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djmips

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Blog Comments posted by djmips

    SpiceWare

    Posted

    On 3/10/2017 at 1:48 PM, Keatah said:

    Thx. As always this is neat stuff. Back in the 70's and 80's I never guessed the VCS would have such development taking place. Let alone any..

    Yeah the "let alone any", is what I what I could have maybe predicted but there's no way in hell I'd imagine carts with tiny supercomputers inside.

    djmips

    Posted

    Hey DJMIPS,

    Did you ever get round to implementing that faster atan2 method?

    So funny, I was reading my own post again today and it feels a little bit like Fermat's last theorem now. Even the 'now' me wants to know what awesome idea I had. I feel like I had a super idea but then got distracted and never got back to it and now it's gone into the ether... :D

    djmips

    Posted

    Everything is well for me. Turmoil would be the quick way to describe the last year. I moved back to Canada (Vancouver) and started a game company with a friend. Things went great and the game is coming along nicely, however, funds were limited and now, to pay my bills, I'm working back in 3D rendering programming at United Front Games in downtown Vancouver. I don't have a 2600 'project' right now. I have been spending time doing some odds and ends for the NES and for the Propeller embedded system. Most of my time in the last few months has been completely soaked up by the incredible challenge of working out a great renderer for DX11 that properly harnesses all of the CPU cores and the powerful GPUs whilst maintaining backwards compatibility with DX10 cards and older CPUs.

    vdub_bobby

    Posted

    Uhm... what did you do to Bob, Billy? :D
    The game had been in development limbo for years. Meanwhile, I'd done several revisions of label and manual artwork for it, and had kind of grown attached to the concept (rock/paper/scissors presented in a ridiculously overblown style). Billy had lost interest in finishing it, and said it was okay if I found someone else to work on it. So I asked Bob, since he'd already done a nifty rendition of some music for it, and he was willing to take it on. The rest, as they say, will eventually be history. :D
    Bob, my perennial 2600 collaborator has invited me to join the project; how could I say no, after all the help he has given me in the past. It is my pleasure to help finish up this game. - David
    Nathan Strum

    Posted

    Thanks for the nice review of BLiP Football. I had fun doing my part for that, though the part you (rightly) praise the most, the gameplay, was all David. :ponder:

     

    woah... Way to come late to the party. :) Thanks for the nice review for BLiP football. As always, Bob, did a great job on the graphics and kernel.

     

    A little insight, my first home computer was a Kim-1 (it was 6502 based and had a calculator keypad and 7 segment display) and I always wanted to write this football game for the Kim-1 when I was a child but I was never quite good enough and I moved onto the Apple and C64 by 1980. This version for the 2600 was a whimsical idea to do an emulator of a more primitive system on a more advanced hardware. I'm not sure that anyone gets the joke but me.

     

    I came up with the idea of doing Fanfare for the Common Man but it was Tommy Montgomery who arranged it for the 2600. It always makes me smile whenever the cartridge starts. It is so ridiculous.

     

    Now that I have a micro KIM from Briel Computers, at some point this year, I am finally going to move this game over to the KIM-1.

     

    - David

    supercat

    Posted

    Nifty! If you added the mines and player ship would it necessarily flicker?

     

    I guess it would have to but, it wouldn't look too bad I don't think. The original kind of flickered anyway. ;)

     

    I really think you should consider more collaboration, you make the awesome display kernels and collaborators can do the gameplay / art!

    supercat

    Posted

    I'm glad you did this; I had been working on and off over the years on a multi voice synth for the 2600 and always knew it was technically possible. As I was working on it I was inspired by Bruce Tomlin's very cool Red Box (DTMF dialer + phone hacking) and his remarks that you couldn't do a general player (although I'm sure he would probably qualify them with the fact that you are hampered in what you can display whilst doing this music routine and specifically he was talking about using the techniques in Red Box). I also liked Andy Muchos driver that used PWM. Which brings me to the question. Generalizing, what kinds of display kernels can you have while playing your four voice music?

     

    I never really put the effort in to finish a working model but I also appreciate that your genius in solving this!

    vdub_bobby

    Posted

    Check out this boss character (technodrome) on the NES

     

    It's from TMNT.

     

    I did the so-so port to the C64 and I think our version was pretty cool as well. Giant bosses like this really benefit from a black background because they are actually just a playfield (map) scrolling. It's a cool effect though.

     

    On the C64 version, I put stars in the background which I counter-scrolled to keep them 'still'. It gave a neat effect that really sold the 'giant sprite' of the technodrome. I had a lot of people around the office really guessing at first. You can't do that on a C64!!

     

    Those were the days...

     

    - David

    djmips

    Posted

    Welcome back David. We were concerned about who was going to pay for the Heavy Industries superfund cleanup, but now that you're back, that won't be an issue. ;)

     

    ;) - Wow, that had me in stitches. I hope there isn't too much pollution to be concerned about. When I make these homebrews, I'm really in the mindset of the seventies and maybe I should do better and reduce the heavy metal tailings and atmospheric pollution.

    djmips

    Posted

    Thanks, no there isn't any associated bad news. I've accomplished some things that I had set as goals back in 1982. :ponder: There are a few negative things, like not getting paid for some projects, but mostly I did it for fun anyway. The other negatives are the lack of excitement these days. Most of motivation has to come from within. I haven't been aching to make anything for quite a while and things have been pretty quiet recently. So I'm just going to wander off and spend a little more time on the other hobbies. I've still got quite a backlog of other projects to get working.

    EricBall

    Posted

    I don't have any website links to send you to directly but my tip doesn't occur to everyone. I have my system setup so the web browser runs out of an restritcted account, that means it doesn't have the ability to install or spawn processes that can write to the registry or overwrite system dll files.

     

    I actually don't have any data on wether this is effective but it does seem to be a logical idea.

     

    I think that there is a movement to use checksums on downloaded freeware / shareware to ensure that you aren't getting a parasite attached to your download.

     

    With my kids computers, they are all running as fairly limited users on their systems.

     

    I think the biggest problem is that most people with Windows XP systems, run 100% of the time as administrators. That's probably the least sensible thing to do if you are trying to protect yourself from trojans and parasites.

     

    I have heard of the Windows malicious software removal tool and their Forefront client security but I've never delved too deeply into them.

     

    They also have a Anti-Malware blog http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/ The IT guy where I work swears by one of these MS anti-malware tools. I'll have to find out which one he was referring to.

     

    There are also some useful tools in the now integrated sysinternals group. The rootkit revealer can be a useful tool.

    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...itRevealer.mspx

     

    I know there are more shareware anti malware software but I've never really got them to work, and as you point out it's a matter of trust. How do you know that the anti malware software is not just a host for more malware?

     

    I usually end up just reinstalling Windows when the system becomes infected.

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