Thomas Jentzsch

Given the number of different controllers which act different with SWCHA, I don't think using SWCHA to detect an exit is a good idea. Therefore I would suggest using SWCHB only. E.g. while pressing RESET, switch Color/B&W. Not sure if detecting a change is feasible though.

Yes. It reads from and writes to SWCHA. Only the bits 2 and 3 are relevant, but the writes obviously always affect all bits, thus affect the left port too. Not sure if that would help, but does the exit code consider the state of SWACNT? I suppose the current code only checks bit 7 to become 0. I think it would help if you check bits 4..6 for being 1 too. Note: Probably the problem occurs now, because VROOM! is the first Paddles game which supports the SaveKey. I did a test with another homebrew (Three.s) which uses Joystick and SaveKey. There I can not reproduce the problem.

You cannot simply copy existing code and plug it into a new game. The code has to fit to the overall code, which usually means that you have to rewrite large parts if not everything from scratch. The graphics (data) may have been copied, but the code definitely not.

I just got my QuadTari today and while testing my VROOM! game on the PlusCart, the game suddenly returned to the PlusCart menu when pressing RESET to start a race. As it turned out this is due to the SaveKey attached to the right port. Other controllers seem to play no role here. I only have to read from the SaveKey and press RESET afterwards to trigger the problem. Any ideas? Also, can I disable the exit function somehow?

BTW: Did you notice the startup problems of James' cart? Was that a physical thing? Or is James' hardware behaving differently again?

Well, they invested a lot of money and I am pretty sure after 40 years in business they know what they are doing. I am pretty sure they will sell their games at a very high volume when compared to the usual AtariAge sales even of top notch homebrews. What I didn't like was the amount of self-praise during the stream. That is something we normally do not see from homebrewers on that scale. Maybe that's a cultural thing or maybe that is something you automatically develop after being admired by fans for so many years? Anyway, it made them look a bit snobbish to me, but I suppose most people will see this differently or don't mind at all. Nevertheless, I hope they will link closer to the existing homebrewing scene than it seems now. The Atari 2600 development community is very small and I wouldn't like to see it split between "them" and "us".

It would most likely have been too expensive in 1982, but we had 32K Fatal Run only a few years later. So at least by the end of the 2600 lifetime, 128K seemed feasible. And utilizing 128K with just 128 bytes of RAM requires some quite clever game design.

Do we know better now? In last night's ZPH show, the Audacity guys mentioned that their new games will work in Javatari, Stella and RetroN77, which would indicate that they are using an existing bankswitching, already supported by Stella. @batari As the designer of SuperBank, did you collaborate with Audacity?

My QuadTari arrived to today! Thanks @gauauu! Now I can start testing my game on real hardware.

Yes, that's right. I wouldn't call them "notes". It's just a base frequency divided by 1..32. And some of the dividers just happen to be close to real notes.

Wrong.

IMO, who is here for the money is wasting his time.

OK, then I can optimize my code and XOR the bits.

AFAIK there is no such list for homebrews. But Stella's info overlay (enable with ALT+L) will tell you. For details see Stella's documentation. For original games you can you this document from Kevin Horton.

How about INPT2 negative and INPT3 positive? Can that happen in theory or with a certain controller?

Depends on the game and measures taken. E.g. ARM games are much harder to dump.

/signed

I am not aware of anything better.

AtariAge is working on it, but Al's time is limited.

It seems like the wanted to make a statement, else they wouldn't have said so. Anyway, I don't mind how they call it, I am just happy that I can compare my efforts with theirs. And learn.

I wonder if AtariAge is considered a "retro video game store" too.

Then I would like to know how they think about the original DPC. And where they would draw the line. This has been discussed a lot here and I think many people would like how the legends think about it.

I think he asks if you could make the shell slightly thinner where you put the logo base. Then the inside space would stay constant.

Good job. Looking forward to how a completed cart will look like, as I cannot image how the two parts will fit together.