Simon

Hi, the past weekend in Antwerp was great and the exposition was excellent. A lot of aspects of videogaming were covered, new games shown and readings/discussions performed. We presented retro games on C64 and VCS and the feedback was more than positive. That machine is called the furminator. It is a modified Terminator 2 pinball in which you insert your head and enjoy a new playing perspective from directly behind the pinball bats. You control the game with the fire buttons of two joysticks in your hands. Your head is protected by a helmet while five cameras inside the machine film the action and show it on a screen to the watching audience. It was really fun and a whole new perspective for playing pinball. Also shown was the PainStation. Later, Simon

Hello, if you live in Belgium or the neighbor countries you might be interested in the upcoming videogame exhibition "Gamezone" in Antwerp/Belgium. I'll be there this saturday and sunday to present some retrogaming on Atari VCS and Commodore 64 at my booth. You can find more information here: http://www.gamezonedesingel.be (page is in dutch language). See you there! Simon

Hello, last week I finally found the time to check the coding once again. I found the bug and a friend of mine burned eproms for testing. I got the pal eprom yesterday and it finally works every time I start the VCS. I'll test the ntsc cart today. Reason was a small routine that I included very late. Somehow I inserted the routine with a JSR-call before the original cart-initialization routine is performed. I must have been confused or drunk to put the jsr there. Probably both. MitEGcl LDA #$00 JSR subroutine Start SEI CLD LDX #$FF TXS LDA #$00 LDX #$CB Loesch STA $0,X DEX BNE Loesch ... The VCS starts up with random condition in ram, while z26, 7800 and the CuttleCarts seem to start clearly initialized. Therefore the problem only occured when turning the VCS off and on again. Switching the VCS on for the first time always started the game without problems. Thanks, Simon

Hello, Hmm. The startup-vectors navigate instantly into the right bank. Here are the vectors at the ends of the banks. The program has to start in bank 2 (intro sequence). After the intro the game itself is in bank 1. BANK 1: ;--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ; Start in BANK2! ;--------------------------------------------------------------------------- org $1FF0 Restart LDA BANK2 ; lands at 2FF3 in Bank 2 (Introstart) org $1FFA ; Program startup vector .word Restart .word Restart .word Restart include bank2.asm ;<End of bank 1> BANK 2: ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ; Start in this BANK (Intro)! ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- org $2FF3 rorg $1FF3 jmp MitEGcl ;(Introstart in this bank) org $2FFA ; Program startup vector rorg $1FFA ; Program startup vector .word MitEGcl ;Introstart .word MitEGcl .word MitEGcl ;<End of bank 2> I don't know about the chips. The test boards were made by AtariAge, Packrat and a local friend of mine. All have got the same problem with VCS/2600jr. The bankswitch is performed with LDA/LDX BANK1/BANK2. BANK1 equ $1FF8 BANK2 equ $1FF9 Yes. Neither of my VCS or 2600jr starts the carts on every try. BTW: a test on a "Gemini" clone system lets the cart start always... Later, Simon

Hello, this is a technical question to all homebrew developers with experience in bankswitched carts (Thomas, Andrew, Manuel, Eckhard, etc.)... The facts: - The .bin files of the PAL and NTSC versions run perfectly in z26. - The .bin files run perfectly with Cuttle Cart on VCS/2600jr (Test Manuel). - The .bin files run perfectly with Cuttle Cart 2 on 7800 (Test Walter Lauer). - The created boards run perfectly on 7800. BUT: - The created boards only start rarely on VCS/2600jr. If it starts, it runs without any problems. But for some reason it only starts very rarely. Does somebody know what the reason for this problem may be? How do 7800 and VCS/2600jr vary in starting a cartridge? The game is 8 kb and using bankswitching. The startvectors in both banks were checked again. Thanks, Simon

Yes. Or to be more correct: you can choose with the right difficulty switch to have ingame music or sound effects. There is a second music included which is played at the game over scene.

Hello, I consider my new game "A-VCS-tec Challenge" as being final now. PAL and NTSC versions have been compiled and some final test cartridges are currently made... We produced a video trailer which shows some aspects of the game. You can download it here (43 seconds, approx. 3 MB): "A-VCS-tec Challenge Trailer" Please do not ask for cartrdiges until their availability was announced either in these forums or on my website http://www.quernhorst.de/atari/ac.html All the best, Simon

Hello, does anybody know about the shown VCS cartridge? It's a german multi cartridge with six games and a cable with connector. What's the purpose of the connector? Does the cart contain RAM to be used as a SuperCharger or something like that? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks, Simon

As written on http://www.quernhorst.de/atari/ac.html the VCS game consists of the scenarios "Gauntlet" and "Stairs". There are 20 different levels of each scenario. The ntsc-version of the game is considered as being final, the pal-version is currently in development... Bye, Simon

Hi, you can download the Eurocon2005 demo and watch some pictures here: http://www.quernhorst.de/atari/ec05.html Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, I finally updated my little webpages at http://www.quernhorst.de/atari/ - you can fetch new information and watch new pictures about A-VCS-tec Challenge, the Eurocon2005 cartridge and the other projects now. The Eurocon2005-demo is also available for download there. BTW: a few of the 33 cartridges with build in LED are still available for sale/trade... I hope that you'll like the demo and the new webpages and am looking forward to your feedback... Thanks and best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, I think that EUROCON was great again this time! It was a nice room with lots of equipment, cool things for trade, interesting presentations and of course nice people and much fun. Pictures can be watched over here: http://www.mr-atari.com/eurocon2005.htm I have a few of the official demo cartridges left, so please drop me a pm or email if you're interested in getting one of the 33 carts. As a special this time: the cart contains a LED on the backside which is blinking while the demo is running. (I'll update my website soon and show some pictures of the carts there....) Best regards, Simon

Thanks for your feedback and I look forward to meeting you there. BTW: I consider the EuroCon2005-demo as complete now and am currently testing it on real hardware... All the best, Simon

Hello everybody, yesterday I talked to Cybergoth on the phone and told him about my latest routines and ideas about diagonal spritescrolling and the possibility to fill the whole screen with scrollers. He pointed me to this topic and it's funny that you had the very same idea at about the very same time. Your demo looks very sweet! I use a diagonal scroller in my new demo. It will be released at EUROCON 2005 in Germany at the end of september. You can download the binary after the event, too. Find attached a screenshot of the diagonal scroller. More information about the event can be fetched at http://www.gamereset.de/eurocon2005/ A second scrolling routine in development uses the two sprites as one scroller. One scrolls from bottom right to middle top and the other from middle top to bottom left like this /\. It's also possible to have it scrolling a bit rounder (sine) by using variables for the vertical pixel-shifting instead of constants for 1-pixel shifting. This results in a scrolltext over the whole screen. All the best, Simon

Hi everybody, the EuroCon2005 was announced - you can find more information here: http://www.gamereset.de/eurocon2005/ Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, I'm currently optimizing some routines to get about 20 free more bytes again, as I want to implement one more feature. All ntsc-colors are final now. The playtesting worked fine - no bugs were found, but I may make some small changes concerning the difficulty... we'll see. I've got holidays from tomorrow on and hope to find enough time to finish the ntsc-game and start converting it into a pal-version. Beneath getting married that means... All the best, Simon

As the first copies of Ralph Baer's new book from Rolenta Press were autographed by him, I thought that the signing hour may be a chance of getting a photo of Mr. Baer playing my new game. So when I ordered my new book from Rolenta, I asked Leonard if it'd be possible to take the game up with him to the signing session at Ralph Baer's home. And as we can see: it worked. Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, thanks to Leonard from Rolenta Press we can watch the attached photo - showing Ralph H. Baer testing a beta of A-VCS-tec Challenge... Isn't that cool? Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, after taking a break and finishing "Resident Evil 4" I finally sat down again and improved/repaired these things in AC. - player0 reflect bug level 9 removed - color bug remaining lives removed - colors/graphics spears changed Next thing to be done is the adjustment of stone colors in the stairs levels. Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, just a fast update to indicate that I'm still striving to finish this game somewhen in 2005. Some more things have been improved now. The free space of about 300 byte is mainly used now. Further playtesting didn't show any more bugs. I'm currently trying different spear appearances and spear and stone colors now and hope to find the perfect setting soon. Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, at the weekend I worked on the leveldesigns and adjusted the colors to show completely different scenes. Only the spears and stonescolors have to be done. Afterwards I'll have a look at the amount of free ROM and decide how to fill it. I'm currently thinking of an easter egg... we'll see. Best regards, Simon

Thanks for your kind answers. Thanks, but the beach scene is not the title screen. It's the endsequence (after finishing the game). The title screen still features the mask as shown in earlier screenshots... Some more things have been changed (end-music, end-scrolltext, end-picture, init after reset) yesterday. Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, after working some more on A-VCS-tec Challenge I decided to post two new screenshots. The first shows the new skydesign (more detailed graphics). As I had some space left I decided to include an endsequence, too. It'll show a beach scene and a special scrolltext... please have a look at the second screen. Some more bugs were found and eliminated aswell. I'm currently working on a the leveldesigns and lengths and difficulties and hope to have these adjustments finioshed soon. Best regards, Simon

Hi everybody, some more bugs have been eliminated and some improvements added: - missile bug removed - bug "no jump possible for a few seconds right after the intro" removed - different random patterns and sizes of stones added - color of player changed a bit - sky is more detailled now - random stairs varies the bonus-level a bit more I'm currently playtesting and adjusting the spear and stone difficulty (amount, speed, pause between). Also some colorsets have to be choosen (levels 7 and up). We'll see... Simon

Hi everybody, I'm still working on the game. The formerly mentioned bugs have been eliminated and the game works pretty fine now. Somehow a "strange" bug showing vertical missile lines appears on screen sometimes. It's strange, because I don't use missiles anywhere in the game. The bug only appears under special settings and circumstances and I'm trying to locate and erase it... Best regards, Simon