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azure

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About azure

  • Birthday 01/02/1972

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  • Custom Status
    🌈
  • Location
    Seattle, WA
  • Interests
    Classic computers, game programming, sci-fi, piano
  • Currently Playing
    Vim vs Emacs
  • Playing Next
    Knight Rider 2600

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  1. This is best news. I distinctly recall there being several discussion threads years ago discussing the desire for a new source of paddles. I have a few sets, which includes one set of original paddles in brand new condition, but all my other sets are in used condition. The good set is smooth as silk, but I still don't use it for fear of wearing it out. New paddles are a nice option. I hope they will offer non-bundled set in the store.
  2. No cart left behind. Hmmph. Saying the 2600+ supports bankswitching is like saying a piano missing all its black keys supports playing music. While you are technically correct, it's still a hollow claim and leaves a bitter taste on the tongue. I'd like the ability to play a modern pop song on my piano, please.
  3. This might be a minority opinion, but I believe the 2600+ and VCS are real Ataris as well as the Flashbacks. They're just not what I wanted. I don't think letting us down is a new pattern for Atari, because the 5200 wasn't exactly what many of us wanted. Regardless, Pat the NES Punk had valid points. I would have lined up to order the 2600+ if it had built-in support for 2600 bankswitching and thus full support for modern homebrews. The "NO CARTRIDGE LEFT BEHIND" ad copy was and is blatant misinformation. The 2600+ is the result of a game maker failing to perform due diligence in finding out what their fan-base actually wants. However, none of us are going to get everything we want (i.e. re-releasing original hardware, reversing time, re-animating dead relatives, and returning to the golden days of home video gaming,) because doing so is a profit losing proposition. An Android board inside an Atari shell is the best we're ever going to get from a for-profit business that has real expenses and real salaries to pay. I'm okay with that, because I can't expect a seat at the table without putting down substantial financial investment in this venture. However, I think we're all in for an awakening when we eventually discover we are not Atari's sole reason for existing. We are but a strategic stepping stone for Atari recapturing its lost relevance, credibility, and mainstream market appeal. Capturing the mainstream faux retro† market is Atari's primary goal. It's the only market that can deliver profits without an exorbitant investment and corresponding risk required for AAA/AA game production. Even if they deny it now, it is what they will eventually pivot to. †Mainstream faux retro being defined as modern Unity style pixel games sold on Itch.io, Steam, and various app stores.
  4. I recently watched a lecture by USC professor Anthyony Levi on developments in non-destructive 3D x-ray scanning of microprocessors. His plan is to image modern chips so that their circuitry can be validated to do what they purport to do and checked for hidden backdoors. Once this technique becomes more commonplace and accessible to the mainstream it might become feasible to perfectly document the internal circuits of legacy chips. If it can be accurately documented and modeled in a hardware language, then it can be recreated. It would be significantly less labor intensive compared to sanding chips down and photographing layers. I think it'll become a boon for retro gamers and computer users, but it's still probably some time before regular people can get access to it, so it might be fantasy for the moment.
  5. I'm going to take a break from this for a couple weeks. I need to get back to regular piano practice and studying music theory. My Blackjack and Proton game projects are on pause until I get the Music Explorer app to a beta release state. I work on only one project for a span of a few weeks. When I get Music Explorer to beta I will post it in the forums.
  6. I added rudimentary tone generation. You need to click Enable Sound and then click on the piano keys. The code is pretty rough and the tones are simple sine waves. They do not sound like piano or Atari notes. It only plays the frequency from the piano column. I will be adding the ability to play the Atari frequency as well. You will have to click Enable Sound every time you load the page. The option is not preserved in web storage, because Javascript audio requires user action to enable sound. For the curious, the maximum polyphony is 2 in order to match the Atari's two audio channels. I will be fine tuning the UI interaction on this. I put it together quickly, so it's very prototype-ish.
  7. I implemented some more functionality (transpose, tuning sensitivity, and distribution charts). I also changed the design a little. I will be adding a 2nd selectable note that will be overlaid with the first note. I will work on the color wheel next.
  8. I discovered I broke the microtonal option on the last update. It's incorrectly calculating Atari note frequencies and cents when Microtones per key is greater than 1. I'll fix that next time.
  9. I have updated the latest version to 0.2 and added a few things. I reorganized parts of the code and fixed some bugs. I still have much more to do. The current top features to implement are: Transpose: transpose will work similar to A4 frequency tuning (Hz). It will allow tuning by a different unit (cents). Enable Sound: I plan to make the piano keys clickable for emulated "piano" sounds. In the distant future, I envision incorporating Atari tone generation. Circle of Fifth's geometry: I have many plans for this. Mainly diagramming various chords. Chord recognition Scales recognition Revising the UI: I'm not satisfied with the UI. It needs work. Dumping the information on the screen isn't the best organization.
  10. I've been working on a Javascript web app for exploring the Atari 2600 music palette. My goal is to provide musicians a way to visualize and identify in-tune notes and chords producible by the TIA chip. I felt frustrated looking at static diagrams with fixed tuning. I imagined better note relationships could be found if it was possible to tune the piano scale and make various adjustments. My app overlays Atari notes onto piano notes by matching up their frequencies. The point is to tune the notes up and down for discovering relative tuning relationships. It also has a function for subdividing the piano into microtonal notes. If you have a digital piano that allows for adjusting the tuning, then you could actually play notes on the piano that are similar to the TIA note frequencies. My app is in very early development so half the functionality isn't working. It's a 3rd version prototype, so the code is still rough. The UI will change as I figure out what the app is going to be. I'm building it in Javascript, because it's easy to build user interfaces in Javascript, and it's highly cross compatible. I'm hosting it on Github for reliable hosting that won't disappear. I'm blogging about it to let people know what I'm working on and haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. It'd be nice to gather some friendly suggestions. It's tested in Chrome and untested in other browsers. It also requires a modern browser version. FYI: If you press UP/DOWN arrow keys in the A4 frequency field, the updating looks neat. https://pizzatari.github.io/atari2600music/ Immediate TODO list: Add a circle of 5ths diagram and some geometry diagrams (updating) Finish the remaining options shown in the UI Fix the major chord detection routine Add detection for remaining chords Thoroughly validate my frequency and cent calculations are correct and use best known values Add a sound generator to play notes as a virtual piano Add an option to flip text vertically for printing the piano layout Think of more useful stuff to throw in Speed up the rendering (it's re-building everything on every change) I got into this because I discovered a new interest in music theory and the piano after thinking about writing some Atari 2600 tunes. I had zero prior music experience, so I am still learning.
  11. I believe kids these days would refer to that as a "battlestation". ?
  12. That would have to be how it got enabled. It was set to 24Hz. Thanks for the help.
  13. That was it. I didn't even know the option existed, and I don't recall turning it on or seeing it before. I don't generally tinker with that many settings in Stella.
  14. I'm having an audio issue with 6.6 and 6.5.3. When I turn audio on by holding the fire button down, the audio is intermittent like a keyboard repeat, however it also does it when using the fire button on a Buffalo SNES style USB gamepad, so I know it's not my laptop keyboard. I'm not sure what's going on. It's the same laptop I've been using for years and haven't had an issue with it with prior Stella versions. It works fine in 6.2.1. I'm attaching some audio recordings to demonstrate what I mean. They are tones produced in Studio 2600 (NTSC) by holding the fire button down. It does the same thing in my code for my game, so it's not just my code doing it. It doesn't do it in Random Terrain's tonetoy app, but tonetoy turns on the audio and leaves it on. The 6.2.1 MP3 sample show it working fine. The 6.6 and 6.5.3 samples show the problem. Any ideas if this is bug or a PC problem? stella-6.2.1.mp3 stella-6.6.mp3 stella-6.5.3.mp3
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