Tail of Beta Lyrae

[bfollett]

I never played Tail of Beta Lyrae but saw it mentioned in the Philip Price Alternate Reality thread. It seemed to be well liked, so I was going to try it in one of the emulators, but I can't get it to run correctly. I have about 6 copies of it and none of them seem playable. Does someone have a copy they know runs in one of the emulators? If so could you post it and tell me which emulator and the configuration to use (machine type, NTSC/Pal, memory needed etc). Oddly I had a little better success running under atari800win than Altirra and that usually isn't the case anymore.

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

[+therealbountybob]

There's a lot of it about

 

This file version should work ok (tested on altirra & atari800win+4.0 NTSC/PAL)

(It's missing the nice intro off the disk version though)

 

TAIL-FixedXL-WithGravityBalls.zip

 

TTOBL is the current HSC game so feel free to post a score folks - there's a few hints too!

You might want to read the comments from mr Price on the previous HSC run (last page or so)

[Albert]

Tail of Beta Lyrae happened to be the very first game I bought for my Atari 800XL after purchasing a 1050 drive. I played the hell out of that game and loved every minute of it! It's too bad that many games I'd buy later didn't live up to the quality of Beta Lyrae. Wish I still had my original copy!

 

..Al

[Mclaneinc]

As we found out from Philip himself, Tail has a lot of protection in it that may or may not be properly cracked per image, one way to try and make it happy is accurate sector loading times so take the SIO patch of if running a disc version and set the timing to accurate for the drive.

 

If its a US version which I suspect most cracks will be make sure its set to NTSC because of the difference in speed.

 

Odd you found Win playing it better as Altirra is the most accurate emulator out there at the moment. Thinking about it maybe that's the reason, Philip's checks are failing because of bad cracks where on a less accurate machine they may pass by accident.

 

Whatever the answer enjoy the game as its superb if not bloody hard later on

Edited August 7, 2013 by Mclaneinc

[bfollett]

Thanks the version you posted works. But, boy it's not an easy game is it! I long ago downloaded a large repository of Atari games and it had 5 versions of the program plus I downloaded a Vapiware version and none of those worked. Phil did know his copy protection.

 

Bob

 

 

There's a lot of it about

 

This file version should work ok (tested on altirra & atari800win+4.0 NTSC/PAL)

(It's missing the nice intro off the disk version though)

 

TAIL-FixedXL-WithGravityBalls.zip

 

TTOBL is the current HSC game so feel free to post a score folks - there's a few hints too!

You might want to read the comments from mr Price on the previous HSC run (last page or so)

[bfollett]

Odd you found Win playing it better as Altirra is the most accurate emulator out there at the moment. Thinking about it maybe that's the reason, Philip's checks are failing because of bad cracks where on a less accurate machine they may pass by accident.

 

 

Attached is one of the versions that you can at least get past the title screen with atari800win and you just get stuck with Altirra.

 

Bob

Tail Of Beta Lyrae, The (v1).xex

[+remowilliams]

The VAPI version on Atarimania should work properly.

[bfollett]

I retested the VAPI version on Atarimania. You are correct it did run under Altirra, but not 800win. The title screen was messed up at the top like every other version I tried, but that did not mess up game play. I wonder if the corruption was present on the released version?

 

Bob

[Philip Price]

By

I retested the VAPI version on Atarimania. You are correct it did run under Altirra, but not 800win. The title screen was messed up at the top like every other version I tried, but that did not mess up game play. I wonder if the corruption was present on the released version?

 

Bob

 

If by title screen you mean the static picture with the ship. Then what I was leveraging was pixel decay latency. I alternated every 1/60th of second on the top of the screen between display list that provided text and display list elements that provided graphics. Even in 1982 the effect was not all I wanted it to be, but was better than what appears now with fast pixel decay. It looked a bit transparent in old TVs, but there was still some flicker visible. With emulators and a modern Graphics card and monitors, the effect isn't the same.

 

Similar to this I used effects to alternate on AR starfield, though I think the emulators often only catch half of the frames and stars thereby look like they are only on half the screen on modern emulators. Even with an Atari 8 bit computer, if it is displayed on a modern monitor or TV the latency I could depend on won't be there (This is normally a very good thing, it prevents unintentional blur). I worked with what I had in 1982-83 (Beta Lyrae), and 1983-1984 (AR). (Publish date was probably many many months after I finished [so I think AR for example was mostly an 1984 work from my point of view, but published in 1985...but I could be wrong, it was almost 30 years ago).

 

Phil

[bfollett]

Ah with that ex

By

 

 

If by title screen you mean the static picture with the ship. Then what I was leveraging was pixel decay latency. I alternated every 1/60th of second on the top of the screen between display list that provided text and display list elements that provided graphics. Even in 1982 the effect was not all I wanted it to be, but was better than what appears now with fast pixel decay. It looked a bit transparent in old TVs, but there was still some flicker visible. With emulators and a modern Graphics card and monitors, the effect isn't the same.

 

Similar to this I used effects to alternate on AR starfield, though I think the emulators often only catch half of the frames and stars thereby look like they are only on half the screen on modern emulators. Even with an Atari 8 bit computer, if it is displayed on a modern monitor or TV the latency I could depend on won't be there (This is normally a very good thing, it prevents unintentional blur). I worked with what I had in 1982-83 (Beta Lyrae), and 1983-1984 (AR). (Publish date was probably many many months after I finished [so I think AR for example was mostly an 1984 work from my point of view, but published in 1985...but I could be wrong, it was almost 30 years ago).

 

Phil

 

Ah with that explanation I turned on Altirra's frame blending option and I get what I think is closer to the intended effect. You certainly did like to push the Atari's graphics.

 

Bob