mksmith

Looking great Bob!

Unfortunately couldn't make the live session as I got roped into playing cricket (did my hammy too 😩). Very much looking forward to watching this today thanks James 👍

Just a small update. I've done some additional testing on my UAV modded machine and my other stock 7800 using a europad/joypad. No changes to how things are working for me in that games sometimes not load, sometimes start and crash, sometimes graphically corrupt or otherwise occasionally load fine. Again the menu always works fine everytime and have no locking up issues there + the europad/joypad is working fine with no button issues at all (either button). Tested both bios 0.93 and 0.94. I went back to the original thread and grabbed the 7800 utility cart on my UAV modded machine. When that loaded (5 different tests), 4 showed no issues on the integrity test, but 1 did (I think I can put that down to the flaky loading I'm having). Bought a new card and no additional changes to the other 2 cards I have.

Sorry Fred, yeah the speed change made no changes to whether things loaded or not for my 2 cards.

I use a original Atari CX-40 with mine no problem. I'll bust out an one of my 2-button atari joypads and test.

Ah yes I think that might have been the case with me too. I only had a handful of files at the time and thought the settings weren't accessable yet. Will confirm 👍 Thanks Mimo - I'll see what other cards I have on hand or can pickup. Saying that both cards I have show the same symptoms but worth helping out trying various cards 👍

Thanks for your help Mimo! These are the two I've tried so far: I tested the following 3-4 times (Pal and NTSC, both cards): Centipede Choplifter Commando Dig Dug Galaga Impossible Mission The symptoms sound similar to the early development in that they sometimes not load, sometimes start and crash, sometimes graphically corrupt or otherwise occasionally load. 2600 games had more luck, but within some sub-folders games wouldn't load at all but other folders load everytime. Fred mentioned in the initial post about the Operating System and Game Loader not having been updated as yet - the splash screen, bootloader and menu all work very well so that's a good sign. I received one of the very early dev carts so once Fred releases new builds I'll do some further testing 👍 Oh I also have another machine so will get that out over the next few days.

Updated to the 0.93 (from 0.91) using the USB methods - loader and bios worked the number of times I tried (using the NTSC or PAL eeloader). I'm on PAL with no pokey installed (yet). So far the menu loaded every time, is much more stable (only crashed once selecting a folder - 40-50 runs) and not showing random characters on the file manager. I can move around sub-folders with multiple pages fine. I can also access/exit the settings page ok. Attempted to load a selection (10 or so) PAL retail games from Trebor's ROM pack, occasionally some loaded 1st or 2nd time otherwise no joy. I haven't tested any 2600 games as yet.

Ah right - I'll find those and install 👍

Great thanks Fred! Just a quick one - I've installed the FT232R drivers in Win 10 and my harmony cart is recognised and found in the Stephen's latest Harmony software but my concerto is shown as the following in the Device Manager (same occurs on 2 different PCs): Just for others who might be on 0.91 and who get the same issue - would that more relate to the cable? BTW happy to wait for the transitional firmware 👍

Oh I have a few there I'm playing with too 😁

Very nice Lewis! Now Beast would be an impressive viewing on the 7800!

Nice!

You could something like this (untested but based on my high-score check): dim score0Var0 = score0 dim score0Var1 = score0+1 dim score0Var2 = score0+2 dim score1Var0 = score1 dim score1Var1 = score1+1 dim score1Var2 = score1+2 ValidateScore0BiggerThanScore1 rem validate each byte if score0Var0 > score1Var0 then goto _validatedScore0IsBiggerThanScore1 if score0Var0 < score1Var0 then goto _validateHighScoreExit if score0Var1 > score1Var1 then goto _validatedScore0IsBiggerThanScore1 if score0Var1 < score1Var1 then goto _validateHighScoreExit if score0Var2 > score1Var2 then goto _validatedScore0IsBiggerThanScore1 goto _validateScore0BiggerThanScore1Exit _validatedScore0IsBiggerThanScore1 rem if you reach here score0 > score1 _validateScore0BiggerThanScore1Exit return

I'd be happy to help @Dionoid 👍

@sramirez2008

All good thanks @batari! Really appreciate the time you have put into getting Concerto out the door!

With @Synthpopalooza producing lots of music for us developers a Pokey chip really should be a considered a minimum requirement going forward to give you the best experience. For my games Millie and Molly uses the pokey for all sounds and Arkanoid will use it for the majority. Yeah both carts are fantastic and offer plenty for everyone!

Congrats Lewis 👏👏👏

Congrats @Revontuli 👏👏👏

Hi everyone, I've updated the TallSprite example for the recent changes in 7800basic (v0.16 onwards) and added additional information how to cater for using QuickScore in doublewide character mode.

Thanks Mike - I'll update my tricks and tips for this 👍

Brilliant work - displaying great now and no render issues!! I honestly believe the under the hood method is perfect for any game that renders like this + you can do animations etc. The only thing you'll find with the 16 zone height around text is you can't plot at 8 pixel increment downwards so all the text will be spaced (following the 16 zone height). You can of course make the font up to 16 pixels high but it may just depend on how you want to present text screens. You can't currently change that on the fly as I understand.

I was just having a quick poke around and have a couple of thoughts: Could you try 16 zone height tiles (knowing that bring difficulties with displaying text 😪). The main bonus this brings is it might help the DL out and also reduce the validations required to scan the tilemap (saying that peekchar is very optimized). The number of palette changes required between each tile is having the effect on the render time especially the larger the level gets (changing to a 16 zone might help also as it will have a 2x reduction on this?? 2x8 vs 1x16) Plotvalue is extremely costly and is the cause of the slowdowns in level 3. Mike's quick score technique is a great replacement (made a big difference for Arkanoid!!). Give this a try now: Rem out your plotvalues on the scorebar each update Change all the tilemap graphics to use the same palette ie. 2 The under the hood process would probably require storing the maps differently as the level needs to be manually built with plotsprite so using data tables is very efficient (my large data table > 256 tip is a reasonable approximation on how I did my levels in M&M and Arkanoid - I used a program called Pyxel Edit to dump the maps out to data). It will probably suffer from similar palette DL issues, would simplify validation and map updates but have a little cost updating the dots vs your efficient char replacement. Hopefully that might help in some way in working out how to keep moving forward - let me know how you go!