vidak

I was just at a big indie gaming function, and I'm pretty sure I could do some fundraising at that monthly event.

The Dig is now complete up to January 11, 2001. http://bootlicker.doubledashgames.com/commo-dig/

Oh by the way, because by the end of this I would have read the WHOLE Stella Mailing List, I'm going to include an index ordered by subject, and it will include all the links to post on relevant subjects, like disassemblies, code examples, answers to arcane questions. One really cool explanation is the reason why (edit) the PF1 register is ordered backwards. Check out the explanation on the Dig! (Link here.)

Actually I think I might have it completely incorrect. There was a CD that got circulated around (you had to buy it, I think), before people had CD burners. The CD was circulated I think because the internet was at like 28.8 or like at most 56.6 kilobaud. It was called the Starpath CD, and it had a lot of amazing code examples. I think the Stella Mailing List name had something to do with the Starpath CD, originally. I'm more than happy to change any of the introduction to anything anyone suggests. I'm also happy to release the content of the Commo Dig under the GNU GPL so that anyone can copy it and host it somewhere else. Going through the Mailing List makes me realise how precious it is. We should have multiple mirrors of all the files stored on it, just in case Big List goes down. I think I might even download all of Glenn Saunder's documentary footage and encode it into much smaller files, because they're all on archive.org's site in their raw format. I missed your first thrust post! I'll put it in. I agree, it's getting really, really disorganised. Luckily it's all text and it's not hard to load. I think I'm about halfway through now. October 1996 to July 2000 is just under four years, and the list kind of dies in the middle of 2005. I'm hoping that the REAL gems are coming up, because I still haven't seen many commented disassemblies at all. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I have done or what I should do?

Thanks : )

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm in the process of trying to make a homebrew game. I'm just getting beginners nerves, though. I understand assembly and BASIC well enough, I just need to actually start working on it. I know some people do kind of "declarations" about what game they're going to make, but I can't really decide on what I want to make. I don't really know what makes an Atari 2600 game fun. I know Random Terrain has some web pages on creativity and coming up with games. I've always loved fetch quests and Raiders of the Lost Ark for the 2600, I was thinking of making a similar game. Although THAT has been well covered by games like Anguna.

Complete up until July 2000 now.

Maybe I will try and take on this project. I'm gonna do some looking around and maybe send some emails to some Chinese factories. I have a friend who speaks Mandarin, and I can get him to translate.

Please find the dig completed up until January 2000. 1999 was a pretty quiet year. http://bootlicker.doubledashgames.com/commo-dig/

Ahhhh okay. So it's not really necessary for me to do anything. I'd love to help, if you need some, anyway. I would suggest you crowd-fund. AtariAge has a great following and a lot of good-will attached to it, and I'm sure you'd do well if you Kickstarted on went with IndieGoGo etc etc Thanks Albert.

Hmm... I think I may need some help. I tried to ask my business-savvy brother what I'd need to do, and like I said he said it may not be worth it. My thinking is I'd just need a lot of money. I'd also need to prove I can actually pull this feat off. I know a lot of people who crowd-fund these sorts of things almost have the project completely completed before they fund. Like they'd already have all the engineers and technicians lined up. My thinking is, I need: - Money - A manufacturer - Some engineers or skilled people - The molds That's my first reflection on the issue anyway.

Yeah that's my plan, I want to make them, but from the sounds of it, it will cost a lot of money. I'm reaching for the impossible, really - I'm hoping to make many thousands of them cheaply. While it may cost a lot of money to get started, injection manufacturing allows you to mass produce them very cheaply in large batches.

I made a post about a month back about making reproductions and got my arse handed to me (hahahah). I still think about the issue of long-term sustainability of Atari 2600 hardware. I realise emulation is very good now, and I do emulate, but I figure starting a discussion about this can't hurt, right? What would it take to make new cart shells for new homebrews? This is an old issue, as discussed on the Stella Mailing List back in June 1999: http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/199906/msg00140.html What we have now that they don't is websites like Alibaba.com, where you can get direct lines of communication to Chinese plastic factories. Apparently injection molds used to cost a lot of money to make. Is that still true? We don't really have the issue of piracy to deal with if we're just making cartridge shells, so we may be able to crowdfund the project. I spoke to my brother about this, and he said it might not be worth the effort. I'm just interested to see what everyone's thoughts on the matter are.

The Dig is complete up until January 1999.

So an bar in my city had bought up a whole load of working CRT arcade machines and set them up to play while you get drunk! Rad! Ghosts and Goblins plays for free! I am totally heading down here during my lunch break from working on my thesis. It's called "1989", and it is in Newtown, Sydney, Australia. Just down the road from the library where I study. These are the games: Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, Alien, Some Simpson's beatemup, Golden Axe, Wonderboy, TMNT, Double Dragon NBA Jam, Point Blank 2, And I think that's it, it's a pretty small bar... I wish arcades would reopen.

The Dig is complete up until May 1998.

I was born in 1991, the year before the 2600 was discontinued. The first console I was given by Santa was the PlayStation 1, in something like '96 or '97. To be honest I hated the PlayStation because all the games were too difficult. The games I had were Crash Bandicoot 2, and a few others which my Dad played which scared me too much. Abe's Odyssey was particularly horrifying. You were alien workers who were being literally turned into dog food. It took until I was about 15 or 16 in 2006, 2007 until I was finally able to master all my PS1 games. My brother and I were bought an N64 when I was about eight or nine, and I enjoyed that console much more. Crash Bandicoot wasn't a real 3D game, but Mario 64 and Rayman 2 (?) were. You had a camera you could rotate, and while the games were difficult eventually, there was a better difficulty curve to them. I wasn't stuck in the first level of the castle like I was for about 5 years with Crash Bandicoot 2. I can't explain to you the hatred I had of video games because of Crash Bandicoot 2 and games that my uncle had on his SNES. Super Mario World is altogether a completely impossible game for pre-teens. I thought I was some sort of idiot who couldn't use their brain and hands properly. I did really well in school but I could never time jumps and attacks properly. N64 games seemed to make more sense. I remember when I was shown an Atari 2600 at the age of about nine. I was incensed. Finally a system that made sense. I absolutely loved Berzerk. I played it non-stop for about 2 hours, and then I have never played one since. Honest. I loved Adventure, Berzerk, and a few others, but I have never played a 2600 in person since. I have only played on emulators. 2600 games are easy to understand and play, but difficult to master, whereas games these these days are incredibly difficult just to understand and play normally. I'm only 26, but I really hate modern games. There's so much cheating and impossible amounts of effort being put into all the big games online now. There are people who have played thousands of hours of games which I will never be able to commit that much to. By contrast cheating on the 2600 is pointless. Who cares? Everyone can tell when you've cheated and you're pointed out as an idiot. I love the mythology of the Atari 2600 as well. The video games industry was more of a wild west, and it didn't require enormous amounts of money to get involved in. I will probably never be able to get into AAA video game development and become respected. But here with 2600 homebrew I think I might have a chance. The 2600 comes from an era of technology that I really love. It's less alienating technology. One person can make a game and understand completely how it works. I'm finishing up my PhD, and it's really opened my eyes to how terrible current digital internet technology is. You no longer sit next to the person you play games with anymore. I personally believe that you should only really be using technology which is easy to repair and simple to understand and master. The Atari 2600 fits that bill. Look at all the wonderful batari BASIC games being created. Another amazing thing about the 2600 is the really long and vibrant community which has existed around it for so long. I am currently performing a Dig of the Stella Mailing List, and it is amazing to see the incredible amount of effort people have spent working on this console, trying to understand it and really pushing themselves to make it even better.

I'm probably going to invest in a broadcast monitor when I am rich and famous. Like a 600 or 700 line monitor.

Classic Game Room has shown me so many cool games that I always wondered about but could never afford. It sucks that copyright ruins people's projects like that.

Completely agree. Sexist games are immediately awful because they're sexist, regardless of how fun they are to play. ET is Howard Scott Warshaw right? He maintains that ET is fun to play, and that the reviewers of the game didn't really understand it.

Now up to the beginning of January 1998.

The dig has been completed up until October 1997. http://bootlicker.party/commo-dig

I'd love to see the source!

I hope to be as half as talented as the people working on this game!

Ah right!! Thanks! By the way I have completed up until mid August 1997.