[Atari coding burnout starting to fade]

OK, I finally found some time to test your program on my SECAM VCS. I can't attach pictures here, but it seems that red is a bit tricky to get on SECAM. In the title screen the exclamation point after "Timmy" and the word "RED" turn out to be a light gray, whereas the word "START" is red when it's not selected. In all levels the platforms where red is mixed with something else it also ends up as gray, while the 'R' blocks and the ladders / chutes really are red. All other colours seem to be as intended, as far as I can tell. I hope this helps.

[Stellar Fortress v0.23]

I personally converted the public release of Gingerbread Man to UA bankswitching, which the Kroko and CC/CC2 all support. I considered FE but decided against it, as Kroko cart users wouldn't be able to play it.

The 2600 Cuttle Cart doesn't support UA bankswitching. If you don't want to lock out people from trying your games, you'll need to find a different way of protecting them.

[The Latest]

EDIT: Welllllll. It works fine in Stella but doesn't in z26. Considering which one is more accurate, looks like I need to tweak it a bit.

 

EDIT II: Which is annoying since I can't pause or single-frame-advance z26 and I can't really tell what the problem is...grrr

You can pause z26 by pressing the backspace key (press the enter key to resume). But for your purpose it might be better to slow the emulator down a bit. The command line option -r1 would make z26 run at one frame per second.

 

The problem seems to be with the pattern of the Cosmic Ark starfield effect. More specificly it's a problem with which scanlines get the double width pixels. We probably don't handle that properly in z26. I'm not sure how accurate Stella is with this.

 

On a real VCS the line with the double width pixels is always the one where the pixel would be displayed right before a new playfield block would start, IIRC. This is independent from where or how you trigger the starfield effect. I think the emulators might start the pattern always in the same way when you trigger the starfield effect, so the lines with the double width pixels might shift when you start the effect in a different scanline or the missile is in a different starting position.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[The Populous Challenge]

Hello Manuel,

 

Populous has always been one of my favourite games too. A couple of weeks ago I introduced it to one of my nephews, and he was really surprised that they made games that good before he was even born.

 

On the sound issue of the PC version:

I think it depends on which soundcart support you enable. The Roland version has good music but poor sound effects. The Adlib version has not so good music, but much better sound effects. And you might have to disable the music during gameplay to get the most out of the effects.

 

I don't know about the Final Frontier add-on, but the Promised Lands disk exists for the PC version. I still have my original copy.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[2005 movies Top 7!]

Hm... not yet... I think it hasn't been localised for Germany yet. Same with "Domino" and "Corpse Bride" and the "Underworld" sequel, I hope we get all these sometime soon

Syriana and Underworld Evolution are indeed scheduled for late february / early march. With Corpse Bride you are out of luck though. This one came out two month ago. I suppose you'll have to wait for the DVD release.

 

But don't be sad. The good news is that Domino came out last week, and that it is even showing in Augsburg this week. And on top of all this it's Kinotag today! So how fast can you find a babysitter?

 

BTW, I use www.filmstarts.de for finding German movie release dates.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg