Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

∞ Vince ∞

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    556

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by ∞ Vince ∞

  1. Posted

    23 minutes ago, Agent X said:

    That sums it up well. Atari's numerous blunders (from both technical and business perspectives) during the Jaguar's first year set the tone, and put them on a nearly irreversible downward trajectory.

    I think the import of decent development systems, put out to plenty of the right devs, along with quality documentation can not be under-estimated. What is it with Atari not wanting people to know how the machines worked? They were doing that kind of thing back in the 8bit era.

    ---

    I know Playstation was a bugger to get anything going on, but Sony, they provided some wonderful documentation. You could choke a donkey on it, but it was there.

     

    It is MHO that if you want to be successful in launching a new console the first thing you do, is, everything you can to make it as smooth a ride for the developers as possible. 

  3. Posted

     

    24 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

    Every chip ever designed has had bugs, and I doubt the pre-silicon verification tools were as robust back then as they are now.  The real question when it comes to bugs is whether management gives you the time to fix them or not.  We all know how that went in this case.

    Fair comment.

    Quote

    Not to pile on the "bad leadership" bandwagon either.  Spinning a chip is incredibly expensive and takes forever.

    True.

    Quote

     A trade-off was made, and it's not that interesting to try to point fingers here or there 25+ years later IMHO.

    It was a tongue-in-cheek comment fella! Don't get riled. People get offended by everything now. I fully understand how that plays out, and you seem to have not bothered to read my second part of the same comment and chose to be all spiky instead!

    2 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

    To be fair to both of them,
    I would love to see what a bug-free, not chopped down by the money people, as originally designed Jag would be like.

    I can't have been more fair. 😾

     

  4. Posted

    I wonder if he designed all the bugs...

     

    I really like Martin Brennan, not only is he an Englishman, he also designed a lovely Jukebox which I own the Brennan 2. 

     

    To be fair to both of them,
    I would love to see what a bug-free, not chopped down by the money people, as originally designed Jag would be like.

    I'd love to see the Konix MS as well for that matter.

  6. Posted


    Also your question doesn't really make sense. The geometry, shapes you make (usually triangles) and the hardware used to make them are

    separate things, but no, Jag was low powered to this degree. The Jag's main problem was, it had no stellar games to sell the machine, and most of us have paid good money for a console or computer on the basis of one stellar game.

     
     

  8. Posted

    10 minutes ago, Felice_Atari said:

    The Atari scene in the UK isn't that big, at least in relation to the demoscene / homebrew scene, but we are spread out across the country. I know of at least one other guy who is based close to me, just outside Cambridge, alongside my best man (and friend) from Northampton; various people from Hull, one from Nottingham and others based around the Greater Manchester area and a couple of people in Kent.

     

    Whilst the wotsit's event that was held in 2009 in a small "business room" in a hotel near to the northern part of the M25; yes, he tried to call it 'Jagfest: Retro Revival' but this was totally different to the Revival events which have been organized by Mr T and Chris Wilkins over the years. These were always much larger events (even the Revival Mini events over the years were much larger) than the wotsit's "events" ever could be. He relied on other people's money too much.

     

     

    Yeah, so lets say 50, maybe 100 Atari hardcore fans in the UK, that isn't many. AA has what more than 20,000 users and most of them have at least some love for the Atari.

     

    Kizza just says whatever pops into his head to impress the person he is talking to at any given moment and no care if it is complete Bollocks or not.

     

    I think it is fair to say that Craig/Mr. T has clarified the totality of Kizza's input into Revival. He brought along a couple of consoles one time. The way he was going (in that interview) 'we're going to get a bigger venue' like he was running it, he's a complete fucking fantasist! 

    • Like 4

  9. Posted

    On 6/26/2020 at 3:07 PM, Welshworrier said:

    And in case anyone thinks it's a slip of the tongue.

    Here's his interview from 2014 where he says the same.(From 1 hour and 14)

     

    https://podbay.fm/podcast/663593797/e/1409277390

    Such a good 'writer' that he just created the word 'travellable'. The Atari scene in the UK is really big?


    Also @ around 1 hour 23, decides to take credit for Revival! What a @~!*house! 

     

     

  12. Posted

    11 hours ago, aNdy_v said:

    I can add your above message if you like, or do you want to add more?

    Just a shame. Don't worry about it.

    I was just trying to find out if he was ok. I'm not on Facebook anymore and when I got no reply to an email for a while and I went on to get

    sick, I assumed the worst. Unfortunately I was right.

    If you could add that message that would be great, Andy, thanks 

  13. Posted

    1 hour ago, aNdy_v said:

    OK, no takers.  I'll add a generic greeting as suggested by CharlieChaplin.

     

    Thank you for your time.

    I'd have said 'Keep Fighting Jason! And don't forget your special moves!'

     

    I messaged you about Jason weeks ago on E64. At that point I was just querying if you had heard from him, I suspected he had it, I got it too. I seem to have been incredibly lucky though.

  16. Posted

    Ok. Cool. Thanks for this Anders.

     

    I knew of Infocom's VM, but not heard about 'Inform'.

    ---

    Sounds quite ambitious to me, but fair play, we don't know how good a coder Halycon275 is, and he might well be capable of the task, with the caveat that it would need to be an expanded machine.

    ---

    For someone who has written and re-written text adventures for three different systems (C16 +4, C64 and Spectrum 48k),

     

    the whole concept of a Z-machine / VM is genius.

     

    Write a text adventure. Create a Front End to edit and customise it.

    Then compile the game to a nice tight compact file which then gets pulled into their custom interpreter.

     

    You create a different/slightly modified version of the interpreter for each machine and every game will work 'out of the box' on each machine.

     

    Wonderful!

     

    I assume this is pretty much the same way SCUMM-VM works as well. Though in that case you can afford to be greedy with resources and the whole point of being small and compact has gone out of the window.
     

     

     

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    2 hours ago, carlsson said:

    I think it would be a huge contribution to the retro gaming world if you produce an Inform or any form of Z-machine interpreter for the ZX-81, even fully expanded. I see there is one for the ZX Spectrum +3 and Amstrad PCW8000/9000 series, not sure if you can find anything for a lesser Z80 system.

    Stupid Q, but what is 'Inform'?

  19. Posted · Edited by ∞ Vince ∞
    + added file

    11 hours ago, King_Salamon said:

    Hi everyone,

     

    I am looking for the instructions that shipped with the little mini arcade games made by The Bridge Direct (or Basic Fun as they are known as now).

     

    I am happy to just have a scanned copy of each but would prefer to have the actual sheet.  I seemed to have misplaced mine and now with Covid and being at home a lot, I went and organized all my goodies and these two have not shown up.

     

    Anyway, I am looking for the instruction sheet for the following:

     

    Arcade Classics #1 - Pac-Man - This can be the instructions from the boxed version from Wal_Mart or even the bubble packed ones sold elsewhere.  The instruction sheet is the same as is the game unit.

    Is this what you are looking for ?

    09521_ArcadeClassics_Pacman_Instructions_Print.pdf

  21. Posted

    5 hours ago, Halycon275 said:

    define half decent btw. i will not use a spectrum, my goal is the zx81

    zx81 is going to be a tough road for a text adventure. 'Half Decent' said by someone British means 'good'. You need a good amount of ram.

    I'd say for a fully functioning text adventure you need a minimum of 16k. Minimum.

  23. Posted

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't ask for feedback then say 'no mean comments' please, or things of a similar nature.

     

    Honest feedback can be quite brutal, but you can't learn or make good games when the feedback is 'oh well done.' and no-one is honest with you.

     

    Everyone will feel differently about your game. That's life.

    I'd say, forget coding a text adventure for the zx81, Switch up to a Spectrum and use the extra Ks at your disposal to write

    a good text adventure.

     

    You need a half decent amount of ram for the location descriptions let alone the text parser. 

    I really hate the idea of playing a rapist, so I'd pass on the game from the get-go.

     

    You have to remember that for a player to want to dedicate hours of his or her life to a game, you have to make the lead character at least in part likeable.

     

    And one final tip, you can get quite a lot of atmosphere out of the default set of character graphics if you use them in the right way.

  24. Posted · Edited by ∞ Vince ∞
    Additions

    Thanks everyone! Like I say I posted about this. A while ago, but it got trolled so I withdrew it. Glad to see there is a lot of love for TMR/Jason a lovely bloke who has 'put a lot in' and never taken anything out.

     

    Always has time for anyone and although I don't know him that well, I have bothered him with coding questions for years and he is always kind enough to never point out how stupid I am, he is a good conversationalist and always talks a great deal of sense. Keep on fighting Jason, and don't forget your 'special moves!'.

    • Like 4
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...