BitJag

Found another possible audio bug, and please tell me to shut up if you already know about this. On one of my K models, all the music in the game (that I know of) plays at <50% speed. The samples for the music sound fine, it just doesn't play the music at the same speed as my other K model. Everything else seems fine, I tested gameplay (single/multiplayer), menus, ect... Also sound effects (bullets, explosions) seem unaffected. I have tried re-flashing the rom to my sunk several times with the same results, and I have tested the same flash copy on another K model and the music sounds fine. I am not sure what other information I could give to help solve this possible issue, please let me know if there is any more info I could provide that might help clarify the problem. To make sure that the console was working properly I tested several other games with no apparent issues.

Just tested it out on the Skunk on two other K model Jaguars. The first one doesn't get past the title screen, but the second works similar to the first K model I tested on, and works fine. We have been playing allot of multiplayer and have found a possible bug. It happens in Kombateroids, and the results are that second player's control becomes unresponsive with the sprite still onscreen but undetectable/uncollidable/invincible. The moment this happens first player's score jumps up to a random high number (100+). The first player can continue to play, and even finish the wave, but the second player's glitched state remains unchanged between waves. We have been able to reproduce this 4 times in a row. The bug seems consistent. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Plug in two standard Jaguar controllers 2. Start the game 3. On the Main Menu select Kombateroids 4. On the Kombateroids menu select the following options from top to bottom: ---Best of 25 ---Being Followed ---Random Map ---30 Seconds ---Death Location 5. Start the multiplayer game 6. Both first and second player hold down the thrust button "B", while holding down the fire button "A", without turning. 8. After 10-15 seconds the glitch will occur Let me know if you need additional information.

ah...That is the problem on my end.

Same issue. Burnt roms, dropped onto a board, doesn't get past the screen with the credits. Model K Jaguar. I did test on Skunk and it works great. Awesome, awesome game! I cannot wait to buy this. I am going to take it into the office tomorrow and see how many people I can get to play it. For testing of course I found a bug that might already be discovered. After flashing to skunk, the game boots into the main menu. I start a normal game at level "60", plays fine. But after I lose all three of my lives, and it goes to the highscore screen, the audio turns into white noise. If I continue back to the main menu, everything seems to function just fine, except for the white noise audio. If I start another normal game at any level, the audio kind of comes back, but it is louder, and obviously has problems still. Also the spaceship sprite garbles up, and eventually disappears, but seems to still be functional, with bullets appearing and disappearing suddenly. If I lose all of my lives again, it goes back to white noise audio at the highscore screen. I have re-flashed three times to the skunk, with the same results, rebooting a few times with each flash. The results are consistent. I am going to try to test it on 2 more consoles tomorrow, skunk and the freshly burnt eproms. One is a model K for sure, I am not sure what the other model is, hopefully an M model. Here is a video Edit: Just tested in VJ, it crashes VJ after losing three lives on wave "60".

No problem, I will just have to settle for another copy of Alice's Mom's Rescue. To give to a friend of course. Thanks for considering another run of your collection cart!

And then dump it to a cart/CD, that looks just as good and plays the same, for your personal collection,for less than $20 and one hour of your time. No one in their right mind would pay as high as they did in that auction, when the content is available for free. (Time to send $20 to Orion_, just because he is awesome).

If the list is still open I would like to be added to buy one of these beauties.

I am sorry that my comment came off negatively. Enlightening was exactly what I was trying to do. That is why I was asking you for a reference to back up your comment about Towers 2 being on CD. It would be something interesting to see or read about.

Towers II on a CD. Haven't heard of that one. ***Google Search*** .......nothing Is there a reference someone could post to that one actually existing? Let the rumors ensue

Just had a conversation with my brother. He brought up a possible model that others have used that seems like it would more likely find financial success. The idea is to work backwards from a success, porting to multiple platforms as you go. An example of this would be to make a game for contemporary markets, like Android/iOS/Steam, and only if there was success on those markets, move backwards, based on audience, when porting the game. Dreamcast>SNES>Jaguar>NES>... (This flow doesn't show an accurate order based on audience) With some clever ideas and money behind marketing the game, it seems like you could produce a business model where everyone wins financially, because you could use funds generated from the success on modern platforms to port to older platforms. It might actually drive potential newcomers who experience the modern platform version of the game to want to start collecting and playing the games for older platforms. If you could somehow drive newcomers to older consoles like that, you could solve the audience size problem I mentioned in my last post (uphill battle ) Remember the keywords here are "seems like..." & "you could...". Personally, I think more than one killer title would be needed to really get the wheels turning. A great non-Jaguar example of this working is Retro City Rampage. I wouldn't be surprised if there were quite a few people who bought the MS-DOS port of the game who hadn't been exposed much to MS-DOS. Of course they only made a 1,000 of these at $30 a piece. I doubt it paid for the time put into porting it, but I am sure everyone got paid due supplementary income from its success on other modern platforms with larger audiences. A Jaguar example of this would be Orion_'s games, but I am not sure how successful it was. It would be interesting to know if Orion_ was more successful with modern platform sales or his Jaguar/Atari Falcon sales of Elansar/Philia/Alices Moms Rescue. I actually waited for my Jag copies of his games before I purchased them on the Android market to support his work. So people like me would actually hinder this kind of model .

I think that funding current homebrew devs to port existing content to old consoles is a fun idea, but there are a few hurdles to get over before it becomes feasible. The big one is money. It seems to me, please correct me if I am wrong, but most of the homebrew devs for the Jag are doing it for fun/for the love of/for nostalgia sake. And the devs that are making a bit of coin from it, and are experienced enough to do ports, are probably not making enough for it to be a full time job. Can Collectorvision & Piko come up with enough money to pay existing devs to turn their "love" into a job? I am not sure what that amount would be, as I image it would be different for everyone. The return. It feels like there are somewhere around 300 - 500 people actively collecting new content for the Jaguar (that might be a bit optimistic on my part). This number could increase depending on what is being ported, and after marketing, but I hate running numbers on hopes. Lets say I was able to sell to 400 of those people at $50 USD a unit. That's $20,000 gross (I haven't paid my salary, the dev, or taxes yet). All I can say when I see that number, is that it isn't enough to pay a developer and make a profit as a company trying to run a business. You might be able to increase profit by porting to multiple platforms, but you will need more developers for that, which equals more money out of the company's pockets up front (I sure hope these devs get paid something up front if this kind of work does happen). The problem is audience, is the existing audience big enough? (Big reason why so many third parties left development for the Jaguar originally, the Jag has always been a hard sell ). Now Collectorvision & Piko could make some concessions to help convince existing developers to jump on board. One could be to give the developer as much time as they want to do the port, in return for getting paid little, to create a no pressure situation to get it done, because they don't have enough money to pay the developer to commit to getting it done in a certain amount of time. This has the pro of helping the dev not to stress and to continue to do it for the love of it. But can have a negative effect on marketing (maintaining a newly introduced audience over a long period of time), on relationships (how much can the company push to get it done, how much can the dev push back? Makes for a confusing, gooey relationship that no normal person would enjoy). Not to mention the possibility of it never getting done (death, devs loss of interest, companies loss of interest/money, etc...) I am not saying it isn't possible, as there are examples of this already "working". One that I personally backed on Kickstarter was Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death, which is a Collectorvision game. It isn't so much a port, then a from scratch project, but they are using existing formulas from popular retro games to create their content. The way they pitched their campaign it seemed they would have had it finished a long time ago, but, it seems like they are in a similar boat, where the devs are getting very little for their efforts (the final funding project was about $40,000, devs might be getting a kickback on future sales), but they love what they are doing. So those in charge are giving them space/time to work on what they love (This is all a guess though). Certainly not a long term business model, but everyone feels like they are winning at the end of the day. I would love to see a "successful" business model for creating/porting games for retro consoles, where the developers/artists/others involved aren't being abused financially some day. As far as I know, it hasn't happened yet, and trying to restart an old engine is bound to be an incredibly steep, uphill battle.

Please put me on the list. Thank you!

That sucks about Eye of the Beholder, I had the wrong impression that it was already being enjoyed to its fullest... Well, if I have the skill and experience to approach it one day, it would definitely be something worth tackling. Until then, here's to hoping someone else might have interest in doing the leg work. Exactly. The other option is to make the listing private, and then provide a link to those who seem "legitimate" in their reasons for printing. But I hate it when things have to be regulated like that. I guess I shouldn't worry about it and let people do what they want to do and just try to keep people informed about pirated games.

Karri, here are the measurements for the circuit baord. The one I designed the 3D print from was for California Games. (In case there are different sizes for different games...) Circuit Board Dimensions 55.35mm x 23.35mm x 0.38mm The IC's center point should be at about 7.5mm from the top of the circuit board and 27.5mm from the side. I was just thinking, if you come up with a design that allows for an eeprom for saves let me know where that chip would sit on the board, it's data sheet for dimensions, and I can get another version put up on Shape ways. It would be awesome to have an Eye of the Beholder cart that looks legit that I could play. It would definatley be a red plastic cart

That programmer is awesome. I might have to burn some stuff sooner than I thought. As for having options for the logo, I think I can setup customability options for the print. This will allow customers to request something custom without having to go through Shapeways quality and elligibillty tests again on my end.

No problem. I will get you the specs tomorrow sometime. It would be awesome to see some releases with this 3D print. Your exactly right about Atari's ownership of logo. I swapped out Atari's logo for my BitJag logo as a place holder and for print detail expirementation. It is amazing how much detail 3D printers can achieve. It would be incredibly easy for me to swap the BitJag logo out for something custom, or if someone wanted it removed completely. Thank goodness Atari let the design patent lapse for the cart design, or I wouldn't even be attempting this right now. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD339577S/en?q=Cartridge&assignee=atari+corporation

I picked the SST39SF0(10/20/40) TSOP. This was listed in the lynx bitbucket https://bitbucket.org/atarilynx/lynx/src as "lynx / contrib / blankcart / Cart / 25022A.pdf". I made the big assumption that this is an acceptable chip to use because the data sheet was there. As far as my limited knowledge goes for designing circuit boards and assembly, the only change I had to make to the original design was making the square hole slightly deeper (0.6mm). This is to accommodate the height of 1.20mm. This also assumes that a custom circuit board follows a similar design as an official release. This makes the wall of the cartridge a bit thinner, but as long as no direct pressure is applied to the area, it should be a tolerable change. From what I understand, and again based on my limited knowledge of IC's, this IC should work in most cases right? If not, is there another one I should be looking at?

And it was incredibly simple... Took a look at the "Shaken Not Stirred" source code as suggested the aforementioned posts and I had it figured in a matter of minutes. Thanks again Karri for putting these examples together, I am definately going to do some more digging. For those who maybe running into a similar problem here is the path to the exact file that shows a struct for all four channels. "Shaken / resident / aaresident.c" lines 38-60 will get you on the right path. Just duplicate and you will have some awesome tunes running with your awesome games in no time.

I have been pursuing the idea of prototyping some Lynx cartridges, and wanted to see if I could get something that looked similar to an original production cart. Using a set of calipers, I duplicated the cart shell in Blender and I have it up for sale for devs, on Shapeways, who may want to create more attractive prototypes. I have already done some prints myself, working out my own mistakes and adjustments required by the 3D printer. I included the details from the store page below and there are pictures available on the store page. I am selling these at production costs to keep it as accessible as possible (no extra moneys for me ) . Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. http://shpws.me/LJKD Also, a quick question to those who are more similar with piracy on the Atari Lynx. Would it be wise to keep this listing publicly available or not? Last thing I want to see is this model being used to make pirated games look better physically. If there is interest from developers, and listing it publicly isn't a good choice due to piracy concerns, I can make it unlisted, and then give access to the print upon request. Regardless, if I ever catch wind of someone selling other people's software with this cart shell, I will take it down.

Awesome article about him here (link found on the wiki), and a few of the other guys behind the initial idea of the console. Love the stuff about them possibly being some of the first people outside of Nintendo to see Nintendo's GameBoy. Great story and it is good to know that he was proud of his work on the Lynx.

My only problem with it, is the length of each level. Graphics, mechanics,SFX etc... All decent or fun I my book. But the monotony after spending 5 minutes in 1 level is the hardest thing for me to forgive, when there is little pay off for spending that much time.

Just got the chance to drop this to the skunk. Great work, taking this one into the office tomorrow.

Yes! Got the first channel of the song working. I wasn't pointing to the music data correctly in the C file. The first channel is working fine, anyone have any ideas on the second channel? I am sure I missing something incredibly simple. Right now I am assuming that I just tell it to play the second channel by changing the first function parameter to 1. No matter what I change the channel parameter to (0,1,2,3), it seems that it is just playing the first channel.

Okay... Pulled those useless defines from the top of my C file, and mimicked the initialization code from the link in the above post. Game starts fine, and then garbage fills the screen, and I can move the sprite around for a moment and then it stops for moment, and then I can move fore a moment etc... Reading into the above thread more leads me to believe that I need to adjust my lynx.cfg file and my directory lists. So this might be a memory issue with my compiled code not knowing where to put the music in memory? I admit, the content in the tutorials about the directory is still sinking in. I have read through it a few times, time to go through it again.

Did a bit more digging and found some gems. It seems that modifying the .asm produced from Clipper is appropriate at this point http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207105-pong-with-segments/page-3?do=findComment&comment=2740272 Also, found and example of the C code at work in the same thread. Thanks Karri! Time for some more trial and error to see if I can get this to work. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207105-pong-with-segments/page-3?do=findComment&comment=3207763 Edit: The C code I uploaded is a mess by the way... sorry.