Deadline

We addressed this by changing pitch and speed.

Thank you! I can't recall any derogatory terms that were used for Atari's. As I mentioned before my family was poor growing up, so the fact that we had ONE computer was amazing and it happened to be the C64. In fact I didn't even know about the "Trash" reference until more recently, like 2010ish. I did use a TRS-80 COCO back in the day and even programmed in BASIC on it. We're just trying to have some fun with the old machines and share our love for them overall. Cheers.

Hi, Yes well the entire project is a work in progress. I expect to get things looking better as we go along. I get it, they could use a bit of a makeover, but we're not exactly demoscene coders so we're still learning as well. Thanks for your feedback. Anyway, here's what we came up with for Pokey, and our video link to his first appearance. We will be featuring Pokey more in the future as well, and the program is up on our github page under APMs. Anyone can certainly help to contribute to make him, or any of our other puppets, better. Pokey is programmed using assembly language and is compiled using MADS. We did use the SAM program, but we changed the pitch and speed for Pokey so it would be somewhat different than Clicky. Thank you all who chimed in to help us make it the best we could. Deadline (CityXen) https://github.com/cityxen/APMs

@Gunstar okay I understand. So show the actual machine and monitor. That does make a lot of sense, but thus far we've only done the two machines so it wasn't much of a concern. Noted and will proceed with that suggestion in the future. Thanks for all your feedback.

@Gunstar Thanks for the feedback. Do you mean like put the logos on the bottom bezel of the monitors? And yes, the consensus that I've seen so far from other forums seem to go with the rainbow, and the attract mode screen saver thing that I didn't know about, as well as the key / io sounds.

@Gunstar Correct, I was under the impression that SAM was exclusively made for C64. Wow, learn something new everyday! Thanks for your help.

@Gunstar, thanks. Yes I certainly will google search it. Please forgive me for wanting to interact with the community rather than look something up in a database. ? I wasn't aware that SAM was available for the Atari machines, and this is a good enough answer for me. So I appreciate it.

Hi, I am working on a project and I would like to ask directly to the Atari community about some things. First, let me give you some background. I grew up using Commodore 64, and so I am very familiar with those machines. Back in those days, you only got one machine, unless your family was super rich. Me and my colleagues now have Atari XL machines, and we're playing with them and learning about them. So where is this thread going? Well, this is not meant to be a plug for our YouTube channel, but only to make you aware that is what our project is for. You see, we're working on sort of, digital puppets, for lack of a better word. We then put these machines in front of a green screen, and then the programs animate their faces and mouths and makes them look like they are emoting, etc. The programs use keyboard and joystick input to change the faces. Then we take this footage and put the computer "AI's" into stories. We already have a C64 version (Clicky), and an Amiga version (Amy). We want to program the same sort of thing but for Atari XL machines. Here is an example of the kind of stories we're making just for reference The programming is not what I am focusing on here, as I could surely figure that out easily. My question is more about feedback from the Atari community to learn about quirks of the Atari XL's that I could artistically incorporate into the "face". For example, Clicky has what appears to be memory being written to the screen in the kind of way that unpackers would use screen memory for unpacking and it would create a few rows of characters that changes rapidly on the screen. I have included a couple of images of Clicky and Amy from one of our vids (April Fools Day vid), to give you an idea of what we're doing. I was wondering if there are any kinds of visual things like this that Atari XL users would know and recognize as being Atari, if that makes sense. Or if there is any other kinds of suggestions that would help to show this face is that of an Atari of the character that we'd like to call Pokey. As you can imagine, we are going to put this to good use on our channel. We are working on other computer "AI's" as well for these types of videos, and so we want to have a whole range of characters that represent each of the old 8 and 16 bit machines so we can make hijinx and fun stories with them. Also, we are not going to use this as a way to lambaste the Atari XL or whatever, that isn't the intent. We will probably address the old rivalry between 8 bit systems, but we will do it in a fun way that is unbiased and so we want to bring out the best qualities of the Atari's for this, and to be inclusive to the Atari community for it. One other question is about voice synthesis. We use SAM for the C64 Clicky character. Is there any modern programs that emulate an Atari XL speech? We record the audio on our PCs then overlay them into the video editor to sync with the puppets faces talking so it appears that they are talking. So what I am looking for is a way to record this voice synthesis easily in this sort of manner. So yeah, just looking for some feedback and tips about how to make our Pokey character look and sound "Atari-ish". If you're good at Atari XL programming, it would be great to hear from you as well for tips on the characteristics of these machines. Thanks for your time, Deadline (CityXen)

Hi does anyone know if this iTalkII is available on modern machines implemented in software form? Aside from that is there any voice synthesis that is available that does not use the hardware box like this? Asking for a friend.