Jetboot Jack

Well there you go - I assumed these games were done in character mode - no need to be in bitmapped modes - Joust especially (unless the vultures are not all done with players) - my assumption. Id the DL all mode E lines - or does it start mode E and then change modes - simply to declare enuff RAM? What is done in Joust with Bitmapped FX? Defender looks like it could be either way - no compelling reason for it to be bitmapped - I guess looking at Stargate its logical to be bitmapped - same code base I guess.. sTeVE [ 12-10-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ]

Sorry I didn't code DK, but is is in Antic E... Joust and Defender on the other hand both use an Antic 4 display... Cafeman - I was refering to the DLI management not using any (or few) CPU cycles. You should be able to do a DLI, changing a characterset every modeline, or alter 3 color registers ever mode 7 line. Really tight code, doing no user input or little AI could change 3 color registers every Antic E line - Fun with Art managed it. X-box - PC like - well yes it is, but its a good bit o hardware, at an incedibly cheap price ($299). Its very easy to code for, the unified memory and HD makes a world of difference compared to PS2. sTeVE

Cafeman, You said: "One thing that I have not done is try to estimate how many cycles I'm using up. I have several DLI's down the screen (6 I think), which cuts into the 6502's cycle time, correct? I'm going to keep adding code until I notice a problem (if ever) and then try to deal with it at that point -- I hope I don't have a problem, though!" Antic does all the work on DLI's the 6502 is pretty free - don't worry about CPU time worry about ANTIC and the Vblank!!!! And: "My biggest hurdle has been trying to animate background graphics. I'm not trying anything fancy, either. I've been experimenting with trying to animate flames and in moving Pyro the cloud in my game; Pyro is made of '01' and '10' bits. To move a bg-graphics series of bytes to (for example) the right smoothly, you just don't move each byte to from $2100 over to $2101 -- that would in effect move each pixel 4 spaces over and is jerkier than one pixel at a time animation." If you are using character modes use multiple charactersets, and flip charbase to animate them!!!!! Its almost free of charge and looks GREAT!!! To move big graphics in character modes also use animated character sets to shift images thru characters smoothly... And lastly: "Also, in order to move BG graphics, I have to (1) read the data (bytes) from a table, storing it in a register, (2) store it in the new location in memory -- for even a 10X20 "character", thats 200 bytes! I suspect I can't do much of this without problems." Again bitmapped vs characetr modes - look at Donkey Kong - bitmapped mode, LOADS of moving objects - secret in the masking simply OR or AND the images to the background... I would still reccommend clever use of chacatersets and sprites as the BEST solution looking at the images of Koffi I see no reason why it couldn't be done in character modes. sTeVE

In the UK Datel and Evesham brought out ripper carts for the C64 that supported high speed I/O. Action Replay was one of them, with that in the C64, a new BIOS for the DD and a parallel cable the C64 discs were fast, and very easy to copy!! BUT comercial games/programs would not work unless hacked. Overall a Happy/Archiver 810/1050 was an easier to use solution for me....

A SSSD atr image would only be 88K - not exactly a waste of space on a several GB Hard Disc....... You can put multiple basic flies into an ATR image - just like a regular real disk. Tape image support would be novel, but pratically useless. Plus it would need to load a serial IO speed - yuk! sTeVE

The carts HAVE to face the way they do because the curved or knobbly grip to pull them out would be backwards - its the opposite side to the label!!!! sTeVE

WOW was one of the first 8-bit carts I bought. I've always thought it an amazing game, a great conversion, and I still play it 20 years after I bought it - I still have the same cart. Now I live here in the US, I fully intend to get a 5200 to compliment my collection!! sTeVE

"BTW, I also think the 5200 cart design was the best ever for any Atari system." I always though the original computer carts were the best design - compact, very expanadable capacity and with the dust protector flap. 5200 carts are a bit too big, given that they are only small capacity computer carts anyway... sTeVE

I would recommend either MYDOS or Sparta DOS for handling a HD. They are both reliable and well featured. Hacks of DOS 2.5 do support HD's but they are ugly and hard to use. If you want to use an ATARI DOS then I would suggest DOS 4 or DOS XE as its othewise known. And be sure to avoid DOS 3 at all costs - I have no idea if it supports HD's, but it is awful and incompatible with 99% of software. sTeVE

All graphic mode lines are generated by ANTIC. The display list can only consist of valid ANTIC modes. Modes 9/10/11 - the GTIA modes - are simply mode 8 with the appropriate bits of GPRIOR (623) set to use 4 bits of a mode 8 display (320 pixels) to create a colour indexed mode (80 pixels). You can set the GTIA mode bits in mode 0 or mode 8 graphic modes - try mode 0 and poke 623,128 - you get 2 pixel wide characters with upto 16 shades/colours (mode 9/11). Mode 10 with the memory usage of mode 0 and redefinable chars (I did create a characterset editor with a toggle on the GTIA bits). To do an 80X48 mode is pretty simple using existing GR modes with GTIA bit settings and using Antic to manage a DL to repeat each mode line 4 times is quite trivial, thereby creating a custom mode from mode 8... sTeVE [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ] [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ]

Cafeman you said "Too bad they couldn't used Atari's voice synth for this game on 5200, eh?" What voice synth? Berserk used samples/SAM type software speech as far as I am aware.. On topic I assume that CBS made no modifications to the 5200 version of WOW - its just the older 8K Rocklan 400/800 version on 5200? So how did the game which relied heavily on quick stick action, like pacman (especially in the arenas), fare given the dreadful 5200 controllers? sTeVE

I have Cloak and Dagger on laserdisc... As soon as my player is out of the shop I'll try and grab a few choice images - I'm sure the quality will be good.. sTeVE

Oh yeah its an awesome conversion alright!!!!!!!

A pal of mine has written a new ST/falcon game - Check out: http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/pinkpage/chuchu.htm sTeVE

I have a homebrew ROM of it and the image for emulators.... sTeVE [ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ]

XE Commando wasn't finished XE Winter games - nope I've not seen one since, infact I assumed it was, like many of the other XE cart games, a late conversion 4 Atari rather than a port done by EPYX at the time.... sTeVE

hmmmm... Black lamp 8bit was developed by Richard Munns and Ivan Mackintosh. The VCS version - I don't know I'm afraid who did it. I played a WIP in the ex-dev managers's office (Bob Katz). It was like 8-bit black lamp without the backgrounds, just the platforms, I fought a dragon too. It was OK - all mono art, a one voice rendition of Greensleeves etc! UFO, maybe it was Tiertex or another company who handled some of the conversions like Tower Toppler etc.... But it was 11 years ago!! I'm gonna try and get some software up on a website that I developed - the PSygnosis stuff at least... sTeVE I currently work for Kodiak Interactive - foremerly Sculptured Software who produced LOADS of Atari XE/7800 software too....

Re"if the XEGS is supposed to be just a better 5200 then why is it still based on a computer??? " Both the 5200 and XEGS are sons of Candy (Atari 400), the XEGS is just a much later evolution.... The XEGS is a larger memory model 5200 at the bottom line. It has a better (more comprehensive) OS, it has a better Joystick system (digital thank God!)... sTeVE

I guess: PC Keyboard = Digital Real Joystick = analog If you are referring to using a PC pad/stick in preference to a keyboard - well the pad is designed as a game input device and is polled by the OS or app differently to the keyboard most likey. Another option is to run the XE versions of the 5200 ROMS which work well with digital inputs as the original machine worked that way.. sTeVE

One of the first games I worked on: http://xlent.nostalgia.pl/software/games/z/0007.html For Atari I developed this game: http://xlent.nostalgia.pl/software/games/c/0068.html Whilst at Harlequin I produced this game: http://xlent.nostalgia.pl/software/games/p/0054.html Whilst at Atari I also saw loads of stuff which never made it: XE Winter Games (packaging and ROM) 2600 Black Lamp (100% finished) 2600/7800 and XE UFO (based on the Gerry Anderson series of the late 60's) The full version of Dracula for the Lynx (the released game is only half of the product, but Atari cut back on ROM space.......) sTeVE

That Background color is probli because u are using normal screen width - ANTIC supports 3 widths, narrow, normal and wide - wide is horizontal overscan, no borders! Moon Patrol uses normal width - hence nasty borders on a TV with visible horizontal DLI color changes.... Its all controlled by register 559 if memory serves me correctly... U will be using more DMA fetch on overscan tho', so it can bea problem, especially if u r gonna try and do lotsa vertical sprite re-usage or DLI's... sTeVE

Cafeman, BIOS ROM - needs to be named atari5200.rom... Just ensure the radio button for other ROM is selected and then click the OTHER ROM button and select the game you want... Works 100% in 2.6! sTeVE

OK.. I'm not at my home PC right now - but the System rom needs to be 5200.rom.. You don't load the BIOS as a cart tho' its just in the directory named 5200.ROM and u select 5200 from the hardware - machine type. Then you load the game you want as the "other cart" cart with USE OTHER ROM button ticked... sTeVE

Cafeman, In your dev notes you say: "I have not been able to get the 3rd color yet using VSS as an emulator. Any suggestions on how to overcome this would be appreciated. When I try to overlay Player0 yellow pixels and Player1 blue pixels, only the Player0 yellow pixels show up (again, I'm using VSS .80, not sure if it's my coding or the emulator). Koffi's douse water (still unimplemented) will also utilize Player1's blue pixels. " In my experience the older versions of VSS do not emulate the GPRIOR settings correctly and therefore you can't get the 3rd color or the "black stencil" modes to work. I've not tried newer versions... I know ATARIWIN and RAINBOW both handle the GRPIOR Ok - well in all the games I've run on them. At the risk of repeating myself elsewhere you can get a program called ENVISION PC to do character set editing on the PC in all mono and multicolor character modes and complie the data into XE format.... Its a good program!! sTeVE

Back in the day I and a few friends did some work for ATARI UK. We produced 3 cheap assed games for them - all unreleased (Contagion, Z-force and an ST title). I then set up a company with some industry vetrans to eek some sales out of the 8bit as ATARI dumped their hardware - HARLEQUIN - and we signed Psygnosis, System 3 and Grandslam - we released PLASTRON... We had MENACE, Barbarian, Shadow of the Beast, Last Ninja II, Paperboy and more in developemnt, plus some originals too (Zero War (urgh!) and Project Xanthien). The XE market was awful - Plastron sold very few units and we found our games spread everywhere, too much piracy! We pulled the plug on the company and went our seperate ways - I joined Microprose as a games designer - the rest is history...