supercat
-
Content Count
7,259 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Blog Comments posted by supercat
-
-
I would think the most logical way to implement copy protection would be to have game disks kept in a caddy with some electronics. The caddy could protect the disks from damage, and the electronics could include logic which would be required for a game to function. In some cases, the electronics could even include some of the game logic. For example, the game might feed part of the game state through the chip and ask it whether any new monsters should spawn. The only way one could bypass the chip and play the same game would be if one knew the exact monster-spawning rules.
-
One of my first ideas for a 2600 cart, circa 1994, was a snake game called "Wormy". I started working out the memory layout and a title screen even before I started what would eventually become Strat-O-Gems. I can't find anything that's close to being a legible title screen; I vaguely remember having an almost-working title screen, but my archives don't seem to have one. If I studied the code I might find that something was just a few cycles off, and I neglected to save my best version before I changed something that made it worse. I might have some title screen graphics on a 2" disk, but I have no idea where I could find equipment that could read it.
One of the design challenges with Wormy was figuring out how to have lots of goodies to pick up as well as obstacles and the snake, all in a ROM-only cart. I revisited the code around 2007 and wrote an amazingly memory-efficient kernel. Perhaps I should revisit it.
Your game is a little simpler than what I'd been trying to do; on the other hand, yours is actually playable. I think the game could probably benefit from a bigger playfield and the addition of more goodies and/or obstacles. RAM would quickly become tight if you want to use a ROM-only cart, but since carts with added RAM are no problem, it might be good to see what you could do with an extra 128 bytes.
-
To be sure, using CFB means that someone can create an image with any desired first block. So what? Design the boot loader so that the first block won't be stored anyplace and then the first block could be filled with 128 bits of random garbage.
-
I've only played the PC demo. I wonder how well the game would work if it was restricted to a vertical format? I coded a crude version once for the PC in BASIC (took about 30 lines IIRC) and it seemed all right. A vertical Zoop-ish game might work nicely on the 2600.
-
It should be easy for the ARM to provide some hardware assistance while maintaining the 'feel' of raw 6502 coding. For example, a cart could provide a bank-switch mode in which fetching a byte from RAM would stuff a 0 into the RAM while putting A9 on the data bus (the hardware to do that on a real cart wouldn't be hard; my 4A50 cart CPLD could provide such a mode if I went to the next larger CPLD). To clear a range of memory, one would simply bank it into an area which was followed by the code one wanted to execute after the "clear". Voila--memory cleared at a rate of one cycle per byte.
Incidentally, my 4A50 cart supports some rather nice put-pixel abilities. To set a pixel whose coordinates are in X and Y:
lda $1F00,x ora $1E00,y sta $1E00,y
Nice and quick and easy.
Incidentally, you could use a 108-pixel-wide bitmap.
-
Another issue with the differences between health care and cost-sharing restaurants is that at a restaurant you'll probably opt to eat better just because you can.Suppose one has a painful condition and a choice of treatments; one costs $100 and the other costs $10,000. The $10,000 treatment will cure all the pain perfectly (but will cost $10,000). The $100 treatment will do a pretty good job, but not a perfect one. Suppose the $100 treatment would be good enough that a Given a choice between (a) receiving the $100 treatment plus $5,000 cash, or (b) receiving the $10,000 treatment and no cash, a person would take the cheaper treatment plus the cash. Would there be any logical reason why such a person should be given the more expensive treatment? On the other hand, is there any reason to expect that someone who wasn't affected financially by his treatment choice wouldn't pick the more expensive one?
-
If your analogy is right, then I wonder why the current US health system is the most expensive and still rather ineffcient (also this)compared to other developed countries which are able to offer heath care for ALL their citizens and have a cost-sharing system.
It's possible for a government-run system to cut costs in the short term by capping doctors' pay at a level high enough that someone who has medical training may as well remain a doctor rather than abandon his field, but at a level below that required to attract people into the field. This will work "nicely" as long as the existing supply of doctors holds out. Once too many doctors retire, however, the systems start to have severe problems.
In England, elderly people are denied certain types of treatments because they're not "cost-effective". Realistically, there is no way that all such treatments could be provided to everyone, but that does not mean they should be denied even to people who would have the means to pay for them and who would rather spend their own money on treatment than on something else or leave it to their heirs. How would you suggest treatments should be prioritized?
People don't get severely ill deliberately, but by bad luck. A civilized society should not spit those, who are already hit by fate.Indeed. Too bad there isn't any real insurance available to cover conditions which take more than a year to treat. That's a subject of a future entry.
-
Did the kernel provide any support for the tow bar? I would think integrating that into the kernel would be essential from the get-go, since the success of that would be crucial to the success of the overall project.
-
Stellar Track is an interesting cart from a historical perspective, and it almost manages to put Star Trek into 4K, which is quite an accomplishment. A few points not yet noted:
-1- The joystick entry routine defaults to the last value selected, whether it was a command number or a digit. So command #4 will always default to "4" as its first numeric entry; command #3 will default to "3", etc.
-2- The game's final rankings seem to bear no regard for the difficulty of the original mission. Playing very well and barely winning a nearly-impossible scenario gives a lower ranking than playing leisurely through a much easier scenario. That IMHO is the biggest defect in the cartridge.
-3- People not familiar with the computer game probably wouldn't have been terribly interested in the cart, but I would expect those who'd had exposure to it back in the day would have thought it the greatest thing since sliced Cheez-Wiz. Incidentally, I'd played the computer game BITD (on an HP-2000 with printing terminals), but not known of Stellar Trak until recently.
-
1
-
-
The double-shot feature is a rather interesting quirk, which may have been unintentional. Essentially what happens is that the game manages two players and two shots, and a control byte determines when the players or shots are controlled by each joystick. If this byte has a value of $00, both shots (and perhaps both players) are controlled by the left joystick. It's not possible for both shots to be fired simultaneously, even in the simultaneous two-player mode; there is a minimum vertical separation requirement. Thus, pushing the fire button will trigger one of the shots and try (but fail) to trigger the other one. The other shot can thus be triggered later even though the first shot is still on screen.
The main control byte gets loaded every frame while the game is in demo mode, but this occurs after the machine checks the RESET button. If RESET is held on startup, the control byte never gets loaded. Since the cart clears all RAM to $00 on startup, the game will use a control byte value of $00.
Incidentally, it would be very easy to edit the game so that a group of 16 variations would feature single player double shots. Editing it to allow both players in a two-player non-simultaneous game to have double shots would be more complex.
-
2
-
-
The biggest source of confusion, IMHO, is the use of virtual channel numbering. Although you now may be watching ABC 7-1 instead of ABC 7, the actual signal might be on channel 22 - i.e. on UHF rather than VHF. This is why people have to hit the "channel rescan" button on their converter, so it can sniff the channels and figure out the virtual channel number for each physical channel, instead of just entering 22 on the remote. Plus, as part of the transition, there's been a big move away from VHF to UHF. So people who only have a VHF antenna (since that's where the big 3 typically were) can't pick 'em up anymore because they've moved up to UHF. All so stations can preserve their "channel identity".Do any television sets provide a means of scanning a specific physical channel to see what it is? It's annoying having to do a long slow re-scan every time something changes. At least some sets allow one to do a "scan and add". Not sure what people with rotary antennas should do with sets that don't.
Also, another one thing I've wished for--allocate a tiny portion of the bandwidth to an analog 'test pulse' (say, one scan line every 1/30 second) which nicer sets could capture and display, so as to allow a technically-inclined viewer to judge the trade-offs between signal strength, noise, and ghosting while adjusting his antenna. Otherwise it's had to distinguish between a signal that's barely adequate and one which has lots of 'headroom'.
-
It's supposed to be 300 times sweeter, so you need to make sure you only taste the smallest amount or the pleasure turns to pain.I would second that recommendation. There's only a certain level of sweetness one can perceive; doubling the concentration of a sweetener beyond that point will double the other tastes without improving sweetness.
-
Trying to place the HMOVE in the same line as the RESPx is going to be a difficult.Depends how far over the sprite needs to go. If it doesn't have to go too far to the right, one could do something like:
; X holds position lda #255 sbx #15 bcs *+7 sta RESPx ldy postbl-241,x sbx #15 bcs *+7 sta RESPx ldy postbl-241,x ... sbx #15 bcs *+7 sta RESPx ldy postbl-241,x sty HMPx sta HMOVE
Provided the position value is within range, and postbl is located so the loads will always wrap or never wrap, the total execution time should be constant.
-
I expected aliasing from a reduction in sample rate, but I wasn't expecting it from a reduction in bit resolution.In my BTP2 music driver, every pitch is a power-of-two multiple of a submultiple of the output sample rate (15.75KHz, matching horizontal scan). This means that any unwanted frequencies resulting from quantizing noise will be "on pitch". For example, when outputting the top C (about 2096Hz) there will be some distortion noise at 1048Hz, but since 1048Hz is also a "C", it's not particularly objectionable.
I was somewhat surprised to discover, when I was simulating a more sophisticated synthesis engine, that there is surprisingly little room for improvement in my BTP2 driver. One could offer a somewhat better selection of timbres, but trying for more precise frequency outputs ends up making things sound worse because it disrupts the regular pattern of the quantizing noise.
-
There are more expensive ARM chips that have bus hold circuitry that could support magic writes, so at least in theory, 4A50 could with with one of those chips.If the ARM can accurately glean the bus timing, I would expect that magic writes could be used with the existing hardware, using bus capacitance to hold things for 100-200ns or so. Given an ARM, though, I'd probably do things somewhat differently from the way I did them in 4A50, since 4A50 was designed around the design capacity of the Xilinx XC9536XL CPLD.
-
It's really a pity that the Chimera is cancelled, i was looking forward to it. So i also hope that batari's Harmony Cart will get finished one day.It's a shame that Chimera and 4A50 have died off, but at least in the case of 4A50 the killer was seeing that the Harmony board can do almost as much, and in some ways more, and it's a lot cheaper. Aesthetically, I prefer the 'purity' of the hardware approach in the 4A50 cart (as opposed to using a micro that would be powerful enough to implement an entire game even without using the 2600 at all) but the raw cost to produce the 4A50 cart would be about $25 before any markup, and I just don't see people paying the necessary premium to buy 4A50-based games.
-
Every once in awhile NetFlix sends out a wrong disk. Someone rents a movie and the bonus disk, mails them back in the wrong sleeves, and the person at NetFlix fails to notice and correct the problem. Perhaps that happened to some of the people who write those bad reviews. Still, I would think those people should be able to figure out what's going on.
Also, NetFlix does not always do a good job of making clear what content is on what disks. It would be helpful if there were fields in the database for the titles of individual programs on a multi-program disk. That information is usually found in comments, but is not always easily searchable.
-
A post is not an E-mail.Even in email, it's useful to quote the particular details to which one is responding. Keeping a 'log' of all messages at the bottom may be useful as well, but quoting a question and then answering "yes" or "no" is a lot nicer than answering yes or no without context.
-
Ultimate is last.
Penultimate is second-to-last.
Antepenultimate is third-to-last.
So what's fourth-to-last?
-
Why should aliens care what we do with the planet? If they like dolphins and don't want them to become extinct, why don't they simply borrow some dolphins and raise them themselves? In the original movie, there was a mechanism offered by which mankind's weapons could disrupt other planets; even Plan Nine from Outer Space offered up something similar as a logical premise (the particulars in the latter were absurd, involving particles of sunlight composed of many atoms, but the overall premise was reasonable). The aliens care about the earth, uh, why exactly?
-
Really?! Not me. I thought the collision detection in this game was near perfect. It seems to be for me!The Klystron pod and reactor will both flicker at 30Hz if they're in the same horizontal 'zone'. Thus, they won't be on screen at the same time and won't collide. As the author noted, the tow bar does not flicker, though I don't remember collisions with it being checked (note that on half the frames, collisions between the tow bar and both sprites would be expected).
-
This is a classic losers debate move. If he entertains this crap, then he lends credence to it. Losing position. Better to let the facts stand, and the law stand behind them, and let people say what they will.Someone claims to have a rare proto that nobody's ever seen. He shows some people alleged screen shots, and he shows other people a ROM cartridge but doesn't actually let them see it do anything. After awhile, people start to wonder about whether the guy is full of it.
Which action by him would lend more credence to his naysayers: setting up a video of him actually playing the game, or stomping his feet and saying he's under no obligation to show it to anyone--people saw the screenshots, and saw the board, and if that's not good enough for them, tough.
In cases where one speaks truth, but one doesn't have good solid evidence to back it up, it may be better to ignore naysayers than to try to respond. If, for example, Barack had claimed to have been born in a town whose birth records were destroyed in a fire in 1972, he might legitimately not have records to show his eligibility even if he was, in fact, eligible. On the other hand, unless Barack has been lying about his past, there should be no difficulty with him proving his eligibility in such a fashion as to stomp out 99.44% of the detractors.
I will not believe that Barack committed a hoax that would require co-conspirators throughout numerous levels of government. That he might commit a hoax that would require only a handful of personally-chosen co-conspirators (none of whom hold official positions) plus a major dose of chutzpah, however, would seem more plausible.
When evaluating conspiracy theories, I try to determine what exactly I would have to believe in order to believe the theory true. In the case of most conspiracy theories, I find that there are some things that simply are not plausible. Here, I don't.
That an official's statement that electronic copy of a document looks genuine would be made without comparing the document against the records on file (to which the official may not have access). Likely.
That someone of moderate skill could electronically alter a scanned document to say whatever he wanted, and have the electronic copy pass muster with a state official who was examining it unofficially. Likely.
That there would be ways for people to have birth records on file in Hawaii without having been born there. Plausible.
That there exist people who are not eligible for office, but would like to run anyway. Certain.
That some people are skilled at bluffing their way through almost anything. Certain.
That some people who are not eligible for office, but would like to run anyway, are also very skilled at bluffing. Plausible.
That Barack's party might take him at his word about eligibility, at least early on. Plausible.
That few people would have a legitimate basis to access Barack's birth records before the primary. Likely.
That officials might feel pressure not to call attention to any problems with the eligibility of a candidate who had won the primary, for fear of having riots on his head. Likely that they would feel pressure; plausible that they might accede to it.
Etc. etc.
I then proceed with the null hypothesis (what would I have to believe for the theory not to be true). That Barack Obama would rather continue his bluff than show his goods would be the expected behavior for a fraud, and not the expected behavior for an honest man.
That's my thought process. In what way is it unreasonable? When looking at most conspiracy theories, the thought process ends pretty quickly when I find something that just plain doesn't work. Here, however, I don't. The whole chain of events necessary for an ineligible Barack Obama to have gotten where he is would not have required a conspiracy involving any officials beyond a general unwillingness to blow the whistle, and I come across nothing more implausible than the notion that a candidate wouldn't have gotten someone to make a clear and unequivocal statement that Barack is a natural-born citizen, rather than saying that he shall not be challenged.
BTW, if the court were to rule that Barack Obama could not be sworn in until he was proven eligible, there wouldn't be a Constitutional crisis. At worst, he's told that he can become President as soon as he demonstrates eligibility; Biden would fill in the interim. Any delay in Barack becoming President would be entirely under his control.
-
Of course, the employer could make a phone call too, combine that with photo ID and call it good.Reasonable right?
So then, in this matter, I think it's safe to say Obama has done what is reasonable, and that's the crux of the matter isn't it?
If a prospective employee tried to do everything in his power to prevent the employer from making that phone call, shouldn't that raise suspicions far above any the employer might otherwise have had? No matter how much the prospective employee's protests claimed "discrimination"?
It is impossible to meaningfully proclaim a document genuine based merely upon a scan thereof. Anyone with even a modicum of Photoshop skill could take a real certificate, scan it at 2400dpi, clone the background over any inconvenient text, and then replace the text with whatever they want, all at 2400dpi. A little care might be required with letter spacing, but nothing difficult. Experiment at different resolutions until the letter spacing of re-created original text matches the original document, then change the text and measure the spacing of that. Convert those measurements to 2400dpi and place letters appropriately. An examination of the document at 2400dpi would show the fraud pretty easily, but if the document were down-converted to 300dpi, all traces of forgery would be lost in the JPEG artifacts. It wouldn't require a massive conspiracy. Just a computer geek who wouldn't mind helping Obama cover over some pesky little details about his past.
If someone were to send a Hawaii spokesman who didn't know anything of Obama's claimed birth details Obama's certificate along with a few others that were forged (competently) to show different data, how would the spokesman be able to tell which was genuine? Obviously only one could be.
If Barack Obama wanted the issue laid to rest, he could have called the Hawaii officials and asked them to make a clear and unequivocal statement: "Hawaii has birth records on file which clearly and unambiguously establish that Obama was born there prior to January 19, 1974, and no records on file which would indicate he was born elsewhere or at a later date." [nb: if he was born after January 19, 1974, but were otherwise eligible, then the Twentieth Amendment ratified in 1993 would make Joseph Biden acting President until Barack Obama's 35th birthday; if Barack stonewalled the release of any information to unequivocally establish his eligibility prior to Jan. 20 and the government wanted to uphold the Constitution, Joseph Biden would be acting President until such time as Barack Obama released the information, whereupon Obama could act as President].
-
He showed a legal copy of his birth record. It's published. Do I need to go look for it?Take a photocopy or a home-computer printout of your birth certificate to the DMV. Do you think they'll accept it?
Note, the official in that article did assert that is a valid certificate. That connects Obama to the record in Hawaii.What did she say:
And about the copy we e-mailed her for verification? “When we looked at that image you guys sent us, our registrar, he thought he could see pieces of the embossed image through it.”Still, she acknowledges: “I don’t know that it’s possible for us to even say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents.”
Doesn't sound like a terribly strong assertion to me. Why might it be impossible for them to be able to say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents? If they could identify the image as a fair and accurate copy of Obama's records, they would know that's what the image represented. That they cannot identify the image as a fair and accurate copy of the records doesn't mean it's fake (without a valid reason for accessing the records, they wouldn't be able to verify the image's authenticity) but their statement is hardly a proof of legitimacy.
It might be a good idea to solidly substantiate any allegations you might have against the President Elect, before airing them in a public forum where you may find your subsequent queries marginalized.When you apply for a job, is the onus on your employer to prove that you're an illegal alien, or is the onus on you to prove that you're not?
When you apply for a drivers' license, is the onus on the state to prove that you weren't born when you claim, or is the onus on you to prove that you were?
Barack Obama is seeking the most important job in the world. Is there any reason that ascending presidents shouldn't be required to demonstrate eligibility as a matter of course? Not a demonstration to the level of "the registrar thought he could see pieces of the embossed image through it", but something more like "the document is a fair and accurate copy of the information in our files."
What is it about Obama that makes people think the former and latter declarations are equivalent? It's bizarre.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
AtariAge on Odyssey 2
in Draconland
A blog by LS_Dracon
Posted
The quad-sized objects are four 8-pixel objects which are placed with 8 pixels between. Crypto-Logic uses four quad objects plus twelve individual objects to display 28 letters total.