potatohead

I do and kind of went on a flashback tour.... https://www.youtube....h?v=MJG5ewAgKhw https://www.youtube....h?v=okGfFYKCwYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2o99jGlZ2o https://www.youtube....h?v=ucQ6FMUszNY

SSX And I like the online pass option, because there is a lot to do and I've had some great interactions with other players. Game is reasonable offline. I still miss the over the top great visuals and feel of the original, but I'm pretty happy.

The key to that was rapid porting of CP/M applications as well as the weight of IBM making development attractive, and early on there were more operating systems to choose from as well. Common business software did not take long at all. From there, a lot of sales were based on those applications. As people either left the 70's CP/M era behind, or moved off an Apple, or started to computerize, the PC was seen as a standard option where the mess of CP/M systems was a real problem. I saw an participated in a ton of that. Hercules equipped PC's running lotus, some word processor and an accounting package were well suited to the basic computing needs business has. You have to remember the perceptions at that time. People asked why a color screen was needed, and computing was not seen as the more inclusive thing it is today. A machine like an Amiga or ST, though capable, just didnt have the mindshare in most business contexts. And very rapidly, didnt get the software either. And by software, I mean things like full accounting suites with support for more than the basics and consultants who would see it through. Even today, a lot is driven by software requirements. This is precisely why we dont see more Mac / Linux out there. Software. Tons of it, often specialized. If you wanted software written, the PC was a great, bland target too. Many opted for that or had their in house stuff brought over from CP/M or other platform too. I saw quite a bit of that as well. Big ass BASIC programs that did specific things. The weight of that continues today in Windows doing well at running old applications. Early DOS machines came with a capable BASIC in which a ton of business automation was done. I did some of that myself and some DBASE type work too. Ugly by the standards of today, but back then it was just put it on screen, get input, process it, output reports or trigger something, next. This was followed by Visual Basic and all that stuff and loads of new stuff ported or written to automate things away so people could so more. Those early PC machines with DOS and a BASIC started out doing that stuff, and running quickly and easily ported CP/M applications which carried the core of common business computing forward on the DOS PC platform, where it mostly never started on most others, but for some common, broad base applications. All very boring stuff, but important and a lot of money moved that way, and where the money is, business computing is, regardless of the actual hardware merits, so long as the hardware does the task and delivers a return that justifies the cost. Say you had a mom n pop trucking company. A single PC cost some money, but the real money was the nice program written to do business. That cost more than the hardware did, but paying it also meant that company never needing more office people, staying lean and focused on drivers. I knew a guy doing this pulling down 6 figures a year, in BASIC, authoring on a monochrome PC, selling the whole works as a package. He went back and wrote them Lotus macros, and when they moved to Windows and or Microsoft, did it again in Visual Basic. That kind of thing was going on everywhere, all over the place. Nobody was using other machines, because everybody knew the PC would have a forward path. Didnt matter how nice, just that it was there.

Why pay for an Apple ][ at that time? Software, that's why. Software is the same reason people bought PC's. Microsoft made the original MSDOS able to run programs like WORDSTAR with few changes to the assembly language. In fact, WORDSTAR ran with a single byte changed. People today will still buy DOS capable PC's, with older chips like a 486 and an ISA bus for combinations of expensive software and hardware that cost much more to replace, or simply cannot be replaced, which also requires adaptation around a new solution. Generally, those costs exceed the cost of a new machine. "ST/Amiga were business machines by default." Nope. 80 columns was a key requirement at that time, but the bigger one was again software. Business users did not buy machines on specifications alone. They bought machines to get specific tasks done and the software needed to complete those tasks more or less dictated appropriate specifications. This too still goes on today. Business users of high end CAD software will select software, then order PC machines capable of running it optimally. Major PC vendors often send hardware in for certification so that the loop is closed on that whole thing. In general business computing is about getting stuff done much more than it is about the nature of the hardware.

Re: Pet 200 Oh yeah. I would be kicking myself too! Damn. Feel for you on that one. Sweet looking computer.

When part of the thing is on a server, all of that becomes harder to do, simply because nobody ever has a complete copy. Make it conditional, in that the streamed content varies and the bar goes up really high. For me, it's not about any of that. It's all about value, and I see the value being diluted in various ways I find no longer worth entertaining. Who knows? If it's compelling enough, I might reconsider, but that is the issue.

The writing is on the wall kids. Serious console gaming is moving to a pay per experience model. So far, tethering various things to an online server and account have been met with varying degrees of success. Here is how it will go down. Gaming a little stale? Looking for some really great new experiences? Great!! Sign up here, and you will get them, or... not. Really will be that simple. Me? I'm stopping where I am. Don't need a new console. Indie gaming on whatever platform makes sense, and I've had some good experiences, and I've had some crap ones too. There is a lot out there besides the next major console generation.

I hope we can keep it rolling. I'm on a project right now, or I would likely be joining TMR in banging around on the Apple. It's a fun machine! BTW: PoP has been assembled, and the person who did it basically rewrote Merlin.

I remember that too. At the time, I thought it odd. Still do. Of course, IBM is still selling mainframes. Funny that. I can't recall either, but I'm positive that message was out there. Kind of like how Tandy hobbled the Color Computer, because it was better than the early PC's.

oh yeah that boring stuff

Yep. A whole lot of people do not see that play out in their lives and it makes things very hard to understand. Walk around any serious manufacturing operation, lab, R&D, test / measure, type facility and you will find systems for control, measurement, data collection, and all sorts of other things doing what they were designed to do. And they were expensive when first built and installed, and they are expensive now, and sometimes there isn't even an option to buy, meaning build again. Tons of people bought Apple ][ computers to run VISICALC. Tons more bought a PC for Word Perfect and LOTUS 123. (A name I never did understand) Doing other things was just gravy. The specs needed to get work done are very different from those used to entertain. My first PC was kind of crappy. Was some Amstrad thing with CGA, but it could run CAD applications. Could do early DOS gaming too, and of course I played those games, getting on line with a modem in 91. One of the first tasks was to hit up ftp.funet.fi and score. That one did work mostly. That work got me a lot of money, and I then was able to get a 386 24Mhz, interlaced VGA output capable of 1024x768 pixel display, non-interlaced 800x600... That one could play some decent games, and of course I played them, but that one ran the CAD much better, and the work paid for... This is how it goes for many people. Today lots of stuff is easy and cheap, but the big dollars still go to things that get work done. There is always the power gaming niche, and I don't think it's going anywhere, but if it does, it won't happen before getting work done does and anything that is designed to get work done is going to do well, given it actually does get the work done. Lots of people thought the Apple 2 was garbage compared to the much more spiffy machines that followed. I was one of those people, but I also needed to get work done too, so I had an Apple and did the work which funded many spiffy things. Those that didn't do that, gaming, whatever often ended up doing other kinds of work, and the machines didn't matter to them. The specs needed to do real stuff are different. Always have been, always will be. BTW: Later on, serious CAD, visualization, life sciences, and all sorts of analysis, happened on powerful UNIX workstations. Those things were not cheap. 50K was easy to spend, and depending on what you wanted to do, they might be seen as garbage to the gamer / entertainment crowd. I ended up getting SGI gear, that would play a bad ass game. DOOM ran so sweet on one of those it's not even funny, and if you dual headed it, like two sets of monitors, keyboards, mice, etc... it could run multiple DOOMS without even missing a beat! So there is a case where everything else, even game consoles at the time were garbage in terms of the fun stuff, but not a lot of gaming happened, because it wasn't cheap, and everybody bought them to get work done. I remember when we started getting dual CPU machines, and "Serious Sam" came out of Croatia. That game demanded a very serious PC, and we had one or two in the building as people were moving off of UNIX and onto the still growing PC. Awesome game, and we played it right, on a projector, good sound, etc... That experience would cost somebody $10K and we did it for fun because we had the gear. Guess what? That year people were dropping $3K on gaming PC's, if not more to get at the upper crust of what was possible! All that getting work done fueled the advances needed to put machines out there that could then be gamed on hard, and each wave of gaming brought add on devices to the PC dragging things forward on both axis. Gaming and porn really pushed connectivity and multi-media on the PC and it's the ability to add on, yet keep standards for getting work done that was the magic. The PC could have been done much better. It seriously sucked hard, but the vision of building layer by layer, rolling early investments forward to current ones was and is compelling today, and today we've build on, tweaked, and literally evolved standard stuff that runs great and is cheap. There are still PC's being made though, and they still have slots in them, because there is still that need to get work done, add on options, etc... USB and friends help a lot with this, and I think all of that is finally falling into niche land, but when we needed to do it we did. USB today is like the slots of old, and the ability to take the stuff we want to do and combine it to get that stuff done is what matters now, and it's what mattered then too. A PC would do that, most other things would not, and of those that would, they didn't have the position and or perception needed to create that center of gravity we all needed to move it forward like we did.

"continued to buy the garbage" Well, that's relative isn't it? Most people I know who bought those kinds of PC's were either wanting to learn about doing business with a computer, or were actually doing business with a computer. At that time, if you knew some of the applications, you were very employable. The same remained true for a long time as each wave of tech came to market. I myself rode those waves multiple times making a lot of money along the way. Having made that money, I would gladly game on other things... They bought the stuff because work was getting done. Work generally pays for gaming, so... there you go.

Fair point, what I should have said is that it has 45 degree resolution. 8 positions isn't very clear. I guess saying three bits per revolution is another way to put it, and what I was really getting at is the angular precision. It is a coarse controller.

IMHO, soft sprites make a lot of sense for this one. At times, depending on player skill, there are a lot of enemy death events and shots happening! This would exceed the hardware sprite capability without a multiplexer and honestly a straight up bitmap ends up better looking and playing when that's true. Flicker city in many cases, or a very complex sorter needed. Personally, I would prefer to see it done in 320 pixel mode, using the PM graphics as color "overlays" in the old school vector style, not for actual objects as the resolution differences kind of break things. Would be super cool to see it interlaced, running at 25-30 FPS, just so the resolution of things gets cranked way up, because that is the appeal of this one. I know this seems wrong, because that 50 / 60 fps is always the "smooth" goal, but really some of the appeal of this one is the choppy movement and delicate balance of resources that drive it. I'm not sure the original exceeded 25 / 30 FPS motion. Sharp line art make the thing, not color. I am not sure the driving controller has enough resolution to work, but it could. The original had at least 16 angular positions. Driving controller has 8... Maybe mouse type acceleration would help with this, or maybe the resolution of the driving controller is just fine... however it works, a rotary controller makes great sense. Joystick / pad kind of ports work, but a lot of the cool game interaction is lost. Player gets a lot of concurrent shots! I think the max is 6 or 8, something like that. Using the missiles would limit this part of the game. Once the initial "get a feel for it" three levels are complete, all those shots are really needed! Couple of optimizations I can think of: There are only a few shapes, meaning they can all be pre-rotated and shifted in advance. Use a lot of RAM, as the game itself has little in terms of bells and whistles. Limit the number of rotation states for the active enemies. Omega Race does not move everything per frame. A shot is small, and a dedicated routine for processing those would allow for prioritizing player movement, active enemy movement and shots above other things. The original had kind of chunky shot movement. I'm not sure whether or not that was due to the shots moving near the display refresh rate or not... but, reducing shot move precision during high soft sprite demand times would not get noticed and would feel authentic. "Ripple draw" the non-aggressive enemies and triangle mines. These can get updated as time permits and again in most cases won't be noticed as the action is elsewhere. By "ripple draw" I mean update positions as time permits to augment that shuffling seen in the drones. Coarse, forgiving collisions in favor of the player. The original did this. it's a little obvious on the early levels, but kind of warranted given how intense the later ones really are. Dedicated routines to highlight boundary collisions as the original did. The horizontal ones are easy, just blast a few bytes. The vertical ones would be great candidates for a quick P/M overlay, The thicker pixel would add emphasis to this similar to the "blooming" seen in the CRT of the original on the same condition. Since horizontal ones are quick, just thicken it a little on highlight by drawing two lines, deffo do this in interlace mode so that the flicker won't be seen on the static boundary lines. Top priority is player ship, second is active enemies, then shots, in terms of per frame updates and motion precision. Honestly, if this were to slow down gracefully when the game gets really intense, it would be kind of awesome like we see in "star raiders" from time to time, or another example is "defender" when hitting the box shaped things that drop the little mines causes a pretty severe slow down that good players learn to exploit... I don't recall the original doing this, but... anyway. The passive enemies can just get their positions updated every frame, but drawing them happens when there is time. They will jump about a little during high action times, but again that's closer to the original motion than not. They kind of shuffle along, and maybe that's good to enforce anyway. Just cap this to X per frame and call it good. If it's in interlaced mode, or maybe even if it's not, having two sets of shapes, one every pixel and another one drawn with pixels missing, gets the two grey scales needed to emphasize the active things, which are shots, player, and active enemy. On PAL, this will work nicely. On NTSC, somebody will need to turn the color down, or run S-video, etc... Unless the line draw is really fast, I think soft sprites win easily due to the setup and line case selection being very high overhead compared to all the short line vectors this game has in it's visuals. There aren't any big shapes other than the borders...

Well, let's not get out of hand on this, but... The Apple is GREAT for programming lots of things. Good tools right in the box, and if one goes looking, languages, and many other tools out there. There is also then and today. Today, those things matter much less, but then? Yeah, Apples were great. When I first moved to Atari after doing a lot of stuff on an Apple ][, it was very restrictive. I didn't have a monitor, no quick assembler, etc... Some purchases later, the big one being the OSS packages, I was kind of set, but for that 80 column screen. Now, when it comes to this kind of programming? IMHO, it's going to be new ground for most people.

The "screen holes" are writable RAM. Just clear them, if you want to insure a unique value, or better, put your value there, and sync off of it without worrying about it being on the real screen.

@Osgeld, and your toolchain is? @TMR, James: There is the currently displayed byte, but there are also the undisplayed areas, which do get scanned. IMHO, you can write to the regions that aren't actually graphics and see them. This is described in the Sather books. e and c machines offer a signal additionally, but still operate the same way the older machines did. I would for sure test these cases, writing to the screen memory holes. I believe they get scanned during blanks, and such. Or parts of them do.

I can run code for you, but not until next week. Getting ready for a Propeller expo right now. The second gen chip is out of this world fun, and I've got it on an FPGA right now and need to do some show 'n tell. IMHO, that byte is consistent across the machines. I've a //e Platinum, which also supplies VBLANK directly... It's in great shape, runs well, has super serial, disk controller, 80 column / double high-res option and CFFA, which I use a USB flash drive with. What is your dev setup TMR?

The light bulb isn't a scanning display like the TV is. The NES will see the kind of signal it needs to trigger off that old TV, but it won't see it at the right time. The light bulb, for all practical purposes is always on, or flashing in a way that the TV does not, that's the difference. But you are set now. Cool. I like that stupid game a lot. Have fun!

http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php New CFFA 3000 cards to be made. If you don't have one of these, and you have an Apple 2, e, gs, you are missing out! Like a lot of users, I made disks with ADT, and still do for some tasks, and that's actually pretty great. Assuming you have a reasonable supply of working floppy disks. I worry about that. Since I've installed this device, my Apple experience is excellent! What I chose to do was add a USB extension cable to the card, bringing the port out to the front near the keyboard, or just placed off to the side. From there, I use the USB flash drives to run the machine. Right now, I've got two or three setup, one for gaming, one for projects and one for applications, testing, etc... Truth is, you only need one, but I find it easier to just have a few. If you want to move data between the Apple and a PC, CiderPress can operate on the disk images, adding and or extracting files as needed. This works well, and it means getting graphics and text into and out of the Apple, along with binary data isn't hard. Recommended.

Pure awesome! Bad ass! Thanks a lot for sharing this. Made my day to see that on an Atari 8 bit computer. And the story goes on! Little by little, the cracks in the system get exposed, exploited and stuff like this happens! Love this hobby. Big grin over here.

Litigation? Seems over the top to me. Frankly, if anyone did that with me, and were wrong about it, I would just rub their face in it big, laugh and move on. But, that's me of course. I want no part of anyone who would litigate over something like this. Blocked, risk is too high. Cheers! --to be reconsidered some time from now (and I mean that literally, perhaps downing a couple might help chill things) We have a PM system that can be used to resolve things. A strong back and forth can get ugly and sometimes people get really bent. Expressing that along with the concern over the statement made has a lot of potential. I've done it in the past to great effect. Ah well.

It's just the gun detecting the timing from the TV, which is the same kind of timing signal it's looking for. That TV will be somewhat out of sync, since it's not connected and free running. Try aiming somewhere consistent and trigger the gun repeatedly. I'll bet the shot drifts.

The NES knows when it started drawing the screen. Starts from the top, drawing lines down and to the right, until bottom. When you pull the trigger on the light gun, whether or not the beam is drawing the screen where the gun is focused on can be compared against this timing which gives a screen coordinate. LCD displays are always on so this does not work.

BEOS was pretty cool, and yes you can run it on period correct hardware. I did once with a friend who was into operating systems. I liked it a lot, just didn't get to use it much because it was so niche. The vision was good though. Hey, here's a great OS rant from Neil Stephenson: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html Well worth reading, and it's lots of fun too. When thinking about all that has happened in Operating Systems, I find that read lucid and highly entertaining. Enjoy!