calamari

Anyone else having trouble viewing that page? calamari

It should be possible, but I've never tried it. An example of this kind of thing is the old MS-DOS Shell (remember that thing from MS-DOS 4 thru 6?) It used character graphics to let us out of date folks have a mouse pointer in a text screen mode . Since the mouse could be at the corner of a character, it used 4 characters as the mouse pointer & fake background and drew to them. I wonder how much flicker there would be with this algorithm: 1) determine which 4 (or more) characters will be written on 2) copy the characters (not the graphics, just the character numbers & position) so the screen can be restored later. 3) copy the character graphics themselves to another part of character set memory (reserved for drawing the software sprite). This draws the background of the software sprite. 4) draw the foreground graphics for the software sprite in this special area of character graphics memory (using xor or whatever). 5) quickly copy the new character set numbers onto screen memory (not the graphics, just the character set numbers that represent the reserved software sprite), would only be copying 4 bytes for the mouse pointer. 6) leave it that way until it needs to move again (or if changing backgrounds) 7) copy the saved (see step 2) original character numbers back (again, not the graphics) so the screen is restored. go to step 1 You could even handle multiple overlapping software sprites with this, but you'd have to put each change on some sort of stack and you'd use a lot of characters.. probably not worth it if you want a meaningful background picture. calamari

Is there a way for a person to find out who has them on their ignore list? Just curious calamari

Don't just plug it into the wall.. you can build a switchbox with a few parts.. I think instructions are in the 5200 FAQ. calamari Edit: yep it's in the faq.. thanks to Voltman3 from this recent AtariAge thread. Here is a direct URL http://www.atarihq.com/5200/5200faq/04_14.html calamari

Nice radar map. Your programming environment is also cool. calamari

I've responded in the emulation forum where this message belongs. calamari

Are you sure you are actually using Atari 800 Win and not Atari 800 DOS? First, make sure you have all the rom files in your Atari800 folder (or whatever you called it). For example: ATARIBAS.ROM 8,192 bytes ATARIOSB.ROM 10,240 bytes ATARIXL.ROM 16,384 bytes With the Windows version it is all menu driven: Go to the Atari menu, Hardware. Select your machine type.. in my case I chose 800 OS-B, but I also could have chosen 800XL based on the roms I have. Yes I actually have these systems. Next you need to tell it where your rom is.. click the Browse button and choose your rom. Hit Open, hit OK again. To load a cartridge: Go to the Atari menu, Cartridge.. choose Use Other ROM. Pretty simple. To load a disk: Go to the Atari menu, Disk drives, then specify your dos disk image in D1 by clicking the D1:. Mydos453.atr or dos_25.atr are my favorite choices, but of course you have to have the atr's.. make a copy of your real Atari DOS disk using a SIO2PC or APE cable, or find them yourself. If you can't find them online you aren't looking hard enough (same goes with roms), same goes with the official Atari800Win website. Once you have D1: specified, hit OK, then go back to the Atari menu and Reboot. You should see Atari DOS/MyDOS load.. of course DOS will usually be boring on it's own, so you probably want to load a second disk in D2: to actually play a game or whatever. If you don't have menus, etc then you DONT have Atari 800 Win, you have the DOS version. There is a big difference between the two as far as interfaces go. For beginners I suggest the Windows version. For programmers, the DOS version. calamari

I haven't played the game in a while, but I know I never got to level 4, either. How many levels are there? Maybe you beat the game? I was able to change the skill level on mine with *, and the level with #. It's possible that your controller buttons need to be cleaned (it's a never ending process unless you have the Trak-Ball ) Maybe John hasn't seen this message yet. His AtariAge nick is ziggystar. He'd be the best one to figure out if there is a bug. calamari

My favorite 5200 Games in order based on what I liked as a kid and now: 1) Space Dungeon, 2 player 2) Galaxian 3) Centipede 4) Mario Bros, 2 player 5) Jungle Hunt 6) Defender 7) Pitfall 8 ) Wizard of Wor, 2 player 9) Joust, 2 player 10) Robotron, 2 player There are so many good ones, it's hard to keep the list down! *Pole Position Blue Print Frogger Missile Command (I remember liking the GAME OVER effect * Killed by an orange soda spill so didn't play it as much as a kid Average: Dig Dug Qix Star Raiders Below average: Gorf Breakout Sports games Pac-Man Other games I forgot (obviously not good enough to remember!) Some that aren't so good: Countermeasure James Bond Congo Bongo Star Trek Vanguard Megamania Solitaire (right now ) Games I wish I'd had as a kid: Combat II Advanced (this game is what Countermeasure should have been) Pitfall II River Raid Kangaroo Kaboom Keystone Kapers I really liked the 2 player games, my brother really liked Mario Bros and Space Dungeon... When I got back into 5200 we played Space Dungeon all the way to level 99 (he drove, I did the shooting). It's true there are only 99 levels of difficulty. IIRC it stops getting harder around level 50. The 5200 has so many great games. It's the best system ever made! calamari

I discovered a major bug in BIN2INC 1.01 this morning. With some files it was giving "Input past end of file". It was opening the file in text mode instead of binary mode. I'm surprised that no one has reported this bug, but maybe that means no one encountered it.. I hope that's the case Anyways, BIN2INC has been fixed and is on my website as version 1.10. If you use POKEDIT or MIDI2POK you should probably grab the updated program. Thanks, calamari

Not after a for loop, because I have the { }'s instead.. but I forget to put ;'s on struct definitions sometimes, because you usually do have the { }'s. And you can put a ; after a single statement for loop, of course, or even right after it if you embed the looped code into the for (), not usually fun to read that kinda code tho, just fun to write it calamari

I'm curious, what did you search for? I just did a search for "distella" in the Programming Forum to see what would show up. I got *10* matches, almost all of them are relevant. You sure you searched the forum? AtariAge has a GREAT search utility. Use it! I'll shut up now calamari

Yes! Go here: http://winprog.org/tutorial/ I have a bunch of other C++ links on my webpage too: http://www.azstarnet.com/~jeffryj/c++.html calamari

Hi, The pages of topics go off the edge of my 800x600 screen when a long url is posted. For example (not a real url, but it shows the problem nicely): Test of a long URL - Edited by Albert Can you make it wrap url's like regular text? For an example of a url wrapping, check Ebay, the index listing urls wrap all over the place. calamari

I think Ronen Habot used SAP music in 5200 Castle Blast for a Pac-Man sound. He may be able to give you a few tips too. calamari

Never played the CV version, or even the arcade version.. but I've never found 5200 Congo Bongo to be that fun. You can always test it out on an emu to see if you like it. calamari

There is a programming language called INTERCAL (made in 1972, IIRC) that has a similar philosophy based on programmer politeness. Some of your instructions need to be prefaced with "PLEASE" so that you are asking nicely. If you are rude and leave out the "PLEASE"'s it won't compile your program. Also, it won't trust you if you are excessively polite, so you can't just put "PLEASE" on every line There are some other features that make this language unique. Check it out calamari

Lots of music: Ballblazer, Pitfall II, Blue Print, Boogie Demo, POK demo Some music: Mario Bros, Gremlins, Frogger I'm sure there are lots I'm forgetting! calamari

Why does eveything have to be so black & white? Just because it's not the "ALL-IN-ONE-GUIDE-FOR-ATARI-2600-PROGRAMMING-WRITTEN-SPECIFICALLY-FOR-ATARI-MASTER", doesn't mean it's a waste.. or is it a waste to you? Seems pretty odd to me. But, here's an idea: You can have 2 books! Or even... 3 I know that's a radical idea, but entertain it for a moment. And besides, for *45 CENTS*?!?! Even a cheapskate would say thats a great deal these days. You can never have too many reference books.... and why didn't you read it? BTW, the time it took me to write this response was worth more than 45 cents.. You owe me some $$$ calamari

A=A AND 16 is actually an error, it should be A=A AND 15, I have corrected it in the command reference, sorry about that. In any case that line isn't the one producing the random number. You could leave the A=A AND 15 out and you'd get a random number from 0 to 9, it would just take longer. Some background: I made RND with a simple equate to RANDOM. So A=RND is the same as A=RANDOM or A=PEEK($E80A). The memory address $E80A is the POKEY random number generator, and it returns values from 0-255. The above code (minus the A=A AND 15 line) gets a random number from 0 through 255. If the number is less than 10 (meaning 0 through 9), it exits the loop, otherwise it gets another number, etc. We don't want to keep testing values from 0 through 255, because there is only a 10/256=3.9% chance of getting a number that is in the 0 through 9 range, so it's slow. In QuickBasic we might use something like A=A MOD 10 to force the number into range, but on the 6502 that would involve division and that's slow too. You can quickly turn bits off with AND. The A=A AND 15 only allows the lower 4 bits to be on (15 decimal=00001111 binary) so it cuts down the possible values of A to 0 through 15. That gives us a 10/16=62.5% chance of getting a number that is in range. Not perfect, but good enough. It won't have to throw away as many values before returning a number in the requested range. Just as a sidenote, 16 decimal=00010000 binary, so the original A=A AND 16 would return values of either 0 or 16. Since 0 is the only one in the range 0 to 9, I'm guessing that you always got 0 as your "random" number calamari

5200 Mario Bros is way better than the 7800 version. Definitely grab a copy. calamari

I've been involved in the Combat II Advanced testing and it's shaping up to be a GREAT game! The 5200 has always needed a good multiplayer Combat game (Countermeasure just doesn't cut it IMO). I especially like the combat choppers, they are fast and mean, and there are lots of good hiding places behind the buildings Don't miss this one! calamari

Inky: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial calamari

I haven't tried that Blitz Basic.. but Qbasic is pretty easy to use, compared to almost all programming languages I've seen, and you should find plenty of example code online. You can also go to Help in the upper right, click Index, push "D", double click DO...LOOP Statement.. there is a nice beginners example there. If you don't understand the example just look up each statement it uses in the Index. I taught myself Basic (GW-Basic actually, even more primitive than Qbasic) by breaking apart programs and experimenting (I would change the program to do something else). I also read almost every page of the Basic manual I had (Just listed the instructions and what they did, with a small example, like the Qbasic Help files), that gave me a lot of ideas for programs to write. My first program from scratch displayed a crude ASCII stick figure doing jumping jacks. At the time I didn't know how to slow down the action so I used BEEP's . It looked (and sounded ) awful. But, I kept trying and experimenting, and figuring things out, and here I am 13 years later, STILL learning things that I didn't know. Don't expect to learn this stuff overnight, and be prepared to put in the time and do the work. Edit: Just saw your update! Thats what I was hoping for.. Keep at it! calamari

What OS are you using? I don't think it is included with XP, not sure with ME. On 98 it's not installed by default (I don't think it's installed by default with 95 either, but I can't remember). With a Windows 98 CD you can copy it from the toolsoldmsdos folder (all you need are the files qbasic.exe and qbasic.hlp). If you don't have that folder, try searching your Windows CD-ROM for qbasic.* with the Start...Find, or Start...Search function, or borrow a friends 95/98 CD. If you still can't find it.. let me know in a private message. Have fun, calamari