Paul Slocum

yeah, shooting for January. The core sequencer is almost fully working now. Just gotta polish out the interface, add some bells and whistles, and add support for the AtariVox. -paul

I'm working on a VCS mini-tracker program, and I've now got a partially working alpha posted on my webpage. The program will let you build your own 8 measure music loops and load/save them on the Atarivox EEPROM. Planned features: - 8 measure loop sequencer - can generate pretty much any Atari sound - "high hat" rhythm module - save/load your loops w/ the AtariVox - some support for the AtariVox speech chip too - tuning helper - trip out mode - display music as numeric data that can be used w/ my seqeuncer kit Project webpage here. Latest alpha ROM here. Rough version of manual here. -paul

If you're really interesting in 2600 programming, the Supercharger is much more useful.

H*R RPG is on hold indefinitely. I've got a lot of other projects that are higher priority right now. There's a thread about this in the 2600 forum. Right now I'm working on a music sequencer cart. There's a slight possilbility it'll be released this year, but more likely in January. -paul

Yes, it does look like a CD-ROM drive, but what you saw is what they used to call a "Floppy Disk Drive". This is apparently what people used before CD-ROMs. -paul

And I'm currently hammering out a new Atari 2600 music sequencer program that will use the AtariVox EEPROM to save sequences...

I still plan on using the new 64K board since Joe took the time to design a proto. Although I'll probably fill up a bunch of full 4k banks with speech or fancy graphics data. And I don't want to give the impression that I'm going to just throw together some sloppy H*R thing to be done with it. I plan on doing something nice, polished, and fun. Just a lot simpler and easier to program and test. I've already discussed several ideas with Matt and I'll make a decision and announcement before too long. I may need to program a proof of concept or two first. Maybe a new crazy 2600 demo will make you guys feel better (attached) -paul scroller.zip

Well where I come from (earth) video games, movies, inventions, etc. tend to be announced before they are completed for many reasons (some that Thomas mentioned). Sometimes things get done and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get delayed a lot. That's life, things happen. Hope the news isn't too hard on you. Again, this is a HOBBY. And note that I did do a proof of concept before I originally announced this (a very complex map display system and a carefully planned memory map). But also again, I never said this is completely cancelled, but delayed indefinitely until I have more time and can get some other projects finished. Maybe somebody else will even take it over or help out at some point? AND I'm saying I plan on doing an alternate H*R game in the mean time. Hey, I'm totally bummed about this too. I want to see this game as much as you guys do, but it's just not going to happen right now. I didn't anticipate my other projects taking off as well as they have, and I can't pass up some of these opportunities right now. -paul

Considering the amount of time that's gone into the RPG and what's required to finish it, it's not so great. And we really don't know how many it'll sell. There are a lot of H*R fans, but I doubt many of them have working 2600s. I think any H*R game or set of minigames will sell about the same. In fact, the Matt told me he suspects that an action game would sell BETTER than an RPG. And writing a new set of minigames or a good regular action game is actually much less work than completing the RPG (especially since we can still use some of the code and graphics that have been completed for the RPG like the title screen, text engine, and character displays). -paul

The code is commented pretty well (a lot better than previous projects of mine). It's already so complicated that I couldn't deal with it without having a lot of comments. I'd love to bust ass and get this game done, but I have a lot of stuff that's in demand yet where there's no money to be had (It'd be nice if I could take time off work to finish some of this stuff ). People want my band to play all over the place and put out CDs, but we're so unusual that it's tough to break even. People want to see my art and fly me to places (like Europe!) to talk about it, but as you can probably guess, computer based conceptual art doesn't sell too good. And as we all know, homebrewing doesn't make any money. I only work 30 hours a week, and put time in on my own programming/music/art projects ALL the time, every day. There's only so much time in a day. I didn't say this project won't ever be done, but not any time soon. As you know, I DO finish projects usually. But I've got too many other ideas that I've been pushing back and pushing back mainly because of the RPG. It's just time to put the RPG on hold and move on to some of these other things. -paul

I finished another part of it that was shown on TechTV (screenshot below), but the project is now on hold indefinitely. I don't have enough time to work on it with my band and other programming and art projects I'm trying to finish. I plan on releasing a simpler Homestar Runner game or set of minigames next year. I'll announce more specifics in the next couple of months. Hopefully later next year I'll have time to start working on the RPG again. -paul

awesome.

I will be programming a new hack that will use it, will probably eventually be adding some support to Marble Craze, and will probably be adding support to future homebrews. Now just need some tech docs for it... -paul

That looks great! You should make it move up and down using a movement table. And it'd be cool to give it a gradient so it looks metalic. -paul

I use the Needham's EMP-10 which is under $200. I also use the Xtronics Romulator which is an EPROM emulator and works great (same guys that make the Pocket Programmer). -paul

I think Chad said he looked into duplicating it in the CC2, but it was too complicated to include. I don't think it's terribly complicated, but it does include quite a few functions and I'm guessing it would have required a larger FPGA, raising the cost of the CC2 even more. And I believe the DPC chip and ROM are integrated into one chip in the Pitfall 2 cart, so it's not like you can just pull the DPC and use it with an EPROM to make a new DPC game. Otherwise I probably would have tried that already. -paul

The DPC chip does a lot of stuff other than the music. I don't think it can be done unless partial DPC emulation is added to the CCII. -paul

The USB is probably nice for some since serial ports are less common these days, except I think that's more of an Apple issue and there doesn't seem to be any OSX software yet. And the transfer rate seems a tad slow for USB. Looks like a nice platform for development since it supports pretty much the same bankswitching schemes that can currently be produced as a cartridges (except for 32k and 64k). I suspect some gamers are going to want support for all bankswitching schemes though. -paul

I've tried it with and without the launcher.

I downloaded o2em 1.01Win (Odyssey 2 emulator) and set it up but it won't work. When I starts I get a slightly distorted "Select Game" screen with a gray bar at the top, and it locks up. I have to use the task manager to close it. I'm running XP Pro. Anyone else having this problem? -paul

they don't give a reason.

slashdot story was rejected

lots of Atari 2600 source: http://www.qotile.net/minidig/

The Slashdot article still says "pending"...

How about "Flying Tennis for Two" hehehe. -paul