Kurt_Woloch

OK, uhm... seems you broke some things that already were working... 1. The fire button from the title screen now takes you immediately to the end message... but how do you start a game without going through the password screen now? 2. In Level 2, Jack doesn't fall down anymore... he can't go up and down while not on the beanstalk, but he can float left and right in mid-air without falling. And if you climb to the top of the beanstalk until you can't go up anymore, the way down is also blocked. 3. In Level 4, there now are several "dead-ends" where the beanstalk reaches to the bottom of the screen, but isn't continued in the screen below, which results in the game repeatedly changing between the upper and lower screen as long as you hold the joystick down. While this repeated changing occurs, the music also slows down. 4. You can't escape from the end message by any other means than switching off the VCS (or exiting the emulation).

OK, my score is probably the worst of the bunch... 11221. I have to admit I only played 2 games of this... the first game lasted for 8 minutes, the second one for 9 minutes. I didn't make mission 2 in both of them. This game has got some problems that made it to kill my motivation to continue playing. First, the games already take pretty long. Then there are times where you have to find the enemy, which isn't too easy. And in the middle of the combat, you often get shot at and don't know how to avoid being hit. At least after my second game, I had no clue on how I could improve my score... the enemy just keeps firing at me and it seems to be a question of luck if I get hit or not. If there is a chance of dodging their shots, the time for doing that is pretty short. Thus, no motivation to play more than these 2 games.

Sorry, I'm a little late this time... here's my gaming time from the past week: Toyshop Trouble: 561 minutes (in 9 sessions) - still couldn't get away from this game even though its week at HSC has ended... but I've made it past Dec. 25th by now, so gaming time for this will probably drop off this week. Jack and the beanstalk: 76 minutes (in 3 sessions, each time trying a new version of it) Radar Lock: 8 minutes (only played it once and found it a bit confusing... especially it's hard to find a single enemy you still have to kill) Reflex: 5 minutes (interesting homebrew, but a bit confusing) Total classic gaming time: 650 minutes (93 minutes per day). All games are 2600 binaries played on Stella.

Hmmm... how about "Castles in the air" by Don McLean?

Well, I tried this too, and I think I spotted some errors: 1. On my first game, the cut scene between Level 1 and 2 didn't behave correctly. When the sun sank down, the sky didn't get dark, and when it rose again, it actually went too far, that is, it "shot through the roof" and reappeared again on the ground, with the final position being a bit above the ground, but not as high as it should be. On my second game, however, the cutscene behaved correctly. In my opinion, in that cutscene, the sun generally lowers and rises too quickly. 2. On Level 2, Jack doesn't start at the lower end of the beanstalk, but only 2-3 screens below the goal of the level. This behaviour is consistent.

OK, I made it to improve my score too, but not by much... 17777.

Here's my playing time for this week: Toyshop Trouble (2600) 283 minutes (pretty good and addictive game) Omicron (2600) 92 minutes (very short games, but many tries) Carnival (Arcade) 40 minutes (got interrupted by a research company, this is net playing time) Burger Time (Arcade) 23 minutes (for a change, I like to play this once in a while. Didn't make the 6th screen this time.) Jack and the beanstalk (2600) 21 minutes (pretty well done, though it's coded in Batari Basic, and Level 2 is still in the works) Earth 2050 (2600) 10 minutes (Tried this once again) Burnin' Rubber (Arcade) 7 minutes (trying to get farther than on first try by going slower) Space Tunnel (2600) 3 minutes (to compare it to Earth 2050, which definitely is a hack of it) Total playing time: 479 minutes (68 minutes per day) All 2600 games emulated in Stella, all arcade games emulated in MAME.

OK, here's my best so far... 11451.

OK, I also switched to the strategy of trying to dodge the cars instead of killing them. The game is actually easier to play if you do that... and needless to say, I've got a higher score now, though I failed at the 5th road with that half island. So my new best is: 205752.

Oh yes, another thing to add: I don't really collect for any of the systems I own. If I collect anything, it would actually be music more than video or computer games. But I'm not really a collector.

OK, I'll categorize my list somewhat... Home Consoles: Atari 2600 (since 1984), Philips G-7000 (found in the trash) Portable consoles: Sega Game Gear (since 1992) Home Computers: TI-99 (since 1983, actually two of them), Commodore 64 (since 1984, also 2 or 3 of them), Amiga 500 (since 1987), 386/25 PC (since 1997), Pentium 133 PC (since 2000), PIII/800 PC (since 2001), Quadcore PC (since 2007) I leave out the pocket computers since I really don't have any games for them (though it should be possible to write some for the Sharp PC-E220, but no-one to my knowledge did that) Handheld LCD games: Snoopy Tennis (found in the trash), Sea Ranger (found in the trash), Gefährliche Rettung (since 1982), Mickey & Donald (theoretically since 1983, but sold it at a house flea market in 1987 or 1988 only to pick it up from the trash again some years later!)

OK, here's my gaming time for this week... I'll add some commentary to some of the games this time. Bump 'n' Jump (2600) 162 minutes (pretty good conversion for 2600 standards) Robotron: 2084 (TI-99, emulated in MESS) 79 minutes (good conversion too, but noticeably works with character graphics and is a bit different from the original) Moonsweeper (2600) 13 minutes (turned out harder than I thought it would be) Burnin' Rubber (Arcade, emulated in MAME) 10 minutes (for comparison to the 2600 version - same game as Bump 'n' Jump... seems pretty hard!) Spongebob Jellyfishing (2600) 5 minutes (Batari Basic game) Spongebob Pixelpants (2600) 5 minutes (another Batari Basic game) Pacman 4K (2600) 4 minutes (for comparison of the changed sound routine) Earth 2050 (2600) 3 minutes (looks pretty good, but the enemy movement seems a little illogical) Total classic gaming time... 281 minutes (40 minutes per day)

Fonz??? On which system did you play that?

OK, it now sounds and looks better. As I suspected, the sound for eating a monster and a fruit are the same. What occurs to me now is that while the fruit eating sound has about the correct pitch (but actually should go first down, then back up), the pitch of the sound of eating a monster is too low... it should be about the same pitch as the "siren" and the sound that plays while the eyes return to the house. Actually, I think a reversed version of the eyes returning sound would be a good idea here. Of course, that's not really feasible as long as the monster and fruit eating sounds are the same. That's why I said it'd probably be a request for the 8K version. But from the delay standpoint, it's definitely better now. Try this one. I would have posted to the first post but I couldn't edit it.

I think the toughest challenge here would actually be the sound transfer, which should occur in exactly even intervals (i.e. once per scanline, as you wrote), or else the sound would be horribly distorted. One problem here is that, to my knowledge, the Colecovision VDP has no scanline counter... it only generates one interrupt per frame. Or is there a timer in the Colecovision which would be able to generate interrupts that often? If not, you're in for some serious cycle counting... Where did you get the 28 cycle count between VDP accesses? I've written a demo for the Creativision, which uses the same VDP, and the first version of it overloaded the VDP with data, that is, it wrote data faster than the VDP could handle it, so the VDP dropped some of those writes which occured outside of the vertical blanking interval. However, I managed to solve that problem by blanking the VDP output while the picture gets drawn. This, however, obviously isn't an option here. The Creativision uses a 6502 CPU, I think running at 2 MHz (or was it 1 Mhz? I'm not exactly sure...), and for all you cycle counters out there, the code overloading the VDP in the active display area, but not in the blanking area, ran as follows (note: VDP_Data_Write is not a zeropage address, but GraphicsPointer is): LDX #$00 LDY #$03 ;3 x 256 bytes VDP_Write_Outer_Loop STX VDP_Data_Write INX BNE VDP_Write_Outer_Loop DEY BNE VDP_Write_Outer_Loop (This writes the pattern name table) However, the VDP was not overloaded by the following code, which copies the pattern and color tables: LDX #$18 ;prepare loop - we have to write $1800 bytes of data (that is, 6K for each loop) LDY #$00 GraphicsCopy1 LDA (GraphicsPointer),Y STA VDP_Data_Write INY BNE GraphicsCopy1 ;end of inner loop INC GraphicsPointer+1 DEX BNE GraphicsCopy1 RTS ;end outer loop

OK, here's my best so far... 40556. This game is noticably more fun than "Sky diver".

OK, since you do list coin-ops... I noticed that my "Dino eggs" on an emulated Apple II in the first week wasn't listed, although it was over 2 hours, and 2 hours was the cut-off for that week. And later on, you did list C-64 games. I think the Apple II is about as old as the C-64, if not older, so that game should be listed too. And according to Wikipedia, that game was already released in 1983, so it also qualifies for "7800 or earlier"... and the 7800 actually was released much later.

My games for this week are... Food fight (Arcade, emulated in MAME)... 235 minutes Space Invaders Deluxe (Hack) (2600)... 13 minutes Fast food (2600)... 7 minutes Sky diver (2600)... 6 minutes Carnival 8k (Hack) (2600)... 5 minutes Ballblazer demo (2600)... 2 minutes Total classic gaming time... 268 minutes (38 minutes per day)

OK, here's my best so far... 44.

OK, here are my games for this week... Wing war (2600)... 249 minutes Burger time (Aquarius)... 144 minutes Pac Man 4K (2600)... 15 minutes Pac Man Arcade (2600)... 7 minutes Fatal run (2600)... 5 minutes Ballblazer demo (2600)... 2 minutes (all 2600 games emulated in Stella, Aquarius emulated in Virtual Aquarius) Total classic gaming time: 422 minutes (60 minutes per day)

OK. I tested it again, and the energizer positions are fine now. I just noticed something else... the interruption, along with the sound when you eat a ghost seems to be shorter than in the arcade. The sound playing while this delay is taking place also doesn't go up far enough. So I'd suggest lengthening the delay and stopping the sound at a higher note while not changing the rate it's going up by each frame. I don't know if that's possible or if it maybe interferes with the sound of the fruit being eaten, since right now both sounds seem to be the same. So this suggestion maybe only works in the 8K version... but maybe it would be possible to lengthen only the delay, without lengthening the sound? However, if you have the delay set up to simply wait for the end of the sound, if probably won't work this way...

I just tried this version, and it occured to me that at least 2 of the energizers are in the wrong places. In my opinion the energizers need to be 1 pill lower than they are currently in order to approximate their arrangement in the arcade. I know that for the upper energizers it's a tough call since in the arcade they actually are in the middle of the three pills between the upper row and the row below it, but I'd go with the 5200 version here, which has the energizer in the lower of the 2 positions between those rows, not in the upper one.

OK, here's my best so far... 3955. Actually, there a quite a few things about this game which the manual doesn't say... so I'll give some tips although they are far from complete since I didn't get very far in this game either... First, you start out in an empty screen, which is your den. The only exit at that time is to the right, which gets you to the first fire screen. Shoot the enemy and pick up the crystal before it disappears. Then fly back to the den and sit down on the ground near the middle of the screen. This will lay down the crystal you collected. You can only carry one crystal at a time, and the color you have indicates which crystal you're carrying (brown for fire, blue for water, white for air and green for nothing). Now it gets a bit more tricky: The way from the den to the first fire screen is the only one that can be passed at any time. For all other passages to other screens, you need certain prerequisites. For instance, below the first fire screen is the first water screen, but at first you only can get there if you are brown (however, this changes later). Also, touching an enemy robs you of the crystal you're currently carrying, turning you green. So, the next crystal you should bring home is an air crystal (since fire and water cancel out each other unless they're separated by air). You'll find the first air screen to the left of the first water screen, but be careful not to collide with an enemy on the water screen since the passage from the water screen to the air screen is also closed if you are green, and you'll have to collect a water crystal in order to re-open it. So get that white crystal and return to the den. Then return to the water screen and get the water crystal. Be careful, if it falls on the ground and you stay there for too long, you'll lose some hitpoints! Once you've brought back the water crystal to the den, after a few moments a super crystal will be forming. From that point on, you have double the range for shooting. Also, you gain quite a few hit points at that point. But the game also gets trickier, since from that point on, you'll lose whatever you're carrying as soon as you touch the background! So you have to fly carefully. As you get out of the den again, you'll notice that there are no enemies left in the screens you were before. However, some more passages are now open. First, the passages to the screens you previously were on are now also open if you are green. Then from the first air screen, you can reach a second air screen to the left and a second fire screen to the top of it, which do contain enemies. Going right from the second fire screen takes you to a second water screen, but you cannot escape that one if you are green. You can escape it, however, if you are blue. Bringing things back to the den also gets much more tricky since touching the background, including the growing and shrinking crystals in the den, robs you of the things you're carrying (and in the den collisions also eat away your hitpoints), so you have to outmaneouver those crystals in order to bring your belongings home safely. And, nastily, as soon as you carry a crystal, the screens on your way back to the den are filled with enemies again. And now for the display at the bottom (which also doesn't get described in the manual): The upper part alternates between showing your score (in 6 digits) and 4 numbers in different colors. These numbers are the number of crystals of the different type (water, air, fire and super) you've already brought home to the den. Below that are a brown and a blue bar. The brown bar shows roughly how many shots you have left, and the blue bar shows how many hitpoints you still have. The number of hitpoints increases when you create a super crystal at the den. The number of shots also increases every time you bring home a crystal. I have partly figured out how the scoring works. Each enemy shot is worth 1 point multiplied by a score multiplier. If you pick up a crystal, it's worth 2 points multiplied by the same multiplier. That multiplier seems to work as follows: score * A * B, where A is the sum of the 4 numbers shown below (thus, the total of the crystals brought home including the super crystal that forms when you've brought home the other three), and B is (1 + number of super crystals created). At least this seems to hold through for the first two "rounds" (considering a round to end with each super crystal created). In the first round, I got 100 points for each crystal brought home and another 200 when the super crystal formed. In the 2nd round, however, I got 400 points for each crystal brought home.

So, any news on this? Sorry to bring this up after nearly 3 years, but I just found this thread and didn't know previously about the menu system of the FB2. What I'd really be curious about is if it would be possible to write games in Gizmode. I know, that's sort of defeating the point that the FB2 should be essentially a repackaged Atari 2600, but I'm always interested what various systems really could do if tweaked in the right way. From the looks of the title screen, I suppose Gizmode simply lays out the Atari 2600's capabilities over a full bitmap which gets fetched from somewhere (probably RAM, but maybe not) line-by-line automatically like in other graphics chips. In the worst case we probably have a 160 wide x 192 high resolution bitmap in 4 colors per scanline, but no sprites / players overlayed over that. This would give us graphics capabilities that are roughly comparable to the 5200 (at least one graphics mode of it) without the players in it. Still I suppose some games would be possible, like those that primarily used software sprites for displaying their characters and didn't use more than 4 colors (at least per scanline). Examples for these would be Karateka, Donkey Kong (Atari 8-bit version) or Drol. Curt, it sounds like you are surprised that it took someone that long to ask that question! Interesting answer, as I was curious as to how you interfaced the menuing system to the 2600 code. Did the FB2 team develop GizCode themselves? Is GizCode open source? <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK, here are my games for this week... Gremlins (C-64)... 191 minutes (95 emulated in VICE, 96 on the original C-64) Vanguard (2600, emulated in Stella)... 55 minutes Park Patrol (ZX-Spectrum, emulated in MESS)... 49 minutes Lock'n'Chase (2600, emulated in Stella).... 42 minutes Tortue (VG-5000, emulated in DCVG5K)... 33 minutes BigBaps (ZX-Spectrum, emulated in MESS)... 28 minutes Glouton (VG-5000, emulated in DCVG5K)... 8 minutes Star roc (VG-5000, emulated in DCVG5K)... 5 minutes Total gaming time: 411 minutes (59 minutes per day)