Materion

I'll revive this topic - anyone knows good homebrew racing games?

I'm crossing my fingers for this project. Keep up and don't give up . I'm sure You will handle this .

Yeah, any chance of digital release ? I would love to buy it too but I have only Flashback X to play so physical medium is no option for me too.

Haha, this game makes me laugh - not because it's bad but because of idea of it :D. Great game concept and it plays really well. Great job !!

Hey, it looks great !! Keep up good work :). We have so many talented A2600 game makers here, it's unbelievable :).

Can't wait to play it !!

Whoah, nice idea for a game! And it seems pretty complex for A2600 too :). Gonna test it as soon as I will get my OTG cable for Atari Flashback X. Keep up good work !

I'm going to buy ROMs too. I was doing research of homebrew games for 2600 and felt sad because some really good games have only physical download option when I don't have real A2600 instead I got myself Atari Flashback X. I was about to reach out to some devs to offer a payment for a ROM but I think they would refuse it. Glad AA is going to make it happen for at least some games. Some games are not available to buy in either form. So I'm wondering if dev don't make profit from selling physical cart why he don't at least sell it as ROM.

That's a shame, cause this game looks interesting for A2600 ;). Hope there are not many games that uses B/W switch ;).

Wow thank You @MrFister!! Gonna upload new firmware right now ;).

I have Atari Flashback X. I got firmware from this site: https://firmwareupdate.atgames.net/. Is somewhere newer firmware to get?

Hello, After updating Atari flashback to newest version of firmware it started to lose frames. Games are from time to time not playing smooth and I can notice frame skipping. Before updating I didn't see things like this. Anyone have this also? Maybe updating to unofficial firmware will solve this issue?

Hello, Does anyone know how to enter status screen in Secret Quest using Atari Flashback X ? In instruction it says to use select button + UP. When I push select + up on joystick it starts rewinding game, when I push select game on console and UP on joystick it does nothing. Thanks in advance for answers.

I found solution for my problem. Post can be deleted - sorry for spam :).

Thanks @Preppie for easy explanation now I get it ;). So value under TOP=PEEK(106) is number of page that top of memory is ? As we subtract 4 of it (what means 4 pages 256 bytes each) so it stores page number of top of memory? Geeez, learning to program even in Basic is hard xD. Would be great if discord about Atari programming exist. Would be much easier to quick ask some noob questions instead of spamming on this forum :D.

Hello, Out of curiosity I wanted to see how oldschool Basic programming looked like. I don't understand in this example two things - why TOP is decreased by 4 - I know it lowers top of memory that is available for Basic program but why 4 - what measurement is this. And another thing why some peeks and pokes are multiplied by 256 and in 170 line it's divided by 256. 90 REM * REDEFINE $ CHARACTER 100 TOP=PEEK(106)-4 110 POKE 106,TOP 120 GRAPHICS 0 130 CHARGO=TOP*256 132 CHARFROM=PEEK(756)*256 135 PRINT "Moving the character set. Hold on •• " 140 FOR PLACE=0 TO 1023 150 POKE CHARGO+PLACE,PEEK(CHARFROM+PLACE) 160 NEXT PLACE 170 POKE 756,CHARG0/256 180 FOR 1=0 TO 7 182 READ A:POKE CHARGO+I+(4*8),A 184 NEXT I 186 PRINT "OUR NEW CHARACTER .•.•.••. " 188 PRINT "$ $ $ $ $ $" 190 PRINT "NOT BAD!" 192 END 200 DATA 0,0,126,66,90,66,126,0

Hello, I have question - when I want to load data from disk to my code I have to specify location of memory where it will start loading. Question is - how I know what locations of RAM are free so I can load there data ? Another question - how to create binary file with level data on PC so I can load it up in FastBasic code ? I mean I can convert decimal numbers to binary and paste it for example to notepad but how convert for example PC text file with binary data to binary file ready to load up in FastBasic?

@atarilux Simple DLI's are kinda simple so that's good. More complex ones ... well they're not so easy ;). Good start is get to know displaylists at all - this video explains them good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io4AZmT9Bnw. Sticking to FastBasic is good idea - it's faster, more modern and actively developed so I think going back to Turbo Basic XL would be a bad move.

@atarilux Yeah I think You need same knowledge about Atari hardware but it offers You much more human friendly syntax and some amenities over assembler. It's like Python but without object oriented programming ;). Now that it supports passing arguments to procedures it's really friendly to me but knowledge about graphics etc. still remain hard to learn but I think in baby steps and help of kind people here it can be achieved on some level ;). Today I learned basics of displaylists so its one step closer to goal ;).

Wow so now I see what FastBasic is really capable of. Incredible. Now would be good to have all that knowledge that is needed to do such things lol :D. It's overwhelming when I try to learn more advanced stuff ... I only coded in Python or C# at intermediate level so I don't have any experience with such low level stuff. Do You have any tips for me that would help me overcome this overwhelm feeling ? Maybe some book, or article that are easy enough for such fledgling programmer as me ;).

Thanks for link I will for sure read this tutorial. Another question - what if I want to have 3 different DLIs at 3 different lines of screen? I understand that I define 3 DLIs, set DLI on 3 lines but how to tell which line will do specific DLI? For example line 11 do DLI2, line 13 DLI1, line 16 DLI3 etc.

Wow, thank You very much for explanation @thorfdbg !! Now I get it ;). I have another question - maybe @dmsc will know. Is Fast Basic fast enough to do vertical or horizontal scrolling well ? I'm wondering if should I start learning about scrolling but I don't know if Fast Basic can handle it.

Hello, could someone explain why we poke value 130 when we wanna do DLI in this example ? Why when I try to use GRAPHICS 18 instead of GRAPHICS 0 in this example don't work? What should I do if I want use this example with GRAPHICS 18 ? ' Define the DLI: set background 2 ' color to $24 = dark red. 3 DLI SET d1 = $24 INTO $D01A 4 ' Setups screen 5 GRAPHICS 0 6 ' Alter the Display List, adds 7 ' a DLI at line 11 on the screen 8 POKE DPEEK(560) + 16, 130 9 ' Activate DLI 10 DLI d1 11 ' Wait for any keyu 12 ? "Press a Key" : GET K 13 ' Disable the DLI 14 DLI

Wow !! @dmsc thank You for still adding new features to this great basic implementation !! For me it's now best basic for Atari and I can't imagine what its gonna be in the future ! ;). Thanks for You dedication and time put onto this. I'm sure many many people will use it and appreciate it :). All good for You and all other members of this forum :).

Yeah I can see he is pro at it - it's very impressive. I don't know how to do this at all but I can imagine it takes a big knowledge and skill to do it. It's good that there is someone like Eddy that do this because many games for Atari didn't have cheats and some of them are really hard and not enjoyable without cheats. Comparing it to C64 games where almost all of it have trainers build in Atari was left out but now we have a chance thanks to Eddie to move forward with it ;).