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MayDay

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Posts posted by MayDay

  2. Posted

    I have some decent video editing software. The screenshot is titled "The Legend of Zelda, The Triforce Saga". As A2600 thinks, I can say with "relative certainty"

    that the copyright is 1990.

     

    Actually, I can say it with complete certainty now. A google for "the triforce saga" turned up this link with a pic of the cartridge label that had been put on ebay before being pulled: http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000980064358/

     

    An article from the next day, same website: http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000357064460

     

    Also be sure to scroll down to number 8 of the user comments. Is there any truth to that?

     

    And finally, here's the most interesting find of all: http://www.ratedo.com/articles/z3proto.html

     

    This is something I would truly like, I don't have time to play all the new titles, Ocarina of Time made me time travel about six months to finish. Something made for the Nintendo would be fantastic to get ahold of.

     

    -JD

  3. Posted

    I checked out Punch-Out and began to try and work up "sprites" of sorts. I really don't think a good port of this game is possible. Characters are too big, and require too many colors. Even if you really did things like a shirtless little mac to lessen the number of colors, the opponents just require too much detail because a lot of the gameplay comes from the opponent's facial expressions/actions/animations.

     

    On another note, in considering if this game was possible I came up with a new atari controller concept: a super nintendo shaped controller where the left part would only have three directions, but could rotate into either two or three different positions. For example, I always dodged to the left so the right arrow now becomes expendable for this game. This could be turned into another button giving you two instead of one. That would allow you to do normal punches with one button, and star punches with the other.

     

    Though not in the poll, RC Pro Am is mentioned. Since two buttons but not all the directions are needed for this game as well, you would rotate your controller to not have either the up or down button. Has someone made something along these lines in the past (ie- three joystick directions and two buttons)?

     

    -JD

  4. Posted

    Sorry, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. And sadly it seems my "secrets" have now been discovered (ie- beating Great Tiger with him never throwing a punch & gut-punching Soda Pop Pinksi). To the more experienced programmers, how feasible is this game? I would love to help out, if even for a demo of one round of a fight.

     

    -JD

     

    *scrambles hooking up NES to do "research" for this game* :)

  5. Posted

    After getting off work, I went back and posted a better working example, though the flicker is awful.

     

    supercat:  It's not really practical to get 16,384 colors via that method...I'd actually thought of implementing a game using that approach in 1994, and posted a demo earlier this year

     

    I saw that thread and thought it was a kernel for producing a grid instead of making extra colors. Because of that, I didn't take the time to download the binary, I usually only do that if I have a question about code itself (or want to play a certain game). I'm not trying to get all 16,000 colors, but am saying that any one of those colors *should* be available to you at a given time.

     

    batari:  The 2600 was designed to produce a non-interlaced display. The venetian blind demo actually just flickers colors on alternate frames...Regardless, I'm not sure of the real utility here except for the "Gee Whiz" factor.

     

    Indeed. Sorry, I was about to fall asleep when posting last night and stated this absolutely wrong. I did however, come up with three utilities today while I was at work (knowing I would probably be asked :twisted:) and here they are:

     

    1. Using two colors to make a three-colored sprite (original inspiration for idea).

    2. Making a ported game more color-accurate to the original.

    3. Surely SECAM users wouldn't mind a few extra colors?

     

    @djmips- Andrew Davie mentions the "interleaved chronocolor" in one of the playfield tutorials (he's the man for creating those, btw). A 3-line RGB method would not be as accurate as this method for an exact color (I wouldn't think, at least up close where perception would be less than if seen from far away). I had not come across the "interlaced spasticolor" and was blown away by the theory. It seems to combine both theories into one if I understand it correctly by alternating the RGB between lines. What it doesn't specify, or at least I don't think it did, was does one color (let's say Red) go between all 3 lines, or just alternate on 1 for each of the two frame (2 lines out of 3 total on 2 frames?). No matter the case, it seems I'm about three steps behind Andrew in my theory (but at least I can spell color). :) Queen's English? Good grief, Charlie Brown! I'm still amazed at how well the people around here know their stuff about Atari hardware and programming.

     

    -Jason

  6. Posted · Edited by MayDay

    Hello,

     

    I was going through information about 2600 prototypes and ran across the venetian (spelling?) blind demo. That got me to thinking if colors on the 2600 could be interlaced by frame to produce a lot more colors... not in actuality, but in perception to the human eye.

     

    Please see the attachment. The idea was to make a red square, a yellow square, and a square in between that alternated between the two to make an orange (percieved) color. I'm new to programming and maybe more importantly, up past my bedtime but hopefully you can understand what I was trying to do here. I quickly threw this together without a ton of thought, and I'm sure it will show.

     

    colordemo.ZIP

     

    I know this isn't optimized or probably even practical, I just wondered if it was possible? I'm curious to see what you guys have to say, and will try to play around with it some this weekend.

     

    -JD

  7. Posted

    cybergoth:  "...even though I think R.C. Pro Am is the king "

     

    Best game ever... all time... any system. The game boy version was horrible, I always hoped for a version on a new machine. I remember my Mom shutting this off on me when I got to level 108 (yes, I know there are only 32 "levels") at 1 in the morning. I was so mad (and so close to getting whooped on too I'm sure). I made it back to the 90's a couple of times, but never over 100 again. If only I would have waited until the weekend to begin... *sigh*

     

    Now I'm all depressed :sad: Anybody else have a "my mom shut off the game" or "my brother unplugged the controller" story, or something along those lines?

     

    I voted for SMB- as there is already a Mario Bros. game. Mario seems more Atari to me than Metroid, which has two different games (which I know of) that are nintendo platform releases only. It would be kind of cool to emulate the lost levels hidden in the code of SMB3 into an Atari cartridge. Final Fantasy and Zelda would be cool, as would Dragon Warrior which wasn't mentioned. I'm guessing Mike Tyson's Punch Out would be very difficult to make look and feel correct but would still be fun to see. For the record, I know ALL the gameplay secrets in this game, two of which I've never seen published anywhere (though I haven't checked for a while, they may be now). Now I have something to keep me busy for a few minutes to check up on. :)

     

    -JD

  9. Posted · Edited by MayDay

    vdub, can you post the source code from the binary at the top of this thread? It's a pretty neat little demo and I would like to play around with it a little. Thanks.

     

    -JD

     

    Oh, another question for you guys, what causes the black lines at the left of the screen? Is this the same thing that sometimes causes the top scan line to not start on time, and can it be fixed?

  10. Posted

    kisrael: The "point and click atari programming" Thread did have a fair amount skepticism *before* bB came out, some of which has been retracted I think, and some of which I'd say the jury is still out on.

     

    lol... glad to be of assistance. My vision was from (or even in) Visual Basic (which isn't even really programming :)). You would just define the sprite (ie- vertical size, shape, etc.) and playfield, give them colors and other stuff. You would then have to do a bunch of if...then statements such as "if player0 hits missle0 then..." and that sort of thing. You could then take that basic kernel code and begin playing with it in assembly.

     

    The reason I was hoping for this is the (very excellent) tutorials Andrew wrote have put me on the cusp of actually being able to do something. I have a dodgeball game in mind that I've been "working on" since I joined the forum. I can draw the field, and I can use alien bill's code to make a sprite (and the movement) I want. The problem is that I can't seem to combine the two and get both loaded from tables. I know it's just my lack of understanding and can't find anything that explains it. I could probably just keep asking a million questions, but this (batariB) seems like a much more plausible option. Now I just have to learn basic. :)

     

    Anyway, I was hoping to make a simple game with a simple tool, then move that code on and tweak it through assembly (probably with help of the pros at that point). I think this tool gives me that chance that I might otherwise not have. So while I can see it spawning a bunch of crap (pretty much what I think of the hacks section) I can also see it spawning 5-10 cart quality games a year, something that will never happen with assembly alone. The Popeye/Kangaroo hack as well as the Luigi's Lunch hack come to mind. I'm sure there are others as well.

     

    And whether these games are cartable or not, I'm guessing everyone could pay to have their game put on cart if they really wanted to. In the end it is all for fun; the newbs should realize how their games are going to be percieved and the people with assembly games should hang their hat on the fact that their games will always be superior so they won't have to meddle with us lowly basic peeps if they choose not to. If egos are put aside and nobody takes themselves too seriously, I think this will be a monster step for the homebrew community (and not just Atari) as a whole.

  11. Posted

    Thanks, that fixed the unknown mnemonic problem. Is there another switch I should be using? I am using "distella -a -p source.bin > sourcefile.s" as my command right now. Taking the code through the entire process now compiles correctly; however I think you'll find the results interesting:

     

    This is a file from the batariBasic thread that vdub_bobby created. 3 is the (renamed) version and 4 is what comes out of the process. Is this a glitch in the program, or am I still doing something wrong?

     

    bbk3.ZIP bbk4.ZIP

     

    Thanks again,

    JD

  12. Posted

    I've noticed that I can take a source code and compile it (then play with it in an emulator) and it seems to work fine. However, if I take that binary that is working, and try to disassemble it back into a .s file, the code will no longer compile correctly. Do I need to go back, take out the variable set at the beginning and add the include files again? I'm having trouble understanding how this is even possible if it is disassembling correctly. The error I get by the way is a long list of unknown mnemonics that should actually be commands such as STA, LDX, etc. They are indented fine in the "source" file (which at this point is actually the disassembled file).

     

    Thanks,

    Jason

  13. Posted · Edited by MayDay

    Andrew Davie:  I barely have enough time to keep the tutorials going, yet alone make corrections to them. Adding another process (keeping the summaries correct) is beyond my capability. That's why I'm a bit dubious about the summaries. Ultimately I'm just going to write what I can, and whatever other people add or do is pretty much up to them.

     

    Since it has been a year and a half since the last lesson, I'm guessing Andrew has found more important things to do other than babysit us newbs. :) Andrew's tutorials are without a doubt the best written and most imformative of the tutorials for a complete beginner. The amount of time and information he gave us are unmatched on the internet. He gave us the information to have working kernals and ability to play and expiriment with them. For his hard work he is to be commended and he has my thanks for his efforts.

     

    Since he taught us what to eventually expect in our games (along the lines of game elements) I thought it would be a good idea to once again take up his creative spirit and try to continue the tutorials. That is, unless Andrew has plans to come back to this at some point, and I would gladly be patient enough to wait for such time. :)

     

    I figure if myself or someone else posts a new topic every week or two, beginners and experienced programmers alike can give their thoughts and tips on each subject. Since Andrew covered playfields and began on sprites, I figure missles are as good of a spot to start as any. The other reason for starting with missles is that we already have a resource to reference, that being Kirk Israel's tutorials located here: http://alienbill.com/2600/101/ Simply go through his lessons and you will see code for changing the size of the missile and setting it in motion, as well as reading the collision detection with a sprite. Very useful stuff.

     

    Anyway, I hope this idea catches on and thought I would see what you all think.

     

    -Jason

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for this question, and if not, please feel free to move it. I remember a while back that I read on here about a guy who could burn off Nintendo ROMs if you sent one to him. I've searched a bunch of forums and can't find anything on this, so I was hoping someone might know who I was talking about. Or if anyone else has the ability, let me know.

     

    Thanks,

    JD

  17. Posted

    I have played around with the javascripts playfield generators and the sprite generators and such. I was just curious if anyone had ever considered writing a program that would take point and click to the level of writing an entire game, and not just segments?

     

    I realize this may not even be possible, but was just wondering if it had been considered. I think this would be a great tool to the Atari community. I have not given up my dream of teaching it to myself and getting my game together, but have found it quite challenging thus far. I also know this probably would have very low optimization and a real programmer would have much more potential (on a machine that is severely limited to begin with).

     

    If it was possible, I wonder what limitations there would be? I would think such things as 1 or 2 players choice, title screen, maybe a standardized music package (if someone were willing to write an original), and a multitude of options could be available. Maybe a simple menu of options upon collision detection, that sort of thing. It could be added to and updated as time went on. Is this topic of interest to anyone? I think a community-wide project that was updated and notated (much like DASM and Distella are now) would be a welcome gift to those of us that are hexidecimally challenged. Let me know what you guys think.

     

    -Jason

  18. Posted

    Hello again, fellow Atarians.

     

    I have not posted to this board for a while, but thought it was right proper time to check up on this thread to see what had been found. I would have liked to help further in the investigation, but have been in the process of trying to start my own business and am thus short on time, money, and cell phone minutes.

     

    Frankly, I would like to say a couple of things. First, I'm somewhat disappointed that no one seems to have come forward with first-hand knowledge of the event. The article in the paper was nice, but seemed to just be a re-hash of what we already knew (except spud's real name :twisted:). That is not to say nothing has been accomplished, as it appears moycon and others have crossed off a few people from the list of potential witnesses. It's really too bad we haven't gotten anything from Ms. McQuiddy yet.

     

    And to Moycon, I feel I owe you an apology. I think I missed the sarcasm from one of your posts, and took it to mean you had crossed over to the side of believers. This is something that's unfortunely kind of hard to pick up in type. That left me not understanding your next post, and thus my response. It seems you were after all willing to put in the work to find the truth; despite the fact that contacting these people would have more than likely proven the opposite point of view if it yielded any tangible results. I base that from the thought that no one would "know" that it was just a rumor (unless they were the ones that started it or contributed to, or somehow tried to counter-act it).

     

    Anyway, this has been a fun thread to be a part of. I still disagree with your point of view Moycon, but hope you can accept my apology, though that remains to be seen. And for the record, I was thinking in terms of a movie instead of a book. :) Of course, we could do both...maybe co-market them?

     

    That's all for now... will hopefully check back in a couple weeks from now.

     

    Thanks,

    -JD

  19. Posted

    First off, I pointed that out because I thought someone may be able to recognize what the boxes would be if that was indeed a logo. I wasn't. And, I obviously spent a lot of time looking at it, drawing by hand is so time-consuming.

     

    For all the nay-sayers, I now have proof even they will not be able to deny.

     

    I used the speed-dial feature on my phone to give my friend Ray a little-ringy dingy. He used to work at Atari, and I think he was even fairly high up in the company. I was shocked when he told me he was present on the day they actually did the dumping. Unfortunetely, the spooks (CIA) came in and took all of their photos and evidence.

     

    The good news is the hippies finally got something right. Using the freedom of information act, I was able to get both a copy of the photograph as well as a memo my friend Ray sent out shortly afterwards. Now we will all know the truth.

     

    -JD

     

    Oh, and sorry, I haven't got the ones of him standing on one leg, or holding a number two pencil, or a sheet of paper yet. I'm still working on it, though.

    post-6479-1112768210_thumb.jpg

    post-6479-1112768211_thumb.jpg

  21. Posted

    Did anyone notice this? I would guess the ones on the middle are game cartridges, as the shape fits and they are all marked the same. Maybe these boxes could be paddle controller cartridges or something. If one of the boxes were smashed flat (the other appears somewhat intact), the logo would also appear in the same spot on the boxes and looks relatively the same size. If we had the actual photo to analyze, I could probably tell for sure if that's what I think it could be.

     

    And just curious, have you tried to get in touch with Marian McQuiddy yet nudicle? I'm curious what they remember and what they might be able to contribute to the cause in way of photos or anything like that. Marian could probably also provide us details as to how it was percieved locally, as the reports sound like the village elders weren't too happy. They apparently had the law changed in less than 72 hours.

     

    Something else that hasn't been considered... If Atari had more stuff to dump that got banned from Alamogordo, could there be a second dump site somewhere?

     

    That's all for now, there's a national championship on tonight.

     

    -JD

    post-6479-1112671948_thumb.jpg

  22. Posted

    Spud- personally, if people don't believe by now, they never will. I say thanks for what you've already done, and don't waste your time with anything else.

     

    As for moycon, I can't tell where he is being facetious and what he actually now believes. His posts on whether he believes or not cover the entire spectrum of the issue. For (him?) and those who do not believe, what more proof is needed?

     

    I say that because... it's in print. It's verified to have been in print. To dispute the claim that the event happened, I see three possible explanations.

     

    1. The Alamogordo paper & the NY Times simultaneously made the stories up, and Spud is in actuality a Hollywood fim effects supervisor.

    2. Atari went to great lengths to fake the dumping.

    3. Aliens abducted Albert Einstein in the 1920s and gave him the information for both the theory of relativity and whether the atomic bomb was possible. In exchange, one of his criteria for him helping the US government was to have them fake this event 60 years later (they used their magical time travel wand so they already knew about Atari). The aliens then kidnapped the town's residents in 1983 and replaced them with androids so they couldn't dispute the events.

     

    I say any one is as possible as the others. Nothing in science and math can technically be proven. People still believe gravity exists, and one plus one equals two because logic would lead one to believe it.

     

    So what possible arguement can be made that the events in question never happened? It's not even April Fool's anymore, this is rather absurd. As a former reporter, I have left a few stories behind, sometimes with the intention of returning, a couple of times, not. The kids are there... and wouldn't be hard to find. I just don't happen to be in NM.

     

    And, while I could be mistaken, I really doubt you're going to get what you are asking for. How many people had camcorders laying around in 1983? Few... including the newspapers. Remember, these are not tv stations we're talking about, newspapers have little reason to shoot video. I can't find you any exact statistics, but if memory serves correctly I believe only about 10% of homes had VCRs at that time. The majority of these were bought for the sole purpose of playing pornography. And no offense to the NM crowd, but I doubt even they would dispute that they aren't exactly on the technological cutting edge. Remember, this is a time when ATARI was the leading game console. Still pictures were the name of the game, and the only ones available to the general public are ones that were going to have been used in the newspapers in 1983. With some work, you may track down quality (if you consider 1983 cameras quality) photographs, but this is as good as you are going to get. Was a tv station really going to drive from Pheonix or somewhere to tape this?

     

    Please stop wasting our time with unfounded and illogical arguements. I doubt even Atari would have had the proof, unless it was a representative on site to supervise/verify everything was done correctly. Even if they filmed it, what do you think the chances of ever recovering it are? They obviously were so forthcoming with reporters at the time. They might as well have dropped a "We can neither confirm nor deny the dumping is taking place" or a "we plead the fifth". There's some good PR for them, releasing a film of them crushing games.

     

    You may be insulted at the mention of the horrors of WW2 or the moon landings being faked. I'm insulted by lack of logic. I believe posting to annoy someone or to simply be arguementative is called trolling. If you contact a warehouse worker/former Atari executive, or come up with some other proof that it isn't true, let us know. Otherwise you are just insulting the people who actually took the time to try and figure out the validity of the story.

     

    -Jason

     

    PS- I realize this is going to sound harsh to some. I tried to think of a way to lighten the mood when I was done typing it, because I'm not an angry person, nor is it my intention to bring anyone down. However, when I stopped to think about it, this is exactly what's being done now so I don't feel so bad about having done so. Enough evidence has been presented that I don't even think it would be a huge tragedy if this thread got locked, fun though it has been to this point. I really hope it doesn't have to come to that, I would really like for people in the NM area to be able to move forward with it and show the rest of us even more evidence.

     

    moycon:

    No one snapped a pic? Not one person thought, wow! A million Atari games what a picture that would make. Obviously not, cuz not one hasn't surfaced.

     

    Are you saying the ones posted are fake then? Or is that some sort of tricky April Fools double (triple) negative? I keep telling myself not to read further into this thread...but the original story is just too good. Thanks again spud, for the work you have brought forth. I'm going to get some ice cream and watch a movie, and not think about Atari anymore tonight.

  24. Posted

    Geoff's Gender Guesser says it's 8.527 times more likely for Marion to be a girl than a boy. There's a big formula they use, but basically it takes all instances of the name from google and compares it with the salutation used for the name. Far from perfect, but I've found it's pretty accurate when I get ready to call people at work.

     

    So I'm 89.5% sure Marion would be female. It works on who wants to be a Millionaire! :)

     

    -JD

  25. Posted

    We're not sure if M.E. = Marion or not. Marion is never associated with the Alamogordo Daily News, but we found that she (?) wrote several articles for the New Mexico Journal or something like that, and all focused on Alamogordo. It's reasonable to assume they're the same person, but not yet confirmed. The exact name is listed somewhere earlier in the thread.

     

    S/he has been contacted by e-mail, as also discussed earlier in the thread. A listing was found for them two hours east of Alamogordo somewhere in Texas. If e-mail fails, that same dude was going to snail mail them to see if it was the same person.

     

    Nice work on the new article, but we completely need an edit button back. I would have liked to use it a few times myself too!

     

    -JD

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