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youxia

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  1. Posted · Edited by youxia

    Doomsday 2000 used to run on DEC machines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Thunderbolt.

    To be honest I have minimal knowledge of the mainframe world, so I have no idea about how compatible these things were and if this game is suited for PLATO. I know it's possible to run it on something called OpenVMS: https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/getting-doomsday-2000-working-on-simulated-alpha-openvms-8-4-2/

     

    I never had much faith in the "youtubers" (nor watched any of their stuff) and this email sort of confirms it. If somebody who calls himself an "8-bit Guy" does not know about PLATO and can't spare a minute or two to learn about it, then what hope is there? :)

     

    Still, I hope you don't give up easily, it's an awesome initiative to keep these things alive. It's definitely a niche subject, yeah, I don't really need a youtuber to tell me that people prefer other ways to connect to the Internet, but it's not what retro computing hobby is all about, methinks.

  2. Posted · Edited by youxia

    JRPGS and SRPGS would be the most obvious hints, if you're into this sort of stuff and if you specifically ask about emulation. Off top of my head, Shining Force series and Dragon Quest are quite awesome. There's also heaps of amazing strategy games of more Western persuasion for the assorted microcomputers. Rebelstar series for ZX Spectrum is one of my favourites, with Laser Squad still one of the best games ever.

     

    Personally, I prefer my NDS for emulating such stuff though. On my phone I mostly play Nethack, emulation-wise I only ever bothered with Level-9 text adventures - another genre suited for touchscreen.

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  4. Posted

    The RPi itself is set to output progressive NTSC in the config. I'm not using strictly "PAL resolutions", only the ones provided by the core itself - whatever they might be when switching between PAL/NTSC depending on game. Eg C64 in (NTSC model) defaults to 384x247 (x2) and 384x277 (x2) (PAL), which, while looking pretty 1:1 (-ish, at least), and not being far off, are not exacty the "original" resolutions I read about (nevermind its difficult to find a definitive answer for that too).

     

    ZX Spectrum defaults to 640x480. Not sure why. And so on...

     

    Overall, Retropie is great, but also fairly confusing with its multum of configs and options. It's nowhere near as straighforward as "put this resolution in this config and it will work". Or maybe it is, but I'm doing something wrong. Which is why I was hoping to hear from others with similar experience.

  5. Posted

    Thanks, but I do have the basic settings covered, outputting 240p and no overscan. And the res settings I quoted are hardcoded into libretro cores (I think that's how it works). It's possible to change them but then often you will get artifacting like shimmer or "rolling".

     

    I do actually have it set up pretty much all-right, but also an OCD and intrinsic curiosity when it comes to CRTs and "settings" in general, so just wanted to compare notes.

     

    Problem with micros and NTSC is that games are usually not marked for region as is the case with console roms. So it's sometimes hard to tell. I'm using Gamebases to check, but these are not always accurate.

  6. Posted

    Hi folks, my first post on this venerable forum. My teenage self from ~3 decades ago would probably be dismayed by knowing I've joined something with "Atari" in its name - I was a die hard ZX Spectrum/Commodore fan - but hey, times, they're a-changin' ;)

     

    Anyway, I was wondering if anybody else here has experience with using CRT TVs for emulated micros. I'm using mostly libretro versions of assorted emus (Retropie on RPi 3B+) and it's a bit puzzling getting the display right - I'm confined to composite (I also do have an RGB mod but no compatible TV at the moment), and also to add to the problem, it's a NTSC set.

     

    I'm not 100% sure what are correct resolutions to use in the configs. I'm aiming for 1:1 pixels and artifact-free display - so far using these...

     

    Atari 800 - 640x480- native libretro setting: this looks pretty good actually

    Amstrad: 768x544 - it works fairly well despite being bigger than RPi 720x480 output, the border is sacrificed

    C64: lr-vice same as Amstrad: 768x544. Seems ok.

    ZX Spectrum: 640x480: this resolution kicks in when I disable border (to get rid of heavy NTSC artifacting)

     

    While these look reasonably good, they do not really match the resolutions from real machines I read about, eg C64 displaying 402x292 (or 320x200 with no border) http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:visible_area

    Could this be improved somehow? Or are these really real resolutions?

     

    Is there any sort of way to display these without problems on NTSC as well? Games are either too fast in NTSC or jerky in PAL, plus on some micros the colours are out of whack. Even though some of the emus have option for NTSC machines.

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