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mksmith

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Posts posted by mksmith

  3. Posted

    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.

    newcard.thumb.jpg.a28bfafa5dfc8cfd7b356dc4048b8cf9.jpg

     

     

    • Like 3

  5. Posted

    Just now, batari said:

    The fix above was to try to address the inability to read some older SD cards. The menu freezes, however, may be related to something else. I got a report that the menu freezes do not occur if you use a 2600 joystick. If that is the case, that might be a hint at a possible solution.

    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.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    41 minutes ago, tep392 said:

    There seems to be a bug in the menu.  I noticed that if you add more files to the root directory, you will be able to scroll farther down the settings menu.  I originally had two files in the root and could only scroll two line down the settings screen.  I noticed this last night and sent a PM to Fred about it.

    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 👍

     

    5 hours ago, mimo said:

    Hi, I have tested all the games you listed half a dozen times each on PAL and NTSC and not one failure. I tried them on my 2gb PNY card too, again no failures but I did get menu freeze several times. Maybe there is a timing issue with old slower cards? I see that your Verbatim card is 80mb/s compared with my stable SanDisk 120mb/s card 

    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 👍

  7. Posted

    2 hours ago, mimo said:

    what SD card are you using?  Do you have another to try? I have had no issues loading games from Trebor's ROM pack
    Do you have an example of a problem game so that I can test?

    Thanks for your help Mimo! These are the two I've tried so far:

     cards.thumb.jpg.afd45b868af50873f56702987e60976b.jpg

     

    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.

     

  8. Posted

    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.

     

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Just now, batari said:

    I should clarify that these newer Concertos use CH341 USB drivers, not FTDI like the older ones. If anyone isn't sure, generally the purple PCBs will use FTDI and the green boards use CH341.

    Ah right - I'll find those and install 👍

  10. Posted

    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):

    devices.thumb.png.88aa190ee4ce564917fdd7caf14373ce.png

    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 👍

  14. Posted

    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

     

  18. Posted

    5 hours ago, RevEng said:

    The Concerto Brotherhood is very selective. For those of you hitting refresh over and over again, here are some suggestions:

    • Think only pure and worthy thoughts. The Brotherhood is listening.
    • Focus your chi into your 7800. Go full Miyagi on that thing.
    • Sacrifice a copy of 7800 Karateka to the 8-bit gods. Ball peen hammer works best. (If you burn it you won't hear the end of complaints about the smoke from your family. Trust me) Deleting a Karateka rom doesn't count for anything, because we've all done that before.

    Good luck!

    karate kid GIF by IFCpat morita nod GIF

    • Like 4

  23. Posted

    3 hours ago, RevEng said:

    The pattern for a doubled quick score would be... 

     scoreText5 = (scoreVar2&$0F)*2
 scoreText4 = (scoreVar2/16)*2

    (Repeat that for all of the score characters. I used both "/16" and "*2" instead of just "/8" to clear out the bottom bit.)

     

    alphachars and other character functions don't care if the graphics came in with one big chunk, or a bunch of discrete imports.

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

    • Like 3

  24. Posted

    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.

    • Thanks 1

  25. Posted

    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!

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
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