Paul Slocum

Franklin Cruz did the vector the hack. Here's the page for it: Asteroids Vector Hack -Paul

Weird! Should add that to the Vector Asteroids hack and it will be almost arcade-perfect. -Paul

I was looking at those auctions, and I found this: New Atari An unopened 2600 is cool, but I didn't realize they went for that much! The reserve's not met either. -Paul

The web interface generates a data file for the Beat Programming Kit. It doesn't actually generate sound. You must save the data it produces and then compile it using the kit. You end up with a ROM image that will play your beat on Atari 2600 emulators or a real Atari using the Cuttle Cart or Supercharger. You should probably download the kit and read the readme file and the information in the beats.h file first. -Paul [ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

I don't think it's possible. And if it is, it will probably cost more than buying real controllers off ebay since you'll have to replace everything but the case and switch. -Paul [ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

Sprintmaster is a Superchip game. -Paul

I'm not sure how I'm going to release it yet (maybe at one of the conventions) so I'm not going to reserve copies yet. I'll keep you updated. -Paul

No screen shots yet. At one point I had something to look at, but I decided to rewrite it all. I'll post here when I get something to look at. It does look like it's similar to that game, Jess. -Paul

Hehe. Actually I originally was planning on including a mode that was a straight port of the wooden marble game, but as I realized that it would be difficult to program and that the other mode would probably be more fun, I dropped the idea. What I'm envisioning is a multi-screen maze of platforms without walls. So you have to avoid falling off the edge, but make it to the finish as quickly as possible. -Paul

The main problem with Marble Madness is that it requires scrolling in all directions. If you somehow avoided this (tweaked the levels so they only need to scroll down or something) you could use the Crystal Castles kernal to pull it off. But I just hate looking at all those jagged diagonals on the Atari. I've always preferred to play Crystal Castles on the C64. Marble Craze is going to have a lot of Marble Madness elements, but with an overhead view so you don't have to look at a bunch of cranked diagonals. It's not a straight port of that wooden marble game. The wooden marble game was just inspiration for the controller scheme. -Paul

My first choice would be Parker Brothers. But if not, I guess my second choice would be Universal Gamex. -Paul

Cool! You found one too. Wierd how they start popping up all of a sudden. Combat Rock's alright, but I'm selling mine on ebay. The Clash totally sold out after London Calling anyway. -Paul

Thanks for everyone's response. I've got a much better estimate now. I'm going to order a few more boards tomorrow. -Paul

I lot of pong systems I've seen have built in speakers too. It would be pretty cool to build speakers into an Atari. -Paul

I ordered a modest number of parts for the Synthcarts, but I have enough e-mails of people who are interested that I think all of them will be accounted for. I'm thinking that I'll order a few more parts now, because I know there will be at least a few more orders when I announce that it's available. But I haven't got the slightest idea how many. Can you please e-mail me if you are interested? It doesn't commit you to buying. I'm just trying to get a rough estimate. The parts aren't cheap and I don't have a lot of money so I don't want to buy too many. But also they take a while to get here so I don't want to quickly sell out and have to wait another 2-3 weeks for more to arrive. [email protected] -Paul

You can keep hitting the ball of the walls, but you can't score anything since there are no blocks, so it gets a little old. -Paul

One thing that's really terrible about regular Breakout is that there's no third level. Once you clear the first two, no more blocks appear. -Paul

Oh yeah. Hmmm. Try: up up down down left right left right B A start... That's better: -Paul [ 02-02-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

I was at Thrift store today and in one store I saw a typical box of Pac-Mans and Combats. I figured I'd dig around a little anyway. I found what seemed to be a Combat cartridge, but the label read "Combat Rock". I figured I'd take it home and see what it was about. Well I put it in, and it seems to function exactly the same as Combat except that it plays a really poor rendition of "Rock the Casbah" by the Clash while you play. I know it's hard to believe, but I dumped the ROM and you can see for yourself: combrock.bin -Paul

If it says "beat player" on the screen several times, it is running properly. To start the beats playing, you set the difficulty switches to A. On Z26, I think the F5 - F8 keys adjust the difficulty switches. Z26 is a great emulator and I use it often, but at least on my computer, it doesn't have very good sound. I know a couple of people who have submitted beats so far have been using the PCAEWin emulator. Also, Crackers pointed out that if you have a Supercharger, you can load it on a real Atari using the WPlayBin program. -Paul

The beta of the Synthcart is finished! If you have a Cuttle Cart and want to help beta test, shoot me an e-mail. You wouldn't have to do anything special. Just load the ROM, try out some of the settings, and see if you find any bugs that I missed. It seems really solid, but you can't be too careful. [email protected] -Paul [ 01-31-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

They're 37 cents each at BG Micro -Paul

Synthcart. -Paul

Unfortunately, yes. I just don't have the tools or expertise to set it up for other machines. The code should compile (perhaps with a few minor modifications) on other machines if you can get a 65xx assembler. -Paul

Wanted to let you know there was a minor bug in the beat player program. It should play your programmed beats fine, but may produce some odd noises when you turn your programmed beats off with the Diff switches. I've fixed it and the update should be available here on Atariage soon. If you want to go ahead and grab the new version, here it is on my server: Updated Beat Kit (beatkit.zip) -Paul