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jwierer

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Posts posted by jwierer

  1. Posted

    Can you right click on any of your sprites/playfields and preview in emulator? If that doesn't work then most likely you doing have the bB compiler installed correctly. Most folks forget to either enable the environment variables. The bB readme describes this. Also, if I recall bB doesn't handle spaces in directory names very well. for that reason I always create a directory structure without spaces.

     

    A screenshot of your settings tab, and copy of your program file (.bas) might also help troubleshoot.

     

    -Jeff

  2. Posted

    So I want to make a sprite similar to

    2v1rln5.jpg

    But I'm new to vbB and I'm not really sure how to go about doing so. It seems to be too big when I try to do it.

    Can anyone help?

    If you have a "good" image you can take it into the image converter and work some magic. This looks like a compressed jpeg and that's not going to work very well because the best way is to convert to black and white and a compressed image won't have consistent colors throughout. Honestly with a sprite, it's so small it would be faster to recerate by hand.

     

    -Jeff

  3. Posted

    I believe it was an issue with my windows 7 installation, I just put XP on my main computer to save me the trouble as it works fine now.

    I was going to suggest turning off Windows 7 Aero (aka glass) effect. If you don't have the correct video drivers, or your machine simply can't handle it, you'll get display garbage like you're seeing.

     

    -Jeff

  4. Posted

    great work as usual jeff.

    VB now works with my win 7 64-bit machine even the music editor works.

    so now I can program on my desktop pc once again.

    I'll prob still use the old version on notebook to do some fine tuning though(I'm on my desktop more then my notebook since I only use that when I travel)

    Great! Did you have to update your bB files as well? Up until last week I didn't realize I was still using 16-bit copies of preprocess, postprocess, and optimize that wouldn't load in 64-bit Windows. Batari gave me the updated ones last week so I figured I'd share the wealth.

     

    -Jeff

  6. Posted

    I've compiled a number of updates and fixes over the last couple of months. For all the new technology adopters, I think I finally have everything you need to get this working well under Windows 7 64-bit. You can download from the first post. Because AA limits 2MB uploads you'll need to download both files and unzip it to the same folder.

     

    New Features

     

    • Build tool strip menu button remembers if you used the standard or alternate batch file for compiling
    • Allows reordering of results and projects tab
    • Better cleanup of previous compilation errors after a successful compile
    • Active project tab is colored
    • Startup and Settings tabs are colored
    • bB reference guide defaults to online copy if internet is available
    • vbB now warns you if you have unsaved changes before compiling
    • Support for DATA and SDATA in music editor
    • End data for music editor simplified to "255"
    • Channel 1 is displayed when using 2 voices in music editor
    • Music editor allows you to select if you want to cleanup (delete) test music binaries
    • ImgToCode.exe now allows you to right-click Convert to Assembly so if you create a playfield, edit it and convert to assembly.
    • Right click Save Snapshot for playfields/Sprites
    • Added Setting for associating .bas, .pla, and .spr files with VisualbB. Double clicking any file will launch in vbB
    • Added a pause button to the music and sound editor
    • Image Converter (ImgToCode) now supports the Title Kernel
    • Added new context menu item for code editor allowing you to highlight a term and seach for next instance or jump to code where a label is defined

    Bug Fixes

     

    • Now Works under Windows 64-bit editions (see upgrade info)
    • When using a shortcut to run visualbB.exe some menu items didn't appear
    • Using File-Open would crash vbb if a project was not selected
    • "Test" bins were not being deleted in the music editor
    • When in the settings tab, hitting backspace while typing in the compiler field crashes VbB
    • When you try to set playercolor or playfield color the dialog always said background
    • Removed dependency on gif.components.dll
    • Save as GIF in sprite animater fails if run from shortcut
    • When REGION is changed the color palette is applied to all open sprites/playfields
    • when dragging sprites from from project explorer it will always use the latest even if not saved.
    • Identified registry issue for those not able to use the playfield/sprite editors. This was due to a bad registry setting (see this thread)

    Upgrading for 64-bit Windows

    If you are running on a Windows 64-bit operating system and you have settings that you like, you should migrate them before upgrading. Note this is a one time step.

     

    1. Run your CURRENT version of visualbB and go to file->export settings
    2. Edit the resulting .reg file and replace instances of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VisualbB with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\VisualbB
    3. Double click the .reg file to import it into the registry, just say yes when it asks you if you want to do this.
    4. Replace your vbb files with updated version

    I've also included a copy of my bB folder that includes all 32-bit binaries for the compiler.

     

    -Jeff

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    Remember to set the Region to NTSC before editing yer sprite. Otherwise the colors will be off when you drag-and-drop the sprite into your code.

     

    Also remember to SAVE ALL before dragging and dropping your sprite as the changes aren't applied until then.

     

    That will be fixed in the next update.

  9. Posted

    I think aliases are great, but some bB users refuse to use them because they claim that aliases are 'confusing.' I don't understand how a highly descriptive alias could be more confusing than a plain old meaningless variable. And some people refuse to use comments. You could put a gun to their heads and they'd just stubbornly sit there with their arms folded. "I'd rather die than use comments and descriptive variable names! Shoot me! Shoot me now!!!"

     

    I think some early adopters of bB avoided using space as 2600IDE was limited to reading files less than 32K. That's no longer an issue with vbB, but old habits die hard.

     

    -Jeff

  14. Posted

    I just saw this thread in the Arcade Coin-Op section about the first drawings of Pac-Man:

     

    http://www.atariage...._gopid__2072096

     

     

    Now, I don't know the first thing about programming, so I don't know how difficult it would be to do this, but what if the updated POKEY version of Pac-Man Collection also had the concept maze added to it? Would that even be possible, or feasible, considering time or memory capacity? Whether it would or wouldn't be, I think it would definitely be awesome!!!

    I attempted to do just that, but the maze hieght isn't the same to get it exactly. This is pretty close. To try it, just play regular pacman.

     

    post-5778-128176510612_thumb.jpg

    paccol_pokey_v8_protoMaze.bin

    paccol_pokey_v8_protomaze.a78

     

    -Jeff

  15. Posted

    Well, the 64-bit system returns an error saying that the preprocess.exe of batari does not support 64-bit windows. So, I'm back to the desktop. Any ideas on a solution would be most appreciated. Thanks.

    For 64-bit Windows you'll need to use the updated compiler. There is an entire thread on it here. If you can't get it working I can zip up my bB folder and PM it to you.

     

    -Jeff

  16. Posted

    Ok...I've setup an old emachine computer running XP strictly for developing 2600 games. I have opted for the time being to use Visual bB. However, when compiling and testing programs, Stella returns "Could not locate <filename.bas.bin> and could not recompile." Is there something I am missing? Below is the current way I setup the programs.

     

    A folder under the main hard drive "C:" was created and named "Atari 2600". From there, the rest looks like this:

     

    *Atari 2600

    |

    |*batari

    |*Stella

     

    VisualbB resides under the Atari 2600 folder. It currently does not have a subfolder. The current settings for VisualbB are as follows:

     

    For Stella: "C:\Atari 2600\Stella\Stella.exe"

    For batari: "C:\Atari 2600\batari\2600basic.exe"

    ALT Batch File: "C:\Atari 2600\batari\2600bas.bat"

     

    I have performed manual and automatic searches for the BIN file that should of been compiled, but no file exists. I also checked for any warnings or errors and there were none. What am I doing wrong?

    Remove the spaces from your path names, for example rename "C:\Atari 2600\Stella\Stella.exe" to "C:\Atari_2600\Stella\Stella.exe" and try again.

     

    -Jeff

  17. Posted

    I think demo's were made of Combat II and Haunted House II 3D, but there's no trace of either on the forums, checked well as I can. Somehow I have a demo of Combat II on my PC from several years ago, don't know where I got it.

     

     

    Look on my website. www.BiffsGamingVideos.com

    Look where? There's no roms anywhere on your site, at least that can be easily found?

    The site organization lacks well organization, but on the far right of the table there is an image linking to a binary for each of the publicly dumped games.

    http://www.biffsgamingvideos.com/html/html_atari_5200/vg_at5200_main.html

     

    Not that you will find any of the First Star roms though as they were never publicly released which begs the question on why he's pushing his site in this thread.

     

    -Jeff

  18. Posted

    K...

     

    I got my word list together and downloaded DISTELLA and DASM to make my custom Hangman cart. I put everything I would need all together on a memory card and went to program.

     

    BUT...

     

    When I went to decompile the Hangman.bin with Distella, I got a notice saying it would NOT run with my 64bit computer! ARGH!

     

    Is there a disassembler I can use to get around this, or is there a switch on Distella that I can run it on a 64bit machine? I am running Windows 7.

     

    Thomas

    Depending on the edition of Windows 7 you are using you could use Windows XP mode, basically it runs XP in a virtual machine

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/windows-xp-mode.aspx. If you have an XP DVD you could always run it in a virtual machine without this.

     

    -Jeff

  20. Posted

    For instance, I created a brand new project and made a file with only the following:

    data MyData

    1, 2, 3

    end

     

    Here's the output:

    [7/31/2010 4:08:19 PM] saving D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros\default.bas succeeded.
Compile started at 7/31/2010 4:08:19 PM
Compiling D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros\default.bas
2600 Basic compilation failed!
LINE -->Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros>preprocess <default.bas >9320e285-8ea9-4f2e-92db-c75cde450b1c.tmp

D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros>2600basic -i <9320e285-8ea9-4f2e-92db-c75cde450b1c.tmp %bB%
game
.L00 ;  data Joel

JMP .skipL00
Joel
.byte  1, 2, 3

.skipL00

D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros>@exit

Post compilation files deleted
[7/31/2010 4:09:33 PM] saving D:\bB Projects\Super Mario Bros\default.bas succeeded.

    I can confirm that set of steps works for me. Are you using the MiniGW build?

     

    -Jeff

  21. Posted

    I just noticed that when the options are set to

    Add bB Environment Variable

    Add bB Compiler to system Path

     

    The output is

     

    Environment variable dB=C:\Atari2600\bB

    Environment variable Path=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\;bB;C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime Alternative\QTSystem;C:\Atari2600\bB

     

    Bolding mine. It uses the variable dB, and then puts bB into the path.

    Good catch, hard for the eye to see that one. The environment variable is set correctly. Appears to just be a typo on my part for the notification. Thanks for letting me know.

     

    -Jeff

  22. Posted

    I know this may sound silly, but if you have a program with a data statement in it could you tell me if it compiles? I have all the files that let you use bB with Windows 7, but I just discovered that data gives a compile error. I just want to find out if it's me or a problem with running bB on Windows 7. Thank you.

    It's working for me under Windows 7. Are you on 32 or 64-bit?

     

    -Jeff

  23. Posted

    I know this may sound silly, but if you have a program with a data statement in it could you tell me if it compiles? I have all the files that let you use bB with Windows 7, but I just discovered that data gives a compile error. I just want to find out if it's me or a problem with running bB on Windows 7. Thank you.

    It's working for me under Windows 7. Are you on 32 or 64-bit?

     

    -Jeff

  24. Posted

    The biggest inhibitor to me is I cannot read sheet music. Sorry, I never played an instrument. If somebody created a midi to bB chart, converting a CSV in code wouldn't be that hard and a UI front end can always be created for the commandline tools.

     

    -Jeff

     

    Thanks for the response! Yeah, I know nothing about sheet music either. Notes on a bar is good enough for me. Here is a VERY rough idea of what I'm talking about:

    I am not sure that bB has an analogue to that. I think the best would see is instead of spitting out the raw code as the music editor does today, you would just see the sounds as notes along with timing per channel. I am not sure how useful that would be though.

     

    Note (length)

     

    Channel 1 F4(100) A4(150) etc…

    Channel 2

     

    Of course the code would still need to be generated on the backend. It definitely makes it a more difficult UI to create because the code has to be in sync with the visualization.

     

    -Jeff

  25. Posted

    The biggest inhibitor to me is I cannot read sheet music. Sorry, I never played an instrument. If somebody created a midi to bB chart, converting a CSV in code wouldn't be that hard and a UI front end can always be created for the commandline tools.

     

    -Jeff

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