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Cybernoid

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Posts posted by Cybernoid

  1. Posted

    A little more info from:

     

    http://www.atari8.info/dodajkomentarz.php?...ews=107&lang=en

     

    As yesterday told me Jerry, he has invented new Atari interface, called SIO2SD. It supports virtual disk 90KB - 16MB in ATR format, using the SD or MMC cards, which can be hot-plugged, with no need to turn off the computer. Under the atari.dwb.pl address we can see test version. The controlling and disk change (any number of ATRs) can be done via special buttons, or from the Atari.

    The whole project will be available as Open Source.

  6. Posted

    SIO2USB interface already does this.

     

    take a USB hard-drive case (with a drive inside ofcurse) write your ATR files to it. then plug the drive to the SIO2USB interface on the ATARI and boot the computer

     

    Well this is awesome. I did not know that. That is easy!

     

    I would like to see something done for the MyIDE, however, many people have this... well okay maybe about 100 people...

  7. Posted

    I don't think this too possible without some clever remapping algorithm,

    most of my 2.5" HD IDE drives have different numbers of sectors, cylinders and heads and so how the data is layed out/extracted would differ between them.

     

    In the ATA spec, there is already a way to send a command to the HD and then read back parameters from the drive including sectors, cylinders, heads and many others. I have already written something for the Atari that will read these values. Just need to port it to the PC. Not sure if it is clever, but... :)

  8. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    I have a couple of questions about some software I would like to see for the PC....

     

    This is what I was thinking would be nice:

     

    A software package for Windows that allows you to do a RAW write to an IDE drive or a CompactFlash card/disk. This way you could write ATR images and Data to a disk quickly on a PC, then plug it into your Atari.

     

    This is what I know:

    (1) You can access the ATA/IDE registers under windows, but are there any software examples out there that I can look at that anyone knows of?

     

    (2) You cannot "hot-swap" IDE drives, but there are USB->IDE enclosures.

     

     

    Anyway, if anyone has some information or thoughts, please let me know.

    I have a PCMCIA spec here somewhere, so I think I will start investigating the CompactFlash writter first....

     

    Thanks... -C-

  10. Posted

    so... i have now 56k ram left for the game... i managed to switch off the OS and implemented my own interrupt service routine (with help of fox back 2002)...

     

    just in case some of you want to do this as well... the $fffe,$ffff is not set correctly but works at the moment...

     

     

    Thanks for that, Heaven!

     

    And, Boinxx is looking great BTW!

     

    Are the squares with arrows going to cause the ball to move in that direction? Also, will there be "crack" squares that if you hit them too many times they fall?

     

    Anyway, I've liked playing the demos so far.... :)

  11. Posted

    Well,

    I guess this also depends on the game and if it uses full screen gfx or only part of the screen. I do remember "Wall Tetris" which uses Gr. 15 RGB mode. The game flickers, but since it only uses part of the screen (and the tetris tiles/icons are relatively small) the flickering is not so heavy and in my eyes acceptable. I guess such a flicker mode could also (have been) done to Jelly Beans, since it also uses only part of the screen...  On the other hand, graphic adventures with full screen gfx and flickering would hurt the eyes...    just my two (euro-) cents...  -andreas.

     

    The game is an RPG. I have decided on the graphics mode. I will use the same Priority-zero trick I used in JellyBeans but done a little more intelligently.

     

    The main graphics mode will be Antic 4, but only using 3 colors: White, Grey50 and Black. So, the screen will be 40x20 in 3 grey scale shades.

    However, where ever your character moves there will be a 16x10 color block that "colorizes" the screen. Each "character" within this block will have 9 colors using PM Over-/Under-lays. I think I will fade the luminance away from your character vertically to provide 29 colors on screen at the same time (this is reduced from the 90 on screen in JellyBeans).

     

    This way it will look like you are walking in a color world, but you see a greyscale map area outside of this world.

     

    This is my idea anyway, and I will have to finish the engine to see how this looks. This way I can have many colors in this game without flicker.

     

     

    Thanks for the euro-cents, especially since 50Hz PAL "hurts" more than 60Hz NTSC in the flicker department.

     

    _C_

  12. Posted

    Well,

    I would limit the program to playback only 8bit waves (one can convert the 16 bit waves on the PC a little faster) on the A8 with 6bit quality.

     

     

    Thanks! I will limit this player to 8bit mono unsigned only to increase loading speed. Playback will be 6bit.

     

    This makes my life simpler for this application anyway... :)

     

    Okay, I will clean up the simple GUI as well...

  14. Posted

    VBI 1 colors: Black' date=' Red, Green, Blue

    VBI 2 colors: Black, Magenta, Cyan, Yellow

     

    So color mixing will provide 16 colors. [/quote']

     

    I think that's far too optimistic:

     

    when two colors (with the same luma) are mixed by flickering then you get the best result, but if two colors have different luma (let's say black and blue) then the flickering really hits the eyes. Especially when you're playing a game with flicker for longer than 5 minutes, your eyes get really tired and you want to stop playing. Then, if you want to mix the two palettes you won't get 16 colors that are all useful:

     

    *snip*

     

    If you're going to use pm underlays anyway I wouldn't use flickering but the 5th color instead.

     

    Thanks! This is very helpful. You are right, when the luma differs it is not very nice on the eyes. So, I will avoid this. (I may avoid using flicker altogether, but I wanted to go through the exercise.)

     

    Also' date=' I may use:

    VBI 1 colors: Black, grey25, grey50, grey75

    VBI 2 colors: Black, grey25, grey50, grey75

     

    But with different character sets, this will provide 9 shades of grey, but I will use PM overlays, like in JellyBeans, in areas. (ignoring the 5th color for now).[/quote']

     

    ...hmmm, I think it's only 7 shades (black, black-grey25, grey25, grey25-grey50, grey50, grey50-grey75, grey 75). Could be more useful, but it's still just 2 shades more than you already can use (with 5 colors).

     

    You are right according to the way I wrote it. If you have a linear set of

    shades 0, 2, 4, 6 you can produce these shades: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6 (7 shades).

     

    But if you have these shades: 0,2,6,8 you can produce: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 (9 shades). Which was what I was using to calculate. Actually if you have these shades: 0,2,6,14 you can produce these shades: 0,1,2,3,4,6,7,8,10,14 (10 shades!).

     

    But, I may not use this since it will cause bad flicker...

     

     

    Flickering is nice for static demopictures but not for games

     

     

    Okay, I will keep this in mind, and come up with a different way to produce colors...

     

    Thanks

    _C_

  16. Posted

    Well, I am working on another game, and I was wondering what you think of graphics modes.

     

    The graphics mode I am thinking of using is ANTIC mode 4 but change the character set and colors every VBI.

     

    VBI 1 colors: Black, Red, Green, Blue

    VBI 2 colors: Black, Magenta, Cyan, Yellow

     

    So color mixing will provide 16 colors.

     

    Also, I may use:

    VBI 1 colors: Black, grey25, grey50, grey75

    VBI 2 colors: Black, grey25, grey50, grey75

     

    But with different character sets, this will provide 9 shades of grey, but I will use PM overlays, like in JellyBeans, in areas. (ignoring the 5th color for now).

     

    Anyway, my basic question is, "Do you mind this sort of flicker in a game?"

     

    I plan on only alternating between 2 sets of colors/charsets, so the flicker is not too bad (according to my TV experiments), or do you think I should just stay with 5 colors only?

     

     

    Thanks,

    _C_

  17. Posted

    Hey, I found all my old BBS download disks from back in the day. :)

     

     

    On these disks are a few demos, a few games, and a few utilities...

     

    Some of these are simple Basic demos, but I still like "KILCOMIE.BAS" and "APPLE.BAS"... hehehe.

     

    Anyway, I have about thousand more disks of games and demos to weed through, so this stuff isn't exactly organized yet...

     

    _C_

    bbs_downloads1.zip

  18. Posted

    Hi Fandal!

     

    How about playing the creator? I will be available (during my lunch hour) at 11:00am to 12:00 my time (18:00 - 19:00 your time).

     

    Also, check out the new release Version 1.0.2:

     

    http://geocities.com/vlastaar/jellybeans/j...eans_v1_0_2.zip

     

    The READ.ME is a great idea. I will add one to the released versions...

     

    Anyone else available?

     

    _C_

     

    PS - I cannot guarantee that network mode will work at the moment, but having a few testers would be great!!!

  19. Posted

    Oh. Yup, this basically answers my questions.... :)

     

    Hmm, have to look at G2F again.

     

    Also, isn't there a way to allow ANTIC to load instructions, then turn off the instruction DMA to allow ANTIC to display one line over and over again?

     

    Is there a way to cause GTIA to output video data on line 21 (NTSC)?

     

    Thanks...

  22. Posted

    Does your PC lock up or your Atari?

     

    I usually use the RI "Serial Control" option. I think this is what you will want with a one chip interface. The safety margin is useful if your PC is slow, but I assume that this is not the case. I would try 2 or 3, just to see...

     

    Adjust the Framing Threshold only if your Atari locks up after is switches to high speed SIO...

     

    These suggestions are only if the Atari is locking up, not the PC...

     

     

    _C_

  23. Posted

    Next question, how about programming a universal PCM/WAV player ?!? Meaning with input/load routine, a directory option and of course a playback routine (and maybe also a quit to menu / dir. function and a exit to DOS/DUP function)...  That would be very nice. A similar program, called "The sound Utility" by Tom Hunt already exists, but it works only bug-free under sparta or Bewe-DOS (and has many bugs under DOS 2). Last not least it is only 4bit playback...

     

    Andreas,

     

    Since you seem to be the most interested in this project, let me ask you a few questions...

     

    (1) I am thinking of abandoning the 5bit and 4bit playback options, and stick with just 6bit. I do not like the quantization error (thus, high freq hiss) introduced with these modes.

     

    (2) I have a load routine that will read WAV files in a multitude of formats. But the load time can be very long. For example, if I load a 16-bit signed Stereo PCM encoded wave file, my program will do:

     

    (a) Throw away LSB of each sample.

    (b) Left/Right Channel mixing.

    © Low Pass filtering for the correct play back frequency

    (d) Resample to 11025Hz.

     

    So playback is 6bit at 11025Hz. The end result sounds great, but it takes over 2.5 hours to load a Wave file into an Atari with a 1MB memory upgrade. (a 16MB Wave file will be reduced to 1MB-8bit-signed-mono data).

     

    So, is the wait worth it?

     

    I suppose I could break this into 2 programs: one with all the DSP functions for filtering and resampling and one strickly for playback...

     

    Thoughts?

     

    _C_

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