Mikebloke

April 15

Hi all, managed to spend 3 hours on doing some updates to the Ball game, e5frog suggested some changes to graphics including the number display, feet and some colour ideas. I've done nearly all his suggested changes, and you can now play in either black and white or colour with the new features.

There is leg movement, and ball crashing graphics now included. I might still make some minor graphical changes, but it should be largely superficial and this should be the final major change (no gameplay changes in this one, just graphics).

https://mikebloke.itch.io/game-no-watch-ball-channel-f

March 30

I've had my own topic of coming to terms with whether to keep up with physical hardware, on an update to that I've recently decided I'd rather just use original controllers on a beefed up emulation pc. My consoles are slowly failing one way or another, I think my Fairchild, Saturn, CDI, CDTV, mega drive, and probably a number of other consoles have "issues" now that I'm just not competent enough to deal with.

I got a Saturn controller pc adapter this month, and the D9 atari dapter which works with the Channel F controller and a load of other stuff (oh boy, been having fun with that!) which is even getting me to the point where I don't even care about getting the systems out with the romcarts. Some of it will be time and energy. I'm running out of steam to want the trouble, when I know I can download it in 3 seconds and not have to plug any additional wires in (controller adapters aside).

The work thing is definitely a thing though, I'm dropping hours and a number of my colleagues are moving on or retiring, or just leaving. There is a lost sense of worth of anything we do, which is made worse when we know others make far more money (we recently had our chancellor, the guy in charge of money, say £100,000 was not a huge amount of money for an annual salary. The average earnings is between £27,000 and £34,000 depending on form of average used).

If you can barely pay for living costs, it makes sense that you won't be able to afford retro stuff as a casual interest, however I think there is exceptions for this. Don't discount the possibility that someone is prepared to go into a lot of debt for something they can't afford because their desire to own or win it beats common sense.

I'm selling some of my games on eBay and have been for awhile, I'm quite happy to drop the price if it doesn't sell, if it goes for £1 it goes for £1.

March 19

On 3/18/2024 at 12:34 PM, Pixelboy said:

Ask any programmer and they'll tell you that having video RAM to work with is way better than not having it.

I'm any programmer and I endorse this message.

One of the fun things about trying to code (never got a game fully working to date on 2600) is how easy it is to change colours on the 2600 due to the scan line feature to generate images like that. In comparison the Fairchild channel F that came out prior did have video ram but you basically splat data into it, there is no objects as such, everytime something moves you have to be mindful of what you want the pixel just moved is going to be, having one colour for the background makes this easier.

2600 has some objects though (two for players, two for bullets, one for background) which makes moving or editing these much more viable, and ultimately later consoles kept that which keeps everyone a little bit more sane.

Some of us just like to make it hard for ourselves though.

March 19

Generally the answer is no. This is because the pass through via RF, composite or scart (you'll presumably be connecting by composite or RF) is literally intended as a pass through. Sometimes SECAM might be included, I've played SECAM signal through mine before.

If you can find documentation online for your VCR, it might have it mentioned somewhere. You'll be surprised what documents have been scanned for the internet.

March 19

5 Amstrad GX4000

4 sega mega drive, but especially model 1 with mega CD attached

3 Atari 2600 heavy sixer

2 Magnavox Odyssey

1 Fairchild channel F

Woodgrain belongs on everything metal.

I like the dinkyness of the GX4000 which is funny given how many port holes are on it.

March 18

On 3/14/2024 at 3:35 PM, Ashevent said:

what a great feat!

Thanks! E5frog has given me some ideas to expand on it, I'll look to do that before I start anything else new. Maybe 🙃.

2 hours ago, Ashevent said:

Congrats to whoever won the Ebay bid on the CIB Checkers cart. I had to bow out around $650, but I knew it was a total long shot to begin with. If the winner wasn't from this group, then we need to collectively hunt hum/her down and retrieve it..lol.

Oh man I would have potentially jumped on that price a few years ago. Hope the person who ended up with my collection is still enjoying it, it's the one game I didn't have (though I only had cart / cart + instructions for the US only games).

Still looking for a new console as it's more likely to happen than fixing mine with my capabilities. Shame there is no similar controllers available for pc. Might have to get into hardware after all and create an adapter.

February 23

9 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Thanks.

I am not at all familiar with the Game and Watch series. There's quite a few games in that series. BITD these never tickled my fancy, so I never played any.

I only ever had chef personally, which is from a technical gameplay perspective a variation of ball with an easier difficulty in the sense that the "balls" in terms of food items only ever went up and down which was easier to manage mentally with one potentially being "held in place" by a cat with a fork to upset your rhythm.

After the game and watch series sega did jump on it a bit with their own variation of games which felt like it had a higher pace, things like after burner, sonic the hedgehog and shinobi is the ones I had, but of course doesn't compare to a true hand held like a game boy or game gear. I would probably struggle to capture the pace of after burner on the channel F but might have a go one day!

I had a number of pinball games like this as well, and the Tetris style lots-of games-in-one was very common at the time too.

Game and watch gallery was a thing that ran from game boy to gba (with a ds version too on limited release) with a number of game and watch games converted over and most with a "modern" graphical variant with mario characters and sometimes new rules (fire for example had different characters that fell at different speeds). If quick and simple games on handheld is your thing, then it's worth checking those out.

February 23

Check out https://mikebloke.itch.io/game-no-watch-ball-channel-f for the latest release.

I've done most of the intended changes, attract mode now works, 3 ball points work as intended (10 each catch compared to 2 ball 1 point).

I've tidied the arm graphics up.

This is something of an accomplishment for me, although it's taken me across 5 days instead of my usual 3 to get to the place I usually do with these ports it's the first time I haven't had to reference the F8 assembly manual.

I usually have to make constant references to the manual to work out how exactly some assembly opcodes work, whereas this time I've just gone for it and thankfully it has worked.

However the code is an absolute mess, I know for sure there is code duplication and I can probably knock out a few hundred lines of code (currently sits at 2037 lines) if I wanted. Branching is an absolute pain and optimising where procedures is could probably help avoid having to branch to a third label just to jmp back so often. I'm a programmer, a games developer, but not an efficient one!

Hope people have fun with this one, it's very playable I think. Let me know if there is any other games I should port over, game and watch or not.

February 22

Really gutted I didn't get to necro this topic in time, on Monday I started work on a new game, Ball, based on the Game and Watch series. Was due to finish it yesterday but had other stuff to do.

https://mikebloke.itch.io/game-no-watch-ball-channel-f

Gameplay is done, I just need to tidy up the graphics but essentially it is done. Hoping to finish it tomorrow. Check the page above for instructions on how to play and more details on what I need to finish.

Game and watch series is a nice one to work on as placement of objects can nicely go into a look up table rather than worrying about how it moves on the screen to player or other input. The screens also came with red green and blue overlays at times on the LCD panel which means it's a great way of adding to the Fairchild channel F. I'm likely to do a few more of these, open to requests or I might just go in release order.

Nintendo please don't cancel me.

February 22

On 1/25/2024 at 6:59 AM, NewbieEmery said:

do you have a list for PS1?

Sorry only just seen this it's just the Wikipedia list that I took days to edit into the right format for excel to sort, and then colour coded for region. I would need to find it as I lost interest in my own project but if you were really curious I could send it to you.

February 22

Apologies haven't been on the forum as of late, so your mentions went unnoticed, really sorry! Gutted to miss out on that one as I actually knew a few...

September 7, 2023

27 minutes ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

I wouldn't be so hasty, I think the idea of archiving the forums is an interesting one. Maybe one of the game museum's would want a copy for their collections? It isn't an official answer, but if having a third-party archive of the forums to date is important to the community than we will take that idea seriously -- Al would need to weigh in of course.

Thank you I appreciate your attempts to alleviate fears and attempting to understand. At 35 I'm probably well below the average age of the users on this site, but I'm thinking when I do get to the age of many original atari enjoyers, will I be asking similar questions to them about the history of video game preservation but no longer having the first hand accounts that they had initially preserved here. There is a lot of non-atari related content, research, information and more here because we have congregated here out of habit. Other sites like reddit where you think this stuff might be instead is actually extremely dead and there is more active users talking about certain non atari systems here than anywhere else in the rest of the internet.

I have a 2600, 7800 and a jaguar, but 99% of my posts here have nothing to do with atari at all and I only saw this because of a YouTube channel I am subscribed to.

This isn't an acquisition specific issue, in fact it's possibly more preserved now than if it wasn't. But it did make me stop and think "is this information anywhere else other than this forum!"

The more I think of it, it's probably a thing for concerned users like me to deal with than bothering Albert with an extensive archive save, try not to delete too much for the next decade or so 😛

September 7, 2023

25 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Has there even been a single homebrew compatible with the Soundic SD050 and similar systems? I know I have been tossing out the idea a few times, but not having the skill or time to go ahead to develop something, I'm surprised if there even would exist such content for Atari to even worry about. After all, those games pretty much are SoC so in theory Atari could put an Atari 2600 core onto a board with some games suitable for the controllers and become one of the first to make PC-50X homebrews, again nearly 45 years after the console was current.

Not a homebrew for the PC-50X but I'm thinking of other discussions that may relate to systems. There is one (is it the arcadia?) about the manufacturing of boards in Taiwan and franchising the system for sale in different countries from one of the original staff members. Yes a lot of this stuff is possibly elsewhere too but some of it is probably only here. I'm not talking about preserving things like the fact that I had to use my foot to bend a PC-50X cartridge board so I could capture game footage no one else had ever uploaded before, or the taco thread, but things that might be important enough for people interested in 50-100 years time who might be curious.

September 7, 2023

1 minute ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

I may have misunderstood question number 2 ... if I did my apologies. I'll let Al address it.

It's fine, I don't expect you to seriously know what atari as a company might do with this forum in 20 years time, but the thing is, many of us will still "be here". There is going to be a lot of gutted people in the future when eventual chopping does happen.

I don't honestly expect Albert to give us a data dump of the entire forums either, I think I'll start a thread elsewhere of threads to be preserved off site.

September 7, 2023

Just now, TrogdarRobusto said:

I think Albert has answered these questions already, and better than I could. But here goes:

1) You own today what you owned yesterday. There is no change to how AtariAge/Atari views homebrew content. We anticipated this question, and we aren't quite sure how else to answer it. If you made the game, it is yours until you decide otherwise.

2) all the information and forum activity for non-Atari hardware are extremely valuable to the community, the industry and to Atari. We own the rights to tons of games published on non-Atari hardware after all.

3) I hope you stick around and help sustain and grow the AtariAge community, and tells us what you think about what Atari is and can be in the future.

Thanks for the replies. In relation to number 2, I'm thinking more about systems like the 1292, vectrex, PC-50X, and of course other systems such as the Magnavox odyssey, fairchild channel f, bally astrocade etc. I think it's going to have to be a case of individuals like myself copy pasting everything into an archive system but an official copy dump would have been nice and much easier (for everyone but you) I guess.

3) well atari doesn't own the fairchild channel f yet, and some other copyright upstart has now taken it on in the US (though I don't think anyone has bothered to take it seriously given the 6 of us who probably still have a system and develop for it is all here). 😛

September 7, 2023

I haven't been around so this is new news to me. I do have a few questions for @Albert and or @TrogdarRobusto

1) what happens to past and any future rom releases of homebrews here on the forum, does Atari have a policy on who owns such content? Can it be made official and public that any binary / other files that we have uploaded / may upload in the future will be still our property and not owned in anyway by Atari? This isn't just about atari systems, but all of them.

2) while there is no plans to remove non atari related material, this forum is a treasure trove of hundreds of threads about the history of systems both post and pre 2600. Some of the only information of systems development is found on this forum from researchers, some of them are sadly no longer with us and the only thing we have is their posts here preserving their precious research. Is there any plans to officially archive some or all of the forum so that this information is preserved just in case? I don't know if any other users are concerned but I'm worried that some of the only stuff on some systems is here and here only.

I think I had a third but I've forgotten.

Albert, congratulations and I respect your decision to be taken in house. I think this is further vindication that there is a place for retro gaming as a modern market and no doubt there will be some doors opening for further technical amazing homebrew experiences (or do they count as official now?!).

I have had my doubts and I was one of those people who mocked the VCS release along with the other mad ideas like hotels. I'm still pretty critical of those things. But even I would say I'm relatively supportive of recent measures such as the 2600+. For what it's worth I still want to say "good luck" to atari.

However the feel of the site will change with time, it's natural. I imagine many of us will migrate and slowly fade away. It's nothing personal, but it will feel different.

Again, good luck to all partners involved.

August 29, 2023

6 hours ago, Charlie Cat said:

Hi guys,

For those that aren't familiar with DaemonClaw that's currently in development from BitBeamCannon, here a quick video on the gameplay of the title that's being developed. .

Anthony..

Nice! Looks impressive.

August 11, 2023

13 minutes ago, e5frog said:

Why are the binaries 2046 bytes and not 2048?
Only took a quick look, hoping to get a game in later.

It'll be me setting it wrong for the signature, I'll fix it next time!

August 9, 2023

Got round to finishing the game as much as I'm likely to do for now. Hope you enjoy it!

subf8.bin

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMARINE.docx

There is now a "night sea" mode through button 4 on the console which switches the game to black and white - ships only appear when firing (or being hit).

I have attempted to adjust the distance to the sides to make it TV able - no way to test this right now unfortunately This means there is a smaller moving / firing area so its not so wide.

Manual is now done as well.

I've kept the game in 2kb, no real reason to restrict it, its more just an achievement for me and can be cut down more than this, I haven't tried to optimise much, but it could be.

I've kept the Escort in the standard 2 player mode, the reasons for this is that in the original Night Sea mode, the Escort is there and appears when the Destroyer fires. While it might be "fun" for the destroyer to not have a indefensible target for the Submarine player to hit on its side, I felt that a 2 ship firing situation gives no real tactical gameplay and a reason I've never been keen on implementing it in etiher this port or the Atari 2600 port I tried to do years ago. Essentially you just end up trying to fire on each other but get to move out the way first. This way, although the Submarine player does have a very obvious advantage (the Escort ship is always predictable route wise, and the Submarine is a smaller ship to hit) it also gives the destroyer a chance to hit the submarine as that player tries to focus on the escort. In tests with my children, the age difference helps even out the Submarine advantage and it is possible to hit the Submarine player fairly often. However, Submarine as a game is always a biased game in favour of one player. Rather than doing the modern thing of "evening" it out to be "fair", I've kept the spirt of the biased game by allowing Submarine player its significant advantage.

Any plus version likely have buttons change game elements so it can be more versatile with its options (2600 style), escort on/off, one player or two player mode, hidden ship mode on or off etc.

August 5, 2023

Hi everyone I've left this really late, as they have nearly finished but I'm in the process of selling my non-homebrew Videopac and 7800 games.

Some of the videopac games are finishing today (sorry) but 7800 stuff is finishing tomorrow / monday. Almost all of these are PAL games btw in relation to 7800, videopac games are all European versions (think I have one US game but its a common one).

Go here for the listings https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/acebloke1986

I'm also getting round to selling other consoles gradually, I'll try and be better and warn people beforehand.

I have a lot more videopac and 7800 games still to list but they are all the £15 and less category.

I'm now in the process of only listing things during seller deals, because the amount of money they take out normally is getting silly for any larger amounts.

August 5, 2023

Updated version, this may be the final version but I think there is still some tweaks needed.

Download here: subf8.bin

Ships flash colours, pause movement and also cannot fire new bullets when hit

Two sound effects, one for being hit (all ships) and for submarine missile (feel free to mute!)

Sped up the display of ship movement to avoid as much flicker

Fixed a small bug where the Destroyer missile goes blue on the submarine line

Increased the range of movement on the right hand side to compensate for varied ship sizes

What hasn't' been done:

From original game:

The two player game in the original game is actually escort free, so just the destroyer and submarine, I could do this potentially

4th game type of the hidden ships unless firing - my next thing is can I add this in easily and potentially keep it in 2kb, I will see.

Ambient "submarine" sound of a sonar ping like noise - I think I've done well to get the other two in, even though they are grating on the ears, not likely to be able to create anything that can run while other things are going on

For Channel F:

Adjustment for tv screen - haven't looked into it yet.

Fixing the screen wipe. Tried a number of different things, including wiping screen grey first and painting lower bit light blue, it doesn't like it, so the green wipe first will remain (a pain, not sure if this is an emulator only issue and would be fine on a console).

Manual in the Channel F style - if only because I'm working on another little game I want as a screenshot for the "coming soon" section.

I've worked to keep it within the 2kb range, there is no reason not to push it beyond it other than challenge. I think with some optimising I could still do the above todo list and keep it within 2kb.

August 4, 2023

13 minutes ago, Crazy Climber said:

Ok good, Im not the only one that hates Goldeneye now haha! Mario 64 I only played on the DS, Im assuming they were pretty similar?

3D shooter using an analogue stick? Wow that was something, right up until a game came out that used TWO analogue sticks, quite a few games suffer from this in this period and not just shooters. Vagrant Story on PS1 had this weird setup where you used one analogue stick to move, but then used L and R to turn camera. Right analogue stick was used to go into a first person mode that froze everything ingame just so you can look around - no gameplay functionality in the slightest! Wasted.

Yes I think those two versions are quite similar from what I remember, it is definitely one of the N64 games that has survived the age though, the courses are simple but the game is fun.

August 4, 2023

I genuinely want to say that at least from the mainstream consoles, the N64 is the one that has aged the worst. Its just not great controls, the graphics are generally a bit rubbish, and a lot of their games are rather small and minor. There is some fun multiplayer games for sure, especially in the racing category (Mario Kart 64, Wipeout 64, Diddy Kong Racing) but outside of that there isn't much that stands out. Zelda games are fine, but I get more enjoyment out of running randomised versions of them (that do work on a real console) than playing the game itself. Unfortunately the first step transition to 3D just wasn't great. There were lots of games I did enjoy at the time, Goldeneye, Mario 64 and Blast Corps, that just feel horrendous to play now.

August 2, 2023

Ok posted on the Backbit Forum for now.

In the meantime I have a first version ready for Submarine for the Channel F, this is a first release version, I imagine I'll get a manual and updates out tomorrow.

0050.png.b37efefac5140390caf9f8f7b94e3e91.png

Download here: subf8.bin

How to play:

1 key on console: player is submarine (blue), destroyer (green) is automated

2 key on console: player is destroyer (green), submarine (blue) is automated

3 key on console: player 1 is submarine (blue), player 2 is destroyer (green)

All games have escort (red) automated.

Left and right to move your respective ship on the screen

Plunge / Push down shoots missile

Submarine player has to shoot either Destroyer or Escort for 1 point

Destroyer has to shoot Submarine for 1 point

First to 15 wins the game, game can be reset anytime, either in game or at end of game with 1,2,3 keys on console as above.

Game plays in "attract mode" on boot up

Things to do for final port version:

Slight pause and flash at hit (all ships)

Sound (like usual, the last thing I touch)

Manual in usual style

Fixing up some graphics so its more stable looking

Changing the positions slightly for TV

Fixing the screen wipe to light green to get grey (I'm wondering whether wiping whole screen grey then trying to get light blue makes more sense, I'll play around with it tonight / tomorrow - the thing that will take the longest to do the least change).

Possibly including one more game type (no red escort ship)

The original PC-50X game had a space ship game included as well, but its much more dull as it involves shooting a missile that fills the line down making it extremely easy to avoid. The second space game the ships are hidden until firing (again, making it incredibly easy to dodge).

Like all my ports, I always plan a form of "plus" version someday to make it more challenging and fun, but my main intention is just to port weird or similar timeframe games to the Channel F in as natural a form as I can.

August 1, 2023

28 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Have you informed @evietron so the design can be corrected?

I will do, as I don't think the two models have any difference in the cartridge caddy sizing, the UK consoles are literally US shells with different logo sticker on it. I think the issue was obviously a costing one to keep it cheap, but I think the yellow section needs to be longer to guide the cartridge in as I struggled to get the pins in all the way.

Guess im doing a crash course in soldering and understanding a multimeter XD

Edit: I'm basically autisticly meltdowning because it was working fine until I opened my console, I'll contact her when I'm fit to communicate with people again XD thanks for the advice again e5frog...

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Gallery

Events

Store

Posts posted by Mikebloke