Atarixlbox v7 for the Xbox released

[Kr0tki]

double post, sorry

Xevious__final_proto_1984.1.4___1984__Atari__U_.zip

Edited February 17, 2008 by Kr0tki

[Shannon]

Thanks for the info Kr0tki. I've been trying to keep track of all the versions floating around so I can get CRC's of them.

 

On a further note, not much going on my end. But I did get netplay working for the one person on the planet that may use it. Kinda like playback/record it only did controller input, I got it working with keyboard. No analog just yet (if at all). As far as netplay goes its pretty simplistic so it's not the most robust code.

 

The netplay issues were tied in with the problems I had with the record playback working correctly. Once I passed a certain "variable" things seem to work fine. Right now it's an ugly hack I should hopefully be able to clean it up a little.

 

Not very many two player co-op or vs games anyways... and I'm hardly a network gameplay expert.

 

Any comments on my Miner 2049'er skin I mentioned earlier? Since I've been using it I kinda like it myself. Enough to probably trim it down so more so it isn't such a memory hog. Still needs a little tweakin'.

Edited February 18, 2008 by Shannon

[mimo]

I'm loving the Miner skin, one of my fave 8bit games, and as I have said before, anything is better than the xlbox standard skin

[NE146]

Dude..so far the last version you gave us seems almost perfect. Matter o fact to me now, it's pretty much "the" de-facto dream emulator for 5200 & 8 bit games...especially with the analog display gone . The program seems to find matching configs for almost all 5200 games I've tried and they all seem to work perfectly (except maybe missile command of course). Also most 8-bit games seem to work right out of the ballpark as well. I was even playing a little bit of Agent USA this morning and wishing I had a keyboard

 

The Rewind function was throwing me for a loop at first. I was building a friend's xbox and put on the latest version on it with absolutely no pre-config on it, and it didnt work. However, I went ahead and edited atarixlbox.ini manually and now it works great. That is a great feature! I also did it on my own xbox using the in-game menu method. My only suggestion is why isn't it enabled by default? It's a totally fun and cool thing to play with

 

@Kr0tki wow thanks for that Xevious! It certainly does look a lot further along than the one I was used to! I now have to check out Bounty Bob, Spitfire, & Super Pac-Man. I've actually never been able to play any Bounty Bob (8bit or otherwise) on any emulator. One of the 8bit images I have seems to work but crashes when you die. Do you have the links handy to those? Yeah I guess I could look for them, but still It also makes me wonder if the Super Pacman is any better because I HATE the current 5200 version I play.. the ghosts get blue too fast! I was a big fan of the arcade game as a kid, but the 5200 versions I've been playing are almost broken because of that one fact. I even have the game on cart and it's the same thing. So if this version you're talking about is any better, I'd be very interested.

 

And Shannon, yes I really like the Miner 2049'er skin. It friggin rocks But watching it on youtube just makes us anxious to see it in real life

[Kr0tki]

Firstly, deactivate the "Dual Pokey (Stereo)" option in Atari800 when playing ANY version of Bounty Bob. Leaving it active leads to improper sounds.

 

Secondly, the image of 8-bit Bounty Bob cartridge has its issues - 1. it's NTSC only, so while playing in PAL leads sometimes to the game stopping when Bob dies, as you've mentioned; 2. it's unfinishable - the elevator in level 2 doesn't work The good thing is, Atarimania hosts the cassette image of Bounty Bob by US Gold, which works fine, albeit only on PAL machines. This version was also cracked to disk long time ago, I'm sure you'll find the ATR somewhere, if you don't like the CAS file.

 

I suspect the cartridge image to be a bad dump. The 5200 image is fine, however.

 

As for Super Pac-Man, the final version is different in that it has scrolling instructions on the title screen, and some rare bug fixed. Go to AtariProtos for detailed descriptions of the differences in this proto and also the others.

[Shannon]

Firstly, deactivate the "Dual Pokey (Stereo)" option in Atari800 when playing ANY version of Bounty Bob. Leaving it active leads to improper sounds.

 

As for Super Pac-Man, the final version is different in that it has scrolling instructions on the title screen, and some rare bug fixed. Go to AtariProtos for detailed descriptions of the differences in this proto and also the others.

Well that creates an interesting dilemna 4 me. The sound issues that atarixlbox had with pokey new was with stereo disabled the frequency of the sound would be too high.

 

I thought someone hacked Super Pac-Man to work correctly over in the hacks forum. Or was that my over active imagination?

 

Dude..so far the last version you gave us seems almost perfect. Matter o fact to me now, it's pretty much "the" de-facto dream emulator for 5200 & 8 bit games...especially with the analog display gone . The program seems to find matching configs for almost all 5200 games I've tried and they all seem to work perfectly (except maybe missile command of course). Also most 8-bit games seem to work right out of the ballpark as well. I was even playing a little bit of Agent USA this morning and wishing I had a keyboard

Yeah I gotta finish working on the analog for games like Missile Command. I kinda got side tracked with the miner 2049'er skin, record/playback, and netplay The configuration thing in some ways is kind of a temp thing.

 

Once I release this baby I'm gonna work on getting the gamebase stuff going. So far it looks like it will be possible. Creating a complete gamebase though can be pretty time consuming though so I put in the CRC check thing for a temp fix. Although I'm not sure how much of a memory hog the gamebase functionality is just yet.

 

The Rewind function was throwing me for a loop at first. I was building a friend's xbox and put on the latest version on it with absolutely no pre-config on it, and it didnt work. However, I went ahead and edited atarixlbox.ini manually and now it works great. That is a great feature! I also did it on my own xbox using the in-game menu method. My only suggestion is why isn't it enabled by default? It's a totally fun and cool thing to play with

Silly me. I don't think I ever included an atarixlbox.ini file with anything I sent you all so that would explain it. My bad. I don't know why I didn't realize that to begin with.

 

@Kr0tki wow thanks for that Xevious! It certainly does look a lot further along than the one I was used to! I now have to check out Bounty Bob, Spitfire, & Super Pac-Man. I've actually never been able to play any Bounty Bob (8bit or otherwise) on any emulator.

I only found one Bounty Bob image that worked in atarixlbox and even then it was a bit flakey. That game has some pretty wacky protection/bank switchin/who knows what. I'll have to try the other two that apparently seem to be floating around. I could never figure out how to start Spitfire once it is loaded.

 

And Shannon, yes I really like the Miner 2049'er skin. It friggin rocks But watching it on youtube just makes us anxious to see it in real life

ok thanks for the input guys. I still need to trim up the size of a few of the animations. Miner does not really have any music, well nothing real memorable. Although I could go for a combo of atmospheric sounds (from bounty bob and the high score screen on miner). Bounty has some music but I'm not too sure if I care for it.

 

Anyways I'm getting fairly close to a release. It's just a matter of follow up on loose ends. All the major stuff has been mostly dealt with. That netplay stuff really had me for a loop there, major brainlock on my part. Might need to take a brain break. Luckily though today I managed to get around the issue I was having.

 

So for now netplay works, keyboard presses are processed, pausing while in netplay works (that last one had me baffled for a while there). No analog in netplay yet, that one is next but should be easier than I was originally thinking. Oddly enough netplay does not confirm that both players have the same ROM loaded so it can make for pretty interesting situation. Somehow I get the feeling x-port threw netplay in as an afterthought.

 

I'm gonna try a test. I'm gonna replace the exe, disk, and cassette parameters with just -run. With that being done it would leave only computer_type and cartridge_type that the user would have to worry about. I'm about 99% sure it will work.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well thanks to kr0tki's comment about disabling stereo in order to get bounty bob to play/sound correctly I was able to get Bounty Bob working and sounding correctly in the emu!!!

 

There are only two working versions of bounty bob that I could find. The first is the correct 5200 dump which is here at AtariAge in the 5200 section. The other one is the cassette version released in the UK. I would suggest using the correct 5200 dump, but if you insist on using the cassette version be sure to set the video mode to PAL. There is a third version of the cassette version that some guy ripped to disk, but it crashes on level 6? The level with an elevator.

 

Oh and it will only work with the compiled emulator version that I currently have.

 

Interesting thing is this solved the mystery of the pokey_new sound being too high in pitch. Apparently there a three parameters that control stereo sound. One is a compile time option which just completely disables it. A global variable "stereo_enabled" to toggle it on/off. A parameter that is passed to the pokey_init module that tells how many pokeys are in the system. Well if you set the number of pokeys to one and leave stereo_enabled, it does the funky pitch thing. Anyways....

 

Spent most of my time just fiddling with little things. Tweaking the skin, disabling keyboard presses when playback is active (and it lets you know too!!), getting netplay to pause correctly, adjusting the size of rewind so it does not freak out in certain situations (like when my miner 2049'er skin is loaded). Phew what a memory hog rewind can be. Savestate load screen is a little more informational when sent to it from the save/record option. When you save a picture it removes the screenshot save path from the name so you can actually see what filenumber it was saved as.

 

Here is the music file I currently have for the miner 2049'er skin. It's a mix of the robot demo music, oh my darling clementine (from 2049'er), some atmospheric sounds, and the music that plays after you enter your high score in bounty bob. In the skin it is set to loop.

 

Give it a WalkingRobot.mp3 listen.

Edited February 21, 2008 by Shannon

[NE146]

Well thanks to kr0tki's comment about disabling stereo in order to get bounty bob to play/sound correctly I was able to get Bounty Bob working and sounding correctly in the emu!!!

 

Dude this emulator is getting awesomer by the moment To me it's the best one since it plays easily on any tv.. Now I'm racking my brain trying to think of anything else that was unplayable before and that you could possibly fix

 

 

Here is the music file I currently have for the miner 2049'er skin. It's a mix of the robot demo music, oh my darling clementine (from 2049'er), some atmospheric sounds, and the music that plays after you enter your high score in bounty bob. In the skin it is set to loop.

Give it a WalkingRobot.mp3 listen.

 

I dig it! Did you make that yourself?

[Shannon]

Yeah I dumped all those different elements using atari800 plus and then combined them together. I kept the walking robot thing in there to keep it more interesting. The 2049'er music aint the best so the smaller the dose the better.

[Shannon]

ok this is mostly grunt work that I needed to get done, but was too lazy too.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Netplay should now work properly and it passes keypresses as well. Not 100% sure, not sure if I care. No analog yet either. Oddly enough netplay does not confirm that both players have the same ROM loaded so it can make for pretty interesting situation.

 

Thanks to Kr0tki Bounty Bob is now playable. There are only two working versions of Bounty Bob that I know of. The correct 5200 dump and the cassette version released in the UK. I highly suggest the 5200 version, UK version is a little slower. Set the UK version to PAL for it to work properly.

 

Record/Playback now works with paddles (0 & 1) when in paddle mode. Yipee! Oddly enough y axis is handled as paddle 1. I'll eventually map this to controller 2 so we can at least have two paddle support.

 

Switched positioning control of sprites in the skin menu to the left analog stick, that way you don't have to worry about unintentionally lowering the volume.

 

Changed the config menu around a bit more.

------------------------------------------

removed atari_ostype. If anyone can think of a reason to keep it, let me know.

removed pokey_type. We default to pokey_new. Is there any reason not to?

 

I renamed "Autoselect Media Type" to "Lock in Autoselect Media Type"

Autoselect pretty much runs everytime there is no config file and it's right 99% of the time anyways.

The "lock in" feature is there to let the user to change the media type if for some odd reason they want to, but prevent the user from accidently changing it.

------------------------------------------

 

Rewind is deactivated when in 130Xe or higher mode (crashes).

 

Basic Cartridge is set to on when autodetect detects a basic program (not sure why I didn't do this a while ago).

 

Tweaked the rewind size so now menu graphics should not dissapear in those rare cases.

 

Savestate load screen is a little more informational when sent to it from the save/record option.

 

When you save a picture it removes the screenshot save path making it easier to see long names.

 

 

bugs

------------------------------------------

leftover Record/playback time is incorrect when recording/playing paddle games. (I'll fix it l8r)

------------------------------------------

 

Configuring a new game is pretty easy now. In 98% of the cases you can just press the B button to exit and that's it. Outside of being asked for a cartridge type. The only exceptions would be if you have to switch to PAL mode or turn of high speed SIO.

 

 

I got this really neat idea that I think you guys are gonna like, but that is all I'm gonna say. Actually I got two, but I think the first will gain the most attention. For now, though, I've been focusing on following up on incomplete stuff.

Edited February 22, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well I got the devkit working on my xbox! Woohoo!! So that oughta make it ALOT easier to track down the harder bugs/issues I run across.

[NE146]

Just wanted to say I'm waiting for the release of this thing, skin and all. Heck the current build I got seems fine enough already. I can only imagine what other stuff & details you're putting in You going to announce this release on xbox-scene or anything? It really is the shiznit for A8bit emulation

[Shannon]

My current mantra is "stay focused". Everytime I sit down and mess with this thing I notice a small little thing here, a small little thing there. Then there is the little side projects I get myself into. The one I'm experimenting on now is a little complicated for me since I really do not know direct3d at all but I did manage to get something to display on the screen so I should be able to hack the rest of it in. I think it will be worth it but if it takes too long I might have to set it aside.

 

Anyways I'd like to get this thing out as well instead of being stuck in dev hell. So I try to alternate between the boring clean up stuff and the fun tinkering around new stuff. I want it to be as simple to use as possible for the 5200 n00b since alot of people do not really understand these old systems. I want them to be able to pop in the ROM's and go, so to speak.

 

I'm almost up to the "T's" in the a800 games. I'm in no big hurry though. Help is hard to find these days and I can only work so fast...

 

Just keep on running into those, dig thru the code realize something else is possible, try to do it modes (feature creep).

 

Only new thing I've done besides tinkering with my new idea is that when a new save state is created it deletes any recordings and if you press the "back" button while in the save state select screen it will allow you to delete that save state (as well as it's recording).

 

Oh and temp code for idea number two mentioned above.

Edited February 27, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

ok. I think it is safe to post a picture of item #1 that I was/is/am working on. It took a bit to get it working, but I'm satisfied enough to follow through with it.

 

Problem is I'm having a bit of trouble finding high resolution versions of the overlays and shrinking down the ones I have now really messes with the font clarity. Because of that I may have to hand create one for each game that needs one.

 

It does leave a question, though, on how to handle this. Should the game pause when it is displayed? or not?

 

Then there is the "shift key" route. With this the user would hold down the virtual keyboard button (aka shift key) use the controller to select the button and the release the "shift key" when done and whatever button was selected would be sent.

 

Thoughts anyone?

 

Oh and the next logical step for this idea would be....

 

 

Time to play some asteroids... I'm in a bit of a pissy mood right now.

Edited February 27, 2008 by Shannon

[mimo]

I think the game should pause, just because I can't multi task

[NE146]

Dude.. that friggin looks bad ass. And the 5200 overlay graphic and the rest gives it that extra touch that brings it right home! And yes I think it should pause.. try that out and see if it works

 

This emulator is turning out great.. Al needs to be alerted of this because when you release it I think it deserves a big announcement here.

[Shannon]

ok. Pause for the 5200 keypad it is. I'll set it up that way when I continue working on it. Hopefully it will work out right. At the moment it just pauses, displays the default pad, and lets you move the cursor around.

 

Well today was 5200 analog tweak day and I would have to say it was pretty productive. I messed around with the analog calculations routines in order to try to make certain games (cough*missile*cough*command*coughcough) playable. Here is what I got so far. I musta tried every method I know of before settling in on the one I have now.

 

Missile Command - I'm pretty satisfied with this one. I can play into the higher levels, no problem. The dpad speed is set to the 2nd fastest speed. The speed is probably a tad slow for people with faster reflexes but too bad!! Personally I think this is about as close to the 5200 feel it will get.

 

Star Wars - Not much to say about this except that the stick is now centered. Control should be a little tighter.

 

Kaboom - I pretty much give up on this one. It's impossible to play with a stick anyways.

 

Breakout - more controllable, but still too hard for me. Because of the way the game handles the stick I don't think I'll be able to get this any better.

 

Tennis - Your player won't jump around (ala pengo style) if you press the stick too far.

 

Centipede - Well I couldn't leave well enough alone. I adjusted this cause I felt the current settings were too sensitive. Personally I'm satisfied with how I got it, it should be more manageable. The dpad speed is about the same as the 5200 to 8-bit conversion.

 

Asteroids - You still have to press left/right or right/left in order to rotate, but now your ship doesn't spin around, thus killing you. Oh and you won't super thrust when using the shield or hyperspace.

 

Pole Position - Probably a little more sensitive than I would like. But I have a feeling most people will prefer it as I have it. The dpad is at the 2nd fastest speed.

 

Gorf - A total waste of my time. I had no luck with it. Just play the digital conversion.

 

Space Invaders - Probably didn't need to be messed with but I did anyways. The transition between the two ship speeds should be improved. Dig pad uses the slowest speed.

 

The dpad should be useable in all of the above except for Gorf (meh), Super Breakout, and Kaboom.

 

If I get a chance I should be able to slap together a build for you all in the next day or so. The 5200 overlay thing wont be complete, though. But the changes I made have the potential to affect EVERY 5200 game. Firstly I'd like you guys to try centipede, missile command, pole position and tell me what you think. Plus let me know if any of the other 5200 games starts acting funky. I went thru the usual trouble makers and didn't have any issues but you never know.

 

Anyways, yes I wanna give the 5200/8-bit first class treatment being that it is an underdog and whatnot. Several of these changes will also come handy when I start working on some of the other x-port emu's.

 

Again, thanks for the help..

Edited February 28, 2008 by Shannon

[mimo]

Kaboom - I pretty much give up on this one. It's impossible to play with a stick anyways.

 

Breakout - more controllable, but still too hard for me. Because of the way the game handles the stick I don't think I'll be able to get this any better.

 

you will get it working when you get the Stelladapter interface working

[Shannon]

I forgot to mention in the last beta I sent out that I tried to add every CRC that I knew of so that all the 5200 games that I "tweaked" will function as intended. So hopefully no matter which dump you are using it will work as intended. Just a side note.

 

I know this is a slow going process, but alot of this stuff is intended to be carried over into some of the other x-port emulators that I plan on working on when finished with this. So I have to be a little more careful/detailed to make sure what I'm doing will be useable in these other projects.

 

I was thinking of incorporating a built in menu system that can read mega disks. Basically the way it would work is you would pick a configuration option use this and then the emu would mount the currently selected file in drive 2. The only boot menu that I know of that can handle "mega disks" is this one menu1.zip

It is nice and compact (only 2k) and would be easy to incorporate.

 

Do any of you know of a better one (albeit small in size?).

Edited March 1, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

Well I got the overlay code functional, and you can move it around on the screen without it smearing everything!! I threw together the code last night and it went faster than I was expecting.

 

Now I just gotta have it remember the overlay position and save it with each game and then attach an overlay to each game based on it's CRC. Once that is done it's a matter of creating the overlay files. At this point I'm hand creating them cause the current scans do not scale down very well... Lots of work... phew!!

[NE146]

I'm excited to check out this latest release! Does it have the new skin on it? Forget it I'll check it out myself Man it sounds like you've been an amazing amount of work on this to have it recognize the CRC's of the rom releases.. holy cow. That is friggin awesome Anyway, I'm downloading it tonight.

[Shannon]

Yeah the CRC's have been a bit of a beast. But I figure this is a 20+ some year old machine so there can only be so many. I did end up slapping them into their own routine though. Those case statements were getting kinda long. I suppose eventually I'll end up slapping them into a table.

 

The only other option was to let the user "tweak" the settings themselves. But there are like 4 different variables. Min/max range, speed increment, center, and range. A bit tedious for the average user and hard to set if you cannot see the stick ranges being used. Using those 4 variables though seemed to be the best workable solution to getting decent analog and digital control.

 

Funny how a project that started out as just a simple.. Fix the sound, fix the screenshots, add artifact mode turned into this. To be honest in the beginning I coulda cared less about the 5200 stuff because most of it was ported over to the 8-bit anyways. But after being spoiled by the analog stick it's sometimes hard to switch back. Plus for some reason most newbs seem to gravitate towards the 5200 stuf so I wanted them to go away with a good impression and not a bunch of headaches.

 

Here is an overlay I created for Star Raiders. I based it off of the "Rescue on Fractalus" in this thread.

 

Shrinking it down without the text blurring is the hard part. I may have to increase the size. (I'm trying not to hog up too much of the screen).

 

I just love that .jpg/.png blur.

Edited March 5, 2008 by Shannon

[Shannon]

I need some opinions here. I took the original scan I got from here at Atari Age and sized it down to the new above proposed size. I then created a new one based on the Fractalus template in above mentioned thread. So which method should I use?

 

A) The lazy way...

 

 

B) Or the custom way?

 

 

 

[mimo]

Custom, you know its worth the effort

[Shannon]

Not much to say. I've created three more overlays. The Atari ones are easy, third party ones a little more work.

 

I set it so paddle 0 is on stick 0 and paddle 1 is on stick 1. Well sorta... It depends on what "port" you set the mouse too. Port 1 equals paddle 0&1, port 2 equals paddle 1&2 (which would map to stick 2&3) etc. As far as I know Atari800 only allows you to have 1 set of paddles "mapped" so to speak. I just slapped that code in for completion sakes, most people will use port 1. In theory you could play 6 player MULE with the 4 controllers.

 

Changed it so the right analog moves the keypad/keyboard, instead of the left. It also remembers the location + transparency of the keypad/keyboard so when you reload the game it will be where you left it.

 

I think that is about it.