lord_mike

Hmm... still not working... with your edits to the score_graphics.asm file, I still get this error: Nothing more specific than that... my code compiles with the normal score_graphics.asm file...

Thank you from me as well!!!

According to the Batari Basic Command Reference: but, it does not give instrucitons how to do that, and searches on this forum came up empty. There are only 10 digits defined, if I try to create any more, I get the following error: I'm guessing that I have to change some of the ORG tags to compensate for the extra digits, but how do I calculate that?

Oh, that would be sweeet! I've been hoping for functionality like that.. it would eliminate half my goto's and the code would be much eaiser to both read and write! That would be my #1 feature request! Add the ability to reference the bitwise variables using constants (i.e. instead of a{1}=1 be able to use a{CONSTANT_NAME}=1 and I'd be in Batari Basic heaven!!! A do...while statement and a C-like "switch" statement would be nice, too, but that's icing on the cake!

Nah, looking sweet so far, man!

I'm a big guy now 20 years later! But, back then, you could see my ribs! I wasn't anorexic looking, but definately very, very trim. In fact, I was trying to gain weight, 'cos I felt I was too skinny! Don't ask me how... I was pretty muscular, and had big bones, I guess!

Well, I have to agreeabout one point... BMI is complete BS! When I was 18, I was 6'1" and 200 pounds and skinny as a rail... yet, the current guidelines would say that I was 30 pounds overweight! I have broad shoulders and am built like a linebacker... so, I weighed more than an average person... yet, I was still very skinny!

Color scrolling is a bit tricky... I had some problems with it... the scrollposition sometimes is off, and you have to compensate for it another way. I will look at your code and see what I can do for you. It's late tonight, though, and I'm very tired, so it will have to wait until tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime, check out my code for Arctic Landtran and see if it helps you any.... It uses color scrolling similar to what you are looking for in your game....

There's another way to do it, but it's not pretty--directly modify the bits in the playfield variables... You can find them here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...p;hl=memory+map (why isn't that post pinned, or combined with the user guide?... It is really crucial to debugging!) Me too... Any idea when it will be ready, Batari? Thanks for all your work!

Beware! the .NET framework totally broke a bunch of apps on my computer, most noticeably activesync to my Phone.PDA and bluetooth... it also made my machine run even more like a dog than normal... Although this app is very cool, it's obvious that it is too much for my machine.... Older computer users beware!!!!

This old article from Popular Electronics was posted at Digg.com: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/27/...ectronic-games/ Great quote: " Only after you've experienced the sheer joy of slaughtering your best friend will you know the true meaning of fun." Also from that same year, a prediction of what video games might be in the future: http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/sh...ge.php?page=i10 It seems that Mr. David H. Ahl did a pretty accurate job in his predictions.... he was like a childhood hero of mine! I guess now he's just an insurance salesman or something... too bad... Just thought I'd forward this article along in case anyone missed it.... it sure is a trip down memory lane!

Hey, what happened to the intro music I wrote for you!

Well, academically speaking, yes, it is better to reuse code for various reasons... mostly 'cos of readibility and ease maintenance... but, when you are dealing with an environment like the 2600 where both space and availalbe cycles are at a premium, you may have to make sacrifices that aren't always "pretty". If you need to save space, use subroutines If you need to save cycled, repeat the code

Thank you all for the kind comments... I really appreciate it! This game was a Christmas gift to my wife, and I had been planning it since last summer. I was able to make the Christmas deadline, but I still had a few odds and ends to finish with the game before I was ready to post it. Originally, I was going to do a 3-D driving game, but when I saw the color scroll example (either Curtis or Michael presented it, and it was way cool.. thanks, guys! ) here on this forum, I thought that top-down would be better. I immediately thought of the Fire Truck game that was one of my favorites as a kid, so I went with that idea. Fire Truck had the truck fixed in the center, and you could go all four directions with scrolling. I figured that would be too difficult to implement, so I limited the directions and allowed the truck to move sideways on the screen. That worked better than expected. I wanted multicolor sprites, but that caused a problem with the color scrolling. The big challenge was implementing a separate cab and trailer and doing it while flickering the two. I had a bear of a time dealing with decmial numbers... Fortunately, studying Batari's zombie chase got the movement the way I wanted it to be. The game is significantly easier with the driving controller than with the joystick. I realize that most people aren't going to play this on a real Atari, and I am going to work on making the joystick version easier... I don't want people turned off by the game being too complex... on the other hand, I want to make sure it isn't too easy, either! Now onto Fort Apocalypse's specific comments and questions... That is actually a FEATURE of the game taken right out of Fire Truck. Basically, it is a penalty for drivng too fast, you more easily lose control of steering. That is how almost all the crashes occur in Fire Truck... the difference is that acceleration and deceleration in Fire Truck is slower, and maybe I can work on that part. I will find a way to make it easier... One of my thoughts is having a low gear... I will experiment with some stuff and see how it goes. In the meantime, make sure to "pump" the accelerator off and on to keep a comfortable medium speed. That would make it harder, don't you think? You'd be unable to pause or stop... the hairpin turns might be harder to maneuver. I'm out of variables!!! The background colors are supposed to simulate "headlights"... I tried to reduce the intensity of the colors of the obstacles, but, for some reason, I couldn't get it to work right... I think I can darken the background some more to make it more of a challenge... (like the game needs it!) I will play around with it. My original intent was to make the game for paddles. Unfortunately, the pfcolors and readpaddle kernel options do not go together, and I really wanted the color scrolling... so, I made the sacrifice, knowing I had a pair of driving controllers handy. Thank you again for all your kind words! This forum has been incredibly helpful. I spent almost a whole year just watching and studying this group to learn how to make this game. I will keep tweaking it and posting updates! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks, Mike

At the edge of the world... Near the arctic circle... Where a warm day is 45 below zero.... Lay the vast, rich oilfields of Northern Alaska... The men and women who work there need vital supplies... Their only link to civilization is a road made of the thin ice that covers the deep frozen lakes, rivers, and tundra of the Alaskan bush... A road so fragile, that the smallest mistake can shatter the ice and send drivers plummetting to the depths of the frigid waters... their bodies freezing instantly, before they even have a chance to drown... Imagine driving a 20 ton transport truck on top of a frozen river or lake, with only a few inches of ice seperating you from the deep water below... No big deal... It's just another ordinary day driving the ARCTIC LANDTRAN... Do you have what it takes to take on the most dangerous job on Earth? Get onboard, driver!!! Here are your keys to an adventure on ice! (cue dramatic music) arctic_landtran_rc1a.basarctic_landtran_rc1a.bas.bin OVERVIEW Drive your transport truck on the frozen road, through both day and night, fighting bad weather, avoiding cracks and slippery patches in the ice and dodging oncoming trucks and caribou crossing the road--all the while staying within the road's boundaries. Off road driving damages and weakens the ice, eventually causing the road to shatter and collapse, with your truck sinking to the bottom of the frigid water. GAMEPLAY To start the game, press reset. To increase the skill level, press select. For joystick control, set the left difficulty switch to B. To use the driving controller, set the left difficulty switch to A. Pressing the button accellerates the truck. Steer using left and right controls. At the bottom of the screen are two status bars. The left status bar is distance driven towards your destination--the oilfield. The right bar is the "health" of the ice you are driving on. Every second you are off the road, the ice weakens and the bar length increases. When the bar is full, the ice shatters, the road collapses, and the game ends with part your sunken truck visible at the bottom of the water. On road driving helps restore the strength of the ice, until it is eventually healed. Reaching the oil field will give you a 5,000 point bonus! Press the button after you've reached your destination to transport another load! TWO PLAYER COOPERATIVE PLAY To switch to two player mode, set the B&W/Color switch to B&W. In two player mode, the left player steers the cab of the truck, whle the right player steers the trailer. Try to coordinate your movements so as to stay on the road. The right player controls the truck's horn with the button. Set the right difficulty switch to A to use the right driving controller for player two (player 2 driving contrller still buggy) TIPS AND TRICKS Don't be a leadfoot!!! The surest way to get into trouble is by driving to fast. The course is very difficult! Slow and steady is the way to go! Keep pumping the accelerator on and off to maintain a medium, confortable speed! If you can't get past the caribou... stop the truck and wait a bit, they will move up and you can plot a course to get past them. Some cracks and slippery patches are unavoidable... Try minimizing your truck's contact off the road. If only your cab or trailer is off the road, the ice will be damaged at half the rate than if the entire truck is offroad. Use that to your advantage! If you are still having trouble, the game is significantly easier using the driving controller (only on a real Atari, not with emulation). TRIVIA The design of the game was inspired by the late 70's Atari coin-op arcade game, Fire Truck This is the first public Batari Basic game using reverse color scrolling (that I know of) This is also my first Barari Basic game! Enjoy! Let me know if you encounter any problems: arctic_landtran_rc1a.basarctic_landtran_rc1a.bas.bin

...well, at least my Super Bowl party! I was almost going to retire the venerable 2600... Last year, there was absolutely no interest at all... Of course, I had some real arcade machines competing with it, but this year they are in storage awaiting a move... This year, I had low expectations. I set it up as a matter of form, but I just assumed that no one would play... especially since I had the Nintendo Wii set up.... Boy was I wrong! The kids were loving it! I set up the Korokdile cartridge with some hacks and homebrew games I made for my wife, as well as some sports game classics like Home Run and Football. The kids really enjoyed my Adventure hack, and my one 11-year old nephew even asked about what it took to program games! I told him that I got into game programming around his age, and I think software development may be in his future! He was actually playing the Atari and the Wii at the same time!!! Taking turns!! Very cool stuff! Had I actually KNOWN that people would play, I would have spent more time making the multicart. Oh well, there's always next year!!! Atari lives!

Yep. Pretty much! in the standard kernel, there is no way around the limitation besides flickering.

First off, let me say that BBasic is an AMAZING tool that opens the doors to Atari programming for people like you and me that would normally be closed by the inordinate complexity of kernel writing. It's WAAAAAAAY easier than straight assembler, and you don't have to worry about kernel timing or anything like that.... There is a slight learning curve and some quirks that you might not expect... but, overall, it's pretty easy to work with... especially considering that it's writing intermediate assembly as its output... the one issue that, as a computer scientist, you will struggle with is the amount of goto's you will have to use... I cringe, every time I use them... I know it's bad programming form, but there really is almost no way around them, but, I try my best to be as "structured" as possible... Object oriented programming like you are used to is a challenge, but you can kind of "fudge" it by putting "objects" in their own blocks... but, the reality is that the memory and timing constraints make it difficult to strictly follow a fully structured or object model... still, I've found that being as structured as possible goes a long way to minimizing "wierd" problems that will inevitably occur with a tool like this.... That being said, it really isn't that hard to get used to, once you figure out all the little "quirks" and limitations of the language... remember that it is creating assembly code for a machine that has only 128 bytes total memory for a stack, all the variables, and screen memory!!!I'd say that the learning curve for an experienced programmer would be several days to a week to get a hang of things... As long as you don't get too fancy with algorithms, you should be fine! (keeping it simple and straightforward is a must with BBasic... almost every time I try and get fancy or "cute", I run into problems...) You won't need to do much assembly, if any at all, and if you run into problems, the forum here is excellent support! It really is an amazing and powerful tool, considering that it is dealing with the most finicky of computer hardware!!! As for a tutorial... download some programs from this very forum and study the code! Also the command reference and tools site is like the bible of Batari Basic... and this memory map is an invaluable resource when debugging in the Stella emulator.... Give it a shot... it really is easy getting started, and once you get going, there's no telling what you can create! I can't wait to release my new game in a few days... I hope everyone here will like it! Thanks, Mike

You always love what you can't have, and I never had a 2600 as a kid even though I wanted one so badly,. I even dreamed about it... My folks just weren't going to shell out that kind of money for a toy... It took me 20 years to finally get one, when a coworker told me he was going to throw his away... That was one of the best days of my life! I was so excited!! I am doubly blessed, because my wife is a big fan, too... and thanks to Fred "Batari" Quimby, I can now program my own custom Atari games for her... like the one I programmed her for Christmas (the source and binary coming soon to the Batari Basic Programming Forum near you!!! My parents are amazed that I'm still obsessed over Atari after all these years... but, you never, ever forget your first love! Thanks, Mike

AHA!!! Your reply made me think, and I didn't do any bounds checking and was overwriting memory locations!!!! That was the problem, methinks!!! Right now it isn't crashing the emulator (knock on wood), I'll try it on a krok cart tomorrow... Thank you very much, your reply made me think more about what happened and gave me the impetus to fix it... I had totally given up! Thanks again! I figured out the right controller, too! Instead of temp1=(SWCHA & %00000011)/16 it should just be temp1=(SWCHA & %00000011) So, a great way to end the evening! Thanks, Batari!!

It didn't work! Actually, the left controller code didn't work too well, either.... it would work for a few seconds then crash the machine something awful... It worked when I put it in a standalone program, but didn't like it in mine... I think it may be 'cos I'm using bank switching???? I don't know... I couldn't get the right controller to work at all, even in a standalone program... But, I guess the original quesiton is moot, since I can't get either controller to work in my program without crashing... Any thoughts off the top of your head? Is bankswitching a possible cause? It's not crucial... I'm doing a driving game using pfcolors, and since I can't use paddles with pfcolors (or can I?), I thought driving controllers would be a nice touch! Thanks for replying to my post, Batari! I do appreciate it very much! Mike

Hey all! Looking for instructions on how to use the driving controller, I saw this following post by Batari (which is also used in his zombie chase example in the BB 1.0 package). I'm wondering if there's a way to also use the right controller. I imagine that the bits in: SWCHA & %00110000)/16 would need to be changed and it would work??? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a million! Mike

Thank you for all the responses... Quite honestly, my angst has been born mostly from frustration... I was hoping to get my nephews some of those handheld Mattel games that they've had for the past five years, and now they are gone... everything like it is gone... I remember last year going to the toy store and they had a whole wall filled with 80's game stuff, and now all that stuff is gone... and then I see these articles one after the other talking about the crappy NES and how it basically was the first gaming system ever, and I'm like... huh? What just happened? It's like suddenly a chunk of your personal history has been ripped from the consciousness of the world... and it leaves me stunned, sad, and very frustrated, 'cos I know that it will be almost impossible to get more "flashback" type stuff in the future... and that is extremely disappointing... I always liked looking forward to the future of the past, and that, sadly, has ended... A lot of people are mourning the loss of the "greatest generation"... the people that fought in world war two and came back home to fuel the greatest period of economic growth in our nation's history... While we certainly can't compare with them, I thought that the passing of the Atari generation should get some mention in the annals of social history as well... after all, we don't want to be forgotten either.... we have our place in history, too... hence, the post! Oh well... gotta keep moving on... fortunately the wife still loves the Atari, and I've got to get cracking on that Christmas gift homebrew I've been meaning to program for her! I've got my Krok cartridge... I have no excuse now! Thanks, Mike

I was reading an article that was posted in Digg.com titled, The 10 Most Irritatingly Impossible Old-School Video Games, and found the article rather shocking... Not one Atari 2600 game listed... This is not an isolated phenomenon. Time and time again, classic gaming articles fail to mention or acknowledge the granddaddy of all video gaming, our good friend Stella. The same year that we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Atari 2600 seems to be the same year that everyone has forgotten the Atari 2600... and everything else that came from that time in history... OUR time in history... In short, we, the Atari Generation are becoming increasingly irrelevant outside of our own community... For years, whenever people talked about "Old School" video games, they meant the Atari... or Space Invaders, or Pong... now they mean the NES or rarely the Commodore 64... Even as recently as last year, the store shelves were filled with Mattel and Coleco handheld game recreations, Flashback II's, Jakks Pacific paddle games... no more... The shelves are empty now, save a few plug 'n play TV games based on the NES chip.... But all the great classic game options are history.... No more Mattel Classic Football... No more Flashback II's... No more Coleco Head To Head football.... Whether we like it or not, the torch has been passed... The NES generation is taking over, and our influence is disappearing... The last 5 years or so were great... a resurgence of retro-enthusiasm., where the late 70's and early 80's were king! But, now, we've gotten too old.... most of us are over the age of 35, and invisible to the world of business marketing... Those that were born in the 80's are now the coveted market.... We are just old geezers... From now on, when someone mentions classic gaming, they won't be talking about Combat, but of Super Mario. It's sad, really... I really enjoyed the cool "Old School" stuff that had come out the past 5 years or so... It was really fun reliving my childhood... But, I guess it's time to grow up and let the next generation relive theirs... Regardless, I'll still continue reliving mine! I hope that in a few years, our era will once again experience a renaissance... but, until then, I will fight the passing of the Atari Generation... The greatest video game generation that ever lived! Never forget! And remember to spread the word! Don't let the rest of the world forget us, either! Atari matters!! The 80's matter!! Long live Atari! Have you played your Atari today? Thanks, Mike

Postscript is a printing "language"... kind of like HTML for printers... Many laser printers have sued this protocol for over 20 years... When you are "printing to file" you are not printing at all, but saving all the postscript language from the document into a file, which is then easily converted to PDF format. You can also use this: http://www.pdfcreator.de.vu/ Which installs as a printer driver and you "print" to it, but instead of printing to paper, it creates a PDF file for you. This one is free. Adobe also sells a commercial one. Thanks, Mike