eric_ruck

Funny thing about PET...I rescued one from a dumpster when I was a freshman at college in the late 80's. I traded it for a half gallon jug of vodka a week later. Classic computers: Atari 400 that I've owned since 1982 Atari 800XL Atari 1200XL Atari 1400XL (yes, working, with lab proto software for the modem) Atari 1040ST Atari Portfolio Commodore 64 Timex Sinclair 1000 I think I have a broken Tandy 100 somewhere. Does the Pentium 233 laptop count? Eric

So that means no one ordered one of these things yet? Darn it, I was hoping someone would review it. Eric

Report from MD: TRU in Columbia has plenty of titles left include Metal Gear, SSX, and uh, a bunch of others I wasn't really interested in. Will probably check out the one in Catonsville on Monday. Eric

I have an old cartridge pong thing whose name escapes me now, but the company name rings familiar...remember this is from the 70's: Internet Corp. Worth having it just for that. Maybe Al Gore was involved. Eric

It's good to know the important stuff will be preserved. "Sorry, we had to move out all the canned food to make space for the video games." Before I had kids the neighborhood kids hung out at my house, mostly to play Crazy Taxi on my DreamCast. But their second favorite... Super Cobra on the Vectrex. The system probably predates the oldest of them by 10 years. Eric

You know, as obvious as it seems, if you're looking to your 2600 for dating advice you could probably use such help. Eric

In really enjoyed Blue Stinger, although I never finished it...got bored trying to get through the freezer. Also I was amused when "Dogs" character exclaimed "shit!" about something or other near the beginning of the game, I'd never heard a game curse before that. Eric

I bought the game on release because of all the good press, tried to play it a couple of times, and basically hate it. I've been meaning to unload that one for some time. Eric

I actually think I have two of these around, one boxed. Don't really remember... I like Touch Me because you can win. You can set it to play up to a certain number of moves. Eric

The download for Doom 2 is not like Phantom. Basically you download the whole thing once and its yours forever. You don't have to connect online to play or anything. I have a Zodiac 2 and I love it except... 1) Really short battery life 2) Somewhat odd and inconvenient cables 3) I think their rendition of the standard Palm apps could use a little more tweaking. Also I sort of got used to the keyboards on the other PDA's I've used, and I kinda like the bash shell on my Zaurus. Eric

Also maybe not anticipated but I'm working on game balancing features of ChargeField (Lynx). Work getting bogged down and only 6 weeks left for the minigame competition this year...doing my best to get it out there. Anyway, levels will be distinguished by paddle sizes, and particle frequency, speed and weight. Eric

Release day, Electronic Boutique, Owings Mills, MD. I was surprised that there was hardly any interested (although in retrospect maybe I shouldn't have been). Eric

Learn Visual C++ 6.0 Now, Microsoft Press, by Chuck Spahr. Excellent book, many/most people are still using VC++6 rather than .NET (6 is arguably better, or at least more reliable). Lightly used, orig. $49.99, yours for $5 plus actual shipping. Video game trades considered (I don't really need any more technical books in trade, believe me). Eric

XBox. I remember the disappointment on the first day PS2s went on sale, the games didn't look any better than the release games for the Dreamcast. Oh yeah, and my unit was defective, wouldn't read DVD's. But all that aside, I like the XBox games and controllers a lot better. I don't think the PS2 has been turned on in months. Eric

The problem with a pure software emulation is a CPU fast enough to do it in software alone would probably suck batteries down too fast for a portable, or be too expensive. I was thinking not exactly GBA but GBA-like hardware. If figure that an ARM system with a decent amount of memory designed to task could probably be built to emulate a 7800 with the costs not getting too out of site. Eric

Boy that was a close call...the HD in my primary computer went down, hard. Managed to recover the CF source code from it as well as my most important work files so far. All I have to say is, NTFSDOS and a USB drive are definitely my friend. Eric

Original post edited, items that have been sold (or sale pending completion) have been marked. Lots of good stuff still left. Thanks, Eric

A sense of community in this mixed up crazy world. Other than that, I dunno, there are a few random Vectrex things, then things that I've been playing recently: NGPC games, I have the absolutely common ones (the ones that come in the 6 packs) and a few others but there are plenty I don't have GBA games, no kiddie titles or sports games please. Other than that, the only ones I do have are Konami Classics, Worms, Castelvania and Iridion 3D. Saturn and Dreamcast games -- I don't have many of either. Eric

Not exactly a book but I've been using www.6502.org as a reference for my Lynx project. Eric

Value is not really my biggest concern. I just wanted to find these games a good home that's not my basement. I found 'em with the system at a yard sale cheap enough and likely destined for the landfill by the end of the day and thought it might be neat to have the keyboard and FD with a game or two, but I don't really want the rest of the stuff, especially since I already have most of those games for other systems. Eric

I don't know what they're doing for a battery, but the Tapwave Zodiac 2 has maybe 1.5 hrs of game time on it, if you're gaming downhill with the wind at your back. And the PSP will suck down a lot more power. Maybe they should have a battery hat. It could be hidden inside a stylish fedora. I wonder if Linux is still the dev system... Eric

I'd have to say either my Black Widow standup, the only coin op I own (which is actually in need of repair now -- anyone?) or the Vectrex 3D glasses, which have limited play value but are insanely cool...I actually get a fair amount of mileage out of them. I work with a bunch of other video game geeks and I think the Vectrex will be making a guest appearance at our new offices when we move in a few weeks. Eric

Lynx of course. Also NGPC pocket, and lately I've been playing by GBA, only for Konami Arcade Classics. I used to be into my XBox but I just haven't had the time lately. I'd like to be more into my Tapwave but I need some new games released for it. Oh yeah, and some money to buy them wouldn't be bad either. Eric

You need to load this into the Lynx emulator here. I think there's also a way to burn this onto an EPROM but you would need a burner and a special cartridge to load it into a Lynx. Also I think you can load it using a feature in another homebrew game called BLL but I'm embarrased to say I'm not actually sure how that works. Oh yeah, to run the emulator you're going to need a reasonably fast machine. Any current P4, higher speed Celeron, Athlon XP, etc. will work. Don't know much about emulation on the Mac. At this point the game isn't playable yet but the primary elements are in place. The idea is that you have to catch the charges emanating from the center with the paddles around the outside to prevent the field from reaching the maximum charge, which ends the game. Rounds are timed and get progressively harder. As mentioned above, your score in the minigame version is a combination of the round time and round counter meters, since bitmaps of digits use up valuable space. If I like the way the game turns out there will probably be a complete version with a score and all sorts of other features. Oh yeah, also the game dynamics are not "balanced" yet. Basically this means that even if the current version would be playable, it would be impossibly hard right now. I'm thinking of doubling the paddle size as well as reducing the speed of the particles, but increasing their number. I'll probably do that before collission detection with the paddles, since detection is kinda pointless if the game is too hard. I might also speed up the paddles, jury is still out on that. I'm putting up in-progress versions of the game to get comments from people on ideas for improvements as early in the development process as possible. This is because I'm developing in 100% assembly, no C code at all, and the code is time consuming to write. Better to get it right the first time then to have to go back and change it later. Eric

They are all on disk. Eric