Fort Apocalypse

If you are into homebrews you should check out the 2600 programming and batari Basic sections of AtariAge. Lots of great stuff in development and that people have already shared. Rom Hunter was collecting homebrew roms for a while and providing them in a single download. It would be awesome if someone had time to continue doing that. I wish that there was a centralized place other that just the forums where these homebrew roms could be kept and distributed, tagged, etc. I think a lot of people are missing out on a lot of great games. JStella can be used for in-browser emulation (via Java) of a lot of them. Here are some of mine, but they're not that great: http://fortapocalypse.synthasite.com/games.php Midevil Mayhem is great: http://www.spiceware.org/atari_medieval_ma...lay_online.html

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Crap. Now I can't read any of the darn posts in this topic without having to select and scroll, select and scroll to see whether there is hidden text. Has there been other hidden text in posts that I missed? Maybe someone was making fun of me in hidden text and I didn't see it? What if Albert is hiding derogatory comments as <!-- comments --> within the page, and they've been there all along, silently mocking me. I'm going to bed tonight, but I don't think I'll sleep much.

This might be good forum for comments/questions about the 7800, if anyone is interested.

That's British spelling. For example:

Check this out: http://bingtweets.com/ For example, here are recent tweets and bing search results about "Atari": http://bit.ly/JepMc It makes it look like the tweets are coming in as you're looking at it, but I think it is just grabbing recent tweets and then displaying them periodically. Still- this is wicked cool.

That would be this link: http://www.atariage.org/narn/forums/ There are some problems with that test site, though, in that some queries are very slow (such as "View New Content"). Also, that has not been skinned at all, so the appearance will change quite a bit. But it'll give you a feel for what the new forum software will look like with a recent backup of the current forum (including the Blogs and Gallery). ..Al New site looks slick!

http://www.legacyengineer.com/store.html

Creating themes (skins) for Firefox takes a good bit of work, so someone wrote a plugin for Firefox that allows you to use something they call "personas". A persona consists of two pictures that you can upload to the Firefox personas site: a top background for everything above the browser content pane and a bottom background in the lower pane. You also give it a name and can share it on the Firefox site (it must be hosted on their site, but whether you decide to share with the public is up to you). You can see how many people are actively using your persona on the site too. If you don't use Firefox, you're out of luck, but it is pretty neat, mostly because it is so easy to do: http://www.getpersonas.com/

Having trouble getting persistance working and having hooked in or tried compiler yet, but have basic shell of an app. It is not online yet, since it doesn't do anything yet.

Thanks, Fred! That's awesome!! Java has regexp/string replacement stuff assuming that is what sed is being used for, that might not be hard to swap out. Here is possibly a list of to do items for me or whomever (but I'm too wiped out to work on it tonight): * Test compilation using bB java at command-line (assuming custom mini-kernels and custom kernels not supported at first) * Log all changes made to Java so that it can possibly be automated to help automate future ports to Java * A page with a textarea where bB source could be pasted * A button that kicks off bB compilation * Change bB java to support output of asm(maybe?) and definitely bin (hopefully the 2600 compiler was converted also?) as a stream or bytearray maybe * Store the source, maybe the asm, and the bin in whatever is used for persistance (it appears that storing a small file as blob should be possible) * If can't compile, provide output that bB compiler would have output to stdout/stderr (so would need to change that part in the java also) to the web UI in a separate textarea * Allow download of files via url * Try to get JStella to work by loading bin specified in url If we get that far, I'll be happy. I've only had bits of time here and there recently, which has just been enough to post here and there on AA. Hopefully have more time this weekend after I get some sleep. Thanks again!

Those screenshots, player sprites, and life counter look awesome! I would have wanted to shell out some dough for that as a kid in the 80s for sure. There is something to be said for properly done graphics. Great job!!!

Thanks! The vertical scrolling in bB is pretty smooth so it could be done for sure. Feel free to take that on if you want to- I might not get to it for a good while. If you were to do that it might require a directional arrow or something to tell you where to go unless you were only doing one side (color) of the building. My thought for a next version of a shooter with similar target and movement was either something like a Crossbow-variant or a shooter atop a ship in the sea where you are trying to shoot down incoming planes and vessels. But I don't have much time for that either. I had a version of Delta Force Sniper where there was the sniper along the bottom of the screen in addition to the target, but it didn't look realistic because of the speed at which the target must move. I never got to helicopters and peasants either as suggested although I thought those were great ideas.

Yes! Wasn't that was part of the deal? Seriously- Curt, take it easy. Maybe you could hire some high school or college kids to do it and pay them by the # that pass your QA instead of per hour or by # they put together- that way it is almost a known cost up front for whatever they do (unless they are staticy and zap chips or are morons and break stuff).

http://www.cubed3.com/news/12440

Not yet. Am watching the mailbox though. If he is pushing this out this week or so, it should be here within a few weeks.

Awesome score!

One step at a time!

True, but at one point the thought was that might not always be the case. At one point Curt/Legacy Engineering was considering packaging it with Atari Flashback 2 Portables, but then Atari flaked out and dropped the FB2 portable project. Now Marty and Curt are still working on getting investors for it, so it's not totally out of the question, but not quite as likely as it might have been. Thanks for the kind words though. So far Fred has done most of the work on the C to Java port of bB. I'm hoping to take a look this weekend to see what I can do.

I've only run it as an applet, but I think it works as standalone too. Look it up. Ok, I don't mind being proven wrong I was more being the "Devil's advocate". I'm programming web-applications/site for 5 years now and I just wanted to hear some valid points for deciding to make something web-based. I've been in IT/web dev stuff since the mid 90's, Java dev about 10 years, about 8-9 of those being at least partially (sometimes in whole) webapp dev or at the very least services powering web apps. I've seen quite a bit as I'm sure you have. Since Ajax and "web 2.0" started, even without flash things can be pretty nifty. Now with more client-side javascript UI stuff taking off recently, there is a pretty good base for web-based apps these days. Yes, client-side non-browser based stuff like iPhone apps have also taken the spotlight recently, but even Google is quite big on the browser as a app platform. That said here are the main pros and cons, IMO. Pros: * Can theoretically run in an modern browser, and browsers are available for most modern OSes. * Can save files and state server-side without additional configuration that is typically local environment specific. * Can theoretically run that webapp almost anywhere and have same application environment/state (like a hotel, kiosk, etc.) - ok maybe this and the last point are the same. Cons: * Javascript and modern browsers needed to view/use webapps may actually be slower on older computers (like the PIII ~400Mhz I'm writing this on!) than older editor apps (I'm thinking Crimson Editor + bB here- that would probably work on the computer I'm on now quickly enough). I can use Gmail on the computer I'm on now though, and it is usable. Just dog slow. * People may feel more comfortable keeping their stuff locally. I've probably done a pretty sorry job at making my case, but there you go.

With current technology webapps are much better. You might be surprised.

Do you think I should start on a Java port of bB first then? That would be pretty fun! I've used a C-to-Java converter before and totally agree that there would be a lot of remaining work, but perhaps that might be the best way to start. Let me know.

That sounds neat. It would be good thing to ask for in visual bB I think. Right now I'm just trying to think about getting started.

I'm thinking about trying to throw together an installer program in Visual Basic. What operating system are you using? If it isn't Windows, then I guess you'll have to wait for someone else to make a Unix/Linux or Mac installer. Michael For the mac, vmware fusion is nice or parallels, then just install it in windows. Linux- maybe wine or maybe vmware? Edit: no way! I didn't know bB was available for Mac and Linux. That's awesome! That is one less reason to have a web-based editor, but still awesome.

Yep, that would be find to install a Java app as an editor, but I'm not really sure whether it would support the separate bB files and compilers being part of that and called via JNI. This started when I reformatted my computer and never went back to setup bB again. I thought "if all of this was online somewhere then not only would I still have it setup, but people with Macs, Linux, etc. could develop also" (Edit: that was before I knew it was available already in OS X and Linux! How cool is that?!!). In addition, I want to be able to work on development while I'm away on a trip if I wanted without having to set it up or have my own laptop (because I've had work laptop HDs die before). Setting up bB for me was not just the standard stuff- I had a 2-4 score minikernel, possibly some other minikernel (I forget), and it had some patches applied. I have also wanted to also be able to use the Yar's "neutral zone" effect kernel at some point that Fred wrote, as well as the new platform stuff. I could possibly write it as an open source project (so people could add to it if they wanted) and then host it on someone's server that they'd be willing to share (if they didn't mind running a Tomcat instance fronted by apache, or similar). But I was thinking Google App Engine would be highly reliable and would stay online even after whoever else I would be borrowing space from lost interest. However, Google App Engine doesn't support JNI or native calls. Basically before I were to get much further, I would like to have a proof of concept app that allows login, has an editor, and "saves files" online. Then next step would be to try to integrate a compiler (although I might spike that early on) and then integrate (use) Jstella. After that, who knows?