calamari

I'd say that this artwork matches the style that Atari used. It's really good.. Maybe Raijin was referring to the way it was vertically stretched without maintaining the original aspect ratio? Either way, looks fine to me. BTW, responding to the comment that it might turn off homebrewers.. I'm a homebrewer and it doesn't bother me much. There will be screenshots of my Solitaire game, there will be an art contest, testing, etc before it's released, plenty of opportunities for anyone interested to make their concerns known (i.e., right now). If you wait to complain about things until after the game is out.. I will laugh at you for being stupid calamari

It never occured to me that this game would need to be modified, actually. I've grown up with the 5200 version, and so I'm a bit biased, but it seems to have an outstanding implementation, even better than the arcade version. In fact, 5200 Space Dungeon is my favorite classic game-- see my avatar at left Obviously you don't agree about some part of the game, although you don't say why. What would you like to see improved if you could? This is a 5200 game, and no technical details were presented.. I see this as a fine forum for this question. BTW, why haven't you haven't answered any of those private messages I sent you calamari

Why would anyone get mad over game suggestions? I'd love testing / suggestions for my Solitaire game, esp. for the win sequence. calamari

I agree with you that given the amount of time left before CGE this was probably the best that could be expected. He has done an amazing amount of work on the game (digital sound, music, graphics, etc), considering that it's only been, what, a couple months since he decided to do it? I have nothing but praise for Ziggy's coding ability, and I stand by my comment above: 5200 Klax is a decent game. However, don't forget that this CGE deadline was completely self imposed, and the release date was originally December http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27952 The game will be sold online as well as at the show, so it's not a CGE exclusive. This leads me to a general question about homebrew ports, but I'll use Klax as an example, since many people have mentioned here that they were looking for something a bit more authentic. Would it be considered an insult for another person to re-port a homebrew? I'm not speaking of remaking original games, just ports. To be clear: I don't have any plans to re-port Klax, I have plenty of unfinished projects of my own to work on.. but there are a LOT of new games coming out, some of them being ports. I feel that ports require special attention and a special responsibility on the part of those involved to make it duplicate the existing work as closely as possible. With a port there is a standard to aim for, and in the case of Klax, we were shown by ZylonBane what potentially could have been. This obviously does not apply to original games. I would hope that a port that is not of high quality would not be granted an exclusive status just because it was the first to come out. Thoughts? calamari

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This is really the final version? That saddens me.. I've played it. It's a decent game, but it could have been so much more This version of Klax is still the same 2-D game with a couple of slanted sides to fool the "consumer". I was really hoping that ZylonBane's terrific graphic upgrades would be implemented, but alas. calamari

Haven't worked on it lately. One major problem that everyone mentions is that the cards aren't very readable. I could make a large numbers with a large suit under it, but I really don't want to sacrifice the full card look if I can avoid it. I wonder if I could use the FlickerTerm approach (two screens that complement each other, flickered, horizontally scrolled one pixel apart, to get a bit more horizontal resolution. I'll have to put it on the list. The other major problem is moving a huge card stack with all 5 sprites without tons of flicker.. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it and just let it flicker like mad? I could also go back to the black & white move that is relatively fast and flicker free, but it is ugly. The game play seems to be done, and 3 card draw _seems_ fine.. I thought there was a bug in it, but maybe not. Need to figure out some sound effects, trak-ball/joystick ranges (I'm hoping to do an automatic range calibration like Galaxian), my sticks are terrible, so if I want to actually play my own game I'll have to Finally, I want to put in some kind of a/v treat if you win, but I don't want to copy the cascading card thing from Microsoft Solitaire. No good ideas on that yet. calamari

New pics using black, red, green, blue, white color scheme.. haven't finished the red ramp lines. calamari

Oops, well let's take a look then as we go down: First of all, there is no orange involved.. so scratch that. Top lines: black, red, green, grey, light grey.. the red & green combine to make yellow (mock up needs to be modified) Either that, or the border color could be changed to solid red. After that top line we don't need the greys anymore, we replace them with green and blue. So, our palette down the ramp is: black, red, blue, green, white. Again, yellow can be made with red & green, or just have a red border. The score can be players if yellow is really wanted there, or red/green dithered. Other than that, you should have no color concerns down the rest of the screen with the exception of the wave lines.. maybe have to change the color of the wave number to a dithered yellow or other color. How's that? calamari

Just checked out your Space Harrier demo (never got around to it before), looks great! I guess the transparency isn't as bad as I expected, so the flicker idea would work fine. I wonder if it would be easier to do it all in Antic 4 character mode or have the two flickering screens. The biggest problem I see with having it all in Antic 4 is those situations where blocks would overlap from the 3-D effect. calamari

Wow, Zylon, that looks totally awesome! You inspired me to finish the quick 3-D rendering.. I adjusted a few of your graphics at the top to accomodate it: I left the dark blue belts in there so that it would be easier to draw the rest of the red lines. I'm not much of an artist, so if someone wants to tackle the perspective by all means please do so. I wonder how many characters would be left for the block animations if this was kept in Antic 4. There might be enough, especially if the character set changed a few times down the ramp. That would be a lot simpler than my flicker idea, and would probably look better. calamari

Hi, Just went to edit a post, and it took 40 seconds (timed it) to actually complete. I use Mozilla 1.3.1. Currently it is Sun Jul 20, 6pm Arizona time. Dunno if this slowness is a known issue so I am reporting it. Posting my original message was fast, reposting the edit was slow. calamari

I have a suggestion on how to accomplish a 3-D Klax game. there are two parts as I see it.. the conveyor belt and the blocks: The conveyor belt never changes. It also uses different colors than the rest of the blocks (dark green and a darkish red). The arcade board is 128x96 pixels, the 5200 Klax board is 60x96.. pretty close match, actually. I was starting to redraw a fixed board using ANTIC4. Someone who is quick with the program can probably do a better job than I can. Anyways, you can use all 5 colors and make a nice looking, arcade matching conveyor belt (15 characters wide by 12 characters tall). The pieces are various colors, but different colors than the belt, and aren't very suited to Antic 4 mode because of the number of possibilities of overlap with the belt. My recommendation would be to use Antic E which gives decent resolution and 4 colors. Instead of making different graphics for all 5 tracks, just make the graphics for the center track. Due to the 3-D effect and lack of rez, some columns will necessarily be wider than others, but it doesn't matter too much because the blocks are narrower than the belt, so there shouldn't be overlap. Anyways, in the current game there are 12 positions, so there need to be 12 scaling points with, say 3 frames of animation each for the flipping motion. You will probably need to have 2 sets tho, one for solid blocks and one for half and half blocks. The graphics can be stored as 1-bit for space savings, then the colors can be applied as the blocks are drawn. To make this work in the game, you'll set up two display lists, each with a different display memory location: one for the fixed conveyor belt, one for the blocks.. both can jump to a third display list that handles the bottom portion, which I assume is Antic 4.. It can use its own screen memory and character set. Each display list will only be active half the time (use the vertical blank time to switch between them and change colors), you'll probably need a DLI to change character set and colors for the lower stack portion. The flicker should not be very bad. EDIT: I should mention that this way of combining screens will make the blocks semi-transparent. Dunno if that will be a problem. calamari

This sounds interesting. Do you happen to have an example implemention? If not, can you elaborate on how this new format would be implemented? What strengths/limitations does it have? calamari

I'm not sure which Basic you are using, but you can use the higher VESA modes in QuickBasic or QuickBasic Extended (QB 4, PDS 7.00, or VB-DOS) by calling various BIOS interrupts. There isn't a SCREEN command, but I've written replacements for SCREEN, POINT, LINE and a combo LOCATE/PRINT. Mouse stuff should work fine too. I also have the original C version I wrote if you want it. calamari 'Graphics and line drawing routines 'Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 by Jeffry Johnston. 'Released under the GPL. See license.txt for details 'Ported to QuickBasic from my original C source, 2003 'To load this program: 'In QBX: QBX GRAPHICS.BAS /L QBX 'In QB, it will be something like: QB GRAPHICS.BAS /L QB DEFINT A-Z DECLARE SUB graphicsMode () DECLARE SUB drawLine (X1, Y1, X2, Y2, COLR) DECLARE SUB drawPoint (X, Y, COLR) DECLARE SUB drawText (Y, X, S$, COLR) DECLARE SUB textMode () TYPE RegType 'for CALL INTERRUPT ax AS INTEGER bx AS INTEGER cx AS INTEGER dx AS INTEGER bp AS INTEGER si AS INTEGER di AS INTEGER flags AS INTEGER END TYPE DECLARE SUB Interrupt (intnum AS INTEGER, inregs AS RegType, outregs AS RegType) COMMON SHARED BANKOLD 'switch to graphics mode CALL graphicsMode 'draw some lines FOR Y = 344 TO 599: CALL drawLine(0, Y, 799, Y, Y MOD 256): NEXT Y FOR Y = 0 TO 9: CALL drawLine(0, 100 + 10 * Y, 799, 100 + 11 * Y, 15): NEXT Y CALL drawLine(0, 0, 799, 599, 1) CALL drawLine(799, 0, 0, 599, 2) CALL drawLine(0, 0, 0, 599, 3) CALL drawLine(0, 599, 799, 599, 4) CALL drawLine(799, 599, 799, 0, 5) CALL drawLine(799, 0, 0, 0, 6) 'draw some points FOR I = 0 TO 799: CALL drawPoint(I, 100 * SIN(6.28 * I / 799) + 200, 4): NEXT I 'draw some text CALL drawText(3, 43, "Graphics test", 15) 'pause for keypress DO: LOOP WHILE INKEY$ = "" 'go back to text mode then exit CALL textMode PRINT "Back in text mode" END SUB drawLine (X1, Y1, X2, Y2, COLR) 'This routine uses a standard y=mx+b plot. 'The axis (x or y) with the longest distance is chosen. There are 'two reasons: 1) Since there are only as many points plotted as on one 'axis or the other, choosing the smaller axis would mean having small 'gaps in the line. 2) It also makes drawing vertical lines possible. 'Normally that is impossible because the slope would try to divide by 'zero. But, we can instead plot x=my+b. XL = ABS(X2 - X1) YL = ABS(Y2 - Y1) IF XL >= YL THEN IF X1 < X2 THEN XB = X1: YB = Y1 ELSE XB = X2: YB = Y2 END IF M! = (Y2 - Y1) / (X2 - X1)'slope FOR X = 0 TO XL Y = CINT(M! * X) CALL drawPoint(X + XB, Y + YB, COLR) 'y=mx+b NEXT X ELSE IF Y1 < Y2 THEN XB = X1: YB = Y1 ELSE XB = X2: YB = Y2 END IF M! = (X2 - X1) / (Y2 - Y1)'slope FOR Y = 0 TO YL X = CINT(M! * Y) CALL drawPoint(X + XB, Y + YB, COLR) 'x=my+b NEXT Y END IF END SUB SUB drawPoint (X, Y, COLR) 'ldiv_t location=ldiv(800*y+x,65536); LOCATION& = 800& * Y + X BANK = LOCATION& 65536 DIM regs AS RegType IF BANK <> BANKOLD THEN regs.ax = &H4F05 'CPU VIDEO MEMORY CONTROL regs.bx = &H0 'BH=00h select video memory window regs.dx = BANK 'window address in granularity units Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS BANKOLD = BANK END IF POKE LOCATION& MOD 65536, COLR END SUB SUB drawText (Y, X, S$, COLR) DIM regs AS RegType regs.ax = &H200 'SET CURSOR POSITION regs.bx = &H0 'page 0 regs.dx = 256 * Y + X 'row & column Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS FOR N = 1 TO LEN(S$) LETTER = ASC(MID$(S$, N, 1)) regs.ax = &HE00 + LETTER 'TELETYPE OUTPUT / character to display regs.bx = COLR 'page 0 / color Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS NEXT N END SUB SUB graphicsMode DIM regs AS RegType regs.ax = &H4F02 'SET SuperVGA VIDEO MODE regs.bx = &H103 'VESA video mode 800x600x256 colors Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS regs.ax = &H1124 'GRAPHICS MODE CHARACTER GENERATOR 8x16 CHARS regs.bx = &H3 '43 lines (really 37.5 but who's counting?) Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS DEF SEG = &HA000: BANKOLD = 0 END SUB SUB textMode DIM regs AS RegType regs.ax = &H3 'SET VIDEO MODE, BIOS 80x25x16 colors Interrupt &H10, regs, regs 'call BIOS CLS : DEF SEG END SUB

Haven't heard from ya.. did you get it to compile? calamari

Because 5200BAS got so big, I had to split my compiler into two parts. 5200BASJ.BAS, and INCLUDEJ.BAS (or 5200BASK.BAS and INCLUDEK.BAS for the later version), the J and K are internal version "numbers". Once I got through 0-9 I started with A-Z. I never overwrite my previous version code in case something goes wrong. Therefore the error you are getting and that is the FAQ are really the same. The reason that you get the error is that it cannot find an include file that it needs to put into your program source. For example: if you use the CLS command anywhere in the program, it will need to include CLS.INC, which is in the INC folder. This include file contains 6502 source code for the CLS command. Of course it's not just for CLS-- PRINT, LOCATE, SCREEN,quite a few commands have an associated include file. This is good because the code can be changed if it is slow, if there is a bug, or even if you just want to experiment with the way 5200BAS works. It assumes that the include files are in the INC directory off of the current directory, so in our CLS example it attempts to open CLS.INC and read from it, but for some reason it cannot. The only reasons I can think of for this are 1) The directory doesn't exist, 2) The file doesn't exist, 3) It can't find the directory. It seems like you've taken care of reason 1), reason 2) would probably not give an error (it would create a 0 byte CLS.INC file), so let's check out reason 3). I used a relative path internally.. When telling it how to find CLS.INC, I didn't say C:5200BASINCCLS.INC, I just said INCCLS.INC. That way, you don't have to put the program in a specific place on on a specific drive. However, it does mean that you'll need to run the 5200BAS program from the C:5200BAS directory or it won't know where INCCLS.INC is. Here is an experiment. Go to the place where you have been attempting to compile and type "dir INCCLS.INC". If you are in the wrong directory, you'll get an error from MS-DOS saying "Path not found". If you get that error, do a search for 5200bas.exe (Start : Find : Files or Folders), named 5200BAS.EXE. It will tell you the folder in which it was found. you might find more than one copy of 5200BAS.EXE, in which case you'll want to try the following instructions for each folder: 1) Change directory to the folder listed.. for example in my case 5200BAS.EXE was found in C:BC7BIN, so I would type: C:WINDOWS>cd C:BC7BIN That would give me: C:BC7BIN> 2) Try testing for CLS.INC: C:BC7BIN>dir INCCLS.INC I might get: Volume in drive C is --- Volume Serial Number is xxxx-xxxx Path not found Or I would get: Volume in drive C is --- Volume Serial Number is xxxx-xxxx Directory of C:bc7bininc CLS INC 550 10-12-02 10:14a cls.inc 1 file(s) 550 bytes 0 dir(s) xxx MB free Of course the second one is the one you want. When you find this place, that is the directory you need to be in when you try to compile a 5200BAS program. You might need to copy your game source code to the new directory. If that doesn't work, please private message me here in AtariAge and we'll figure it out. Before I release the next version of 5200BAS, I need to write an installer and have a config file containing the absolute path to the include files. Then this problem should no longer occur. The difficult part of using 5200bas should be associated with writing a good game, not running the compiler. Sorry about that. calamari

Just noticed this contest, dunno how I missed seeing it! My favorites: Dave Dries label. Wow it's great! Seems to give an immediate feel for the game. I especially like the bright and blended colors, also the cartoony look to it. There is nice movement caused by the curved building that draws my eyes from the sweating player to the baseball, which has a flash around it to confirm the object of the game. The large and original lettering for the game name makes this one stand out for me. I also like Nathan Strum's label. Did you use raytracing for most of that? Looks really cool. The cursive lettering gives it a baseball feel. It looks like he is running from something, maybe the beam in the background? Is it swinging? Matthew Bowman's is nice and professional looking. The Atari label integration looks believeable (good font, size, and spacing). calamari

Make sure that TASM and all its files are in your working directory. You need TASM.EXE and TASM65.TAB, maybe some others? All include files are created in the current directory. The pre-include file has the code that sets up things like the initial display list, VBI, sprite page, etc. This is written as a seperate file afterwards, because these type of settings can be changed anywhere in the program (so it doesn't know until after the .asm file is written what to even put for it) The post-include has the code for all the included functions that were used.. (CLS, LOCATE, PRINT, etc), among other things. This one could have been written into hello.asm. The advantage of the current file breakups is that hello.asm is going to contain pretty much only code that you have written. That way if there is a problem, you aren't wading through a bunch of code that doesn't make any sense. I suspect this is the reason you aren't getting the .1 and .2 files. They are created last so the error probably happens first and then you exit. See this FAQ entry for more information on fixing the error: http://lilly.csoft.net/~jeffryj/5200bas/52...basfaq.html#1_9 calamari

Yep, you need LSR A rather than just LSR with TASM (same with ASL, ROL, and ROR) calamari

Wow Voltman that cable looks nice compared to the mess of wires mine turned out to be. Luckily, I got a real Y-cable since I made it. calamari

Cool, glad it worked! What is the new game you are working on? calamari

Hi, Right now there is only integer math with 5200BAS. I was considering some kind of import or rewrite of fixed/floating point, but it would probably be too slow to be worthwhile. In Solitaire I keep pixel X and Y coordinates for the mouse pointer. ANTIC 4 has 160x192 resolution (when the characters are considered 40*4=160, 24*8=192). To get the character X/Y position I divide the X position by 4, the Y position by 8. This is fast for the 6502 to do. 'FINEX/FINEY = mouse position (0-159,0-191) 'CHARX/CHARY = char position (0-39,0-23) A=FINEX:A=A/4:CHARX=A A=FINEY:A=A/8:CHARY=A Not sure that's what you were hoping for. If not, let me know. calamari

Basic Compiler : 5200BAS 5200BAS Basic Compiler 5200BAS is a Basic language compiler targeting the Atari 5200. Page includes compiler binaries, documentation, FAQ, examples, 5200 programmer tools, and links to other local and remote Atari 5200 programming resources. Thanks for making this list, cala Note: Previous version of my post had an invalid url, sorry about that.

Hi, Sorry for the delay in sending out everyones totals. One bidder did not read the rules so it made a bit of a mess of things. The items that were won by this bidder that received other bids will be offered to the other bidder. You aren't required to take these items, but it will be at your original bid price (I think each of them $1) if you want them. I'll put any such carts in a seperate list at the bottom of each affected list, so you can decide. Thanks, calamari