ZackAttack

Quick update on this. I picked up another 2600 and a 7800 off craigslist today. The menu is correct on both of these consoles. So either the first console has faulty hardware or there is a compatibility issue. I'm going to see if we can't figure out exactly what causes it.

I thought the ARM only had a few cycles available for game code. Isn't it spending most of it's time feeding the 6507?

IMO, the cart would need to match all the functionality of the Harmony Encore and then provide something extra on top of that. Features I would like to see include: * Support for online gameplay * App Store with DRM so games could be sold cheaply over the internet without worrying about piracy * Ability to develop games in C++ * Support file system access in the game so they can be much larger than what's out there now * Bluetooth controllers I know everything I just said is the exact opposite of keeping it simple, but simple is boring.

Glad to hear you got it working. If you're having problems with the deathscreen being skipped in situations where the player is pressing up when they die, you may need to make the loop ignore the controller input for 30 frames or so to give the player some time to release the joystick/button before proceeding. Another option is to add logic that requires the up button be released and then pressed before proceeding. I hope that makes sense, it's difficult to explain.

I haven't had much time to work on this lately. There has been some progress made on getting the platform tile done. I think once I have the first tile working properly the rest will be a lot easier. It's building the first one that can be used as a template for the others that is really tripping me up. I also got my harmony encore last week and fixed all the bugs that cropped up on real hardware. So what I have so far has now been tested on real hardware finally. I've also been thinking about how to get a decent looking loop in the game. Any feedback on this would be helpful. The idea is to use the M1 and the BALL to draw an 8 pixel thick oval in brown and then use P1 to draw the rings inside the loop. P1 would be set to 2 copies medium and wide to put a ring on each side of the loop. The COLUP1 would have to be set before and after the missile is drawn so the rings and oval can be the correct color. The P1 M1 and BALL objects can be positioned in a few scanlines right before the loop starts. P1 will need to be repositioned after the top 2 rings get drawn. There should be enough vertical space between the rings that HMP1 can be used fore the repositioning. At the bottom of the loop the background color can be changed to green for 4 scanlines and then brown to draw the ground and the objects turned off during the drawing of the grass. Finally the HMM1 and HMBL registers would need to be updated each scanline to move the missile and ball in an arc. Here's a mock I did in mspaint. I know the oval border isn't 8 pixels like it should be, but other than that I think it's doable.

It actually wouldn't need anything as fancy as the melody board just a simple bank switching chip and a giant eeprom. It wouldn't really "need" all of the 1MB, but hey a 1MB eeproms is less than a buck on digikey. So why not pack it full of levels and sprite animations?

That would be really neat. I wonder if it would be possible to have it create the complete code required for a tile in my graphics engine. Might have to look into doing that one day. Sounds like it would be challenging.

Does this mean we can expect more games from the ninja franchise? I hope so.

Great now I can reach a score of 20. You should check out the fixed point math http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#fixedpoint If you used that you could ramp up the speed a little slower.

If you get stuck on the shot effect I can probably provide some assistance. I'd also like to suggest slowing the mallards down at first and increasing their speed as your score goes up.

I think it's because you have the title screen right after the deadscreen. So you're drawing the deadscreen first and then immediately drawing over it with the title screen. Maybe add a loop right after the dead screen to draw the screen and wait for input like you did for the title screen?

I'm talking about how the lead shot spreads out a little as it travels away from the shotgun. It would look like this when you fire. Maybe the mallards could have a death animation too. Either dropping out of the sky or exploding into bits.

Nice job on the hunter! A bigger crosshair might help. Or, maybe when the shot is fired you could change the crosshair to a 8x8 square of random pixels to simulate a shotgun. That would probably look really cool. It might take some skillful bit manipulations to get a decent looking shot pattern, but I bet it would be worth it. Not to mention a good exercise in programming.

I found the control to be somewhat awkward. Have you considered having a hunter centered at the bottom of the screen and using the paddle controller to aim the direction of his rifle?

I want to mock up my level tiles before I code them. Are there any tools that let you easily edit a complete frame? Since the level is made up of P1, M1, Ball, PF, and COLUBK I need an editor that would support placing and changing those. Has anyone created that yet?

I was able to download the eeloader in step 1 just fine. Step 2 worked fine too. I can't perform step 3 though because I can't read the menu to select the upgrade option. Also, the root menu, that has the firmware version, doesn't allow me to select anything but the top row which takes me back to the file menu. Is the menu system in the eeprom loader image or the hbios file? Perhaps I need to send this cartridge back

Those games are fine too. Also tried the other TV. Maybe I need to reload the firmware? Not sure how to do that yet.

My son made it to room 9 and he's only 1. Is there anyway to disable the death column?

It's an Atari Jr, S.N. A1962021752. I'll see if I can try a different TV later today. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be purchasing an additional 2600 and a 7800 that I can test on as well.

Both those games seem to work fine.

Just got my encore and it's having trouble displaying the file menu. Games load fine and they play without any problems. Does anyone know how to fix this?

You know I hadn't even considered that. Hopefully I'll have some time to continue work on it this weekend. The biggest issue I see right now is ROM space. I think a full game would need 1MB mapped into 16 different sets of 256 pages. Good thing eeprom is cheap.

Cool concept. I'd recommend changing the animation though. Everyone knows that alien rabbits hop everywhere. They never walk. Search youtube if you don't believe me.

$0F is actually 15 decimal and 00001111 binary. I think ^ is the XOR operator. If so ^ $0F would invert the 4 bits on the right. (1's become 0's and vice versa)