quohog

Saw this on ZPH, downloaded it, and it's awesome! Really well done and fun! I wish I didn't have to start over whenever I messed up, but that's my only gripe. Super great!

I saw something like this in the source for Codebreaker and was so confused. If you OR a value with INPT0 at compile time you'll read the wrong address, I thought. I never heard of mirrors before. Very interesting! I'll try it! Thanks! edit: Hey, it worked! Now I just have to solve the problem of clobbering the A register.

Wow, I had no idea. That's really interesting how that works. Thanks for checking out the binary for me! All my keyboard reading code was just ripped from samples on the forums. I'll have to dig into it more. But, even if it's not autodetecting it, shouldn't switching it from "autodetect" to just "keyboard" fix it by force?

Let me know if you have any trouble getting the controls to work in Stella. I've had some troubles. Here's a blow-by-blow: New computer, reinstalled Stella. Game won't take pc keyboard input. Under options it says "auto detect: Genesis." What? @Thomas Jentzsch suggested defaulting all the controls and this worked! I could now play with PC keyboard. Yay! Plugged in two actual keyboard controllers with daptor IIs. This also worked great. Unplugged controllers and moved them and the game to real hardware on a harmony cart. Controllers worked fine!* Back on PC, pc keyboard no longer works. Back to "Autodetect: Genesis." Forced to "keyboard" controllers. Nothing. Did Thomas's "default" suggestion that had worked before, nothing. Exited and restarted Stella, nothing. Restarted computer, nothing. BUT if I go back into Atari Dev Studio in Visual Code, and compile-run from there with the arguments "-bc keyboard" it works fine So why doesn't it work when I just open the compiled rom in Stella? Anyway hope it works for you! *Asterix here to say that I wish you could navigate the Harmony menus with keyboard controllers. Buttons for up, down, and select is all we need! That leaves 21 spare buttons!

Hi! Remember Tap-A-Mole? Well, it got kind of back burnered in 2021. I got really busy and also I was kind of stuck. With only two bytes left in 4k, it was really hard to fix the last couple of bugs. But it's back! And I *THINK* all or most or at least some of the bugs are fixed. The lost snowball on the field? Gone. The occasional crash if the rng ever returned a zero? Gone! (???) Then just a few cosmetic changes: Hammers are now color coded to their scores (helpful in 2p) Hammers swing in opposite directions that make more sense (I think @ZeroPage Homebrew's James asked for this) Probably a bunch of other amazing features and fixes that I'm forgetting because it was a weird year But I think this is done! I'm going to call this build BETA, and if I don't hear about any bad bugs I'll call it DONE next week. So I'd love to hear from anyone who plays it. Testing greatly appreciated. Special questions: Did you ever see a mysterious snowball sitting around for no reason? (It's really the highlights of the bell, offset by the memory of a ghost mole) Did the independent difficulty levels help even out skill levels in 2p? Can you see what appears over the hole if you miss a mole? Did the game ever crash with a black screen? Any other bugs? What's your high score? My current is 5416! It sounds like a lot but later rounds score higher and lead to bonus carrots. Thanks for playing! (I'll put the new .bin in the top post)

I'm scrubbing back and forth in time with Stella, trying to find a very rare, hard to reproduce bug. A bug that only happens if I hit the right input on the right frame, and I'm trying to find out what that is. Ah ha! I finally get my bug to appear! So I break into the debugger and step back through time until I see the frame before the bug appears. But then when I step forward the bug never appears because as I step through I'm not hitting any inputs, let alone the right input on the right frame. So is there a way I can step backwards and forwards in Stella and have it re-enter the same button presses, etc. on the same frame? Like an input recording option? Or, whenever any of you are faced with a hard-to-repro bug like this, do you have another method of attack, if input recording is impossible? Any tips appreciated! Thanks!

That did the trick! Thanks, @Thomas Jentzsch!

I just reinstalled Stella on a new computer, and I can't seem to get it to take any input from my pc keyboard when playing a game. Under game options, it's autodetecting the input to be joystick. I force it to "joystick" just to check--no difference. All the Stella emulator keyboard functionality is working. I can hit all the debug keys and Stella responds as normal. But no key on the keyboard is making anything happen in the game. Is there something really simple I could be overlooking? Thanks!

Can Stella output a bundled executable that would run your .bin game file, wrapped up with Stella, in a standalone .exe file, or whatever it's called on your target platform? And if it can't, wouldn't that be cool? For sharing your homebrew games with your less technical friends and family. The ones who could never figure out how to download and install Stella. You could just send them an executable and say, "Here, run this!" And it would just work. Maybe I'm missing another more obvious solution. Is there an easier way to share your games with people who don't have Stella or a Harmony cart? I think you could do this with Javatari online, and running in a browser is super cool and accessible, but javatari only works with joystick or paddle controls which doesn't work for my keyboard controller game. Just floating that idea out into the land of wishes. Cool idea or uncool? Or does it already do this?

That looks amazing! I can't wait to play it. Qix was an arcade favorite of mine. I hope you do a big "how we did it" presentation at a conference some day and I also hope it's recorded and posted.

Got my boxed copy and really love it! But I'd like to know if anyone else is having a problem with a little "dead zone" where you can't get your paddle under the tiny rocks on the left hand side. I've tried it with two pairs of original paddles that I've cleaned up a lot, and also with a hyperkin ranger in paddle mode, and always this little gap I can't catch rocks in. Is it just me and I need to clean my paddles some more? Talking about the gap between the two pairs of blue paddles here:

My suggestion is to wait 26 more days before worrying. That's how long it took for my order.

This is so great! I've been looking for something exactly like this for a long time! Thanks!!

Oh, you're right. I just checked it on my Atari Jr. and you just bounce off. But on my old Tele-games heavy sixer I get a QR code for the guide. Still not too bad. You don't loose a life. Just the annoyance of having to hit the select button, which is a pretty good deterrent. Really curious what technical difference would cause this though. ?

After some more fiddling around, I've found the way to fix it is to turn off this option: "Preserve Code Editor Focus" Which is an option I'd love to have checked because I do want to stay in my code and not pop down to the output terminal every time I compile. But this seems to be what causes the F5 button to "break." And it's not just because focus is in the wrong window. I click back into the code window before I hit F5 and still no compile. No matter what window has focus F5 won't work, until I uncheck this option and then everything works again. Hmmm. ?‍♂️? Anyway, that work around works for me. Just mysterious.

What's the normal thing that happens when you touch the bunny? Do you loose a life? I think I like my glitch version better!

No reason to wait, you say? Okay sounds great! I'll see if I can still get one. Thanks!

This happens on my old heavy sixer as well. Is it not supposed to happen? I was confused at first but then I thought it was intentional. Anyone have trouble getting their score QR code to scan? It scans the login page for me easily, but not the score. ?

Hi. I'm not a PlusCart owner yet, but I'm definitely going to be. I'm just not sure when is the right time to jump on board. I don't need to be an early adopter. I don't usually buy games in early access, for example. I like to wait for them to work out the bugs, and have a nice polished product to enjoy. I guess you could call me a casual hobbyist. So is the PlusCart there yet? Or is it still in Beta? Pre-Beta? Or did it hit 1.0 and I just missed it? I know it's going to be great. I'm just in no rush and I'm happy to wait for testing to complete. Any perspectives welcome! Thanks!

Thanks, @mksmith! I got it working this time by messing with my assembler path settings. It seems like something wiped out the path I was using. Since the path field was empty, it seems like the built-in compiler should have kicked in instead. Not sure why it didn't. Or why my settings cleared. (Would an update do that? ) I was frustrated that I wasn't getting any feedback when I pressed the button--just a dead button. But then I wondered if maybe some output was being generated and I wasn't looking in the right output window. Where would a message about "there's a problem with your compiler," go? Thanks again!

Hi! Thank you for Atari Dev Studio! I use it every day! Not sure if this is the place for tech support, but I'm not sure where else to ask: One of my most common problems is that the F5 button "breaks." More specifically--pressing the compile, or compile and run, buttons do nothing. Pressing the short cut key, the on-screen buttons, or calling directly from the command palette--none of it works. Sometimes I fix this by just randomly changing things--updating if there is one, restarting, variations on jiggling the handle. But I wish I knew what specific thing I could do to clear this error. Right now it's happening to me and nothing seems to fix it. Any info, or things to try, greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I'm always interested in new vectrex controllers. Especially analog ones. Count me in, depending on final price!

I voted for Glacier Belle because it's nice and clear. But I'm starting to wish I picked Captain Morgan because it's got so much character!

Interesting! I never would have thought power was the culprit! Sounds like an easy fix. Thank you!

Every once in a while my Colecovision games look glitchy, like in the picture below. Extra pixels in horizontal or veritcal streaks, like garbage bitmaps. Not just visual artifacts--they mess up the gameplay sometimes. I thought it was my multicart, but now it's doing it on regular carts like Popeye here in the picture. I've cleaned the carts with alcohol, and when I pop them out and reinsert them five times or so, press reset a bunch, swing a dead cat around my head 13 times, eventually the glitches clear up. But they always come back. Just wondering if this is a common problem with a known solution. Any info appreciated! Thanks! PS Just kidding about the cat!