Eckhard Stolberg

quote: Originally posted by Russ Perry Jr: Scott et al -- okay, so it's really "LG", but if the bottom of the "L" is missing, why isn't the bottom of the "G"? Does the "L" stretch underneath it or something? Can somebody give a PAL screenshot, or does it not even show up correctly in PAL? The "L" extends about halfway under the "G". There isn't really a way to do a proper screenshot, since the game behaves on a real PAL VCS just like it does on the emulator. The way I was able to see the complete initials was by cheating in the PCAE debugger. Shift the game screen untill you can see the lower status bar. Then play the game untill you get to the point with the initials. Now switch to the debugger and render the next frame to a line slightly above the "LG" display (line 160 or so). Increase the value in the X-register by 10 or more. Now render the frame up to line 200 or so. If you switch to the game display, you should be able to see the full "LG" display. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

OK, I tried out the game. The initials really are "LG", and you would be able to see them fully, if you were able to fly a little further down. Are you sure there isn't anything else involved to pass the invisible barrier right behind the lower mountain range? I tried the game on the Cuttle Cart too, and the same thing happens there. So it's not a problem with z26. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

But it might be possible that the code to display the initials got accidentally changed during the PAL conversion process. Maybe Scott could tell us how to make the initials visible in the game, so that Thomas or someone else can have a look at the corresponding code? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

All my other PAL 7800 games have siver end labels. Some of them have "pro system" silver end labels though, which is a term never used with the PAL 7800. No, NTSC Ballblazer won't run on a PAL 7800. It will crash after a couple of seconds. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Some month ago there was a guy from Taiwan named Christopher Rydberg soliciting for programmers on the Stella list. He was talking about doing professional releases of Atari games. His plans were pretty similar to what Junie is trying to do now. If Randy provided some information to this guy to get him started and now confused Junie with him, I can see why he got so worked up about the situation. In the initial post of this thread Junie said that he can offer the same service as Randy for a much lower price, using the same resources as Randy. This makes it look a bit as if Randy is making some unduely high profits of the homebrew programmers work, which clearly is not the case. You have to keep in mind that Randy is offering an all-around service, where the programmer just has to send the binary to him and then wait until the royalty checks come in. All the financial risk is with Randy, as he has to preorder all the parts. And as he is building the carts as the oders come in, he probably oders the parts in smaller amounts than Junie is planning to do, which probably means that he has to pay higher prices. If Junie really can offer the same service as Randy for the much lower price that he mentioned (and keep it going for quite a while), then more power to him. But I have to see it before I can believe it. I'm sure once Randy realizes that Junie isn't the same person that he obviously had the unpleasent e-mail conversation with, he will return to his nice and friendly self that he usually is. And to comment on the intended topic of this discussion too: Generic boxes have been uses by other VCS game companies too. HES had the plastic clam shell boxes similar to those used in video rental stores. They had a clear plastic foil around them behind which you could put a sheet of paper. One side of the sheet contained the frond/side/back label and the other contained the instructions. Bomb/Onbase also had generic cardboad boxes. These had two holes in the front. The manual were printed on cardboard too, so that they could serve as part of the front cover. The cartridge would nicely prop the manual up to the rest of the box, so that this concept worked pretty well. But in the PC field many companies were using generic two part boxes too. These were wrapped with a paper jacket which would identify the actual game. Wouldn't something like this reduce the costs for your (Junie) boxes too? A one part paper jacket might be easier to make than stickers for the front and back cover. And they might be easier to apply to the boxes as well. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I have a PAL Ballblazer with a red end label and a NTSC Ballblazer with a silver end label. The only difference in the box is that the NTSC copy has a sticker about the Atari Advantage competition on it. Everything else is absolutely the same. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

In Europe the 7800 came with the Atari joypads. The 2600 Jr. first came with the proline joysticks and later with the joypads too. Both controller types offer two button support on the 7800, while both buttons do the same function when used on the 2600. In the USA the 7800 must have come with the proline joysticks. You can see it in the movie "In country" with Bruce Willis and Emelie Lloyd. In one scene you can see Bruce's character lying on the couch and playing the 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man with a proline joystick. He is even playing it with one hand only, since he is holding a beer can in the other hand. And somewhere on the web I saw a scan of an US advertisement for the 2600. It said something like "2600: It doesn't get older - it gets better". This advertisement shows the "small rainbow" 2600 Jr. toghether with the old style joystick, so maybe a package like that was available at one time. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The TNT picture label version was also distributed by HES in PAL format. In that version the scroller text ends with 'GDAY', so that's how you can identify this version. The scroller also says that the game was written by Sculptured Software. Didn't this company also do some of Atari's 7800 ports? This might be how Atari got to release BMX Airmaster too. I think there is a member on this message board who works for what used to be that company now. Maybe he can find out more about this game? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I think the French 7800 is based on the PAL model. But Atari changed the output to an RGB signal, so that you can connect the console to the Peritel/SCART connector on your TV. Christian Bogey (Khryssun) has posted the pin description for Atari's RGB connector on his website. If you search this message board, you should be able to find his anouncement for the link. With this information you should be able to find a converter to an US RGB monitor or something. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I haven't really been able to figure out the ROM from your site. It is totally different from the released version and crashes all the time on the emulator. This file definately is a bad dump. Do you still have the correct prototype ROM up on your site? However, if there really is a prototype ROM of RotLA that only differs from the released version in the two bytes that Thomas mentioned, then you are right. These differences most probably stem from the cartridge reader and not from any differences in the game ROM. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I agree with you that River Raid is the HES version. But are you sure about the Frogger cart. Please note that it uses a different case as all the other HES releases, and that it says "Weltbekannt durch Monopoly" under the logo, which is what Parker Germany uses. Also if you follow the link from moycon's message to the Wierd Frogger discussion, you can see a picture of Marc Oberhäuser's HES copy of Frogger, that is totally different from the one in the auction and that uses the normal HES case. Why would HES do two totaly different versions of the same game? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The differnt bytes depend on what cartridge reader you use. Since reading from these addresses will switch the banks, we are normally ignoring them in the 7800 based cart reader and set them to $00. With the -a command line switch we will read these bytes too and do another read to the bankswitching byte for the current bank to reset it. Some other cart readers just ignore the fact that reading from the hotspot will change the bank, and read the full 4K address space in one big chunk. These will then read wrong values for the system vectors in one of the banks. This is why the -g9 switch is nessessary in z26, which will try to start the game in the other bank which might have correct system vectors. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The random number generator in the Atari 800 is located in the POKEY, so if you'd use the Ballblazer board, you would get the same functionality. But the POKEY just provides a part of one of the LSFRs (linear shift feedback register), that is used for generating the sound output, as the random number. So if you search for LSFR on the net, you should find some information about generating pseudo random numbers. On the Stella mailing list this has been discussed several times, including some examples for the VCS. So maybe you should have a look at the archive. But if you just need numbers between 0 and 15, a simple counter between user interactions might be good enough depending on the game you are going to write. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I think this is a PAL game. In this mode the radar screen is green during normal gameplay and turns red when the mothership approaches. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Strange. On the Atari order form on their main site (www.oshealtd.com) it still says that they'll ship internationally via USPS. Maybe you should ask them which version is correct. So, do you just want to order one copy to turn into your personal test cartridge, or are you already going to buy the ones you'd need for selling your game, even before you have written it? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The 16 POKEY registers get repeated over and over in the address range from $4000-$7FFF. And you can order NTSC Ballblazer carts for $2 each from Oshea's at ClassicAtari. BTW, you can try out the POKEY support in MESS. You just have to set the corresponding bit in the A78 file header. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

If you use z26 version 1.52 and go to video mode 9 (ALT-9), then it will display the number of scanlines that the game does. A proper NTSC game should do 262 lines per frame, and a PAL game should do 312. If a game does more than 290 lines or so, we are treating it as a PAL game in z26. Of course there are the PAL-M games from Brazil, that use NTSC resolution but the PAL palette. In z26 the "-" key should let you switch between the NTSC/SECAM/PAL palette. You could try out which suits your game best to determine which standard it might be meant for. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Since my site has been mentioned I guess I should say again that most PAL 7800s are actually a lot easier to modify than the NTSC version. (Are we slow with site-updates or what? ) Also Graham has come up with some very nice designs for 144K RAM-cart modifications. I need to change the software a bit to fully support them though. I wish he also would be able to fit an EPROM into the design, so that we could have a bankswitched RAM-cart without the need for the console modification. As for releasing real game cartridges, I'd suggest modifying the Ballblazer boards. If Osheas still has a lot of them, I don't think it would hurt much to turn some of them into new games. The good thing about the Ballblazer board is that it was designed to work with EPROMs too. Also it comes with a POKEY chip, so that you could have some decent music in your game too. You would only get 32K for your game, but I don't think that would be much of a problem for most homebrew programmers. And Karolj, while you are looking at my site, check out the backdoor example again please. It has some example code for detecting PAL/NTSC 7800s, so that you can make your game compatible with both types. You would want it to work on your own 7800, now that you have learned that you can have a real cartridge, right? For PAL games you need to do 25 blank lines at the start and the end of the normal NTSC display. Also the colour palette is shifted a bit between the NTSC 7800 and the PAL one. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

That's pretty strange. I tried out the ROM on my Cuttle Cart, and it sounded just like the emulator. Therefore I don't think there is anything wrong with z26. Maybe the ROM image floating around the net is a bad dump. Or maybe it really was taken from a different version of the game. Would either of you be willing to lend out his cart for dumping? You probably wouldn't want to send it to me over here in Germany, but maybe Albert or someone living a little closer to you guys would be willing to help? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

quote: Originally posted by Scott Stilphen: Any idea why some of the colors in Raiders of the Lost Ark are wrong (especially the Valley of Poison screens)? Sorry, I don't know this game very well, and I have no idea how it is supposed to look like on a real NTSC TV. Maybe you could post a screenshot and tell me what's wrong with it? And maybe you could also tell me how to get to that place in the game? Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg

I've nerver heard about that problem, so it probably didn't get fixed. But I doubt that it is possible to get the DOS version of z26 to play flawlessly on an NT based OS anyway. Not without some major changes to the code, and then we could just give in and go on to do a proper Windows port instead. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

We have released a new version of z26. The small changes we did this time are probably only interesting to developers, but since there are so many of them hanging out here, maybe someone might find this link usefull. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

We are talking about the PAL version of Ghostbusters 2 here, right? Most emulators default to 60 Hz mode, whereas PAL games should be played at 50 Hz. To make PAL games play at 50 Hz on z26 you have to use the -5 command line switch like: z26 -5 ghost2.bin We made this optional, because we are using some tweaked graphics modes that might not work on all computers to get a 50 Hz refresh rate. The PAL cartridge will always run at 50 Hz though, so the tune might appear a bit slower when compared to the emulator. If you play Ghostbusters 2 with the -5 switch and compare it to the cartridge, does the tune still sound dramatically different? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I have an early german Activision catalog, which also shows the international edition box for bridge, so I agree that there must be a PAL version of this game. Also there is a PAL version of Dolphin on one of the HES 2 pak specials. They had to remove the Activision logo though, to make some room for the additional bankswitching code for the multicart. BTW, the HES version of Decathlon does show the Activision logo, but the game has been changed from Activision's 8K FE type of bankswitching to Atari's 16K F6 type, to make the game compatible with the PAL 7800 consoles (and some NTSC 7800s too). I'm wondering if this modification was done by HES themselves or by Activision for HES. Do you have an idea, Ken? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

If you read the first paragaph about the Display List List in the 7800 software guide, it says that OFFSET gets added to the highbyte of the graphics data address in the display list entries, and that OFFSET gets decremented in each scanline of the region. So I think I made a little mistake. I think the graphics must be stored upside-down, because OFFSET decrements. And there is no difference between sprites and background on the 7800. It's all the same type of object. Therefore the same same limitation apply, which means that you have to store each line of the sprite in steps of 256 bytes as well. BTW, I tried your demo on my PAL 7800 and it looks pretty much like the screenshot on your site, except that there are a lot of lines with garbled graphics under the logo. But writing converter tools for programming on one PC based emulator on another PC based emulator is just as wrong as it gets, especially when you are trying to replace converter tools that are running on a third PC based emulator. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg