Pixelboy

February 17

9 hours ago, nanochess said:

That's so cool! 😀 I hope you have a copy

I had an ADAM at the time (with no floppy drive), not an IBM PC, so I never had any reason to bring home the PC floppy disc from school with my games on it, and there was no printer I could use to print the listings of by Basic programs (I probably did write those listings by hand at one point during development, but I threw away those papers a long time ago). I also didn't know how to define and use sprites in SmartBASIC, so it never occured to me to try to reproduce either Big Maze or Basicanoid on my ADAM.

One thing I did do on my ADAM was adapt the Basic listings from the classic books "Computer Spacegames" and "Computer Battlegames". Both can be found (along with others) in PDF format here. A few years ago, I actually spotted both books on eBay and decided to buy them just for nostalgia's sake. I still have them, and I'd be willing to sell them to anyone here, if they share this nostalgia and would like to own them in printed format.

February 16

I can recall the first real "game" I made back in high school, in Basic. It was called "Big Maze" and was essentially a very large maze of interconnected empty rectangular rooms (think Berzerk but without inner walls, and the player controlled an Otto-like smily face). There were no enemies, so there wasn't a lot going on aside from exploring the maze, but I recall that you needed to find a key to reveal the exit of the maze.

My second game (during that same time) was actually an end-of-year assignment. I tried making a clone of Arkanoid in Basic called Basicanoid, and while the CGA graphics looked good, my code was a spaghetti mess and I never got the ball to actually collide with the bricks, the ball was like a ghost flying off the screen and making the program crash! I ran out of time and handed in "Big Maze" instead!

February 15

Scramble = Super Cobra

February 13

All I can say on this subject is that the number of bugs reported to FPGA core authors (forcing the release of updated cores) looks roughly about the same as the number of issues reported in software-based emulators. That alone tells me that FPGA solutions are not really "better" than emulation, just different.

Also, the way FPGAs are used today to replicate game consoles and handhelds is a relatively recent thing, and I have to wonder how long those FPGA chips last. Will Analogue FPGA products still work 20 years from now? Maybe, maybe not. And as FPGA technology progresses, will the cores developed for today's FPGA chips still work on more advanced FPGAs just 5 to 10 years from now? If it turns out that FPGA solutions are just as transient as original hardware, then for me PC-based emulation will always seem like the better option, because programming a pure software emulator is less of a niche activity than learning to program FPGA cores.

February 11

If this bug can be reproduced under emulation, then that's where all efforts should be concentrated. An emulator equipped with a step-by-step debugger should be enough to track the problem down and ultimately provide an explaination for the bug. Testing on real hardware is a good thing, of course, but it's absolutely necessary only if emulation fails to reproduce the bug.

Just my two cents.

February 7

So this is a prequel to The Heist? It has the same music!

January 23

Oh! Alright then, I'll be curious to see what that box looks like.

January 23

Thanks, but I have the controller itself, so I can take a picture of it anytime I want. The box is what I'm after.

January 22

I want to make a ColecoVision trading card for the Joy Sensor controller, but the box picture I have in my archives is rough and not suitable for putting on the front side of the card. Does anyone here own this controller with the box? If so, could this person be persuaded to scan this box for me, at 300 DPI? The box has a weird trapezoid shape, so 3 scans would be required to get all the image details of the frontal side. I'll take care of uniting those three scans into a single image.

Crossing my fingers...

January 15

Perhaps not the joystick port, but a small module similar to the Super Game Module that plugs into the front expansion port should be doable. I don't know the hardware technicalities involved in making the ColecoVision communicate with a PS2 keyboard, mind you, but the CollectorVision Phoenix can do it, so I'm pretty sure it can be done.

January 14

Just to quickly chime in, the ADAM went through multiple board revisions during its short life cycle. Some of these boards may show unforseen problems with homebrew hardware. This is not the first time such issues have been reported in the ColecoVision homebrew community.

January 12

January 11

8 minutes ago, Kamshaft said:

I know that, but at this point I don't know what's causing it. Did you try another game and try downloading the manual?

I tried several manuals within the homebrew list and I'm getting a 404 on every one.

But then I tried xdurable's suggestion and it worked for me.

Weird...

January 11

I just tried with a different browser altogether, one I never actually use (namely Microsoft Edge) and I still get the 404.

A 404 error is a server response, which means it's not necessarily a cache problem on the browser's end. Could it be a file access permission problem instead?

January 11

1 hour ago, Kamshaft said:

Works, it was all tested before hand.

Sorry, I'm still getting a 404 when I click on the link for the manual. Can anyone else confirm upon visiting this page? I'm not seeing the screenshots either.

January 11

1 hour ago, Kamshaft said:

The sub pages have been added! Took me like an hour to organize those pages.

The link to the manual on your web site doesn't work.

EDIT: Also, the screenshots are missing for some reason?

January 10

Just want to mention that the 128K MegaCart ROM of Space Shuttle has been added to the first post of this thread.

Thanks go to TPR for giving me editing privileges on the first post.

January 9

18 minutes ago, Kamshaft said:

All the files Luc sent me are up. Enjoy!

Looks good, but what about the 4 sub-manuals for Space Shuttle? They're kind of important.

EDIT: Also, you may want to post the 128K version of the Space Shuttle ROM which I posted earlier in this thread. It was not beta-tested like the 64K version was, but it should work better for some people on their AtariMax Ultimate SD cartridge.

January 5

On 12/30/2023 at 1:52 AM, bennybingo said:

@Pixelboy - I believe I have the Star Fortress and Space Invasion box you are looking for. I will check in the AM and scan it for you if they are the correct ones. I will also check my Super Arcade Controller. I have no idea if it is black or white, as it is still in the original box. That said, I will be sure to check for that as well.

Thanks!

Ben

Just want to mention that bennybingo never got back to me about the above, and his PM inbox is disabled so I cannot contact him via AtariAge. I tried sending him an e-mail using an e-mail address I had in my records, and I got no response, so I'm not sure if he got it.

January 2

I heard back from Kamshaft this morning, and I sent him my manual files for review. I asked him to post a heads-up in this forum thread once the files are up on cvaddict.com.

January 2

Alright, so I can see lots of people want to be able to play Space Shuttle but require the manual, which is quite understandable.

Full disclosure: I sent a PM to Kamshaft recently to see if he could host the manuals for Space Shuttle and Utopia on cvaddict.com, and I'm still waiting to hear back from him. Stay tuned.

January 2

1 hour ago, livingonwheels said:

Won't work on my Atarimax either (purchased in 2019) even with updated firmware.

Very weird... Alright, so please try the alternate ROM below. It should work, but keep in mind that it wasn't fully beta-tested like the 64K version, so I can't guarantee you won't see some bugs.

space_shuttle_128K.rom

December 30, 2023

5 hours ago, bennybingo said:

@Pixelboy - I believe I have the Star Fortress and Space Invasion box you are looking for. I will check in the AM and scan it for you if they are the correct ones. I will also check my Super Arcade Controller. I have no idea if it is black or white, as it is still in the original box. That said, I will be sure to check for that as well.

Excellent! That would be great!

When you scan the two game boxes, please be sure to remove the papers from the plastic shells and scan only the papers.

Thanks!

December 29, 2023

Stay away from Frogger II, it's one of the rare duds Parker Brothers released on the ColecoVision.

December 25, 2023

54 minutes ago, Bomberman93 said:

2 different overlays. 1 of each.

And 1 batch.

And 1 "certificate of authenticity"

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

Excellent, thanks for the confirmation.

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