Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Jetboot Jack

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    1,957

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Jetboot Jack

  1. Posted

    Are you sure?

    I couldn't resist so here's P.G. with scanlines that I already got what are the PFs (including PF2&PF3) that I put in 40Bytes wide that I think nobody will notice the difference.

    Then I thought the same way as I usually do with Mariuszw that is to use the loading and/or title screen(s) to show original and A8 version credits and date.

    I can help and do all this on G2F during night together with MrFish if is yours wishes. The font can be other one and other sizes, of course, because I just did this one one simplier and quickly on P.C.'s Paint program so you can say what's yours like and wish... I would only suggest that even less size that NAMCO needs that design as it's their original and at the time.

    I have two ideas that is the A8 have a sort of 'paper colour' where is shown the credits or not and is all shown above the white.

    Indeed I like the white (maybe would change to lightest gray (0C) instead of plain white (0E) for the BAK colour register because there are too too much black loading and title screens around. The problem here, in my opinion, is that you had most of the screen empty and that is why I am adding stuff. You'll cover more white area and have original together with the A8 version credits that is another problem solved ;) :).

    Here's the two (and it can have less used scanlines to get 8scanlines blank at the top more the same at the bottom so that it can be all the picture also be seen on NTSC tvs):

    attachicon.gifmine.PNGattachicon.gifmine _credits no paper different colour.PNG

    :P

     

    :thumbsup:

     

     

    Too many fonts - the "Atari 8bit By" line looks crude IMHO - that typeface is not used anywhere in the game...

     

    sTeVE

  4. Posted

     

    Yea, I wasn't going for 1:1 with the PC-Engine CD audio... i know I can never come close to the sound of redbook CD audio with a PoKEY, but I think I can get it to sound better than the Famicom or Master System version of the same track. :D Honestly, I think the PoKEY is better equipped to deal with Ys music than either the NES or SMS... it's just more flexible, plus the ability to do PSG percussion helps a lot!

     

     

    I see where you are going - anything but the PCE CD soundtrack for Y's just sounds wrong IMHO - the SMS version is horrid...

     

    sTeVE

  8. Posted

    This is exactly what MWP does. You just need to set new column very quickly so the change doesn't become visible at the wrong moment. Best way to achieve this is to expand screen to 48 which happens anyway when you turn on fine scrolling. Then you have 4+4 char "buffers" on the side so you can prepare new graphics as you wish.

     

     

     

    Exactly the technique we used on Shadow of the Beast!

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 2

  12. Posted

    Well I took a look - I had a few of the unprotected retail discs given to me in the U.K. to support disc owners. Although I am unsure how widespread this was - as the company I worked for did distribution too...

     

    So far I have only uncovered a couple of flippy discs, one disc has NYC and Alley Cat, the other Speedace and Zybex. Supplied unprotected for me to copy for tape purchasers...

     

    I will continue to look for the others - I know there were more US Gold ones (I got them when the Americana label was live) where the Synapse games went to die in the UK.

     

    There we also others from U.K. Publishers - I had Draconus and Cosmic Pirates at one point...

     

    I will test them as they've been untouched in boxes for around 20 years!

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

     

    The disk is damaged. Like 99.99% of the copies of this title.

     

    This title must be the worst of all in this regard. I collected something like half a dozen, may be more, original disks and all are physically destroyed. Besides being so fragile, the timing is quite critical. Even the original disk might sometimes fail depending on the drive firmware and the computer OS. I traced the protection long ago and found what appears to be a bug that makes the timing much more critical than they probable intended to be.

     

    IIRC, there are multiple protection checks that are randomly selected at boot time. So depending on how exactly is damaged, it might sometimes work. Be careful when checking this under emulation.

     

    Most important, if somebody is going to dump this tile with a SCP or Kryoflux, be very careful. I wouldn't recommend the default parameters. Chances the disk will not survive.

     

     

     

    It's been a while, but in my loft I have/had copies of the disk that Zeppelin gave to retailers to "copy" for users who bought the tape, but wanted a disc version - for this and Draconus.

     

    I will try and dig, em out...

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    To be fair it's not PAL's color gamut that is at fault but Atari's output of it's PAL video signal - PAL has a good bandwidth for color and removes hue errors, also chroma errors are not present in PAL outputs....

     

    Take a look at machines developed for PAL rather than converted to PAL, or later machines like the ST and the AMIGA to see what I mean - proper reds...

     

    sTeVE

  21. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Emkay,

     

    I am still utterly confused - you seem rather bent on making this thread about the impossibility of this being a good version of the game with good sound.

     

    From what I have seen Bosconian is shaping up to be an exemplary game for the little Atari and from what I know of the audio abilities of the system I expect there to be equally great sound - the samples are already awesome!!

     

    This is an Atari forum celebrating our collective enthusiasm for this old computer - lighten up, this is gonna be great!

     

    sTeVE

    • Like 3

  22. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    "POKEY should have no problem reproducing the start theme. Heck, even the MSX version gets it right."

     

    It's just those lazy statement from above, that make people guessing wrong possibilities to the A8. You'd need 2 POKEYs to get the musical feature of the MSX, driving 30% of the 6502 CPU, where the MSX almost needs no CPU ...

    OK, you could do PWM , using almost all CPU with one POKEY.... Musicwise every of those old chips is better than POKEY. But people still like to mix things up.

     

     

    I'm confused - the MSX has one 3 voice AY chip - a very limited chip in my experience of having to actually use them in games.

     

    How does the A8 need 2 pokeys to come near that?

     

    Getting a solid rendition of the game audio on Pokey is totally practical IMHO; either as a conversion from the WSG original or based on the MSX conversion...

     

    sTeVE

     

    P.S. The conversion is looking absolutely fantastic by the way, a really great piece of work!!

  23. Posted · Edited by Jetboot Jack

    Indeed - the chip was sold from 1978 (it's in their catalog of that year) - hence it's inclusion in the Intellivision etc - and is still in various forms in production - quite a feat...

     

    But that it is less powerful than Pokey does mean we have "expectations" :-)

     

    sTeVE

  25. Posted

    I think Zylon Bane is saying that the early members of the AY sound chip family (and variants such as the YM2149) as used in many home micros and consoles that favoured off the shelf components like the INTV/ST/MSX/ZX Spectrum etc is not a very powerful sound ship.

     

    And less flexible than Pokey in many ways - so perhaps getting great Bosconian audio should be possible given the AY powered MSX version is quite good albeit the usual tinny AY...

     

    As someone who has had to support AY/YM chips in various games, I gotta say I think in the right hands they can do pretty good audio, but it's always "thin" - on the GRADIUS arcade machine dual chips sound kinda neat as do Konami SCC enhanced carts - but they are not anything like AY...

     

    sTeVE

     

    P.S. The AY chip was designed in 1978 - so Pokey is pretty much a contemporary...

    • Like 1
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...