MobiusAqua
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Posts posted by MobiusAqua
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in Atari 7800
And this is why the new QuintOKEYTM will be super epic. 20 channels of amazing multi-instrument synthesis, capable of rivaling even the Atari AMY. The cartridges can even be used to make julienne fries in a heartbeat!
With one of these, I could easily port Gyruss, and have it nearly arcade perfect, in the sound department! *crosses fingers behind back*...and you didn't hear that.
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I agree with RevEng and Mord, but I also just had a thought: did you set your palettes? Like...
P0C1=$0E P0C2=$45 P0C3=$8A
...for example? Just curious.
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I think he's suggesting that it would listen to the signals coming down the cartridge bus from the processor to the game ROM, and if a command from the processor matches something, based on the codes that were typed in, it would hijack that command, and send different data back to the processor, instead. To, like, modify the number of lives in a game, or something like that. The game would normally say "3", for example, but the device would hijack that, if you typed in the right code, and tell the processor that you have 9 lives, instead.
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There's a good-sized one in my area, called Sound Go Round. They have games going all the way back to the Atari 2600/Intellivision/ColecoVision/Odyssey 2 generation, and up, and a few other things, as well.
One of my other favorites is Jay Street Video Games, which sometimes has cheaper prices than SGR, but I've mainly seen this with SNES games. The only problem is that there aren't any of those near me; the closest one is two hours away.
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It sounds like you've filled bank 8 completely with images. Its not a problem, but if you want to stick code in bank 8, it will need to go in the DMA holes between the images.
Do you need a few bytes of space available in bank 8, even to just add the dmahole 0 command? I'm curious, because last time I tried adding code into the DMA hole in bank 8 of BB (or even just dmahole 0 by itself), it refused to compile the entire ROM, just like what happened to Mord.
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Personally, I would have suggested something like "Track Suit Toby", if you weren't able to get the privileges to use the real name. Just a thought.
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That looked pretty cool! Great work, MJ. One thing I thought was interesting, was that Apocalypse II kinda reminded me of Mad Planets, in a way, particularly near the end of the footage, since you're shooting at planets that slowly grow. But that looks epic.
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Pengo!
I was just thinking about this, too! I thought about a version that let you choose between "Popcorn" and whatever the other version's background music was called, among other things. Like a mix of the two most common game revisions, changeable in bits and pieces from an Options menu. And with PAC-MAN-RED's graphics, anyone who codes this is gonna have an epic-looking game.
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Then I think we should call it the "epic Albert plant mullet"!
And let me add my own congratulations as well, Albert. Very well deserved. That is so cool! -
The first rule of 7800 Club is you DO NOT SUGGEST NES GAMES.
Wait... I thought the first rule of 7800 Club was "never talk about 7800 Club"?
I've thought of a few, but I've also thought about them from a technical standpoint.
Like... Mad Planets, for example. I'm not exactly sure how many sound channels the arcade has, but it'd be interesting to see if the TIA could pull at least some of those sounds off. If not, then the POKEY could have a field day, and the explosion sounds probably wouldn't cut off the background music, either.
And I was starting to think about Ice Climber, too... *hides in a corner, cringing*
But then again, maybe there's some trick to smooth vertical scrolling with 7800Basic... I thought about turning everything into sprites, line by line (turning an entire line into sprites, sliding them up or down one pixel, or something involving WSYNC), but that'd probably choke either SALLY or MARIA...Gyruss can come incredibly close to sounding arcade perfect, with a six-part harmony (all of the POKEY's and TIA's channels working together), but I wonder how well the YM2151 can do square waves? And with the graphics PAC-MAN-RED drew up in the "Gyruss for the 7800" thread, it could look positively epic.
And a part of Mr. Do would be epic, too. (That was an unintentional rhyme.
) We could see how far we can push 320C mode to its limits, or just use 320A and layer sprites, ColecoVision style! One of my curiosities about the 7800, is how far someone can push MARIA, using its 320 modes, particularly 320A and 320C. I mean, Prickle uses 320A, but that's just text (using plotchars, rather than plotsprite). The fun part will be trying with graphic sprites.But besides sports, how about RPGs? I vote... Tower of Druaga!!
Hopefully the Sharp X68000 port (which also uses a YM2151) didn't prove that that's the only way it could sound... how about something that, if not arcade perfect, sounds like the PC Engine version?-
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I don't mean to de-rail the thread any further, but I thought the PS1/PS2 adapter was a really cool idea, CPUWIZ. One of the things I wish the 7800 had was a pause button on the controller, like the 5200 has. I was thinking about programming BB to support that, once I got far enough.
Okiday, back on topic: your controllers look epic, Edladdin, and the Supreme 78 is on my "think about possibly getting" list, for when I either find my/buy a new 7800. They look really well made, and I really can't resist getting an arcade-style controller with green buttons and ball-knob. (Not that green's my favorite color, or anything...
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My pleasure! I'm glad I'm able to help. I think this is a great utility, and I wanna help you squash as many bugs as I can.
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Okiday, this time I'm pretty sure I've found a bug, and I think it might be in a78header.
I downloaded the most recent release of 7800basic, and after making a few edits to my game, compiled it. I was a bit surprised that it encrypted the ROM a bit faster (usually the count hits 08, before it finishes), but when I went to run the ROM in MESS, it didn't boot. All I got was the rolling horizontal bars, like what happens when you start MESS in Atari 7800 mode, without a game cartridge loaded.
Here's the compilation output, just in case:[email protected]:~/7800projects/bubblebobble$ 7800basic.sh bb-prealpha_dec19-2015.bas Using dasm version: DASM 2.20.11 20140304 Starting build of bb-prealpha_dec19-2015.bas 7800basic 0.4 Dec 21 2015 20:32:51 *** (): INFO, bank #1, GFX Block #0 starts @ $A000 digittop alphatop digitbot alphabot rounddigits *** (): INFO, bank #1, GFX block #0 has 1568 bytes left (98 x 16 bytes) *** (): INFO, bank #1, DMA hole #0 starts @ $B000 no code defined for DMA hole *** (): INFO, bank #2, GFX Block #0 starts @ $A000 digittop alphatop digitbot alphabot rounddigits round001 round001large round002 round002large round003 round003large round004 round004large *** (): INFO, bank #2, GFX block #0 has 624 bytes left (39 x 16 bytes) *** (): INFO, bank #2, DMA hole #0 starts @ $B000 DMA hole code found and imported *** (): INFO, bank #3, GFX Block #0 starts @ $A000 digittop alphatop digitbot alphabot rounddigits round005 round005large round006 round006large *** (): INFO, bank #3, GFX block #0 has 1072 bytes left (67 x 16 bytes) *** (): INFO, bank #3, DMA hole #0 starts @ $B000 no code defined for DMA hole *** (): INFO, bank #8, GFX Block #0 starts @ $C000 bubblunleft01 bubblunleft02 bubblunleft03 bubblunleft04 bubblunleft05 bubblunleft06 bubblunleft07 bubblunright01 bubblunright02 bubblunright03 bubblunright04 bubblunright05 bubblunright06 bubblunright07 bubblunleft11 bubblunleft12 bubblunright11 bubblunright12 bubblunleft21 bubblunleft22 bubblunright21 bubblunright22 bubblunleft31 bubblunleft32 bubblunleft33 bubblunleft34 bubblunright31 bubblunright32 bubblunright33 bubblunright34 bubblunleft35 bubblunleft36 bubblunleft37 bubblunleft38 bubblunright35 bubblunright36 bubblunright37 bubblunright38 bubblunleft41 bubblunleft42 bubblunleft43 bubblunleft44 bubblunright41 bubblunright42 bubblunright43 bubblunright44 *** (): INFO, bank #8, GFX block #0 has 1152 bytes left (72 x 16 bytes) *** (): INFO, bank #8, DMA hole #0 starts @ $D000 no code defined for DMA hole *** (): INFO, bank #8, GFX Block #1 starts @ $E000 bubblegrn0 bubblegrn1 bubblegrn2 bubblegrn3 bubblegrn6 bubblegrn7 bubblegrn8 bubblegrn9 bubblegrn0a bubblegrn1a bubblegrn2a bubblegrn3a zenchanleft1 zenchanleft2 zenchanleft3 zenchanleft4 zenchanright1 zenchanright2 zenchanright3 zenchanright4 *** (): INFO, bank #8, GFX block #1 has 2816 bytes left (176 x 16 bytes) 7800basic compilation complete. User-defined 7800.asm found in current directory 8047 bytes of ROM space left in the main area of bank 1. 4096 bytes of ROM space left in DMA hole 0. -8147 bytes of ROM space left in the main area of bank 2. 45 bytes of ROM space left in DMA hole 0. 6904 bytes of ROM space left in the main area of bank 3. 4096 bytes of ROM space left in DMA hole 0. 14460 bytes of ROM space left in the main area of bank 7. 0 bytes of ROM space left in the main area of bank 8. 4096 bytes of ROM space left in DMA hole 0. pokeysound assembly: 303 bytes Complete. Read $C000 bytes of cartridge data. Cartridge hash area is from $F000 to $FFFF. Cartridge signature for 'bb-prealpha_dec19-2015.bas.bin' appears to be empty. Encrypting... 00 01 02 success! A valid cartridge signature is: 06 f2 29 c8 19 a8 29 e0 e7 0e 06 3c 9e 6b 53 06 45 56 52 16 f3 03 80 49 42 42 95 0e e8 1e c4 ae d7 e5 ea 45 31 2e c5 16 4e 76 fe 4c f8 1a 9f bc c5 79 f3 06 b1 1f 0b 02 41 3c ba ad ae 2b 0c 9f 9e ff 9a bf 2b ae fc 36 b0 80 2d ce 4b 48 64 56 c0 dd e5 1a 77 26 ea 5e ef cd 3a c8 53 35 69 3e 92 07 23 d3 1d 99 dc 10 6d 88 f8 ba 04 f6 38 d3 15 41 f9 77 48 a8 8b b9 Wrote back 120 bytes to 'bb-prealpha_dec19-2015.bas.bin'. 7800header 0.4 Dec 21 2015 20:32:55 opened parameter file a78info.cfg [email protected]:~/7800projects/bubblebobble$
And here's what's in my project folder's a78info.cfg:
### parameter file for 7800header, created by 7800basic set tvntsc set supergame set [email protected]
Just for grins and giggles, I tried compiling one of the previous pre-alpha builds of my game (should I even call it that anymore? I think there's quite a few people who know what it is, anyway), which is a 48KB ROM. That compiled the exact same way as the 128KB Supergame ROM did (the December 19th pre-alpha), but MESS actually loaded it, and played it just fine.
So, out of curiosity, I went and downloaded one of Frankodragon's Panda Racer source files (one of the files that compiles into a 512KB ROM), to see what the compiler did, and it did the same thing. MESS wouldn't play it, either.
The reason why I'm guessing it might be a78header, is because my next thought was "what does the compiled ROM look like, in a hex editor?". Popping the 128KB pre-alpha ROM into KDE's hex editor "Okteta", I glanced through the source code, before looking at the A78 header at the top. Here's what the December 19th pre-alpha's header looks like:
I also threw Panda Racer's ROM into it, as well, and got something similar. Apparently it's setting the cartridge type bits to 2 and 3. Interestingly, I changed the first bit to 0, saved the ROM, and tried loading that into MESS. Started up, no problem.
I'll be happy to post any of my project files, if you need to have a look. Thanks in advance, and sorry if the post is a bit on the long side. -
<<HASSAAAAAN CHOOOP!!>>
Running 7800bas.bat without an argument does indeed put out that error. I'll look into putting in a test and a sensible error message.
I can't replicate any sort of hang while running 7800bas.bat with an argument. Are you certain it wasn't just 7800basic.exe that hung? (which is normal, since it shouldn't be called directly)
Well, I booted my primary system into Windows 7 (it has a triple-boot setup, as Windows 7 was what I used, before getting Windows 10 Pro), and tried each of the programs. Just to be sure I didn't get a bad download, I copied my development environment from my Linux hard drive to my Windows hard drive, and tested both. Under Windows 7 they worked perfectly fine. And the strange thing is... I can't replicate the hang anymore, either!
And I don't understand why... I re-booted into Windows 10, after testing things under Windows 7, and now it works. It must have been a false alarm, or something was going on, that was stopping it... my guess is my anti-virus (avast!) was secretly scanning it, and didn't tell me (because that's what it did, the first time I tried opening 7800basic.exe, today), but I could be wrong about that. I don't remember what all I had running, then. Sorry to have bothered you with that. 
Got GIMP setup today (I think) and just successfully compiled a sample program. Getting ready to start reading about the commands.
What is recommended for an editor? JEDIT or just use notepad (Windows 7 btw).
Thanks for the development of this RevEng!!
Forgive me if I'm answering a question that wasn't aimed at me, but you can use any text editor. I would recommend Notepad++, since it lets you open more than one file at a time, and keeps them in tabs. It's freeware, too.
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Someone has got to port Bonk's Adventure to the 2600. Hudson/NEC mascots get no love...
Why not have someone port it to the 7800? It could look just as good, if not better, than the NES port, use the POKEY (or YM2151) for background music, and maybe be more like the TG-16 version in ways the NES version wasn't (end-of-level sequences with different music, and the screen following Bonk as bonuses are counted up, for two examples), with some Engrish fixed ("Begin 2 Round", anyone?).
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You don't need THAT much for 8-bit music. Gyruss is a fine example of it, but a single Pokey could do most of what Gyruss would require. It's a matter of being very clever in synthesis rather than throwing out notes. (Seriously, listen to Gyruss's arrangements. Really not as complex as people think.) Yamaha really is SERIOUS overkill for early 1980s games.
For grins and giggles, I threw Prickle into MESS, and Random Terrain's Tone Toy 2008 into Stella, to see how close I could get to imitating the "Perfect!" cue from the chance stage. I found that neither the POKEY, nor the TIA, could hit the really low square wave notes you hear first, but I got pretty close, by using a low sawtooth wave. The three other chords you hear afterward are two notes, in the same key, played at the same time.
But now that you've mentioned that, I'm curious; I hope this doesn't sound weird, or demeaning/insulting in any way, but is there an example for that? Because that actually sounds pretty interesting, and I'd love to see how someone could do something like that, with just a single POKEY's four channels.
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The character graphics are terrible and the movement looks like something the Spectrum would do but the graphics for the tank and other vehicles - not the helicopters - are really good and arguably better than the 7800 version. The music and audio SFX are also POKEY based. Those items might be worthy of pilfering for the ultimate 7800 hack of the title.
With that in mind, I wonder: how close to the arcade's music could we get, if someone tried to make a POKEY rendition, using, oh say, a combination of square, triangle and sawtooth waves? I bet the POKEY could probably do a near-perfect rendition of the theme song, and whatever the name of that song is, that plays after a certain number of rounds. Maybe that might work better, than using the POKEY audio from the Atari 8-bit version? Just a thought.
And sorry if I'm helping to de-rail the thread.
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That actually really comes in handy, so thank you! I was just wondering if 7800basic had a random number generator, and you answered my question.
EDIT: And I think we might be having a problem with 7800basic, at least under Windows 10... I just re-downloaded it under Windows 10 (my primary setup is Kubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit, a.k.a. Linux) to make some screenshots, to try and help both Lewis2907, and anyone else who might find it slightly daunting to install this excellent piece of software, and found something, when I tried to run both 7800bas.bat, and 7800basic.exe (the second one was just to localize the problem):
Running 7800bas.bat by itself just says "The system cannot find the path specified." (I did run install_win.bat first, so it's set up properly), while either adding a command-line argument ("7800bas adventurer.bas" to be exact), or running 7800basic.exe by itself, gives me this:
Is anyone else having any problems with theirs? My Linux setup works just fine (7800basic.sh, 7800basic.Linux.x86, and the like), and as far as I know, I'm using the latest build for it, as well (the one on the first post, as of the date I posted this). Maybe I got a bad download?
Just thought I'd throw that out there. If this has already been fixed, or answered earlier in this thread, forgive me.
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That's definitely true, however I think the NES is unique, compared to most of the 8-bit game consoles, as its sound generator has a dedicated digital sound channel (a.k.a. the "DPCM channel"), so as far as I know (and I might be wrong about this), the NES can actually play sound samples, without having to stop everything. Konami games are great examples, as they usually have snare and kick drum samples, among others. And, in the case of Blades of Steel, like you mentioned, there's also the other speech samples, like "Face-off!", "Fight!", and the garbled mess/"With the pass!"/"Lick the pole!" (according to Wikipedia, it's saying "Get the pass!"), when you pass the puck, on certain occasions.
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Actually, the 7800 version's copyright screen says "Developed by Sculptured Software". So maybe Imagineering did the XE version?
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I grew up calling it "Gay-den", as well. When I found out the official pronunciation, then I started calling it "guy-den". Of course, when I started learning a bit of Japanese, I started to think that maybe it was pronounced "guy-dane", since the "e" sound in Japanese is supposed to sound like a long "a".
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So PacMan Red - does this mean someone is making use of your terrific artwork? :-)
Well, if they're not, then good gravy, they seriously ought to be!
These look epic, Illya! -
I would also add that you might want to try the .a78 file that 7800basic generates in an emulator, rather than the .bin file, because most 7800 emulators (like MESS and ProSystem) use that file.
When you use 7800basic to compile your game, it should make a bunch of files. Like, if your game is called MsPACMAN.bas (using your example), when 7800basic compiles it, it should make a few more files, like MsPACMAN.bas.bin, MsPACMAN.bas.a78, MsPACMAN.bas.asm, and so on. The .bin file is what you put onto an EPROM or EEPROM, so you can play it on an actual 7800 console, while an emulator can use the .a78 file, as that tells it how to set up your game (like, how big is the ROM, does it have a POKEY chip, is there extra RAM in the cartridge, and all sorts of other technical stuff).
Hope that helps.
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Drat! And here I thought they were leaving together! We'll all miss them so... (okiday, I'll stop, now.)
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Double Dragon XM
in Atari 7800
Posted
Well, I do agree that the newly-edited dragon looks better than the old one. And the car doesn't look too bad, even though the differences between the old and new car designs aren't as pronounced as the dragon's differences.