Papa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFymgF8f__8 Check out Run Out!

Here is a more recent BIN of the WIP... SFW.bin The title screen is gone and this is for what I would consider to be a very good reason. It opens up that much needed graphics memory and, as I plan to make the game start out in demo mode, is unnecessary. I am going to be building up the A.I. in increments with the demo mode being first. When a player presses the corresponding fire button (player 1 for story mode, player 2 for versus mode, so those indicators will also be gone and that memory will be freed.) the demo will stop on whatever background is loaded to allow for player selection. I think this will look especially cool as the game will start with a fight scene and keep on showing matches until you butt in and play. My Sakura clone now has a punch, kick, crouching kick, and dragon uppercuts have been set up much like the charge-down moves from Guile or Chun-Li. When you hold down for a couple of seconds and then release and press fire the three Sheng Long students will deploy the uppercut. The fireballs are still 'quarter circle towards' moves. Trying to do a twisted 'z' pattern with a VCS joystick is NOT EASY! The fireballs are doable and I felt no need to mess with them. Quite a few subtle changes have been made and the game is still coming along nicely. Thanks for the magazine coverage!!

*passed out...

..Plus if you like pretty girl art then keep the Sears version (or whichever one has the art) of certain games. Casino, Blackjack, and Poker come to mind...(Blackjack has great art for the Sears Telegames).

Star Trek! Keep it! I just played that for my kids and they were like "COOL. You can see the view-screen and those are Klingons!"! You know it's a keeper when kids of our time can tell what the graphics are and you don't have to answer questions like "Why does the water kill the frog?", "Can't frogs swim?" to which you answer "These must be rushing waters that it would die in!?", or "What is that dot supposed to be?" to which you would answer "It's an adventurer with a sword, backpack, map, lantern and a keen sense of direction!", or "Why is the batter naked when all of the other players are wearing pants and shirts?" (thanks angry Nintendo nerd), to which one could answer "I don't know, and no you can't play Sneak & Peek!"! I've said this before, but I would recommend the following as well: Ghostbusters Rampage (and a second player, preferably a girlfriend or wife, and beer) Spy Hunter Kung Fu Master Radar Lock (it's Afterburner for the Atari) Most Activision games (only a few turds in there) also... Pacman 4K and 8K (4K is coming out and 8K can be slapped onto a Harmony cart) Princess Rescue (however you have to get it, get it...) Fat Albert is a hack-job that just came to fruition and looks extremely good (even with voices!) Titan Axe should be coming out soon and I made that, so I like it I get why you would want to sell those, though. You could make TENS of dollars!!

I always do something like... if player0x<15 then player0x=15 (possible limit for left side) if player1x<15 then player1x=15 if player0x>125 then player0x=125 (possible limit for right side) if player1x>125 then player1x=125 This would form two barriers on the left and right side of the screen that neither players can go through.

Yeah, I'll be using the 16-bit randomizer a lot for A.I.. It's built into the DPC+ kernel, so it's easy (shaaa..). This game has been quite taxing. Every time I get one problem solved another one pops up. It's still coming along, though. I just added a punch for the Sakura clone, all the Dragon Uppercuts are now active, low kicks and flying side kicks have been added for the Ken and Ryu clones, and I'm working out some of the kinks in the code. This one may take a while. I really love how it looks, too. I like how you can switch from big to small characters on the fly and that it's all on the VCS! Lately I've also been learning about vwBASIC and also BasiEgaXorz. My kids were in the arcade today so I got around to testing out some of the latest changes to my code on real hardware. This game is going to use every bit of graphics and code memory to work and the A.I. is gonna be tough to code to say the least. I'm sure I can handle it though (famous last words... ). I'll post another update to download pretty soon...

KYEWT!

The answer is Activison games. I know they aren't technically Atari products, but they had the nards to put art inspired by actual game graphics on the boxes and games (and the programmers names!)

With Atari you ask it to please draw a line and let be a color if the gods allow it...

AHAAAAAAA! I just realized that one set of drawscreens I don't sub back to my FRACINC registers! A simple oversight. That should fix whatever was happening with Street Fight World. I don't have any jitters or bad stuff happening on any of my multitude of televisions (nine sets) except the two sets that are progressive scan CRT. HD looks great. Regular old CRT looks great. I've also noticed that the scan counter built into Stella goes ape$#it on several original Atari games, although they look great on regular televisions. I was wondering, though... If the Harmony cart can play Super Charger games then why can't VBb enable extra memory for programming? I'm sure it's just something to do with a mapper that enables Super Charger. So why not make one that mixes the extra memory parts of one with the 32K (or higher) enabling parts of another? ...I know I'm still just dreamin'...

Change the purple pickle to a crack pipe with smoke coming out of it... jk This game is starting to look like a winner!

I have considered trying to code the Atari BASIC cart just to see what could be done. Before my wife found Bb and downloaded it for me ("Hey..I bet you would really like this!") I was looking at the Compumate. I really don't like blister-keys though. I would tolerate it if it was all I had. I consider getting help from the ARM processor to build carts that play on the original system to fit into my own 'purist' ideals. I like assembly and all, but I just can't seem to get as creative with it as I can with BASIC. I really love the sprite maker and playfield drawing tools in Bb and I seem to think in BASIC. I have all those old books on BASIC programming for Amiga and Atari computers and toy with AMOS and QBasic as well, but the fun of just sitting down and getting results immediately, like with a visual environment or vwBASIC, is very exciting. vwBASIC will be my next learning endeavor. I like that it's been upgraded to include labels, but I also think there is nothing wrong with the simplicity of number lines. Now that I see that each loop can approach 12K compiled it seems bigger. One factor with DPC+ is that the first and last banks are taken up by the ARM code. I've also found that progressive scan capable CRT's don't like DPC+. I have HD and CRT TVs that play my games perfectly, but my Progressive Scan CRTs look terrible, with jitters and doubled sprites (something I use regularly to get bigger objects) tearing in half with poor sync. I will print the manual (although a much deeper explanation with more examples would be helpful) like I did with VBb and BasiEgaXorz (another endeavor). Thanks a LOT for the compliments on my latest work. It means a whole heck of a lot coming from someone like you.

I have currently programmed four games that use bankswitching. The SuperCharger has 6K of additional RAM that can be dedicated to graphics. After enabling scripts and compiling with vwBASIC I can see that it would be quite useful for many programs even with the limitations in size. 12K is the max with double SC and a little less with Super Charger or other games. All of the games I've made are 32K (I decided to use the highest amount that could easily be put onto cartridges). DPC+ may complicate that, but I've also use it for two games. Titan Axe is 32k bankswitching using the standard kernel. Run Out is 32K using DPC+ and my newest work, Street Fight World is 32K DPC+. I've been programming with Bb for over three years now. I like vwBasic (I will call it VolksWagon BASIC) and will be studying it while I finish up my latest DPC+ game. I am not new to this. I've programmed in C++, Visual Basic, Assembly (a little with my Coco, and I don't think well with it), and several other 'game-making' programs, like Game Builder, etc... I find Visual Bb to be so easy and yet limiting enough to express with that it fits me like a glove. I just want more than 4K total graphics memory, that's all. I could fit two more characters in my Street Fighter clone and all the backgrounds.

Can it do a 32K game with the 6K extra?

How about that Super Charger! Pure Awesome Sauce!

byte...HA HAAAAAAA! (I keep calling it "Deeter" like the German name...I only just realized that it was "Die-et-er")

TELL ME ABOUT THE F*CKING GOLF SHOES!! (did anyone every find out what game it was, btw?)

Just out of left field with this. What would it take to add just 4K more graphics RAM to the Atari VCS? Could a cart be made that adds more (like a Super Charger) that could then be accessed by Bb? I keep drifting into what if's and how stupendous games could be with just that tiny bit more. Could a newer version of Melody board be made that adds 4K extra or is this just not possible? ...So, that's what would have happened if I invented the finglonger. A man can dream. A man can dream.

Ah, Kirk-el. Not to be confused with Erk-el.

If it's the power switch you can swap out one from an old NES. Some use the same switch.

Sorcerer was kind of a let down for me. Most sports games (Bowling was just plain wrong) stunk, although I really liked the Summer Games, Winter Games, California Games. I could do without River Raid (although It can be fun at times, I guess, and I make it a personal policy not to attack Activision games as they are usually pretty sweet. H.E.R.O, Kaboom, Star Master, Keystone Kapers, Pitfall!, Pitfall! 2, Kung Fu Master, Rampage, Ghostbusters, are all must own games.)! Frogger is usually considered a good game, but once you've played the Super Charger version the cartridge seems bland. Now there are a lot not mentioned here of course, but I did manage to offer up more good one's than bad and still stay on-subject! Positive.

I always say "If it aint fixed, don't break it worse!" I think this is a perfectly good topic. No one has called another person stupid yet. People are only stating their opinions. I would even be so bold as to call an RF Filter or an RF Trap an external 'mod' that doesn't devalue the original hardware. I've heard that certain Flashback 2 systems can be modded with a cartridge port to play games. I've even seen it set up to play the built-in titles when a cart isn't in place. Once, on the Neo Geo thread, I was called stupid for stating the the Neo Geo had different RAM than the arcade system. Much arguing and mud slinging ensued until someone came on and said "I have an adapter that plays the games that use the different RAM" (paraphrasing). Certain games glitch up when you try to cross them over with adapters from arcade to home systems (this is because of different RAM, shhhhhh). No one was like "Oh, why did we call that guy stupid when he was right?". I think if people want to mod their stuff to play on their HD TV's it's fine. It's not the original. You won't be able to sell it for what the price of an original might go for. You can't say "That's a heavy sixer from 78' that's all original!" anymore. It's your business and it's cute and all. I just think it's a tad unnecessary when there are cheaper, less invasive options that provide a cleaner picture without digging into the system. I think it's totally on topic to argue the benefits of keeping hardware original when modding is being discussed. It could be a thirty-nine year old system your changing and that might not have crossed the minds of certain users. If you like it then do it. If you didn't know about filters before then I hope I helped and you may consider it. I program games for the machine and I need to know what the customer might have to play the games on so I may need a modded system just to see what they will see when or if they buy it. It's often a costly upgrade and it forever (unless you feel like undoing a mod to restore something) changes your Atari to a modern RCA/RGB/S-VIDEO version of the system. I've got nine arcade cabinets that house most of the best systems from the past forty years of gaming. I've modded the controls to be hard-wired to arcade sticks and buttons to play upright. I've modded and had modded many systems to make, what I consider to be, improvements (mostly cross-region enabling mods. Occasionally RGB (like for Sega)). I have a place in my heart for the original Atari as it is and that may not apply to everyone.