Bad Panda Bear

DOH! Nobody said there'd be any thinking involved. So I asked myself, what would I do in C/C++? Well I might try to get the screen position from the logical position by moding the logical position by 160. But this won't work, because 1024 % 160 will be 64. This would leave an invisible wall at 64 pixels into the last screen, which would look bad. So really the screen is just a window into the larger game world. So we could have a 2 byte variable that stores the upper left coordinate of the screen in logical coordinates. This would range from 0 to 864 (1024 - 160). To find the position of a ship in physical screen coordinates, simply subtract the screen's logical position from the ship's position. If it is < 0, then the ship is off screen and should not be drawn. If it is >= 0, and < 160 then the difference is the physical coordinates of the ship. Hmmm...does the left corner of the sprite start when the RESPx is set? If so, then the above idea would have problems with ships that are partially off the screen to the left. So perhaps the logical coordinates should start at the right end of the logical world. Then the physical X position would be: screenXPos - shipXPos Assuming that screenXPos represents the left hand corner of the screen. So if we could spare the cycles to do the above subtraction, we would not need the extra bytes to store the physical location of the ships. But we would need two bytes for the logical position of the screen. So did anything I just wrote make sense to anyone? Anyway an another topic: The reason I put the NUSIZ values into a variable was because I was afriad that changing the NUSIZ registers on the previous scan line could affect how that scanline displayed. This would only happen for the arrows because there are no empty scanlines between the arrows and the ships on the horizon. So should I add a scanline between the arrows and the ships? It seems that this might be neccessary anyway for the horizontal positiong code. That's enough thinking for tonight. It's sleepy time for me.

I don't think there is an artist on the team, so I decided to try to make some sprites myself. Here is a screen shot with carriers on the left, tankers on the right, and an enemy sub in the middle. I left the bottom arrow alone for now. I'm not particularly happy with these so if anyone has suggestions for improving these sprites please let me know.

The solution I've been trying is to use a video capture card to view the PAL signal on my computer, which is connected to my TV through a DVI input. Video capture cards cost around 50-60 dollars. Unfortunately most capture cards sold in the U.S. only have NTSC tuners. This left me with an extra PCTV Rave card that I cannot use . The only card I found that's readilly available in the U.S. is the [email protected] Master. Unfortunately this has crappy software and I have yet to get it to work with my PAL-B atari 2600. I'm waiting for a new release of dScaler to try again. Another option would be to get a hold of a video capture card made in Europe or Austrailia, which would have a PAL tuner. Or you could do a video mod on the Atari 2600. Most video card capture cards will support PAL through S-Video or composite even if they don't have a PAL tuner. Good luck with your quest to use yor PAL 2600 in the U.S.. I'll post a follow up if I ever have any success getting this to work with my setup.

I like the shooting sound effect on Spider Fighter for my GBA Activision Anthology, but I haven't played it on a real 2600. How does the GBA sound for this game compare to the real thing?

I just bought your heavy sixer. Even though technically I spent my e-bay budget for the month a couple weeks ago.

Hmmm, about two hours away. I'll have to think about this. I think it's sad that you should have to get rid of your collection. I'd be willing to donate some money as well.

I haven't been very impressed with the surround sound on my system. Maybe I should have spent more than $500 on a receiver and 5.1 speaker set.

I got one of these Beeshu Ultimate Supersticks from E-Bay a couple weeks ago. It works on my Atari 2600, with both buttons firing. (There's a switch to go between using the left or right buttons). However on my Atari 7800, I can't get any of the buttons to fire. According to the box it supports "Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64,128, Atari 2600, XE and ST, AMSTRAD and Spectrum" If no one else does it, I'll try to get pictures of the stick and the box for the rarity guide this weekend.

But from what I've seen of the game, the top arrow is different from the targgeting arrows. The black arrow is where a torpedo will go if it's fired, the red targeting arrows are where on a ship a torpedo would hit if it's fired, taking into account the ship's speed and direction. Also in the arcade version, there can be multiple targeting arrows if there are multiple ships that could be hit by a torpedo. So could we have to up to five arrows, red ones for targeting the ships, and a black one for the where the torpedo will go? Perhaps using the two player sprites, two missle sprites and the ball? Or maybe we'd just limit it to one red arrow? Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself here. What I'd like to do is to break it up into small milestones that I can start working off one by one. Here's what I think might work: Milestone 1: Get the background colors of the horizon and the ocean drawn. This will be fairly easy as there's no sprites to mess with. Milestone 2: Get two ships in the foreground drawn. Milestone 3: Get the two ships in the foreground moving. Maybe just by adding temporary joystick control to the ships. What I want to do is get the display code that reads the fractional ship positions working, but not worry about the game logic for calculating velocity and movement yet. Milestone 4: Get two more ships in the foreground, this involves adding flicker to alternate frames. Milestone 5: Add the enemy sub. This might be a part of mileston 4, but I was wondering if we could move the enemy sub to be between the foreground ships and the horizon ships. This would eliminate flicker on the enemy sub. And it makes sense as the sonar screen shows the enemy sub as between the two rows of ships. Of course this means we have 8 ships on the screen at one time, plus the enemy sub, so there's extra memory used. Milestone 6: Add the ships on the horizon. Milestone 7: Add the top black arrow. Milestone 8: Add any top red targeting arrows, or maybe not if we decide not to do that. Milestone 9: Add the bottom arrow. And then it would probably be time to switch to implementing some game logic before adding torpedoes and explosions and stuff. But I don't feel like making up mile stones for that right now. So what do you think. Is this the right approach? Are there any mistakes or weaknesses in this plan of attack? Depending on how my work responsibilities go this week, I'll try to get at least milestone one completed before next weekend. So far I think this level and detail and level of speed is perfect. Thanks so much for organizing this, this looks like it's gong to be fun!

Hi Cybergoth, I haven't had time to go through your latest post in detail, but I have looked at the framework you posted and I have some questions. This looks like it is the F8 bankswitching scheme I've read about. It starts out with variables for the first bank, which are divided into variables common to both banks, and variables local to bank 0. The variables for the second bank have a similar layout. So my first question is, won't the too banks clobber each other's local variables? I suppose it isn't a problem with the intro screen, since it won't be used during the game. But I imagine the game logic would need to switch over to the networking code to get the moves for the second player. Second, I'd like to confirm my understanding of how the DASM ORGs and RORGs are being used. The first segment uses an ORG 1000 To put it at that location in the dasm output file. And then a RORG D000. The second segment uses an ORG 2000 to put it after the first segment in the output file, and an RORG F000. Am I interpreting this correctly? Since D000 and F000 will look the same to the 6507, is the difference between the RORGs so that the assembler won't get confused between addresses in the two banks? I noticed that the RAM segment for the first bank is named "vars", but the RAM segment for the second bank is named "variables". Is this so that the assembler won't get confused between the two segments? And finally, I noticed that each segment ends with a series of interrupt vectors that point to the FirstInit for each segment. The second segment has an ORG $2FEF/RORG $FFEF to move the interrupt vectors to the end of the bank. Shouldn't the first bank have similar statements? That's it for now, I will start digesting your other message later today.

There's a lot of good games I've missed out on, but of the ones I've played here are my favorites (in no particular order): Asteroids (Arcade version) Half-Life Dark Forces Jedit Knight Halo Space Invaders (2600 version) X-Wing Tie Fighter Starfire (2600 homebrew) Civ II

Let me think, I remember Parker Brothers games, and Imagic games, and 20th Century Fox games, but no Activision. No wait! I remember we had a white label Space Shuttle! I thought that game was the coolest thing. Allthough I never actually successfully completed a mission. This would have been sometime before 1985, because we still lived in Seattle.

Since my current Atari 2600 project is going no where, I'll volunteer to help with the programming. I'm new to 2600 programming, but not new to assembly language or programming in general. So I'm willing to take on tasks 7 and 8 if no one else has their hearts set on them. I have no hardware or musical skills, so 4 and 3 are out.

Programming can be an extremely difficult and frustrating task, so don't be surprised if it takes a while to get good at it. A mistake I made when I was first learning was to try to write a program all at once. I would write a whole bunch of code, and then it would take forever to get it to compile and even longer to get it to work. Instead I think it's better to start with a small piece of the functionality and slowly build it up into a complete program. I like to evolve my programs slowly as I start to understand the inherent difficulties and problems in whatever I'm working on. Good luck, and don't forget to swear at the computer a lot. Good programming requires lots of profanity

Dammit! If only I had searched for "Atari Supercharger" instead of "Atari 2600 Supercharger"

It was a dream that got me back into Atari 2600 gaming. I dreamt that I still had my old 4 switch woody and was playing it in my computer room. When I woke up, I was sad to remember that I had sold it at a garage sale years ago. So I went on e-bay and started buying.

I think this is a cell phone number, not a land line phone number. In the U.S. the FCC has forced cell phone companies to allow number portability. You'll notice that the auction states that the number can be switched to cell phones and internet phone services.

I finally did it! I found the best strategy was short sessions every day, no more than one hour long. I tend to improve a lot more over the 24 hours between sessions than I do if I play for several hours straight. Another strategy is to go for as many diamonds and freighters as possible on the lower levels. It seems that if you wait for a while, then less will show up. So shooting them quickly yields more scoring oppurtunities.

I saw this on ebay and just had to have it. But out of curiosity, was this a good deal? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...69&category=162

I remember being impressed with the 400/800 version of E.T. There were no pits, and the end spaceship animation was cool. OTOH, the new Starfire homebrew on the 2600 is just as good as the version I played on my 800xl.

Hi, everyone. I've decided to de-lurk to ask a question about a CCE "Supergame" system I just bought on ebay. It has a composite out but it looks like this was done as an aftermarket mod (The back of the case isn't flush at the seems, and the box mentions a TV switch box). However, I've seen other systems on ebay that have had the same mod. So who did all these mods?