Osmeroid

Thanks guys, you've given me quite a bit of food for thought there. The only way I could think of for printing on box-thickness card would be to have a completely flat bed printer (expensive item I would think - if they exist!). I knew that jpg format is less size hungry but image quality of a jpg is never as good as bitmaps. One idea I had was to produce the box cover art & logos as high res images but have the main box (which is just plain big rectangles of one colour) at a lower res (around 400 dpi) and simply transfer the higher quality images on top the main box template. This seems like a valid approach but whether I get any great reductions on the file sizes remains to be seen. I've tried making box templates from paper - just to see how difficult it was to construct one. The real pain in the backside was trying to include the cartridge support tab. It can be done but it's a very fiddly job. I couldn't imagine ever trying to hand-make 100 or so boxes like this, including the cart support too. Then again, it would be quite a challenge So you think that image quality would be fine at 600dpi? It does give me a figure to start with. Would there be any benefit from constructing the image at say 800 dpi & printing at 600? Thanks for the advice guys , whatever happens the results of this will be at PC4.

Looking forward to it BP!

I still enjoy this game so much http://www.nny.com/holiday/snowcraft.htm

Can you zip bitmap files & would it make much difference to the file size?

I'm a big fan of boxed games - gives a more 'authentic' look. This is something that I've wondered about for some time now, but just how thick or rigid can the paper/card be & still go through a printer? Can anyone tell me what level of resolution has been used for the reproduction boxes/manuals? I'd really appreciate any help with this one. I created a bitmap with the dimensions of just the front panel of a box on Photoshop @1200dpi, the file was 363Mb!!!! That would mean the complete box image would be 850Mb+ in size & probably take an eon or two to print off each box. A friend of mine who is a designer suggested creating the image at 1200 dpi & printing at a lower res of about 800dpi. Image quality at this level is great but it is an enormous file for a single image. The gatefold would be very nice but I think you'd really need to weigh up the pros & cons of cost vs. appearence. As much as I like boxed carts, I think that the additional costs of the gatefold (materials & printing) might well make the price prohibitive to a lot of folks. Having said all that, I do appreciate the reason for wanting the gatefold, sturdy boxes posses two key elements - visual appeal/impact & pragmatic storage.

Sounds a bit like when I was trying to learn Fortran

@Nukey - So do the kernels in 6502 assembly work similarly to the 'procedures' found in Pascal? @Simon - Credit where its due!

Cool site Matty - I loved the 'Freak Show' Informative too & good to see a PAL dedicated site

I got it - sort of like taking a detour past that piece of coding? Reminds me of using 'REM' statements in BASIC (many, many moons ago)

So to use that facility, would your line would look like this? $7000 : NOP JSR $84FF...20 FF 84 EA Would you recommend using PCAE over StellaX for development & testing purposes? I've had problems in the past using PCAE, like just running unmodified games on it. Do the emulators differentiate (in terms of display) between NTSC & PAL? I only ask this as one particular aspect of Simon Quernhorst's Mental Kombat that I really liked was using a console switch (colour/bw) to actually run the game in either TV format, sort of like having a universal cart! I think that this is one of the cleverest innovations I've encountered & if (a BIG if!) I ever managed to produce a game I'd really like to be able to add this function in. But how could you tell if the program's format switch had worked just using an emulator? Perhaps I'm seeing trouble where there isn't any.

Thanks Nukey, a few attempts have crashed on me as I tried just randomly altering bits to see what happened. After reading Kirk Israel's "2600 101" tutorial & playing around on H-O-M, attempting some real programming for the 2600 doesn't seem quite so intimidating. Famous last words!

I always try to get boxed copies of games but also a 'spare' which could be loose boxed or whatever to play. The cover art, especially for the older Atari releases (CX2601-2650 'ish) are really superb - seeing them for sale seems to have a hypnotic effect "Buy me - Buy me.... "

I know its not true programming but I was messing around with Barnstorming using Hack-O-Matic & managed to to get the game to restart everytime I flew the airplane over the first windmill. The (apparent?) significance of this did not register on me until later & have now erased that modified file. Question is, is Hack-O-Matic purely an image editor or can you play around with the source code of the rom with it?

This is why I don't play cards, I'd be a pauper within minutes!

That probably explains a thing or two about why I found it so difficult to judge when I had flushes & the like Perhaps I should try reading up the instructions sometime.... :wink:

@Al - Put me down for a copy! I've never played Yahtzee before so I thought 6 dice were the norm

Great game this, does anyone know if Russell has added the 2 player option to it yet?

Enduro is a great game but doesn't it give you severe handcramps?

Even I managed to folow some of that! Really great article, perhaps there's some hope for me yet

Al, you’re a cad of the first water!! How CAN you mock Zaxxon?? What with it’s flicker-free animation and almost frighteningly realistic perspective!

Combat Rock & Mr. Roboto both have fantastic sounds (counts pennies) I'd certainly like Pengo with the original arcade musical score, wasn't it a Jean-Michelle Jarre track?

Plenty have been listed that I would name, but there are a few others Sky Jinks Oink! Pengo Reactor Jedi Arena

Quite possibly Frostbite is my fave Acti title & one that I can play pretty much all day. Top score of around 250K. I absolutely adore this game & think it possibly even pips Pitfall 2 & HERO at the post.

Since I got back into Atari, 4 years. Got 226 unique games & 293 total. I consider most of my 'modern' & 'repro' games as showcase titles, such as Pick Up, Save The Whales, Mental Kombat, Polo, Snow White Bugs Bunny, RS Basketball etc. Really into Gyruss at the moment, excellent music (Toccata & Fuge in D minor)

That's good to hear! I've saved a whole stack of wonga to buy as many AA products as possible