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Looking for some details on launch titles if anyone has them. Most of the information I already have is from box scans from atarimania. When the Atari VCS launched, nine launch titles were also released in gatefold boxes, the ones that open in the front like a book. The carts also have numbers on the end labels. Combat was the title bundled with the system, and it was packed inside its gatefold box. When I first started researching I assumed that all gatefold boxes were only released once, and that all subsequent releases of the titles would have been the traditional coloured box style. After digging, I realised that four of the nine releases have multiple gatefold variations. Now I have several questions that maybe you can help with. Was Combat also sold separately? If it was bundled with every system, it seems like there would be no poin Indy 500 could be purchased with or without racing controllers. If bought with controllers, the gatefold and controllers were packaged in a larger outer box. Indy 500 had two colour variations of orange and red. Were one of these specific for the controller package? Anyone with further information, especially dates, or even any details on gatefolds and launch, would be so appreciated. Thank you. Looking for some details on launch titles if anyone has them. Most of the information I already have is from box scans from atarimania. When the Atari VCS launched, nine launch titles were also released in gatefold boxes, the ones that open in the front like a book. The carts also have numbers on the end labels. Combat was the title bundled with the system, and it was packed inside its gatefold box. When I first started researching I assumed that all gatefold boxes were only released once, and that all subsequent releases of the titles would have been the traditional coloured box style. After digging, I realised that four of the nine releases have multiple gatefold variations. Now I have several questions that maybe you can help with. Was Combat also sold separately? If it was bundled with every system, it seems like there would be no point. If Combat was not sold separately, then why then are there multiple gatefold box variations? Some are a darker red, some have vertical slits for instructions while others have diagonal pockets (haven't seen any other gatefolds like this yet... Have you?) It would be cool to know what variation came with your system. Indy 500 could be purchased with or without racing controllers. If bought with controllers, the gatefold and controllers were packaged in a larger outer box. Indy 500 had two colour variations of orange and red. Were one of these specific for the controller package? Were Street Racer and Surround re-released in different coloured gatefold boxes? If so, when? Were all of these variations just due to different factories producing the products? When Atari was doing gatefold I didn't think they had too many factories. That's all for now. If you have any info, especially dates of reprints/ box changes, that would be awesome. Or any other info pertaining to launch or gatefolds.
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Current version: BlackJackThetaVIII-0-96.bin Test version: begins at $90,000,000 and split is always allowed on opening hands. BlackJackThetaVIII-0-96-90k.bin This is the latest version of my blackjack game. It's almost feature complete. The features I've implemented so far are: 16K F6 bank switching Screens: Title screen, Ship crash landing animation, Betting screen Play with 1, 2, or 4 decks Dealing to 75% penetration, Deterministic card dealing Navigation menu, Dashboard display of current options Game Options: Early surrender (Es); Late surrender (Ls); Hit on soft 17 (H17); Stand on soft 17 (S17) Hand Options: Double down (D); Surrender (Su); Insurance (I); Splitting hands (Sp) Card flip animation, Sound effects Expanded the betting denominations up to 10,000 Made the player's chips represent current number of chips The fire button now works to take the currently selected action. Cutscenes: landing, losing, and winning Features I will be adding next: Keypad support Refining the split hands interface, because it's confusing Idle animation Features I'm considering: Red/Black pip colors Looking into allowing more than 2 split hands Premise: You're a NASA astronaut who crash landed on the uninhabited, inhospitable planet Theta VIII. You're living out the rest of your life in an artificial hotel casino created for you by the intelligent species who damaged your craft and killed your crew. Not knowing your preferred living conditions, the intelligent species constructed the hotel using the narrative from a poorly written pulp fiction novel in your possession. You can't leave and Blackjack is your only entertainment. However, there may be an escape. The casino closely resembles the story in the novel, which describes a casino being bought up by foreign investors. Perhaps your way out is to break the bank! Instructions (click the spoiler) New title screen. New landing screen. It's been rewritten using tail call optimizations and a new vertical positioning scheme that uses a modulo strategy. It's composed of four 32-pixel rows and two variable sized rows. I plan to use this kernel in Battle for Proton, which is why I spent so much time on it. Old screens left for comparison: Dev Notes: Older versions:
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- homebrew
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This is very early version of my first Atari 2600 game. It is is intended be more feature filled than the Blackjack game released by Atari. My goals are accurate casino play, higher quality graphics, and supporting a true multi-deck shoe without dealing duplicate cards. Why am I making this game? I like Blackjack, and I don't like the official Atari version. The Atari 2600 is the reason I became a programmer, so I'm somewhat fond of the 2600 and 6502 programming. I made an attempt in 2008 with a different game concept, but I didn't have the time to work on it. I had accepted a new job that kept me extremely busy. The joystick controls are simple: Press down to HIT. Press up to STAY. Press fire to begin a new game. Why Theta VIII? You're an unfortunate guest of the Hotel Royale on the planet Theta VIII. Roadmap This is a work in progress, so the features are very limited. The controls will evolve as features are added. The core game play appears to be working, but it's not well tested. The status bar at the bottom displays the player's score, dealer's score, and the current game state. Those will be removed in future revisions, but the status bar will show message prompts, chip totals, and win/loss status. I'm posting on my blog to stay off the forums for now. This version is way too early for game reviews. It's bare bones. I have to return to my other work for a while, so my rate of progress will slow down for a while. I hope I can have it complete after about a year. I have plans to add many more features and user interface touches. Here's a short list in order of descending priority (although they're all important): accurate casino game play with betting, double down, splitting (only 1 split planned), surrender, insurance, etc no duplication of cards (cards are unique by deck, rank, and suit) betting mechanics and player's chip management sound effects a 2nd player: paging left and right will switch between players. I gave up my original plan to show 3 hands on a single screen. It won't be practical. support for 1 deck with 75% penetration and up to 4 decks with less penetration improving UI feedback: getting rid of the ugly Hit/Stay/Win/Lose graphics; using the bottom status bar instead lots of game options and variations (such as dealer hits on soft 17, early or late surrender, color scheme, number of decks, etc) sprite animations more graphic touches Accurate game play is my number one priority. My goal is for card counting to actually work with a single player, 1 or 2 deck game, which requires that no duplicate cards can be dealt, random numbers must be unbiased, and the deck is dealt to a realistic depth of penetration (between 50% to 75%). Technical Details I've attached the binary and some screenshots, but not the source. I'll attach the source after I've rewritten a few messy subroutines. I'm somewhat inexperienced with 6502 assembly, so there's lots of room for optimizing the code (and data). Let me know if you find any bugs or inconsistent scan line counts. I'm rendering at 262 lines. When I release the source, I hope to get some tips on better assembly programming. Until then I just really like solving problems on my own. The only problem I've been unable to solve so far is I couldn't get the joystick latches to work. I had to write my own latch logic, but I'd prefer to use the hardware latches to free up some space. You're probably wondering how I'm storing 4 decks in 128 bytes. Well, I'm not. I'm storing the cards in play (meaning they're dealt to an active hand) in a packed format. I'm currently using this format: ; Card: Single packed; deck suit rank; Bits: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0;; Rank: 0-13 = ranks Ace through King; 14-15 = unused The discard pile is a different situation from the active cards in play. I'm currently not storing discards. Cards shifted off screen are summed into a total, which doesn't work for preventing duplicates. A combination of strategies is what's going to work. The discard pile doesn't require knowing who has which card. It only needs to know which card is available to deal, so I could use a bitmap. Four decks contains 208 cards. If one card is one bit, then the entire 4-deck shoe can be stored in an array of 26 bytes. ; Cards 0 to 8 : 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; Cards 9 to 16 : 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; Cards 17 to 24 : 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; Cards 25 to 32 : 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; Cards 33 to 40 : 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; ... The average hand consumes about 4 to 6 cards, so the RAM usage is low for the average case. The trouble is dealing with worst case scenarios, which could deal 20 or more cards to a single player given multiple decks and splitting hands. The worst case contains all the lowest valued cards for both the player's and dealer's hands. I have to balance the worst case scenario of active cards in play with the format for the discard pile. If I don't go with the bitmap, then I'll have to settle for implementing a circular buffer for storing the discards. It will truncate the card history, but would only affect a very small percentage of hands. I currently have about 45 bytes of RAM free. I'm wasteful with RAM, so I have some easy optimizations to make for freeing up space. This version represents the culmination of about 1 month's work so far. I spent a week rewriting code that wasn't going to work, and then spent another 2 weeks goofing around with writing my own horizontal and vertical positioning algorithms. In the end I just ended up just using the divide by 15 method. Heh. Heh. SkipDraw is not used, because the vertical positioning in this game is trivial. Nothing moves and everything is divided into fixed size rows. Hardware Testing The game is completely untested on hardware, because I don't have a Harmony cart. I'll get one sooner or later.
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- blackjack
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