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4Ttude is my personal entry for the Atari Lynx 30th Birthday Programming competition. At the end of July the core of Nutmeg (the other entry of mine, made with Retroguru team) was almost completed and all the technical problems solved, so decided to go with a personal work, but with only a month for doing it had to find something simple. The only option was to make an advanced version of the barebone tic tac toe POC I did to test my comlynx lib. The core engine is taken from open source code on github, but since the original code uses the terminal as output, it wasn't a trivial task to make it something playable on the Lynx. My first version of the game was reaaly basic in terms of GFX and Musics. Thanks to the work of @marss 4Tude during the last day had a very nice new dressing (GFX rework is not finished at the moment) and in the future I'll try do the same for the musics if I find a help. The game is a classic 3D tic tac toe played on a cube of 4x4x4 spaces, displayed as 4 layers of a 4x4 grid. To help the players, on the right side there are alternate views of the same cube and of its four diagonals. I think that these alternate views are an innovation respect to a lot of other versions of this game you can find online. The player can remove this alternate views from the board with the game options or pressing Opt1 during game. The last move is displayed with a yellow border and also this mark can be hidden from the options or with Opt1. To learn the game it's possible to play against the CPU selecting a difficulty level from 0 to 10. The CPU is very strong, so to master this game the player has to spend some time learning. If you beat the CPU yor rank rises and the records of yor last ranks is mantained in the game internal save state (only if played with a cart with an EEPROM chip, on a HQ SD cart, or on an emulator with EEPROM emulation). You can also play unranked games that don't change your rank. Think at them as Training Matches. During an unranked game versus the CPU you can use some training tools pressing B: you can undo your last move (only if the game is not over) or ask an hint to the CPU (the CPU will give a hint according to it's difficulty level, at level 0 it will be a random move ? ) When you'll be good enough at this game you can play with other players. There are 2 multiplayers mode: turn based on the same console or with two Lynx connected with a comlynx cable. Thats all, if you like board games this little work will give you a lot of hours of fun. You can find attached to this post the game instructions (sorry for the typos and the bad english, maybe someone can help me checking the file, I'm busy tuning the new game GFX). Here are the game controls: DIRECTIONS KEYS: Navigate menus or move on the board A KEY: select an option on the menus or place you move during the game B KEY: access training tools during an unranked game PAUSE: pause / unpause the game OPT1: rotate board visualization options (only during a game) OPT2: rotate musics (during game) and mute unmute it PAUSE+OPT1: Back to game menu PAUSE+OPT2: Rotate the screen OPT1+OPT2: clears the internal EEPROM (only when the game is paused) 4Ttude.txt
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Developing comlynx support for Atari Lynx homebrew could seems a difficult task, but I discovered that it's easy. I think that the real reasons for so few homebrew with comlynx support are that there aren't so many examples of code available, and comlynx is not well suported on emulators, making difficoult to test the code. Sage's version of handy should support comlynx emulation over UDP, but using two PC is not the best solution while testing, and on my PCs I wasn't able to make it work (it crashes trying to connect). Since I'm developig a game that uses a 2 players mode, and I have to wait long time before to have an SD cart or an EEPROM cart programmer PI hat, I decided to modify Sage's version of the emulator to run two instances of the emulator core in the same application, than crosslinked the TX and RX comlynx interfaces of the two cores to have a comlynx test enviroment that can run on a single PC and without relying on network protocols. I made a quick and dirty tweak of the code, so don't expect an advanced version of handy. It's buggy, plays sound from both emulators core (so better disable sound) and can't emulate commercial games comlynx connection. But it works very well as a testing tools for developers. It's possible to swap betwen the two cores with CTRL+N or from the emulator menu. The active core outputs to the screen and gets the keyboard input, the other one runs silently in background. This means that it's not possible to use the two cores at the same time. Attached you can find a build for windows and a zip with the modified sources. When I have time I'll add the sources to my github and post the link here. To encourage other developers to start using the comlynx feature in their games (this can give more chances to win in the atarigamers game competition of this summer ) I'm sharing here two code examples of comlynx use. The first one is a simple piece of code from karri already posted on the forum (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/154232-cc65-link-error/?do=findComment&comment=1888745) that doesn't seem to have attracted the attention of the other developers. I slightly modified karri's code and attached it here (testcon.zip). In this example some sample text is sent over the comlynx connection at the A key press and printed on the screen of the other endpoint. The B key clears the buffer. The direction keys move an Hello world text, so that placing it in different position can help to identify the two running instances. The second example is a simple but complete game, an implementation of Tic Tac Toe using a 2 player mode over comlynx. The game uses a simple handshake protocol to start the connection that defines the two players ID (I took the handshake protocol from the comlynx code example of Championship Rally posted here http://atariage.com/forums/topic/283514-multiplayer-comlynx-from-championship-rally/) and a simple communication protocol derived from a more complex one I'm developing for another game of mine. Here are some screeshots of the game: The game code is mine (wrote it in an hour), this means two things: - It's public domain (do whatever you want with it, you can also develop from it a full game with muisic, gfx and and AI for 1P mode, but hurry up before I do it first) - It can contain bugs. I really hope to see a lot of new homebrew games with comlynx support in the next future. Happy coding Note: The code examples posted here aren't tested on real lynx yet. Please let me know if they work as expected. Handy_multi.zip handy-win32src-0.95-patched_multi.zip testcomlynx.zip tictactoe.zip
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AVP Hacking (some notes I wrote down years ago, think I might share them ...) Using the "official" ROM from 1993. Goal: Find out why Alien mode is deactivated. Activate Alien Mode in Menu. Maybe do a cheat for level select. Help: We know its there because someone (http://zenade.angelfire.com/AVP/lynx/avp.html) found out how to activate it by patching into memory as well as selecting the level nr. But this Cheat is not really telling where and how to patch ... ? We further know that it was possible to select the alien in the menu in older ROM versions. (which I do not have available...) Findings: Alien Mode is in and "just" deactivated in the menu. It can be activated and the item picture in the menu is appearing, too. There is some conditional branch before the picture is displayed. But it is not clear yet what is this condition... My guess: COMLYNX Mode! Comlynx? Indeed there is support for Comlynx in AvP! Just connect a second lynx and one player can select marine while the other is predator. But: It does not seem to work. At least not with my two Lynxes. Add: With three Lynxes every player gets adifferent character ... means the Alien pops up in the menu as expected. Investigating: First, extract files from rom. We get something like 200 file entries, but a lot of them are zero entries. File 0 is the title picture (as always). Trivia: It is not a single sprite but four, background, alien, vs, predator are seperate sprites. File 1: main code/basic fuction stays resident. File 2,3,5,7: menu and actual game ... swapped in at the same address as needed. File 2 contains Intro? File 3 contains the selection menu! File 5 is engine. File 7 contains the Game Over screen. Remark: switched pics??? Most of the other files are sprite data, but sometimes with some additional data (table?) in front of it. Lets concentrate on the file 3 and look for the menu selection part. And there it is... LDX $06 LDA #$00 L2E22: ORA $0A,X DEX BPL L2E22 BIT #$03 BNE L2E6B BIT #$10 ; Left/Right BEQ L2E46 LDA L2E7A ; CURRENT SELECTION DEC CPX #$02 ; And this is crazy... because x is always -1 here!! BPL L2E3B ; And this is crazy... if this should be cmp this makes more sence... but limits AND #$01 ; And this is crazy... the value to 0 and 1 for the selected character BRA L2E41 ; And this is crazy... L2E3B: CMP #$00 BPL L2E41 LDA #$02 L2E41: STA L2E7A ; Store selection BRA L2E5F L2E46: BIT #$20 ; Left/Right BEQ L2E5F LDA L2E7A INC CMP #$02 ; And this is crazy, too ... must be CPX as above?? BPL L2E56 ; And this is crazy, too ... doesnt make sence AND #$01 ; And this is crazy, too ... BRA L2E5C ; And this is crazy, too ... L2E56: CMP #$02 BMI L2E5C LDA #$00 L2E5C: STA L2E7A ; Store selection L2E5F: LDA L2E7B ; Animation of Frame or similar? INC AND #$03 STA L2E7B JMP L2DBF ; The following is interesting, too L2E6B: LDX $07 LDA L2E7A STA $10,X STA $AD JSR $058e JMP $1822 ; And if we check a bit of code before, we find the following ; This is run when we first enter the menu... LDX $07 TXA STA $10,X STA L2E7A What do we learn from this? a) there is a bug in the avp code b) selection can be 0,1,2 BUT ther is this CPX on something which limits this to 0 and 1 (alien is 2!) c) on start this value is read from $07 Some very nice piece of code is: LDX L2E7A LDY #$07 LDA L2D88,X STA ($AB),Y LDY #$09 LDA L2D8B,X STA ($AB),Y LDA $AB LDX $AC JSR $056e this code is plotting the selection frame ... based on a three entry look-up table. three characters! We learn: L056E is plotting a sprite! looking where it is used will find an additional piece of code which draws one sprite only under a condition: LDA $06 CMP #$02 BMI L2DE4 LDA #$b0 LDX #$52 JSR $056e L2DE4: What sprite is it? yes, the alien head for the menu. (not shown: right above that was the plotting of marine and predator) What do we learn? Based on the value of $06 the alien head is (not) shown in the menu. The same value is used on some loop above the selection code to OR some values which are tested for left/right. What does this mean, why do we want to make an OR if we have only one Lynx... and why is all this keypad reading and storing (not shown at all) done so terribly complicated... based on some indizes... could it mean...yes indeed!!! Checking the main code result in a lot of SERDAT occurances... means: COMLYNX code!!!! => a short check with two Lynxes, yes we have comlynx support. And the complicated code for selection "just" synchronizes the selection between two(?) Lynxes.
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E-Jagfest is over, and it's about time we get some updates about the games shown there into public; especially those who are good on their way. So it's time for an official thread on Karate World Tour! Jagfest visitors could try out an early build of the game, and now we are proud to present it to the Atari Age community. "We", that is matashen who is doing the coding and myself who is drawing the graphics; with the final board being designed by Lynxman when it's time. Karate World Tour is a one-on-one competetive fighting game; a genre sorely missing on the Lynx to this day. It is inspired by early western fighting games, namely classics like International Karate and the Way of the Exploding Fist.. This means: no fireballs or quarter-circle plus punch moves, but a more realistic Karate simulation. No energy bars, but points. Just like a real Karate tournament. Highlight of the game will be the 2-player-Comlynx-mode. We hope that Atari fans everywhere will enjoy this game on events like the Jagfest in the future, we want it to become a favorite for occasions where Atarians gather. As with all of matashen's games you will also be able to save your highscores and possibly win/loss-ratio. You can expect all the moves and smooth animation you know from games like IK; nothing is ripped though, but carefully recreated for the Lynx' lower resolution. We will try to put many different locations for the fights in, four of which you can see right here (work in progress). Generally speaking, while our game is inspired by the classics we hope to make it even better if we can. We ope to get this game done in time for a 2013 release; it would be nice to have the first official championships held in November at the e-Jagfest 2013. But we cannot promise that yet, as Green Little Quak-Quak is the top-priority, but Karate World Tour will come right after it. So without further delay, here's the latest screenshots.
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I thought i'd post some pics of the Atari Lynx themed night i organized at this months @RetroTuesday club meet-up as i know people appreciate ComLynxing. Got a few Melbourne Lynx collectors together for some ComLynx action as well as introducing McWill's fantastic LCD and VGA mod to fellow Lynx lovers The biggest surprise of the night is just how SUPERB the Lynx graphics look up on a projector! Everyone was blown away! The pics really don't do it any justice. This served great for Single Player BMX High Score challenges on the big screen As always, full 6-player Checkered Flag and 8-Player Slime World's were the favourite of the night. Here's a bit of a write up on each pic (hope this works with same alignment as posting...) Pic 1 - Lynx Display: I set-up my Lynx hardware and accessories for show & tell. As a side note, after a decade + of owning both CIB Atari Lynx Battery Packs (behind the Lynx Display Unit), i notice they are different language variants Pic 2 - Lynx tub: I brought with me my Lynx library, though most were untouched as everyone wanted to ComLynx. Pic 3 - ComLynx sets: i never take my Lynx's anywhere without packing these essential ComLynx sets I'm just lucky to have picked all these up when they were being sold at ridiculously low prices! Pic 4 - Lynx screens VS: a comparison pic of Checkered Flag running on a classic Lynx II screen (on the Left) vs McWill's LCD modded Lynx II (on the Right). Pictures SERIOUSLY DO NOT DO THIS JUSTICE! Pic 5 - Lynx VGA: taking turns at California Games BMX on the projector. The picture quality was better than anyone could have hoped for! Pic 6 - Slime World: a close up of McWill's LCD screen modded Lynx II. Isn't she beautiful?!... Pic 7 - 8P Slime World: Love, love, love this game in full 8 player ComLynx mode! Unfortunately, one guy keeps winning every time we link-up (and he doesn't even own the game ). We also tried out the Competitive mode (3?) for the first time and i was waaaay in the lead... until someone's power adapter cord came out and it froze the network Pic 8 - Lynx 6P Checkered Flag: I claimed 1st spot again in 6P mode (no drones). This is the ONLY car racing game that i am any good at - retro or current systems! I just love the simplicity of it: Left, Right, go, stop. It doesn't need to get any more complicated than that! Pic 9 - BMX Bandit: This is, without a doubt, the best i have ever gone in the BMX challenge on California Games! While the High Score of 415 may not be the highest ever, i don't think i've ever seen so many seconds left in the bag (over half a minute) after crossing the finish line! Does anyone have their scores and (especially) time left recorded for comparisons sake? I'm really curious as to how the hell i got that - especially considering i had 3 other players trying to crash into me from the start That's it. Hope you enjoyed seeing them. If anyone has pics to share of any of their ComLynx events/party's i would love to check them out!
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G'day guys! Anyone heading down to PAX AUS this weekend? If so, come say hi and join in on the Atari Lynx mulitplayer action! I am running the Retro Handheld Area so naturally I'm turning it into a Lynx-Fest I'll be cycling between 4P California Games, 6P Checkered Flag, 8P Slime World and thanks to Carl Forhan from Songbird Productions, a couple of ComLynxed Championship Rally's as well. If you are attending definitely come and say 'Howdy' (I'll be in my Weird And Retro tee) and have a game with fellow Lynx lovers. Or, if you wish, have a crack at the other classic handhelds as well: Game&Watch, Gameboys (solo & linked), Game Gear, WonderSwans, Neo Geo Pockets, and the rest. Though honestly, not sure why you'd go for any of that considering there's so many lovely Lynxes ComLynxed for your gaming pleasure! So, with all that said and done... "Gentlemen... Start, your, Lynxes!!!"
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- ComLynx
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