jwierer

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

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

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

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

I'll zip up my bB folder and PM it to you to rule that out. -Jeff

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

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

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

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

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

Are you converting the graphic to Black and White? If it can't distinguish color from background it will be all 1's or 0's. -Jeff

I had to look at the assembly to understand it myself. Take the example RevEng posted. The central image is 48x36, so yes you will need to make sure you set the width and height so it only outputs an image 48 pixels across and 36 pixels tall. Any larger and it's not going to work. Replace .byte values in the sample .ASM and try to compile. Once you get that working you can mess with everything else. Keep in mind the differents regions are going to be different dimensions, 98x8 etc... so for each portion you replace you'll need to set the appropriate width/height before generating the .byte data. My tool is only going to spit out the .byte values, you need to replace each section in the .ASM files seperately. Still it's better than drawing by hand -Jeff

As you should My modification only outputs the .byte codes that you can use in the titlescreen kernel. Here are the basic steps: 1. You'll need to copy over the titescreen kernel to your program. 2. Within that folder, you'll see a series of ASM files that contain the different elements which vary in dimension 48x36 96x7 etc... 3. Take the image (bmp, jpg, gif, etc..) and load it into imgToCode. 4. Replace the .byte codes in the appropriate assembly files. For example if you wanted to use the AtariAge logo I used you would use the following and then copy it into 48x2_1_image.asm It's possible to create a fully automated tool, but this should work for now. -Jeff

Very cool. Played around with the tool I wrote to generate bb Code for Michael's bitmap kernel and after about 5 min I was able to generate your byte code. Just choose playfield and title settings and make sure to resize the image for the appropriate width and height. Then replace in the various .asm files to create your own. ImgtoCode.0.9.1.4.zip Here an example of converting the AtariAge logo. AAtitledemo.bin -Jeff

By changing between PAL and NTSC you will see how the same color will be viewed on a PAL vs. NTSC television as the colors won't be rendered the same on a different regions tv. It makes sense that when you change the region setting it apply it to your sprites and playfields so that is how it will work in the future. -Jeff

There is a setting for NTSC/PAL on the main toolbar. That determines what color palette is used when selecting colors. If you start a sprite with the NTSC palette and change midway the colors you see won't change. So you need to select a palette then start editing. I think most folks choose NTSC or PAL and don't change that often. -Jeff

Because I didn't add this to the editor, I recently added a blog posting on changing the title screen using hackomatic 3. -Jeff

In the fall of 2009 I took some time off from programming and hence my blog as I was traveling heavily for work. When I got back I started to work on VisualbB again by adding some new music and sound editing. I wanted to post my Failsafe editor for some time, but had to wait until the Bob was done tweaking it as the editor would break when various changes were made. Now that Failsafe is available for purchase, I figured it was safe to publish the editor. Since I created this primarily as a tool for Bob to quickly develop graphics and levels I never created anything specific to modifying the title screen as in my Pacman editor. It is still possible using the editor and a hex editor, such as Hackomatic 3, to create a somewhat custom title screen. I say somewhat because the changes that you can make are limited as you will see. The first thing you should know is the title screen is a combination of text and playfield graphics. The second thing you'll need to know is how to calculate the hex codes for the playfield graphics that are used. For example, if you look at the rows of tree on the title screen it is using the sprite at Bank 0, Tile 71 (using the Graphic functionality in the failsafe editor. Tile 71 * 2 = 142 and 142 in hex is $8E. Removing the Trees So let's search for that row of trees. You can begin by launching HOM3 and searching for the following set of hex values which represents the 20 trees used in three different rows on the title screen. "8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E,8E". You'll find several instances of it, but the title screen trees are stored between $9F64- $9F77 You can change it to something different, for example I'll just add in a few buildings to make it look like a city using "90,92,96,98,9A,98,96,94,92,90,92,94,96,98,9A". Keep in mind this is reused across 3 different rows so it will be repeated. Changing the name in the title Now what if you want to change the name, "FAILSALE"? There are two ways to do this. You could change graphics using the failsafe graphic editor by changing titles 1 through 10 in bank 0. The other way to do it is to change the sprites that are used on the screen. Since the first method is pretty easy I'll skip that and focus on the later. FAILSAFE is the combination of the following hex codes: "02,04,06,08,A0,0C,0E,10,12,14". If you search for "02,04,06,08,A0,0C,0E,10,12,14" you'll find a couple instances, but the title text is stored between locations $9Fb9 to $9FC2 but you can actually use the entire row from $9FB4 to $9FC7. For our purposes I'll put FAILSAFE II in the middle of the screen using, "02,04,06,08,A0,0C,0E,10,12,14,62,62" from $9FB7 to $9FC2. Changing Novice, Intermediate, Advanced Let's say you want to change NOVICE to something else like "DAMN EASY". First thing is to find where NOVICE is stored. Once again use HOM3 and search for the following hex codes "6C,6E,7C,62,1A,1E". It should take you to location $9F1B. NOVICE is actually stored from $9F1B to $9F20, but you can modify from $9F18 to $9F23. To make the change I changed locations $9F19 to $9F22 as "1C,16,6A,6C,00,00,1E,16,76,64". Using the same method you can make similar changes to INTERMEDIATE and ADVANCED. Changing the text across the bottom Using the find functionality you can search for "FAIL". The second location you find be "FAILSAFE @2009 BOB DECRESCENZO" at $282D. Using the text editor (View->Open Text Editor) you can replace the text with something else using capital letters. For example you can call it "FALSAFE 2". Out of respect to Bob, I recommend against changing the copyright notice. And that's about it. There might be additional things you can change, but I'll let you play with it and figure out the rest yourself! Once done this is what my final title screen looked like.

Form the commandline you can just do a binary comparison FC /B <file 1> <file 2>, but of course HOM 3 will allow you to compare the currently loaded binary with another and provide a report with links to the changes. Just go to File->Compare Files. -Jeff

I can change the behavior so that if a sprite/playfield is "open" it uses the current item vs. the saved item. As for a score bar editor I think it's more intuitive to just set the code to the binary value vs. the decimal. Makes the code easier to read as well. -Jeff

No you missed a step in installing the bB compiler. In your bB folder you should see a fodler sed. Move sed.exe to the the parent folder where the 2600basic.exe compiler is located. This is covered in the bB readme. -Jeff

Replace the playfield section with your code and you should have a static picture of it in emulation. set romsize 32kSC set tv ntsc const pfres=24 COLUBK = $00 COLUPF = $08 playfield: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X X..............................X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX end main drawscreen goto main

Sorry but that is very unlikely. I only know how to program for Windows. Best bet is full emulation of Windows or run Windows in a seperate partition on your hard drive. -Jeff

Any fixed width font should do. I just use Courier New which I think is the default now. -Jeff