potatohead
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Blog Comments posted by potatohead
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Totally.
AL is not going to put Atari age behind a pay wall. This is about adding some goodies people might want to pay for, and those that can do that, help the site run better, faster, etc...
I wouldn't worry about it.
What's going to happen is some people will pay, some people won't. Some people can, some people can't.
In the end, Al sees a few bucks needed to make this thing go, and we all are happy campers.
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Thanks for the link. Great track.
--->I've got "Tarzan Boy" on 12" vinyl. Played it at many a late HS / College dance...
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Good rant.
I think I understand where you are coming from regarding the VCS. I don't think anyone in that community really understands it.
Just FYI, my early efforts were more along the idea of things that could be done with a 6502. Starting down that road showed me quickly where I could learn some things. All good there. The memory foot print made the VCS early games an obvious target.
Watching the progress of the ZiCog progress has been informative. Some of the obvious ways of doing things with the COGs kind of fell flat. Other means ended up working well.
Very curious as to where you end up! Your other works have been great so far.
I'm rambling a bit. Really, the other target was an Apple. Memory is at issue, but speed and complexity are not. With the external RAM systems coming on line, having a working 6502 will open some interesting doors.
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I dunno about that. My wife and I did her cassette tape collection a while back and it was a lot of tedium. (Digitize, maximize, split to tracks, save to MP3, add ID3 info.) We also have a stack of LPs which I'd like to digitize, but cleaning up the recording (manually, using Wave Corrector, for highest quality) is hugely time consuming.
I recently digitized a stack of LPs, but instead of cleaning up the recordings, I cleaned up the records, and left all the remaining noise intact. I figured, "hey - they're records, they are what they are". I actually still like hearing some of the crackle and rumble from time to time. Sure - a pristine CD from the original masters would be preferable, but unless I'm listening to real quiet passages using headphones, I almost never hear the surface noise. The only thing I'd clean up would be real loud "pops", but fortunately I didn't run across any. (Although I did clean up some 78s awhile back which were almost all surface noise.
)I highly recommend Last record cleaner. Good stuff.
There is a lot of merit to this. Last Record Cleaner is good stuff! For years, a friend and I have shared a very large vinyl collection. He's got it now, and that's cool. I don't have the setup for it, or the room. Anyway, there are a few bottles of "Record Lube" left, purchased in a 20 pack on deep discount. You clean the record, then apply the lube, then record, then clean your stylus. Amazing stuff! Have never seen it anywhere since.
Anyway, there is a lot to just getting a good snapshot of the vinyl. The little bit of noise and pops really can add to the flavor of some music.
78s are tough! I've only done one, and it was a home recording of somebody singing into one of those record grinders. The original recording quality wasn't all that bad. Problem is after a few plays on the heavy handed turntables of the time, the noise rises with each pass. When I got it, the vocals were 10-20 db well below the noise peaks, but still above the average. Just enough to recover, but it took days. Ran noise profiling software, did cross mixing, drew a few bits by hand, and just notched all over the place. The result is maybe 20 - 30 db S/N max, with 5 - 7 Khz of overall bandwidth left. Bandwidth was probably close to the original quality of the home recorder. Noise is still worse.
Was enough to make my wifes mother cry though! She could hear him after the cleanup enough to be moved, but not before.
I'll never, ever do another one of those.
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Interestingly, ripping some of the vinyl was just fun, so we did a little of that too.
I dunno about that. My wife and I did her cassette tape collection a while back and it was a lot of tedium. (Digitize, maximize, split to tracks, save to MP3, add ID3 info.) We also have a stack of LPs which I'd like to digitize, but cleaning up the recording (manually, using Wave Corrector, for highest quality) is hugely time consuming.
Yeah that's a labor of love for sure. We used SoundForge, 24 bit sampling, diamond eliptical needle, SHURE cartridge, well balanced turntable, direct drive.
The best was filling in waves with the pencil tool. If you extrapolate from the surrounding audio forms, you can get it so close, it's not even funny.
Took a lot, but a few of those recordings are just excellent. S/N is better with digital, but there is a flavor to well pressed vinyl that's just nice. Plus, a really great 12" single, well mastered is really punchy! It's hard to explain. The media delivers 70 - 80 db, but it can do volume changes, raising the overall level up and down. On very low notes and some passages where they choose to push it, I found 16 bit audio not roomy enough to capture it. Sucks on the down sample from 24 bit too. So, I've got the things downsampled and they are great, but the really good sound remains in 24 bit. Can DVD audio, or something do that?
I find cassettes worse actually. Good Vinyl is either spot on, or has a pop or something, assuming it's not worn to the point of ruin. Tapes are just a mess throughout! Ugh...
Totally wouldn't do it for a huge number of recordings. That's part of why it made sense to just go P2P, snag good rips where it wasn't going to matter, then do the great tracks by hand.
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That's a tough one.
Maybe this helps:
At some point, keeping game history is important. So, snagging the torrent isn't that big of a deal. If that stuff is kept hot, there will be times in the future where it's worth having around.
So then, buy one a month, based on what you play.
Seems that's an equitable trade and modeling that for your son at least sets some better expectations. If you don't play one much at all, then remove it and focus on what you do play.
The reality is if we completely followed all those rules, much history would be lost, and unplayable, untinkerable. That's not good for anybody really. On the other hand, completely ignoring the rules gets us less new stuff going forward. (maybe --that's not established firmly)
So then, the balance is most people doing the right things most of the time.
Ive shown my kids about that model. If it's newer, there are reasonable ways to buy it, so do that. If it's older, then arguably there is some slack, and it's all about enjoying some history. No sales, etc... and very little harm is done. If they feel bad about it, there is likely a problem, so pony up and do the right thing.
Early on a bunch of us were downloading quality rips rather than rip our own vinyl collection. Same sort of dilemma. Keep rebuying, or consider the investment made? We ended up settling on whether or not it adds value. Some of the re-releases were arguably better. Those warranted a purchase. Some stuff is not obtainable today. Get the rip, as the rights holder was paid. Interestingly, ripping some of the vinyl was just fun, so we did a little of that too. Again, most of the people doing the right things more than not, and I think it all kind of works.
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I forgot something.
To take the movie analogy, going faster brings us the illusion of motion and the potential for the experience to be immersive. Size matters here too. It's hard to get immersed in a small screen. Colors and detail in movies help a lot with this too. With games, particularly a lot of modern games, this is a crutch.
The simple idea that if we bring enough eye and ear candy to the player that they will become immersed in the game is a false one. Just thought I would put that out there, and I would love to hear thoughts on that from others here.
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Dude, I would be all over that on the Prop!!
With there being serial, TV, VGA drivers, a Z machine would be a great show off.
The state of the SD access is actually decent. I'm pretty sure one can be added to the demo board. For sure it's easy on a protoboard / HYBRID.
Been working with your sprite driver. Nicely done. It's simple compared to other similar efforts.
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I think that is the latest. You can also find binaries in my blog.
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Smoothing won't be needed if just 2 paddles are read. Paddles in Medieval Mayhem are read every other frame (2 paddles per frame) and I didn't motion smooth the results.
Makes sense.
People seem to be able to deal with about 25Hz, plus where input latency is concerned. Anything below that is jerky and totally hammers our ability to be precise. I first experienced this when working with X Window servers. The IRIX box I ran every day had a 60Hz hardware mouse. Rock solid. The SUN box next to it had a 15 to 20Hz mouse pointer. Not sure if it was hardware or not, but it just sucked. Move, wait, frame, frame, frame as the mouse moved back and forth over the target with me over correcting a few times. End result was not being able to just go and zip, click! It was more like zip, wait to see, fine tune, then click. Or get a bit drunk, then it didn't seem to matter much!!
Thanks for linking that anyway. It's a good reference to paddle stuff.
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Nice!
Thanks for the tip. Not sure if I'll need it for two paddles. Might though! Nice to know some work has been done along those lines.
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I found who made the cart offer.
Seriously, what would you do to the game? I might go down this road. Depends on what I find when I get it all loaded up. If it builds, then I've a shot at some polish.
That's funny! I also thought about making some kind of Pong with powerups with bB not too long ago.
Your ideas sound interesting, looking forward to see how it will turn out!
Btw., are you planning to finish Ooze! and release it on cart one day?
I want to actually. Somebody, maybe it was you offered to cart it up. Maybe that's the right way to go.
Trouble with Ooze! is it's a tangled mess of code and flags. Each time I think, let's polish it up, I look at it and just kind of stall. Back when it was finished for the compo, I could have tweaked it a few places and it would have been good to go. People were wanting AtariVox and extras added too. So I stalled, and now with bB more capable, it's almost a rewrite.
That game could use a paddle too though! I don't know what to do frankly. Maybe it can be released as "Batari Basic Classics: OOZE!", or something. Simple text label, batari version, source and development log as a package. Maybe a tweak or two to fix the levels better than they are on the last solid version.
If anything else, maybe I can get a vanity cart, or a few made for those that liked it as it is, with perhaps just some cleanup. ?!?!
Nope, i didn't offer to make carts as i neither have the knowledge nor the hardware to make carts.
I really like Ooze!, simple but fun to play game. IMO it would just need a few more tweaks before it could be released on cart. Maybe a few different power ups or adding the ball sprite as an "enemy" ??
I understand that rewriting it for bB 1.0 will be a lot of work but i think it would be worth it.
I also think a multicart with a few 4k bB games like Ooze! would be a nice idea.
Yeah i know, talk is cheap...
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That's funny! I also thought about making some kind of Pong with powerups with bB not too long ago.
Your ideas sound interesting, looking forward to see how it will turn out!
Btw., are you planning to finish Ooze! and release it on cart one day?
I want to actually. Somebody, maybe it was you offered to cart it up. Maybe that's the right way to go.
Trouble with Ooze! is it's a tangled mess of code and flags. Each time I think, let's polish it up, I look at it and just kind of stall. Back when it was finished for the compo, I could have tweaked it a few places and it would have been good to go. People were wanting AtariVox and extras added too. So I stalled, and now with bB more capable, it's almost a rewrite.
That game could use a paddle too though! I don't know what to do frankly. Maybe it can be released as "Batari Basic Classics: OOZE!", or something. Simple text label, batari version, source and development log as a package. Maybe a tweak or two to fix the levels better than they are on the last solid version.
If anything else, maybe I can get a vanity cart, or a few made for those that liked it as it is, with perhaps just some cleanup. ?!?!
-->After posting on that thread, the Pong idea just stayed with me. Those are usually the best ideas too. I could see having some fun with somebody on that kind of game, and from the comment below Batari says the paddles are working just fine. I'm gonna press forward with that for sure, this time making sure I head down the road where a cart makes sense. Anyway, I know I liked OOZE!, and that helped to build it. I'll like the Battle Pong game and it's been a while since I had a game idea I was into. Plus, it's PONG! Everybody loves a PONG game. (well, I think a lot of people do)
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You mean Eric's driver demo?
I was thinking the same thing. Do some captures and maybe a short movie.
Eric, are you ok with that?
Gonna have to do some stuff with the code. It's the best color output on the chip, BY FAR.
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That looks good to me IMHO. Very few people would have a problem with that arrangement.
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Actually, I just had a thought. The current license requires the user to duplicate my license verbatim. Maybe add a clause which allows the user to incorporate my license into theirs.
That's true.
Can you put your license somewhere they can just cite it? That's a split the middle thing that would work well.
eg: Magic Bubble Driver Code, Eric Ball 2009, licensed [cite URL?]
The problem with mixing the licenses together is then a big license.txt file appears, or it all gets mangled, or something ugly.
BTW: The Propeller Wiki would be a good place for this. propeller.wikispaces.com. You can just put your driver code there, document, license, etc.. and then it's both available and they've got a nice clean page to cite. I'm one of the maintainers for that. Everybody has been good so far.
This is what I'm going to do with my next round of stuff.
Some things I just don't care about, and those end up in the forum. Other things I do, and I've been struggling with this also as the MIT deal isn't quite how I like to play it.
And GPL saw my driver re-written, which was a major bummer for those that did it! Like to avoid that.
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I just was going to shoot you an e-mail about that, until I saw the latest license.
You've struck a good balance with this license! Nicely done.
Thinking back on other projects, the Creative Commons is kind of rough for this kind of code. I personally like it and the GPL, for a lot of things, but both of those would inhibit this project. CC would have not allowed for the character mode driver derivative / modification I am planning as that will roll up into PropDOS, which is MIT. I think now, given credit is preserved, that could happen and that's a good thing.
(and the folks on that project are GREAT on credit, going so far as to track me, and others down to secure it)
BTW: You can always license to people on a basis other than the default license stated. I've done this in the past, to permit a non-GPL derivative / modification to exist. Bummer though, is that not everybody will up and ask.
Good on you for thinking it through too. Licensing is such a PITA...
Who cares if a batch of credits pile up in a header or two? If anything, it's gonna be nice to see who did what over time. Of the options we have most often, that's a pretty easy one.
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Yeah, that's cool. Upload some screenies. I should have done this years ago. Didn't have capture hardware and Internet was new. The only reason I'm going down this road is a discussion here, triggered the memory.
IMHO, some retro ports done with this would be sweet! Have Rad Warrior for the CoCo? That's one game I thought would have been just excellent, had they thought of this. Way back when, I had that cart, and playing it, + seeing some artifacts, led me to tinker with a proggy not to different from the one I captured here.
The 320 mode yields a lot of different colors, but only 256 at any one time.
If you have time to tinker, build a palette with the 3 intensities (2 greys and 1 white) at the top of the palette, say slots 15, 14, 13, with 15 being white, 14 being light grey, 13 being dark grey. Slot 0 is black, then choose a bright red, dim red, bright blue, dim blue, yellow, green, etc...
Run this proggy and see the result. I've not played with the 320 mode yet, but I seem to remember the best overall color sets being something like that.
Anyway, the lowly CoCo 3 has a great CPU and a pretty killer 256 color graphics mode. Now it's on the net, documented at least.
You should upload code too. Had I done at least that, the last 15 years or so would have seen this used...
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That's what the supplements are for, right?
LOL!!
I'm wary of those things. Hate depending on stuff. Hope it all works out.
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The oven deal works ok. Make sure and clean the record first! Low temp, helps if you have something heavy to apply to the record as well. I did this with a 12" single or two with good results.
Go to the thrifty and try it on a coupla throwaways before you put the real deal in.
A good friend and I have been sharing a rather large vinyl collection. Every few years, we will swap. Currently, he's got it, and that's cool.
Personally, I like the vinyl sound. A well mastered 12" single just sounds great!
One thing about those USB turntables is the often spotty stylus quality. The best recordings I've done are from a real turntable, pre-amp, into a good sound card. If you've got a 24 bit capable one, those are great! You need the headroom to get the full detail and dynamic range, and allow the pops to happen.
BTW: If you've got a pop, that's what the pencil tool in your audio editor is for! Just zoom in and scribble something that looks like it should be there. It works amazingly well as you get most of the original frequencies. This is better than just lopping them off most all of the time.
For most tunes, it's just not worth the hassle. For the occasional vinyl only release, or one with good range characteristics, the digital conversion is fun, but time consuming!
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Listen man.
I've watched you bang around this stuff, having a great time. GOSUB! was just great. We do this because it's fun to do, and that's the baseline expectation.
Don't buy into this crap. Take a break, relax, then just enjoy Atari. I don't think I've seen a completed MAUS Games release, have you? We both have at least one, so that's something to put it into context. (Actually you've a crap load of interesting stuff! Game on!)
Edit: You are one of the firsts too. Jumped on pretty early. I remember you getting into it right after the initial flurry of get started bB activity. Lots of people whined about not having this or that feature to complete this or that (overly high expectation) project. You just went ahead and did interesting stuff.
So just do that. Have fun. That's what most of us are doing!
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Excellent!
I do this too. It's fun, harmless and sometimes surprising!
Moving garbage cans is a good one. Say, from one side of the hall way to the other, or from the corner to a place between displays and such. They will often stay for quite some time!
You would appreciate this guy huge:
Look through the stunts. He's done some very good ones. The Starbucks branded chairs was great.
Also:
Google up Improv Everywhere. They are a performance art group and their stunts are just fantastic! Be sure and read the Best Buy one. It's hilarious!
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They want the action, you don't.
Any SANE buyer doesn't.
This is why e-bay doesn't make sense to you. It makes perfect sense to them however.
I no longer e-bay.
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Hey, this is pretty cool, and interesting stuff!
Maybe there is enough bit rate for Indy 500 TAG mode?
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Building a Propeller based VCS?
in potatohead's Blog
A blog by potatohead in General
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I suspect it will too.
This 6502 + Propeller project is interesting though. For me, there is some nice learning getting the circuit built and running. That's worth it right there.