Franco Catrin

I only had two versions: A clean one that came compressed and I was unable to patch directly, and this uncompressed one by Kilroy. If you can point me to the one with the loading screen I can take a look. Font patches are welcome ?

It works fine in PAL and NTSC, but now that I think of, I don't know if in PAL the colors are the same, I think they may be a bit off. It doesn't have bosses, only a big plane from time to time. As I could see in the code, there are 4 stages for this game.

Hello everyone! I did some changes for the Screaming Wings game to improve the graphics and also improve the gameplay with it. I always felt that the game was too hard because you couldn't see the bullets neither the enemies against the background, so I changed them (see screenshots). Doing these changes I also created some reverse-engineering tools for Atari that may be interesting for some people. https://github.com/fcatrin/a8tools I also wrote a post about the process. It's in spanish but I can translate it if there is interest on it. http://franco.arealinux.cl/2020/06/a8tools-y-como-mejorar-screaming-wings-para-atari-800/ Cheers Screaming Wings 2020.xex

Of course I can do the changes that you might need! I'll send you a PM!

WOW you did in a few days what several of us were trying to do for a long time. I've just seen the first stage and got blown away! Hats off. Excellent job!

Oh no, there is no such a thing, the sprite is once in memory. The precalculated tables are at the byte level, but it seems you already got it. Also, the animations are done at 15fps, you don't need to go higher than that.

If you need faster graphics may be you can borrow some of my code for this game. It relies in precalculated tables https://github.com/fcatrin/a8pop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGc7zjj660

Awesome work!!!!! Now waiting for the topic for purchasing them :-)

You are right! I'll take that restriction out of my mind.

Hey!! How time flies!! What an amazing port is that one for the BBC!! Reading about their progress reminded me the same struggles and doubts. Specially those about memory use, because for my code to run fast it uses a lot of precalculated tables and I don't know it they will fit on memory once the implementation grows, I must get to that point to know. As popmilo said, the graphics department have done a great job and I am the roadblock here, but the good news are that most of my real life problems are being left back and I'm "resuming normal operations" step by step. I hope to be back at A8 coding this year, there is no reason not to do it now.

Hi José!! We have to go back on track!

May be you don't realize but you are some kind of God to us. Your STAC inspired a lot of people here in Chile, I even got my first job thanks to a clone system that I did after reading your code (I was 14). Not to mention the users!! They just adore the turbo + error recovery system. Vitoco made another clone that was way more popular than mine, and I knew about him because of that. I think I'll do the reverse engineering again and then compare my findings with your source, just for fun.

This is awesome in many levels!!! I was behind a CAS with your loader for many years and I got one just a few days/weeks ago. I reverse-engineered your loader when I was a kid and I always had trouble understanding a part that seemed like an alternative bitrate estimator to me. I haven't checked your code yet and I don't know if I should jump directly into it or I'll try to repeat the reverse-engineering, it was just too fun. If that was a bitrate estimator, your loader is unique. All turbo/error recovery clones (including mine) didn't made that part, only tuned the SIO to use a faster bitrate at recording.

I use a version control system for that (Subversion in my case). I just push or pull the changes from my server and that way I can work on any machine. PS: Thanks for the good wishes. We are working on it!

It doesn't make me laugh, I think that those graphics are fine. May be you are being too critical with your own work. If I were you, I would take the learning of skills needed as a project in itself. Learn some asm, it is not so hard in these days if you have the will to do it, then come back to your game and bring it to life again! If you think that you need more help, here in AA there are people that work that way (José Pereira is the first one to come to mind)

Well, Prince of Persia moved past beyond some graphics ideas and an awesome intro. My latest update was in September 2015 with backgrounds rendering from the original maps, double buffered animated software sprites and awesome graphics provided by artists in this forum. At least until this point, the game is doable even when some people like emkay say it is not. For the way that PoP renders the backgrounds I wasn't sure that the masking would be fast enough, but it was. Each coder have different reasons to project stagnation, and I share some things that have been said here. All projects are fun an fascinating at the beginning, when you are doing a lot of new stuff, seeing how what you had in mind becomes something real. Once that is done, the amazingness curve starts to flatten and it requires more push to get the project going.. then real life adds more breaks to it. In my personal case, I had two personal projects in that state, one was PoP and the other one was RetroBoxTV which I was developing since 2012 with a commercial version "almost finished". Then from September I was decided that I needed to finish RBXTV and it went public in December 2015. I was really focused in RetroBoxTV and my "normal work" that I didn't realized how I ended working from 10AM to 4AM seven days a week. Surely I wouldn't look at PoP in that time if I wanted to get RBTV out. Then real life triggered in. After 15 years of marriage my wife asked me for divorce this January, and then all my priorities changed. I looked back and realized that she was right and I was wrong. My plan didn't change at all in any case, I only reorganized my life when she was gone. It's a bit of risky but I choose the RBXTV path and dropped some normal work. As things have developed I believe that RBTV will allow me to do only the things that I like, and that includes Prince of Persia in the near future. In my case, it's not about the code or technical difficulties, it's just a matter of balance between work and life, and priorities. I love what I've done in Prince of Persia, and I would love it even if it only showed one screen with no sprites, but today is not the time to work on it if I want to have a good life in the next years. PS: My wife came back two weeks ago, I have a second chance. I will not screw it this time.

Yes it is.

No news in my side. Totally consumed giving support to the recently released RetroBoxTV

If you have an Android set-top box and want to use a gamepad, you should try RetroBoxTV Atari (Droid800) support then (www.retroboxtv.com)

But Pitfall wasn't a 8-bit 2600 conversion, it's a 2600 original which was later converted to the Arcade (by others).

What about adding more circuits? It was always a bit disappointing to have only one circuit

I'm sort of beginner on software sprites, from that perspective and without going into to much technical detail, here are some advices: First and most important: Don't mix math code with sprite code. It will be easier to program and optimize when the time comes if they are separated. The following advices are just derivates from this approach. The Atari/6502 doesn't have mul/div, but the factors are always the same, for example 40 bytes per scanline. Use precalculated tables for screen positions, then you need to setup one register index to read the multiplied result. Rendering at pixel precision can be hard too. Precalculate the rotations needed, then the rendering code will be straightforward

What a great update! Awesome! Buenísimo!

It looks really good!! Congratulations!!