Kurt_Woloch

Here are my times for the past week (March 19th through 25th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 85 min. in 7 sessions Crazy Taxi: City Rush is still the only game I played this week, and it doesn't look like I will play any others soon. There are still many things to do regarding the death of my mother... her funeral will be on Thursday, then there's a soul mass on April 3rd, and on April 10rd there's the first visit at the notary in order to deal with her estate (or whatever you call that in proper English). There's also a fundamental problem with gaming in that my mother was into video and computer games as well (at least as long as she still could see properly), but my father is not. Right now I spend much more time with my father than I used to spend with my parents before my mother died, and because he's still my father, I somehow feel obliged not to pursue unnecessary things such as gaming as long as there are more important things to do. In the game itself, I'm making progress, now having completed the bronze medal and three out of seven missions in the "Hills" district.

Here are my times for the past week (March 19th through 25th)... Sorry, I still haven't played any classic games this week, and it doesn't look like I will play any soon. There are still many things to do regarding the death of my mother... her funeral will be on Thursday, then there's a soul mass on April 3rd, and on April 10rd there's the first visit at the notary in order to deal with her estate (or whatever you call that in proper English). There's also a fundamental problem with gaming in that my mother was into video and computer games as well (at least as long as she still could see properly), but my father is not. Right now I spend much more time with my father than I used to spend with my parents before my mother died, and because he's still my father, I somehow feel obliged not to pursue unnecessary things such as gaming as long as there are more important things to do.

Seems like you didn't win the catch-up race this week. Should I really continue posting my times here? Anyway, here are my times for this past week (March 12th through 18th) on modern systems... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 81 min. in 7 sessions Like last week, Crazy Taxi: City Rush was the only game I played this week since my mother died a week ago and I was busy with my father arranging everything for the funeral. In addition today I caught the flu last Sunday and stayed home for most of the week. In the game, I made some progress in equipping my cab for the last level, in which by now I've completed the first two out of seven missions and reached the point where motor speedup gets to be the most affordable upgrade.

Here are my times for this past week (March 12th through 18th)... Sorry, I didn't play any classic games this week. In fact, I didn't do much having to do with them at all since my mother died a week ago and I was busy with my father arranging everything for the funeral. In addition today I caught the flu last Sunday and stayed home for most of the week.

Here are my times for modern gaming for this past week (March 5th through 11th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 82 min. in 6 sessions Crazy Taxi: City Rush was the only game I actually played this week. Stockstream definitely won't appear on the tracker anymore because the game was discontinued on Friday last week as I found out early this week. Also, my mother was on her last legs, and I visited her in the hospital on Thursday together with my father and then on Saturday together with a former classmate. Finally, she died this morning, so now I'm working together with my father to arrange her funeral.

Here are my times for this past week (March 5th through 11th)... Sorry, I didn't play any classic games this week. I did, however, continue to work on a map of Hover Force (Intellivision) which I tried to stitch together from frames out of a Youtube gameplay video. My mother was on her last legs, and I visited her in the hospital on Thursday together with my father and then on Saturday together with a former classmate. Finally, she died this morning, so now I'm working together with my father to arrange her funeral.

Here are my times for modern games this week (February 26th through March 4th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 75 min. in 7 sessions This week the only modern game I played was "Crazy Taxi: City Rush" on Android, partly because I got bored with the other games and partly because I worked on creating a bot for "Toyshop Trouble" on the Atari 2600 for several hours. In Crazy Taxi: City Rush, I achieved a few power-ups, but nothing fancy to mention. Still I'm working towards more power ups and completion of the first mission of the "Hills" district.

Here are my times for classic games this week (February 26th through March 4th)... Atari 2600: Alien Attack - 1 min. Carrot Kingdom - 6 min. Toyshop Trouble: 375 min. in 7 sessions I continued to write an agent playing Toyshop Trouble, but despite teaching it all the rules of the game, I didn't manage to get it to play the game as well as I play it. One problem is the only way I found to get it working was to simulate keypresses on the online Atari 2600 emulator at Virtualatari.org running in Chrome, but even then sometimes the keys get stuck and some keyboard messages sent by the program don't come through or get mangled. Also there's a problem if a toy and the player collide, in which case the program needs a bit of time to go on, because it doesn't "see" the incomplete toy and because it only targets one toy at a time before continuing while myself I often plan ahead, plotting a path through the toys, and overall my own playing is faster and smoother than the one of my agent. While doing that, I also played the game myself for several hours, and after giving up on my agent, I tried to play it in Stella with the frame rate set to 10 (1/5 or 1/6 of normal speed) which got me much farther in the game because I had more time to plan ahead. Other than that, I tried two new homebrew games, Alien Attack (which reminds me a lot of games for the Interton VC-4000 console) and Carrot Kingdom, which is a jump'n'run game in the veins of Super Mario Bros, Wonder Boy and Thundercats.

Here are my times for this past week on modern games (February 19th through 25th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 73 min. in 7 sessions Browser: Papa's Pancakeria - 74 min. in 2 sessions I continued to play Crazy Taxi: City Rush and Papa's Pancakeria, as last week, except that I dropped Stockstream. Due to time constraints I only played two sessions of Papa's Pancakeria this week, and actually at both games I am at a stage where they don't seem to offer many new things anymore... it's the last district (Hills) on Crazy Taxi: City Rush, where I just managed to beat the first bronze medal mission, and on Papa's Pancakeria I seem to have unlocked everything but a few customers and furniture items.

Here are my times for this past week on classic games (February 19th through 25th)... Arcade: Q*bert's Qubes - 188 min. in 3 sessions Atari 2600: Q*bert's Qubes - 9 min. I continued to play the original version of Q*bert's Qubes, and finally managed to beat Level 8, where you have to do 3 Tic-Tac-Toes with non-fixed qubes. After that comes Level 9 which requires 4 Tic-Tac-Toes with fixed qubes, after which those same two combinations repeat over and over. I didn't beat Level 9 in that session, but in another one where I started at Level 5. Oddly, it took me a lot of failed attempts until I finally got into the "zone" where the game seemed to play itself, and I managed to beat Levels 9-11 several times. After that I briefly played the Atari 2600 port of Q*Bert's Qubes, mostly to look how they solved the problem of the limited colors per scanline there. Well, the grid has been reduced from 5x5 to 4x4, and on the scanlines where the front and right side of the qubes are shown, they actually display the correct color of those sides on alternating scanlines... on one scanline, the front is shown and the right side is black, on the next scanline it's the other way round. That way, they only need to show at most 4 foreground colors per scanline, in addition to two players. Other than that, I only played modern games. apart from programming a bot which should be able to play Toyshop Trouble by itself. Right now it's able to solve the first level. The next step is to teach it to differentiate different types of toys from each other for the next levels.

Here are my times for this past week (February 12th through 18th, 2018) on modern games... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 144 min. in 7 sessions Browser: Papa's Pancakeria - 88 min. in 3 sessions Twitch: Stockstream - 23 min. in 2 sessions I continued to play the same games as last week. In Crazy Taxi: City Rush, I'm now in the Hills district and have upgraded my cab to a point where at least some missions are winnable. I had an extra long session on one day where I mapped out some additional side roads in the Hills district (inside the golfing area) which aren't covered by my map yet, and there isn't a map of this game online. On Papa's Pancakeria I got the first customer who likes to order mixed items (i.e. one slice of toast and one waffle). Other than new customers, I've already seemed to unlock everything else. Finally, on Stockstream, I went in, but when I told the chatters there that my mother's still in the hospital, they said I should better be with here rather than playing Stockstream. Since I've actually wanted to leave the game for a long time, this was the final push to do it, so you probably won't find me playing Stockstream again.

Here are my times for this past week (February 12th through 18th, 2018) on classic games... Arcade: Cosmic Guerilla - 28 min. Ms. Pac-Man - 13 min. Atari 2600: Toyshop Trouble - 245 min. in 5 sessions ZX-Spectrum: Ms. Pac-Man - 55 min. I decided to try the ZX-Spectrum version of Ms. Pac-Man which I've never played before. It's quite good, but the sound is not as sophisticated as on the Apple II, and you can't corner here like you can on the original arcade version. It seemed bit hard for that reason, however then I replayed the arcade original which is even harder although a bit smoother. On the Spectrum you notice that in the intermissions the tempo of the music is a bit inconsistent depending on how much is going on in the animation. Apart from that, I also replayed Cosmic Guerilla. Back when this came out, it seems that they made the games difficult by only allowing the player to move relatively slowly. Later they found out it's more satisfying for the player if it can move at a reasonable speed... Last, but not least, I replayed Toyshop Trouble on the Atari 2600 until I managed to reach December 24th, which took quite a while. Now I'm trying to write a bot that plays the game by itself. It can't do too much right yet however... it is able to differentiate the different types of screen from each other, switch into the game screen, read the pattern of the first toy to paint and find the position of the player on the main game screen.

Here are my times spent with modern games for this week (February 5th through 11th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 108 min. in 7 sessions Browser: Papa's Pancakeria - 160 min. in 5 sessions Twitch: Stockstream - 50 min. in 2 sessions This week I basically continued to play the same games as last week. In Papa's Pancakeria, I've now unlocked all the drinks and ingredients, and only new customers are appearing. In Crazy Taxi: City Rush, I completed the Uptown district and started my first missions in Neverly Hills, which is very hard because the taxi you get at the start isn't up to the task at all, and it's very hard to win any mission before you've at least somewhat upgraded it. In Stockstream, I tested a new Twitch extension, but didn't get to actually vote although the week was a very volatile one with stock prices dropping like flies. My real concern, however, is now the condition of my parents. My 87 year old mother fell to the ground on Tuesday night when she tried to turn out the light, and then fell out of bed on Wednesday afternoon. She's now in the hospital and will have surgery either tomorrow or on Wednesday. Her condition has got progressively worse over the last weeks, and my father now applies for a place in a nursing home for her. I spent over 5 hours over the last week on supporting them in one way or another. My father is 83 as well and also degrading somewhat, so it sometimes gets hard to talk to him.

Here are my times spent with classic games for this week (February 5th through 11th)... Arcade: Q*Bert's Qubes - 167 min. in 3 sessions Atari 2600: Ms. Pac-Man - 12 min. This week I only played two different classic games. I continued to play the arcade original of Q*bert's Qubes after having finished the C-64 version last week. I did get over 300,000 points this time, but didn't manage to beat Level 8 where you must complete 3 Tic-Tac-Toes with "floating" qubes that don't stay in their correct position if you jump on them again. Apart from that, there was only a quick session of Ms. Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 where I got to Level 8 (the 2nd banana round). My real concern, however, is now the condition of my parents. My 87 year old mother fell to the ground on Tuesday night when she tried to turn out the light, and then fell out of bed on Wednesday afternoon. She's now in the hospital and will have surgery either tomorrow or on Wednesday. Her condition has got progressively worse over the last weeks, and my father now applies for a place in a nursing home for her. I spent over 5 hours over the last week on supporting them in one way or another. My father is 83 as well and also degrading somewhat, so it sometimes gets hard to talk to him.

Here are my times for this week (January 29th through February 4th) on modern games: Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 95 min. in 7 sessions Browser-based: Papa's Pancakeria - 121 min. in 4 sessions Twitch: Stockstream - 18 min. I basically continued to play the same games as last week. In Papa's Pancakeria I managed to unlock all the drinks, and in Crazy Taxi: City Rush I made some progress in the downtown area. I cut back my time on Stockstream because of the condition of my mother who was in the hospital until Wednesday and returned there yesterday for another infusion. She's clearly degraded and can't do several things anymore which she was able to do before. So I'm trying to get my life in order, doing what I have to do.

Here are my times for this week (January 29th through February 4th) on classic games: Arcade: Q*bert's Qubes - 78 min. in 2 sessions Atari 2600: Gauntlet (Hack of Dark Chambers) - 14 min. Commodore 64: Q*bert's Qubes - 70 min. This week I had another go at the C-64 prototype of Q*bert's Qubes, and I think I've beaten it now. Last week I didn't manage to beat Level 6 where you have to do 3 tic-tac-toes with cubes that misalign again if you jump of them again after they're aligned. After that Level 7 and 8 call for 4 Tic-Tac-Toes, but now the cubes stay put again although the level intro for Level 8 tells otherwise. Level 9, however, is pretty much a kill screen. The level intro is unusually long with Q*bert jumping off the cubes, off screen and backwards, while in the process corrupting part of the characters. Eventually the level intro ends, but now the qubes look like Swiss Cheese, and it's impossible to finish the next round because it says you need "-" tic-tac-toes, and actually I aligned the whole board and the round still didn't finish. So that seems to be one more area which hasn't been completed in the prototype. For a good comparison, I played the original arcade version afterwards, but didn't get as far as I hoped I would. Finally I tried the Gauntlet hack of Dark Chambers on the Atari 2600 which I saw in a Youtube video about hacked Atari 2600 games. It somewhat feels like the arcade version although there are at most 4 enemies on screen at once. In other news, my mother left the hospital on Wednesday, but they couldn't help her too much. Seems like the infusions only help her for a short time... on going home, she was in pain again, and yesterday she visited the hospital again for another infusion. Her talking has become somewhat slow and unclear, so I'm working on getting myself together and getting my life in order, which means less gaming because there are more important things to do.

Here are my times for modern gaming for this week (January 22st through 28th)... Android: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 63 min. in 6 sessions Browser-based: Papa's Pancakeria - 152 min. in 5 sessions SkiFree - 3 min. Twitch: Stockstream - 29 min. in 4 sessions I pretty much continued to play the same games as last week. I hit a roadblock at Crazy Taxi: City Rush since there's a mission I should actually be able to complete, but it doesn't quite work out, at the end I have 415 m left to the goal. In Papa's Pancakeria I unlocked more drinks and ingredients, but there are still some left to unlock. The only new game I briefly played was SkiFree, in search of Javascript skiing games. This is one, based on a game already written back in 1992 and sold in the MS Entertainment Pack for Windows 3.1. It hasn't changed much since that (except for the language). It's a bit too free for me since from the skiing events shown on TV; I'd expect a tree cut free from trees with flags in between you have to go around. Instead there are trees everywhere and the flags are hard to find. Oh, I just found that MS is selling this game in their app store for Windows 8.1 and 10 (that's the system requirement!), but it's still the same JS version which also runs fine as a browser game on Windows XP. Actually I was looking if there's a Skiing Construction Kit where you could do your own tracks, but I didn't find such a thing. Maybe this was an idea that's still open to write. Maybe you could write a skiing game with SEUCK... I cut back on gaming a bit this week because my mother's in the hospital, she's suffering from heart problems.

Here are my times played on classic systems this week (January 22nd through 28th)... Arcade: Action fighter - 73 min. Q*bert's Qubes - 23 min. Commodore 64: Q*bert's Qubes (prototype) - 129 min. in 4 sessions I cut back on gaming this week a bit because my mother's in the hospital since Thursday, suffering from heart problems. Anyway, as for classic games, I played the arcade version of Action Fighter which is a bit different to the home versions in that there's one big map where you change between being a motorcycle and a car rider and then change to helicopter or boat at some points in the map which fly a certain distance to the end point which brings you back to the motorcycle / car in the main map. It's a horizontally scrolling racing game, but it also scrolls vertically if you go left and right. Your goal is to clear 8 posts scattered around the map and then enter and defeat the enemy fortress. And then I discovered a game which I didn't expect to exist on the C-64, but that version was found and released a few weeks ago. I found it when actually looking for a map of C-64 Street Surfer (which doesn't exist) and one of the pictures I found instead showed a screenshot of Q*bert's Qubes. Having played the other versions extensively, I can confirm that it's pretty much complete. It recycles some of the sounds of Q*bert (which I would have expected from Parker Bros. since they also recycle the sounds across games and systems, and their other versions of Q*bert's Qubes do this as well, as the arcade game does), but unlike it, it runs silky-smooth... but slower than the original version. Also Level 1 is what's actually Level 3 on the arcade since the first two levels with fewer colors have been cut... but the other home versions are also like that. Missing from the prototype is a title screen and a Game Over screen and a possibility to go back to Level 1 after the game has ended (you always continue at the level the game ended). I got to the end of Level 6 (3 cubes short of making it) in a 44-minute game in my last session. Apart from that, I looked a bit into the programming of the APF M1000 console.

Here are my times for this past week (January 15th through 21st) on modern systems: Uzebox: Pac-Man - 20 min. Dr. Mario - 10 min. Android phone: Crazy Taxi: City Rush - 86 min. in 7 sessions Online: Papa's Pancakeria - 153 min. in 5 sessions Twitch: Stockstream - 51 min. in 5 sessions I tried two Uzebox games this week, Pac Man and Dr. Mario using an online emulator. Sadly, on Dr. Mario it seems like not all keys are working, so it was rather difficult to play, and I switched to the NES version. Then I continued to play Crazy Taxi: City Rush, in which I made a bit of progress in the Uptown district. In Papa's Pancakeria, I got to the level where you can also make drinks for your guests. Also I maxed out the space for posters and ground items in the lobby. In Stockstream, the balance is now over $58,000, and they have a contest on which however is only for US residents which I'm not. So I played along a bit, but didn't get too deep into it.

Here are my times for this past week (January 15th through 21st) on classic games: Apple II: Ms. Pac-Man - 62 min. Arcade: Ms. Pac-Man - 15 min. Atari 2600: 2048_4vcs - 15 min. Ms. Pac-Man - 34 min. Atari 800: Ms. Pac-Man - 22 min. NES: Dr. Mario - 31 min. TI-99/4A: Jedi Gauntlet Demo - 23 min. This week I played various versions of Ms. Pac-Man again. My general goal on each of those was to reach 33.333 points which is doable after a bit of practice. The Apple II version shines by its sound relative to the machine's capabilities which does much more than only short blips like you can find them on other Apple II games. Somehow it seems to share much of its codebase with the C-64 version, which might explain some of the properties of the C-64 version, for instance the slowdown when Ms. Pac-Man eats dots. The Atari 800 version, in comparison, reminds me a bit of the MS-DOS version, and it surprised me that the ghosts's eyes are solid instead of cut out. Also there's flicker now and then if too many objects are on one scanline. I also noticed the severe slowdown of Ms. Pac-Man whenever she eats dots which is much less pronounced in the original arcade version, and finally, at the 5th round the game speeds up by a huge degree. I also played the original version for a quick comparison. On the Atari 2600, I also played 2048_4vcs, another version of 2048 for the Atari 2600 with the source code available which I looked through and I must say that I find quite a few places where the code could be optimized to make room for more features, most notably a title music. Then I played Dr. Mario on the NES after trying the Uzebox version which didn't quite work out. On the NES I reached Level 5 or 6, but didn't want to play for more than half an hour. Finally I also tried the demo of Jedi Gauntlet, a BASIC game for the TI-99 by Opry99er, and there I also looked into the source code. I didn't manage to beat the demo since I didn't find a way to solve Level 3 with the amount of force supplied.

Well, if you know the value beforehand, you can still write it shorter by loading the complemented value instead of loading 6 and then complementing it. So instead of LIS 6 ;loads 6 COM ;complement it to $F9 INC ;adds 1 to make it $FA you could write... LI $FA ;load FA so 6 gets subtracted This would be one byte and 2 lines shorter and probably faster to execute. I'm still puzzled about that S though... according to the VES wiki S can't be used as an argument directly. It's only affected by certain operations. If the compiler accepts the S in this place, I wonder what it's compiled to.

Did you really code it like that? Let's see what this actually does... LIS 1 loads the accumulator with 1. COM complements the 1 just loaded so it gets FE. INC increments it so it gets FF. AS S adds S to the accumulator and stores it there, so now the accumulator is S - 1. LR S, A stores back the value so S has now decreased by 1, and the accumulator has the same decreased value. However, if you're always subtracting 1 (and not more), you can use a decrement command instead, which is DS. So you could write this shorter as: DS S (decrements S) LR A, S (you only need this if you also need the value to be in A afterwards) Don't know what S refers to, though... do you write a definite register number instead of S, or is it another register I forgot?

I just tried your demo as well (the BASIC one, not the cartridge version), and obviously it doesn't contain any speech, nor any higher-level stuff. What would you imagine the speech output in this game to be?

In which form do you store the timer? This would determine exactly what to do. It's true that there's no subtract command on the F8, but there are ways to get around this. In my code for the Video Brain which also has an F8 processor, I've coded it like that: Let's say, we want to subtract the content of A from register 0 and store the result back into register 0. Since we can't subtract the number directly, we have to create a complement of it, add 1 to that and then add the result to register 0, which goes like follows: COM ;complement A INC ;increase A AS 0 ;add R0 to A LR 0, A ;write back the sum to R0 I hope this helps...

OK, just to clear things up... actually I don't understand how you were even able to code this up without knowing much about the technical data of the Channel F. Sprites??? Sadly, there are no "sprites" per se on the Channel F, only bitmap graphics. And the graphics memory is write-only, so you can't read it in order to determine if the snake has hit something. There's also no collision detection in hardware, which means the processor can't see what's actually in graphics memory at all, not even through small windows. As for colors, each scanline can have one of 4 possible 4-color (or 2-color) palletes, one of which is black and white and the other red/blue/green on grey, light blue or light green (if I remember right). Inside of that scanline, the dots can be freely set, that means you can have red, blue and green adjacent to each other.