not an excessive amount of per-frame calculation for game logic. Sort of pong between 2 knights on bungee cords. Putting the ball in a hole above the opponent scores points and hitting the other player floors them so the chord drags them back to the wall. Also has a warlords-esque catch-throw mechanic to it. so.. for those who have coded a game before - is there anything showstopping or potentially difficult I may have overlooked? As I say I chose a game I've enjoyed playing that looks suited to the hardware but being a first project I may have missed something. My second problem is that I'm the opposite of most of the 'new game idea' posters - I can code but I can't draw. Doubly so given the restrictions of this machine. If anyone would like to put together any suggestions of technically viable screen layouts (keep in mind this is a first project, so although I'll take 'theoretically possible with ninja coding tricks' suggestions it may be best to scale things back a tad) then it'd be a great help. Any other random things you feel you may want to tell me at this point of use will also be taken onboard

sadly being 25 I missed the opportunity to create new stuff on the 8-bits 'in the day', but I've had a lot of good conversations with folks who were there about what they did and why. mostly because they're smart and interesting people to talk to, but also to hopefully learn something from them. got nothing but respect for people who were creating from no prior art or previous experience so had no guidance as to what should or shouldn't be done - they just did it. But I'm not going to namedrop. People who namedrop only do it because they don't feel they've acheived anything for themself. Jeff Minter told me that

at the time I had a mastersystem but wanted a NES. I knew the sega was technically better, but my mate had all the cool games. In hindsight though if you run zelda alongside golden axe warrior then the SMS has the better game. looks better, plays better, sound is about equal. 20 years later the NES sees more playtime so I suppose time rules in favour of the NES

sure thing. A couple of friends have given me a load of ebm/synthpop/electroclash/insert genre here type things to listen to so have been pondering a few covers again. As I type this apoptygma bezerk - nonstop violence is playing in the background and it does have a really cool agressive harsh lead to it which might make on the the pokeys weaknesses an advantage in this case? Might have a try....

revolutionary from a hardware point of view? Even with my bias towards the commodore 64 I'd be hard pressed to call between the c64 and atari. If I had to spec my dream machine it would be cherrypicked from the A8 and c64 with a z80 CPU kind of how the gameboy colour works. But you are going to hate me for this (possibly ) - but I may have to say the sinclair spectrum being a UK person. Tech is great, tech is fun - but at the end of the day for something to be revolutionary it has to have an effect on people. and for that to happen they have to be able to afford to own it. Jack Tramiels 'for the masses not the classes' ethos went some way towards it but in the end it was uncle clive and his z80-strapped-to-a-framebuffer for as low cost as possible that got most kids at a keyboard. Kids which in a lot of cases went on to great things and in the case of the coders were hardened by having to survive such hardware. Although you could claim he was basically doing for computers (bare minimum to acheive the aim) what atari did for consoles with the VCS hardware, putting the ball in Ataris court again? Thing with this argument is its easiest to say which machines didn't have an impact (sorry to the CPC fans reading this )

hmm... how would that lead sound work in the prosonix cover I did? always thought it sounded like the chip was screaming in agony the way I did it, but that sound for the lead might actually come across as more natural... (by the way.. I quit my job last week - so might have time to get back into doing some atari music now...)

HAVE YOU TRIED TURNING IT ON? </generic tech support question, which helps more often than it really should>

Currently playing Kameo, Geometry wars retro:evolved and marble blast ultra

umm... actually that was me just then - wasn't aware I had 2 accounts registered until I only half-entered my username there. oddness. Any chance of nuking that account before I confuse myself any further with it?

Evening hopper - you following me? First the Archie, then PC, then here?

I'm currently attempting to wire an old mario bros cart up to use as a devcart for hardware tests (using an FPGA with RAM and flash memory instead of eproms). So far as I can see if I supply a ROM image for the PRG ROM the program itself can copy tile data to the PPU and you can live without a CHR ROM. what I want to know is if this assumption is correct and are there any alterations I would need to make to the cartridge to make this happen? so far the only alterations I have made are to unsolder the ROMs and I'm starting to solder a cable in place of the PRG ROM so the FPGA board can supply the data in its place from its own ROM/RAM (and potentially act as a mapper in the process. Thanks

fantastic... I was impressed with an earlier version that played one of my tunes properly and RESID doesn't We need more Galway on the pokey actually... his driving basslines that make up for the lack of drums is one of the things it does best. galway would've done awesome things with it

's a shame the A8 music is weak compared to the C64 version - strikes me as the kind of tune the POKEY could do a pretty damn good job of.

Ahh - I'm a nottingham lad (bulwell scum ) but I was with the multi-format computer club up in sherwood out past the city centre. Think I might know one or two of the local Atari lot from another forum I frequent though...

Think he's just fine.. just his busy time and my busy times seem to be out of phase, so when I get back and find he left me a message whilst I was busy he's buggered off to do something because he's now busy... In fact as I write this I switched windows and saw I'd just missed him... D'oh!