bhall408

A reminder that you can find and play VROOM! and other nominees in Argon! Argon is on Google Play (Android phone/tablet/TV/Chromebook), Amazon AppStore (Amazon Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Microsoft App Store (Win11)

Thanks to @Songbird, you can now enjoy the MicroVaders BETA in Argon! Congrats on the nomination! Find Argon on Google Play (Android phone/tablet/TV/Chromebook), Amazon AppStore (Amazon Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Microsoft App Store (Win11)

Thanks go to Matt Smith, Mike Saarna, AtariAge/Al and The 8-Bit Guy/David Murray - the demo version of 7800 PETSCII Robots is now in Argon! You can find the full retail boxed version for sale right here on AtariAge -- https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1282 Be sure to get out your headset and/or crank up the sound, as the title track sounds amazing in stereo! (I personally think this is the best demo of POKEY+TIA in stereo -- it is what I use at trade shows as the example) Find Argon on Google Play (Android phone/tablet/TV/Chromebook), Amazon AppStore (Amazon Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Microsoft App Store (Win11)

First, congrats on the nomination. Second, thanks for releasing a demo version. I tested it in Argon, and all appears well. See attached. As an FYI, Argon is now on Amazon AppStore (as of late December), which gets you Fire TV/Stick/Tablets and the Microsoft App Store, which gets you Win11 (as of January). As always, Argon is on Google Play for Android phones, tablets, TVs and Chromebook. We'll see if we can get it added to the special (for the month of Feb) Atari Homebrew Awards section of Argon.

See support.markspace.com for various knowledge base posts on pairing controllers, using google drive, etc - the more power user stuff.

You can use a game controller or keyboard for more precise control. Anything off the shelf should work, either BT or USB. For example, a PS, Switch, XBOX etc controller. If you are playing on a phone or tablet, a USB OTG adaptor will let you connect via USB. I use a Mac keyboard that way when testing keyboard support.

My personal "best" so far is 30... I'm sure I can do better!

I never tried compiling the source "as-is" with SynAssembler -- I converted it to ca65 format first. So somebody might do that in the future, but not likely to be me.

Here you go... As of last summer, I was down to a final bug to fix in the re-built Dandy... https://twitter.com/markspaceinc/status/1572644203100016643 Here is the post after I did the first compile that ran "something" https://twitter.com/bhall408/status/1553400744585433090 My goal is to make it couch-compliant and then add it to Argon... Would also love to add background music, a title screen, and make a few other improvements. Dandy 1983 Manual - DRAFT 2022-04-10.pdf

FYI... Since this is a one-button game, we did a custom UI for this in Argon at some point last year -- just a single button to press

I'd used the full-screen text editor that came with the Atari Macro Assembler.

FWIW, we started adding PICO-8 support to Argon last month. So I was hunting itch.io for games to test with. This one really is a fantastic fan-made port! Down side for handheld play is that it like the 800 version, it uses/needs so many keys!

I did a driver for the CX21 and CX50... If CX85 used the same technique, it might work. I resurrected the 1980s code from hard copy and updated it to assemble with ca65 on my Mac more recently... https://github.com/bhall408/atari800-touchpad-keyboard-controller atari800-touchpad-keyboard-controller Atari 800 Device Driver and Subroutines for CX21 Video Touch Pad and CX50 Keyboard Controllers Project was originally done in late 1984, using Atari Macro Assembler. Updated to now use ca65 on modern systems.

Speaking of which - could you set the rotation flag in the LNX header to indicate that it is played Tate/Portrait? It is currently 0=normal/landscape With it set correctly, Argon will pick it up and display correctly (and adjust the d-pad inputs accordingly) hexdump -C /Users/bhall/Downloads/Microvaders_beta_Nov_2022.lnx | head -4 00000000 4c 59 4e 58 00 04 00 00 01 00 4c 65 78 69 73 5f |LYNX......Lexis_| 00000010 33 2e 42 49 4e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |3.BIN...........| 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 41 74 61 72 69 00 |..........Atari.| 00000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| At the same time, you could adjust the cart name and add yourself as Manufacturer. We end up ignoring it in Argon because it is so often not set correctly From https://atarigamer.com/lynx/lnxhdrgen Byte 0 - 3 | Char literal | "LYNX" EEPROM byte-bits encode details of EEPROM used 4 - 5 | 16-bit uchar | Bank 0 page size bit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 - 7 | 16-bit uchar | Bank 1 page size | | | | | | 8 - 9 | 16-bit uchar | Version number +---+---+ +---+---+ | 16/8 BIT 10 - 41 | String + \0 | Cart name | | REAL/SD 42 - 57 | String + \0 | Manufacturer EEPROM TYPE UNUSED 58 | uchar | Rotation (1=left, 2=right) 59 | uchar | AUDIN Used (1=yes) Example: 0x40 (00000010) no-EEPROM, SD card saves 60 | uchar | EEPROM detail, see right EEPROM Type values - 0: no EEPROM, 1: 93C46 61 - 63 | uchar | Unused

One of the reasons I like/prefer cc65 is that it is a cross compiler. I've considered if it would be worth the effort to compile the DBC compiler and linker on my Mac, creating a Mac hosted DBC tool chain (that still output to Atari XEX). Could even optionally allow curly braces

I'd used DBC back in the day. After a while, we switched to ACE C, which was a variant of DBC. It was great for doing projects where you wanted the resulting (p) code to be compact, vs code that ran super fast. We used it to write a BBS. More recently, the co-author of that BBS moved the same code to cc65, and it ballooned in size -- the ACE C version fit on an unmodified 800XL or 65XE. The cc65 version needs 128K!

Whoa! Love the new attract mode!

For extra credit, you could do a magenta, red and white version... Here it is in Argon using Arcade Jason color mapping... (it maps bands of luminance to colors based on a spec he set out) You just need to tweak the luminance/brightness to get the 3 colors!

Bumping this... We ended up supporting ECS sound in Argon, and we also support stereo in that we pan the various channels (main + additional ECS) across the left/right spectrum algorithmically. They are not hard right/left, which as others pointed out, would be jarring. Sounds really nice with headphones or a good stereo setup. In the future, we plan to make it such that games can dynamically set the panning at run-time if they use our SDK.

If you add Atari Touch Pad/Koala Pad support, that is via reading PADDLE0/PADDLE1, so should not impact your timing. For an example of this, see the 2012 version of Planetary Defense (has Koala Pad support, treating it like a track-pad for the in-game cursor). Planetary Defense was originally joystick-only in the 1980s version published in ANALOG Magazine. As an alternate, we can agree on a memory location to feed you precise X/Y coordinates, so similarly a simple LDA to get the values, and they can be exact. For paddle, it is best to clamp it to 90% or so of the full range, ie, ignore the top and bottom 10 of the theoretical paddle range of values.

I found 2 spots that mention 6 times per year, but it is implied vs stated https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/market-to-gamers/ has "We publish January – March – May – July – September – November" and https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ has "GETS YOU the printed version in the mail every other month" I'll pass on the feedback that it isn't obvious to OSG...

Poster was asking for people to test in emulators, so sounds like digital release is at least contemplated... In any case, Argon supports both free and premium titles, so if they are looking to have a limited digital release, either in Argon, or as a stand-alone app (Android/Amazon/Win11), that can be done.

Looks like a cursor style UI -- are you supporting Koala Pad/Touch Tablet for cursor movement by chance? If so, we support that in Argon and it would be cool to try that out -- you can use touch or pen on mobile/tablet, or mouse/trackpad on Chromebook/PC. (We need to set a flag in our database to indicate a game is supporting touch input, we could work with you on that).

Old School Gamer Magazine... You can get it print sent by mail, or a digital/PDF subscription. @1980gamer - I just started writing a column for them that covers indie retro games & game development, starting out with the 8-bit era...

Had you tried Preppie II and Sea Dragon? (Not gotten around to it myself... Although I have Dandy Dungeon down to a final bug to fix in my ca65 translation)