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Jetboot Jack

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Posts posted by Jetboot Jack

  1. Posted

    ._ files exist in ADDITION to the original - I have no idea why the original files are disappearing, but standard behaviour is those ._ files are always there but invisible to OSX and visible to windows whatever filesystem you are using. They should have NO affect on the use of bin files on any system -FAT32 or not.

     

    I use my mac just as you, as the source for all my downloading and game management before placing those files on NAS, Windows and PI systems and have not encountered any issues in this process

     

    I use try and use exFAT filesystem on windows systems so that I can read and write with out legacy issues with NTFS though...

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 1

  2. Posted

    Yes, mistaked because there can be more than one type of enemys at the same level but then it still can be and have all them with the same PF3 colour.

    And No the enemys doesn't seem to ever overlap eachother and always move in charsteps so it still makes sense my proposal.

    :)

    :thumbsup:

     

     

    What I mean is you are showing white ghosts and brown grunts when in reality if they are on screen they would be the same color - so white grunts or brown ghosts - which would look little better than the current version IMHO, your mockups do not represent the actual visuals of the game - not wether enemies overlap or not (which they don't I know)...

     

    sTeVE

  3. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Isn't the problem with your plan Jose, that most of the time in Gauntlet, once you get past the opening levels, there are several different enemies on screen at once, overlapping horizontally and vertically - so one more color available would not really help there...

     

    Perhaps a better approach would be to use the color to change the floor to pop the enemies off it more or the walls so they stand out more strongly?

     

    sTeVE

  4. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Not sure , if people know this game already...

     

    It's also not meant to be a negative statement, but it shows what the Atari can do "out of the book" .

    The game looks very lovely done, but there are those "ability borders"

     

     

     

    That game looks rather poor really - I get there are lots of colors on screen and there are lots of different graphic modes in use, but it really is avoid the player missile red pillar and shoot the player missile enemy, since and repeat - nothing actually interesting to be honest, at least not compared to the likes of Elektraglide, Last Star Fighter, Dimension X or Stealth...

     

    sTeVE

  5. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Nintendo and Sega had came up with inventive terms about their hardware. Neither of them invented sprite graphics, Atari had player/missile and Commodore 64 had sprites long before those companies built consoles. I liked when Sega stated the Genesis had "Blast Processing" instead of stating it ran at 7.67 MHz. I admit the higher CPU speed on the SEGA probably enabled it to do more, have more moving objects on screen at one time.

     

     

    I don't think either of them ever claimed to have invented sprites - why the attempts at bashing?

     

    Sega did not claim the Genesis/MD had blast processing they claimed Sonic USED blast processing - it just scrolled in larger steps than 1 pixel to get speed!

     

    The sprite limit on the MD was not a factor of CPU, although if you were trying to push more than around 80 on screen you had to do some tricks and most devs just lived with a bit of horizontal re-use flicker. There was plenty of time to draw and update the sprites...

     

    sTeVE

  6. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Hyperspin invokes the emulator, it is the emulator that requires the file type not Hyperspin, the command line parameters you pass from Hyperspin should take care of the filetype parsing for the Emulator (which one are you using)?

     

    I used to use Rocketlauncher with Hyperspin to control all that stuff - http://www.rlauncher.com

     

    Personally I would dump Hyperspin I find it an outdated mess of a F.E. I suggest using LaunchBox (in BIGBOX mode if you like) instead, lots of great themes and much simpler and easier to use!!!

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    "Nintendo likes to claim they invented lots of graphic techniques, but the truth is most were done long before Nintendo even made their first console, all they did was build the techniques into the hardware instead of doing it by software as was done a decade before."

     

    Nope that's just not true, Nintendo have not claimed to invent lots of graphic techniques - sure scale and rotate was done in software LONG before they provided that function at a HW level, but that is why it was so interesting, and SEGA followed suit on the MEGA CD. Arcade hardware had that feature for many, many years and the software approach was always going to be limited to expensive and powerful hardware platforms - like VGA PC's at the time. But putting it in a low cost console so it could be leveraged by all developers made it a feature every game could use without the need to spend precious cycles on "doing it in software". And I think you will find that Nintendo did not claim to invent the technique, they just cleverly marketed it as a feature of the SNES to create distance between their platform and the competition - kinda worked out well for them too...

     

    sTeVE

  9. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Damn - that Gridrunner looks and sounds awesome - is there a downloadable of it?

     

    And it goes without saying the latest work shown on Rick Dangerous is superb.

     

    As anyone who actually makes games knows it's NOT easy, however simple, polished and elegant the final experience is to players - huge props to everyone doing it...

     

    Cannot wait!!!

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    Those of us running Altirra under wine on OSX know there is a miserable key mapping issue that prevents ALT+key commands from working properly and this really hampers use of the emulator - such as not being able to switch to and from full screen etc.

     

    Well I found this lovely little hack that makes Altirra under wine a total joy to use - http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/winekeymap.html

     

    You replace your existing version in /Wine.app/Contents/Resources/lib/wine/winemac.drv.so

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

     

    It is indeed a very nice development. But there is so much missing. Compare it to Atari Blast.

     

    What ist the exact framerate in the Menace demo? Gameplay is depending on the visual graphics and the fluent presentation.

    Where 50Hz is needed for a clean 320 Pixel scrolling, 25 fps is similar , when using 160 pixel scrolling... and so on.

    "Zybex" has at least the perfect mix of resolution (Gr. 7) and fluent gameplay.

    But, games that "do a dot and move a dot" are as much fun as watching a stone laying on the ground. And this is not my opinion, it is what gamers expect(ed).

     

    "Strictly Gone Bananas" uses gr. 10 resolution with square pixels and real fluent animations that compensate the low resolution look and give even more fun, while watching due to the animations.

     

    Just remember we actually made this in 1989 or so rather than 2016!

     

    Menace without parallax ran at 25fps in Antic 4 and over 30fps in Antic 5 - 8 independent software sprites (albeit they had ONE definition for all 8 in a wave)...

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 3

  14. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    LoL

    So you were the one who showed me the source :)

     

    @Jetboot Jack: Nice code :) Are you then the one they mentioned as "programmer got ill" ? Were you involved in other projects ?

     

     

    No I was behind Harlequin, I did some coding, mostly graphics & design and also "got the deals" with the licence holders (so did the business) :-)

     

    I took Contagion to Psygnosis to get the licence for Beast and Menace...

     

    There were many Halrequin projects on A8, ST and then I have been making games ever since :-)

     

    I am currently Director of Design at Supermassive Games

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 6

  16. Posted

    For recalbox/retropie its the location of the files rather than any OS level meta data that associate files with emulators - the core will only load .bin or .a78 files that are in the share/roms/atari7800 directory - put the wrong files in there and they just don't show up in the UI for either FE.

     

    sTeVE

  17. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Didn't stop then, the N64 had a car racing sim with a 3 letter name (MRC?), all the screen shots shown were complete mock ups and when the game was released it was an ugly fog (draw distance) mess but it never stopped Nintendo promoting it as something else,

     

     

    You are conflating Nintendo with the publisher - this game was not by Nintendo so laying the blame at their feet is silly - Nintendo had nothing to do with the adverts, they were done by imagineer and ocean since they developed/published it - and to be honest my memory of this is that the box shows very accurate images of the game :-)

     

    5376_back.jpg

  19. Posted

    Best Atari tape deck, used mine until the XC11 came along...

     

    Saw and repaired many 1010 and XC12 plus a fair few of the chubby 410 - not enamoured of any of them by comparison to this original 410!

     

    In fact I really dislike the XC12 - there are so many versions of it, all a little different and all cheap...

     

    sTeVE

  22. Posted

    Gunstar et al...

     

    "a 16K cartridge, is no excuse for Sinistar's shortcomings, Atari could have chosen to make it bigger and better"

     

    Absolutely - I think you conflate my post with corporate policy. I was not advocating size, merely stating the facts of mid 80's Atari cartridge game development...

     

    Developing games for Atari UK in the late 80's I was offered 64K rom capacity for both XE and 7800 games - 128K was not on the table, and to start discussions on a larger capacity seemed to be a rather onerous undertaking.

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    Don't be too harsh - you're comparing apples to oranges.

     

    Back in the day the market for games meant that a 16K RAM standard and small cartridge size forced lots of compromises on games - and still MANY of them were simply stunning (like Star Raiders or Joust)

     

    Just look at how much nicer the XEGS carts are when they have more RAM and cart space!

     

    I do agree this Bosconian port is lovely!

     

    sTeVE

  24. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    The Altirra emulator for Windows includes such tools. I have heard Altirra runs on OSX via parellels. I do know it works under WINE on Linux. Also, Parallels is the commercial version of WINE on OSX.

    Crossover Is the commercial version of wine for OSX - Parallels is nothing to do with wine.

     

    And yes Altirra runs fine on OSX under wine...

     

    sTeVE

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