stlouisrod

Amazing site and font productions!!! It's incredible how many styles a simple 8-bit font can provide. I ended up using HxD (Windows hex editor) to copy and paste the .fnt file binary data into VS Code for me to include in my Assembler code.

Amazing work on this! i finally have an alternative to the actual arkanoid that has too much visual jitter on the paddle to be enjoyable. Considering how no other non-atari consoles support paddles, the more games we have using them the better!

Hello all. I just obtained a 6 switch non-heavy Atari 2600 (Taiwan build) that plays every standard cartridge I insert. But my Harmony cart just pulls up a white screen with a loud tone from the speakers. The Harmony continues to work fine on 2 of my other Atari 2600s (another 6 switch non-heavy, and a 4 switch woody). I plan on taking apart the latest one and cleaning it thoroughly, as I suspect some of the pins used by the Harmony are dirty/damaged, but aren't used by only 4k-8k cartridges. Thoughts?

Wow, great show, technical difficulties and all :). Looking forward to another great year of contenders. I really hope to see more games developed for the driving controllers (Tempest Elite a great start), and paddle controllers, mainly because those controllers are so unique to the Atari platform, and very challenging to fully appreciate via emulation. As far as a dream port title, I'd love to see an attempt at Zaxxon in its isometric glory. I remember being HORRIBLY underwhelmed by the Coleco version released when I was a kid, though in hindsight, their reworking was impressive considering the time/resources/memory restrictions they had.

This goes without saying, but the quality of these games is getting so good, thanks to amazing feats of programming ingenuity, that I HIGHLY recommend playing them on real hardware, on a real CRT (not modern LCD), in order to avoid adding any graphic/audio glitching or lag to the experience. Twitch games like these truly deserve it :). Personally, I use a Harmony cart for 2600 playing, and the SIO2PC universal interface (USB edition) to my Atari 130XE.

Great to hear, James! Really enjoy your channel btw. Keep up the great work.

So when are the 2020 homebrew award nominees being released so I can start "judging"?

Tried the beta2, and it seems to be working fine. Not exactly sure how to rigorously test, as I simply ran original carts, as well as newer 32k homebrews. Let me know if there is a specific test plan to follow, and I'll assist more. Does this support holding port 2 button down to utilize that port for control? Etc.

Thank you, sir! I'll definitely give it a try.

In case you're considering enhancements to the Harmony firmware, it would be great if it would accept menu navigation from port 2 as well as port 1. I love paddle games, but using them to navigate the menu is incredibly painful. And yes, my paddles are rebuilt and excellent (no jitter). The driving controller on the other hand is SUPERB for navigating! So my dream would be for the menu to use the port 2 controller to navigate if anything is plugged in there. Otherwise, it would default to port 1. I would then leave the driving controller in port 2 for menu navigation, and swap the port 1 controller with whatever type of games I plan to play :).

Thanks for the update, Simon. I wasn't clear.. the mod I tried is the pre-made one on Ebay: Atari 2600/7800 A/V Composite RCA Audio Video Mod Kit " IMPROVED SOUND KIT " 1G, not yours. I think yours offers more flexibility, and I plan on trying one of yours in the near future to see if it works better on my 4k.

This .bin is in cartridge format. For it to work on my modded XBOX running the Atari800 emulator, I have to set the config of the rom as type cartridge, or it will not load. I can also run this directly on my atari 130XE over my sio2pc and APE software boot screen. Hope that helps.

Just played the iesposta pac-man 4k game... Fantastic! This is one of the only versions on any console that support diagonal movements, which is absolutely critical unless you are using a 4-direction arcade stick (yeah, right).

Quick update on the simple composite mod I made to my 4 switch woody. As I said above, picture looks great on a CRT, and on most older (non-smart) LCD panels. HOWEVER, there are big image problems when sent to my 1st generation 4k LCD HDTV. While the color seem solid, there are major ghosting/double images occurring, no matter what settings I change on the TV itself. I blame the ever-worsening analog to digital chips in these newer TVs, which apparently can't quite cope with the hack's timings/signal strength.

1) frostbite 2) keystone kapers 3) kaboom! 4) river raid 5) stampede 6) sky diver 7) megamania raiders of the lost ark 9) h.e.r.o. 10) circus atari

Well, I tried every machine setting possible in Atari800Win+, including running Turbo Basic XL as a cartridge, but TBXL itself only appears to work on a machine with 64k of memory or more. I would provide a compiled version of the game, but the TBXL compiler throws an error on my code for some reason.

Oh boy.. Good question. I am using most of the available ram not being used by os and turbo xl. I only tested on stock 800xl and 130xe which have 64k and 130k respectively. I will test in an emulator with limited memory and provide some insight.

Sorry, but if you downloaded this prior to 8:45pm CST on 10/14, i had left test code inside only giving you 1 life and starting you with 5000 points, lol. Please re-download the ATR with the correct version if so.

So I went back to a game I created in high school called Hot Air in Atari BASIC, which played OK but was way too slow and graphically unappealing. So 30 years later I got back into Atari programming and restored my two Atari 8-bit machines (800XL and 130XE) to full working order. Then I pulled every programming trick I knew of to improve the game in every possible way (custom display list mode, display list interrupts for many more colors, vblank interrupt routines to move the main character liquid smooth, etc.). I never had Turbo XL Basic as a kid, but now I use it to autoload the game and increase the frame rate even more. I'm posting it here for your enjoyment and feedback. Yes, it's similar to Joust, so sue me I have all 4 2-bit missiles left to utilize (either independently or combined for 5th player sprite), so I'm thinking of adding bullets or bird flying across the screen on later stages for added challenge. Let me know your suggestions. The game attempts to save your 5 highest scores to a file "D:HSCORE.DAT", but this will not work on some emulators that set floppy drives to read-only (i.e. XBOX Atari 800 emulator). If the game can't write to D: it will attempt to write to the H: (hard drive) device. If THAT can't be written to, then it will display the error and restart the game anyway. Enjoy! TXL_Hot_Air.atr

Not exactly. The dos versions i run error out when trying to access drives 3 and 4 even if a physical drive is set to those numbers. I saw somewhere you have to hack some dos variants to see drives beyond 2. They don't normally allocate space for the extra drives to save memory and allow all programs to load.

Thanks for all the advice, gents, but in this case, it came down to stupidity on my part. I did not realize there were TWO switches (black and a white hiding behind it), and was flipping both switches to the right (which equates to drive 3 instead of 2). I feel shame. Thanks for bearing with me.

FYI: I searched the forums and found a .zip with the fixed sound versions of Gremlins, Moon Patrol, and Mario Brothers. OMG, they sound glorious considering I've dealt with the poor sound versions since the 80s, lol. All 3 games just ratcheted up a notch in quality for me. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/177460-gremlins-with-working-sound/?&p=2213980&hl=fixed%20sound&fromsearch=1&do=findComment&comment=2213980