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Giles N

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Posts posted by Giles N

  2. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    I’m not saying anything should be left to chance here.

     

    It would have to be a quality-unit with quality-controllers, being able to run old carts and providing availability for the titles for these systems (and possibly more).

     

    Which could mean that Atari or whomever would or could do such stuff would have interest in providing professional output, professional availability for the Homebrews made later.

     

     

  3. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    45 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

    I think that low demand for such a device is the main obstacle. 

    I think that a built-in eshop with arcade-titles and atari-console-software-download service could do a lot.

     

    One could also build in cart-slots for NES and SMS, Genesis and SNES so you would have a box with 8 slots lined up in two rows.

     

    And as to eshop-download:

    to make available Atari400/800 games (lets say 2-10$ each), which would really expand the catalogue.

  4. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    12 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

    How many cartridges do you have, anyway? 🤪

    I have 40++ 5200 carts

    30+ ntsc 7800 carts

    25+ pal 7800 carts

    a few 2600 games, but not many; I mostly connect with multicolour-sprite/multicolour-background level of grfx, with exception of early vector-games where 3D made things more difficult.

     

    But if a Super-Atari-FrankenTron78000 could play any atari-console-cart from any system using cartridges, how many titles would exist?

    • Thanks 1

  7. Posted

    2 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

    Just two observations:

     

    1. Retron is emulation

    2. Emulation isn't bad. 

     

    It it might not be what you want, but short of FPGA, it's a cheap and easy way to get most of the way there. 

    What I would like, would be a console  where you could put in original (ie old) cartridges in say 2, 3 or 4 different slots, to be able to play any atari-console-thing on one unit.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    2 minutes ago, King Atari said:


    People were asking for just such a thing when the subject of Retron supporting Atari conoles first came up. IIRC they got to looking into 7800-compatibility but the 5200 posed too many issues. Someone probably remembers for sure how that went or where they are as far as all that goes, as I haven't really been following - I don't really go for the new 'retro' consoles that employ emulation when real hardware is readily available to me. That's strictly a personal choice on my part, and if they made something 5200-compatible and with new controllers, I'd probably buy it just to make my life easier in that area, emulation or no emulation.

    But the fact remains that if someone were to get new-produced 5200 'guts' (i.e., not emulated) into something I could plug into my actual 7800, I'd be all for it. That doesn't really solve the controller issue of course, and I have no idea is such a thing is even possible, but it's fun to daydream about.
     


    I'm far, far from a programmer, but it seems that where this topic is concerned, well, therein lies the rub. The 5200 has so many unique components to it (in comparison to the 2600/7800, I mean) that getting many/most/all of its games playable on a 7800 would essentially need an entire 5200 crammed into a module that plugs into the 7800, basically using the 7800 for power and little else. Or so it seems to me.

    I can’t believe that making a new sort of joystick for an AtariRetron would be like ‘difficult’ to a professional hardware-firm; emulations do it.

    Old 15 pin PC joysticks did it.

    And number-keypad.

    Come on, thats not like difficult.

  11. Posted

    19 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

    Aren't all these "system changers" just the old system on a board with an A.V. pass through?

     

    I know I'm oversimplifying the effort involved to make something like this, but that's because you basically need a whole donor to mount up the "guest" system. Hardly seems worth it. 

    Actually a good point.

     

    But lets say you had some tech-geek who had like 3 or 4 5200 units that had broken down on different areas of hardware...

     

    But anyway, as I don’t know much about hardware, I was just asking.

     

    Perhaps, for all I knew, all it would take would be some analogue-joystick hardware, put it them toether in the right manner, and then it would work.

     

    But if one would have to pick apart several 5200s to make one converter, you sure have a point man.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    14 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

    Average software answered the question basically. When you see multicolor sprites on 5200, it is a layering or synchronization of multiple players and missiles and background graphics, ... or it could be by using the 2600 common method of dynamically changing the Sprites color on a scan line by scan line basis.  Programming tricks.

     

    Also , if you use Player0 and Player1 for one sprite, you get their 2 unique colors, and you get a 3rd color where their pixels overlay each other. Same with combining P2 and P3. 

     

    Some games use software sprites using background graphics pixels or character sets.  Then you could easily have 4 or 5 color sprites, although moving them is much more problematic, as is checking for collision. 

    I’m impressed.

     

    Thanks a lot for info.

     

    Now; how is the palette for the 5200?

     

    What colour would the ‘overlay-colour’ be if you put Player0 and Player1 on top of each other?

    Would they follow ‘logical’ colour-rules: red + blue = purple, blue + yellow = green etc, or something completely different?

  14. Posted

    31 minutes ago, King Atari said:

    This is a dream peripheral of mine, and if someone somehow made it happen, I'd certainly be interested. As far as I know though, nothing has ever been attempted.

    The 5200 uses the POKEY soundchip while the 7800 obviously doesn't, so there's something to consider. And then there's the whole controller keypad issue; a theoretical 5200-to-7800 adapter would have to include at least one on the module itself, but even if they got two (four?) on it, playing games that make extensive use of the pads that way doesn't exactly seem practical - unless 5200 controller ports were also put on the module itself, in which case you're back to contending with one of the issues that would make a 5200-to-7800 adapter attractive in the first place (IMO).

    What would be the atteaction:

    You buy a 7800 with a 5200-converter-thing.

     

    Then you can play

    1) 2600 games

    2) 5200 games

    3) 7800 games

     

    on the the same console unit.

  15. Posted

    19 minutes ago, King Atari said:

    This is a dream peripheral of mine, and if someone somehow made it happen, I'd certainly be interested. As far as I know though, nothing has ever been attempted.

    The 5200 uses the POKEY soundchip while the 7800 obviously doesn't, so there's something to consider. And then there's the whole controller keypad issue; a theoretical 5200-to-7800 adapter would have to include at least one on the module itself, but even if they got two (four?) on it, playing games that make extensive use of the pads that way doesn't exactly seem practical - unless 5200 controller ports were also put on the module itself, in which case you're back to contending with one of the issues that would make a 5200-to-7800 adapter attractive in the first place (IMO).

    Perhaps we should voice a wish for a Retron-style universal Atari-console that can play any (original)atari cartridge from any atari-console, with high-quality controllers?

  18. Posted

    12 hours ago, AverageSoftware said:

    There are 8 sprites.  Four of them are called "players," these ones are 8 pixels wide.  The other four are called "missiles," these are two pixels wide.  All of the sprites fill the entire height of the screen, they're basically screen-high columns of pixels.

     

    Each player sprite has only one color, and each missile corresponds to a player and shares its color.  There is a mode called "5th player" that allows you to make the four missiles an independent color.  There are a number of programming tricks you can use to get more color and to make it look like there are more objects than there actually are.  Anything but the most basic of 5200 games will rely on lots of these tricks.  There are actually several other sprite details, but it's too much to go into here.  There's a lot of information out there on the ANTIC and GTIA chips that can explain it better than I can.

     

    As many as you have ROM space for.  Sprite data is really small, each byte contains eight pixels, so it's not hard to cram a lot of them in there.

    But there’s a ton of 5200 games displaying what to me appears to be multicoloured sprites: the F1 car in Pole Position, the Pengo-character, snowbees and ice-blocks in ‘Pengo’, the hero, and enemies and pick-up animals in Gremlins ... etc etc etc.

     

    To me, it certainly looks like the 5200 can display multicoloured sprites and/or movable objects.

  20. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    7 minutes ago, AverageSoftware said:

    There are 8 sprites.  Four of them are called "players," these ones are 8 pixels wide.  The other four are called "missiles," these are two pixels wide.  All of the sprites fill the entire height of the screen, they're basically screen-high columns of pixels.

     

    Each player sprite has only one color, and each missile corresponds to a player and shares its color.  There is a mode called "5th player" that allows you to make the four missiles an independent color.  There are a number of programming tricks you can use to get more color and to make it look like there are more objects than there actually are.  Anything but the most basic of 5200 games will rely on lots of these tricks.  There are actually several other sprite details, but it's too much to go into here.  There's a lot of information out there on the ANTIC and GTIA chips that can explain it better than I can.

     

    As many as you have ROM space for.  Sprite data is really small, each byte contains eight pixels, so it's not hard to cram a lot of them in there.

    Would it opens for really, really tall sprites, but not very broad unless you use two of the eight in beside each other as one object?

     

    Could the missiles be almost infinite vertically, or limited like only four up- or down-wards?

     

    I’ve seen many multicolored figured on Atari5200 games: how is that pulled off?

    Using more than one sprite on same object?

  22. Posted · Edited by Giles N

    On 10/18/2014 at 4:23 AM, nosweargamer said:

    I reached Ep 50 and celebrate with a round of Ninja Golf!

     

    I really do have appreciated your enormous info-and-review output on retro-gaming, but, since I’m a bit into grfx, drawing and art, I’must put in that the graphics of Ninja Golf is very (!) good...

     

    -Consistent style

    -Splendid use of colours

    -Many parallaxes

    -Very fine horizons

    -Nice blend of semi-cartoonish/half-realistic figures and cartoonish monsters (frogs and the dragon)

    - smoot animations

    - many varied (and humourous) scrolling-fields.

     

    This is easily Graphics: 9,5/10

     

    Sound could have been better though..., I agree there...

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    On 8/29/2019 at 7:07 AM, AverageSoftware said:

    Yes, right now I'm working on Magical Fairy Force.

    An early version will be at the Atariage booth at PRGE this year.

    Well, I keep getting faster.  Ratcatcher took about 3 years of calendar time, Curling took two.  I expect my current project to be done in about a year and a half.

    Not very much, I squeeze in time around my real job.

    It actually isn't.  River Raid is my favorite game on the system.  I don't have a definitive list, but Berzerk, Ms. Pacman, Kaboom, and Countermeasure are among my favorites.

    What are the sprite-limitations or options on the 5200?

     

    Can you just pick 3 colours and one transparent, then its all good, or are there stricter limitstions?

     

    How many frames can sprites have?

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