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New homebrew called "Rocketeer"


GroovyBee

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This thread and threads like the 7800 XM thread make me nauseous. More butt kissing in them than anything I have seen in my lifetime. People willing to put up with anything so long as their hopes of receiving the goods are still somewhat intact. What about holding people accountable? Wow.

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This thread and threads like the 7800 XM thread make me nauseous. More butt kissing in them than anything I have seen in my lifetime. People willing to put up with anything so long as their hopes of receiving the goods are still somewhat intact. What about holding people accountable? Wow.

 

Accountability is good. I think we all agree on this.

 

However, this is a disagreement between two entities (individuals/groups of individuals) whom we all support -- or at least enjoy their products.

It is also a disagreement that really does not need to be detailed in public -- or debated by those who are not a parties involved in the disagreement (unless brought in as a neutral, third-party arbiter).

After all, if those who know what is supposed to be happening can't agree on things, how do any of us really know what is supposed to happen.

 

Personally, I feel that all will eventually be resolved in some way, shape or form and we will get a lot of great games to enjoy.

 

Mike from Morgantown -- writing from Pittsburgh

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This thread and threads like the 7800 XM thread make me nauseous. More butt kissing in them than anything I have seen in my lifetime. People willing to put up with anything so long as their hopes of receiving the goods are still somewhat intact. What about holding people accountable? Wow.

Accountable for what? As I've said many times before, what transpired between Mark and William is none of my business, and I have no interest in it.

 

GroovyBee promised two games that were pre-ordered, and he has explained that they are delayed. As a home-brew game programmer myself, I can understand how polishing a game can take longer than expected (Christmas Carol was in "any day now" mode for 18 months!).

 

It's not putting up with anything so long as my hopes are intact. Mark is a solid member of this community, in good standing, and I trust him he will deliver. When I pre-paid, I knew I wasn't given a hard delivery date. That it takes longer than I wanted, I can deal with that.

 

Personally, I wouldn't ask for pre-payments on my games for this specific reasons, and perhaps Mark might reconsider not doing so in the future, or even handle the process differently. Certainly he should manage expectations a bit better.

 

Nonetheless, this is why this community supports him. We've seen the demos, we've seen some of his finished products, and we know that he is good for it. At least I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

 

As for any bad blood with Elektronite, that should never have been brought up. William has a tendency of taking umbrage when anybody dares to suggest that his enterprise is just a guy in his living room, making home-brewed games. But for all the professionalism that he wants to claim, then he goes and makes public statements that are unbecoming of a respectable business--to the point of sometimes arguing in public with his own customers, or the community that supports him.

 

I look forward to Hovver Bovver as much as to Mark's other games, but frankly I don't care when it comes out, or who publishes it, or even if Mark is working on it at all. That's Elektronite's problem.

 

I think this thread has gone poisonous again. I thought it had a chance to recover--and for a while it looked like it had--but apparently not. I won't be posting here again.

 

GroovyBee, I wish you luck. (And please, finish a game at least--give us something.) :)

 

dZ.

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Groovy Bee's next game should be "Trolls". Where from a bridge a Norse God, summons lighting to scare away Trolls that attack him. If you miss the Troll, you upset him and he grows with his anger. With his larger size it takes more lightning bolts to scare the Troll away. If you can't scare him fast enough, he becomes too large the bridge breaks and the Troll swallows Groovy Bee, opps I mean the Norse God.

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This thread and threads like the 7800 XM thread make me nauseous. More butt kissing in them than anything I have seen in my lifetime. People willing to put up with anything so long as their hopes of receiving the goods are still somewhat intact. What about holding people accountable? Wow.

 

Forget Syria, forget the global financial crisis, forget spiralling global poverty, forget the loss of biodiversity - it's the f*&^ing homebrewers we need to sort out! NAO!

 

:lolblue:

 

Go battle some multinational megacorp with your pent-up man-rage... leave the fun and games to the happy old fucks like us who enjoy them (or wait patiently to enjoy them in some cases :0)

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Just as long as we have a steady supply of homebrews it makes all those other petty world problems seem like nothing!

 

That it is why it is so vital we keep these homebrews coming out like clockwork.

 

We need a Sally Strothers intellivision fun raiser 1 hour special to feed our hungry system!

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We need a homebrew release that increases awareness of the decrease of biodiversity in the world ;-) Maybe Utopia 2...

 

Sorry, I'm a science guy :-)

We need a homebrew release that revolves around global extinction of all biological lifeforms :) maybe Utopia Falls

 

Sorry, I'm a crazy guy :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Time for an update :-

 

My Rev3 cart prototype PCB will be in late next week. As soon as its built up I'll be adding photos of it to this thread. Once its working I'll post a video (if sh3-rg/Reboot will kindly host it on youtube). revolutionika has kindly offered to test this cart design on his menagerie of machines after that. I know that I don't have enough Intys to do extensive testing on and we all know Rev has a stockpile ;).

 

Rocketeer will be completed and the final version available to play at eJagFest (at the end of November). I'll also have some proto carts there (along with the proto multi-cart) if people want to see them in action. If it all goes to plan and the new design checks out OK I'll be in a position to start building carts and shipping them out in December. Unfortunately it can't be earlier than that because of the time needed to get the PCBs made.

 

Whats new in Rev3? This PCB contains a microcontroller and is all .1" pitch devices. Once Rocketeer and Mars Minis ships I'll be making the PCBs available (and a ROM creator tool) to other homebrew developers. That means if you can solder (or find somebody that can) you can make your own runs of carts just like homebrewers in the 2600/7800/jag/Vectrex/G7000 scenes already do. All you need to do after purchasing the PCBs is order the rest of the parts from your favourite electronics component supplier e.g. RS/Farnell/Digikey/Mouser and invest in a cheap microcontroller programmer.

 

Using a microcontroller means its a flexible design and the same PCB will support games up to 42K (words) which pretty much covers most homebrews.

 

What happened to Rev1 and Rev2? Rev1 only supported games up to 16K (words) and was originally designed to hold Rocketeer. After discussions with nonner242 on the direction to take KillBotz (and later Terra 5) it was pretty clear that those games would be too big to fit into 16K and Rocketeer was already having its wings clipped to fit into the cart size as well. I don't like saying "no" to team members, especially when they come up with good ideas because it stifles their creativity (homebrew game development should be fun for everybody) so I needed a cart design that I could take forward and get a few years use out of. That led on to Rev2. Rev2 is based on the same design idea I used in the multi-cart with an embedded ARM core at its heart. Unfortunately the project kinda exploded with feature creep and so its been put back until next year.

 

All my currently announced Inty projects will be handled by Rev3 so that also takes the pressure off when Rev2 becomes available.

 

On a side note: Just because I'm not going to toe to toe with Willy about the Hover Bovver fiasco publicly doesn't mean I've left the scene, run off with peoples money or cancelled any of my projects. My current focus areas are Rev3 PCB, Rocketeer and Mars Minis. All other Inty projects will be worked on after that.

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Glad to hear it! I won't be attending the eJagFest, but I wish you luck with your exposition.

 

Also, are you implying that the Multi-cart will be Rev3 as well, or will you pursue Rev2? In any case, it's in hold, right?

 

Thanks for the update!

 

dZ.

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Glad to hear it! I won't be attending the eJagFest, but I wish you luck with your exposition.

People will be able to play the current versions of the games at Play Expo this weekend. Due to the large capacity crowd there (5000+) its not as informal or developer orientated as eJagFest. At eJagFest you get a much better opportunity to show off WIPs and hardware prototypes to people who are genuinely interested in what you are working on.

 

Also, are you implying that the Multi-cart will be Rev3 as well, or will you pursue Rev2? In any case, it's in hold, right?

The multi-cart and the Rev3 carts are different beasts entirely. They only have the PCB form factor in common. The multi-cart and Rev2 are similar (with an embedded ARM chip on each) but you can think of the Rev2 as being 100% targeted at running a single game like the 2600's Melody or the Inty's JLP. As I said in the multi-cart thread its on hold until the New Year.

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