Inflate/Deflate Has anyone optimized these routines

[Marius]

@lance

 

Although I know some of these disappointing quality troubles with other companies, I think these examples should be used as learning points how NOT to act. Act better than the others.

 

We have seen some excellent new releases the last 25 years here in the atariscene and most of these new releases came with outstanding documemtation, labels, boxes and all that.

 

I would not say that we are spoiled with those new games, but the people who released all this excellent stuff did define a new standard in quality.

 

Besides all this great new quality, we have also seen that new game releases did eventually get one or two software updates (bug fixes). That is highly appreciated.

 

Although I can follow your thoughts, I think people expect from you that in case of serious bugs, you will do everything to work it out with the customer. I am talking about serious bugs where a game crashes on a PAL system (example).

 

I think that are the situations people are concerned about here.

 

Like I wrote in the other post I decided to buy Venture and Tempest Xtreem. I do not care about labels or cart shell quality. You convinced me by showing me a warm and dedicated person. I am pretty sure you want people here to be happy with your games. So perhaps you can give some insight in what happens if it turns out that some of the products has a serious flaw.

Edited April 25, 2017 by ProWizard

[video61atarisales]

@lance

 

Although I know some of these disappointing quality troubles with other companies, I think these examples should be used as learning points how NOT to act. Act better than the others.

 

We have seen some excellent new releases the last 25 years here in the atariscene and most of these new releases came with outstanding documemtation, labels, boxes and all that.

 

I would not say that we are spoiled with those new games, but the people who released all this excellent stuff did define a new standard in quality.

 

Besides all this great new quality, we have also seen that new game releases did eventually get one or two software updates (bug fixes). That is highly appreciated.

 

Although I can follow your thoughts, I think people expect from you that in case of serious bugs, you will do everything to work it out with the customer. I am talking about serious bugs where a game crashes on a PAL system (example).

 

I think that are the situations people are concerned about here.

 

Like I wrote in the other post I decided to buy Venture and Tempest Xtreem. I do not care about labels or cart shell quality. You convinced me by showing me a warm and dedicated person. I am pretty sure you want people here to be happy with your games. So perhaps you can give some insight in what happens if it turns out that some of the products has a serious flaw.

and there were and some still are, multimillion dollar or higher enterprises that still make mistakes in programming, and lots of companies do not market their stuff very well.

 

the first home brew ever, came with a very primitive lousy label and no packing at all. it was the best i could do back then. yet what did that release do? why it started the whole homebrew scene. my friend harry dodgson and i started this whole scene.

 

we were, and still are old school. we knew the atari market back then, and its still that type of market today. otherwise i would be long gone. been doing it since 1983, and i am still here.

to make a product first class as its viewed by some, is their right to do. but mine spreads a little wealth.

 

recently we were told about a pal bug in a game. as soon as we thought we had a fix, i mailed out another cart to the customer right away. paid the shipping to europe, never demanded that the other cart be shipped back first, only asked that he would report back to me if the fix worked, and that when ever he could, at his own leisure, ship the other cart back.

 

never heard from him since.

 

that is the only bug that was ever reported to me since i took over atlantis games group completely. and it was not venture. so i do not care if i meet someone elses high standards, unless they tell me its what i have to do. then i have to respond.

 

our games are well done. they are done good enough, so that people are actually buying real atari equipment to play them. volkswagan made a good bug car, but if you want fancy packing and prestige, some people buy corvettes:)

[+Stephen]

Don't hurt yourself patting your own back so hard. You personally started the homebrew scene - LMFAO.

 

 

The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Silicon Valley which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986, and was depicted in the films Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) and Jobs (2013), as well as the PBS documentary series, Triumph of the Nerds (1996).

 

A little humility can go a LONG way.

[video61atarisales]

Don't hurt yourself patting your own back so hard. You personally started the homebrew scene - LMFAO.

 

 

 

A little humility can go a LONG way.

 

it sure goes a long way with me, because we are the ones who did it for the atari world.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600_homebrew

 

hobbyist Harry Dodgson released the first homebrew cartridge, titled 7800/2600 Monitor Cartridge.[9] The cartridge was not a game, but rather a diagnostic tool that Dodgson hoped to persuade Atari Corp to market to customers interested in programming their own Atari 7800 games. As Atari no longer manufactured the keyboard controller required by the cartridge, they declined, so Dodgson decided to manufacture and market the cartridge on his own.[9]

Dodgson purchased a batch of Atari 7800 Hat Trick games at Big Lots for a dollar or less each, and cannibalized the parts to create the new monitor cartridge. He then advertised the cartridge on Usenet and in a catalog for video game store Video 61, ultimately selling around 25 cartridges. With the relatively small number of hand-made cartridges, the title is considered a rarity among homebrews.[9] The rights to the cartridge were later purchased by Video 61.[9]

 

actually i used to keep track, but i think we made about 130 of them. i had to butcher over 100 hat tricks out of my own inventory to do this. harry found about thirty at a big lots store. i have some left somewhere, but the batteries went dead. when we did this, not one of my customers that purchased them, ever complained about the label, let alone the packaging, because there was no packaging.

 

we never set up any parameters about how the atari homebrew scene was to be operated. we never anointed any gate keepers at all. we just wanted to get programs out there, that were needed.

 

i followed i think it was the next year, with a little pong game, not much, not the best, but it helped us again to get our feet wetter, paddle wars cartridge for the atari 8-bit. sold perhaps a couple of dozen, no complaints about the crummy label or packaging.

 

since then i have released more games on cartridge in the atariworld, than anyone else, "that i am aware of". and there is more to come. more people to help, more programs to keep people using their atari's.

 

so to the people who want to put out their corvettes, more power to them, but i like my bugs.

 

i own many games, bought them when everyone else deserted atari for nintindo, etc. i pay royalties on some of the games i publish, i have acquired the rights to many games, i have licensed many games that all but disappeared in the atari world.

 

i helped save the games that atari refused to release on the XEGS, the lynx, and the 7800 i bought many of them.

[_The Doctor__]

He did it on his own and was hawking his homebrew on usenet like so many others..(search usenet archives) He did it on his own until later.. when you came along and agreement to sell came along..later still,.given rights etc.....much later, yes, years later you made/sold the carts all by yourself

 

and he pretty much says this in interviews as well as elsewhere... maybe we should take a wiki edit over what comes directly from Dodgsen himself... here is one such interview to back this up...

 

MT> So, how EXACTLY did you manufacture the first cartridges?
HD> I bought a "Hat Trick" cartridge, removed the ROM, changed the onboard jumpers, installed a socket and plugged in an EPROM which was programmed with the previously mentioned AIM-65 using a board I bought that did 3 types of EPROMs (1K, 2K, and 4K). A piece of blue self-adhesive shelf paper cut to size finished it off.

MT> You and Lance at Video 61 seem to make a good team. How and why did the two of you meet and decide to work together concerning programming and manufacturing homebrew cartridges?
HD> I really don't remember how that came to be. I know I did the initial runs of the monitor cartridge myself. It wasn't until many years later that Lance took over that task.

http://www.gooddealgames.com/interviews/int_Harry%20Dodgson.html

 

and there is more if you look and listen... it is great that you sold products from one person or another over time... you are always looking to obtain different rights for software or products any way you can that is cool... but once again we go to the sources find it's not exactly what you say it was.... that pesky internet... I do hope for more stuff though.... I am sure you know how to find old usenet posts and of interviews thru out time..... I think he was very gracious in that interview by the way.

Edited April 26, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[MEtalGuy66]

Yep. Good ol Lance Rinquist.. Biggest BUTT-PIRATE there ever was in the atari scene. Likes to "aquire" rights to others work and then threaten legal action against those who won't bow to his awesome authority.

 

Ask Sal Esquivel and Pete Meyer how Lance "Aquired" the rights to the software they have written in recent years.

 

Something along the lines of:

 

"Guys, some of the original games companies from the 80s are going to try and sue you for similarity to their products.. Better sign the rights over to me so that my lawyers can protect it all..."

 

Lance is a slimy piece of filth that has been slithering through the Atari community, leaving a stinking trail of disgust for decades..

 

Don't give him your money, don't take him seriously, and don;t worry about his ridiculous legal threats.

[video61atarisales]

He did it on his own and was hawking his homebrew on usenet like so many others..(search usenet archives) He did it on his own until later.. when you came along and agreement to sell came along..later still,.given rights etc.....much later, yes, years later you made/sold the carts all by yourself

 

and he pretty much says this in interviews as well as elsewhere... maybe we should take a wiki edit over what comes directly from Dodgsen himself... here is one such interview to back this up...

 

MT> So, how EXACTLY did you manufacture the first cartridges?

HD> I bought a "Hat Trick" cartridge, removed the ROM, changed the onboard jumpers, installed a socket and plugged in an EPROM which was programmed with the previously mentioned AIM-65 using a board I bought that did 3 types of EPROMs (1K, 2K, and 4K). A piece of blue self-adhesive shelf paper cut to size finished it off.

 

MT> You and Lance at Video 61 seem to make a good team. How and why did the two of you meet and decide to work together concerning programming and manufacturing homebrew cartridges?

HD> I really don't remember how that came to be. I know I did the initial runs of the monitor cartridge myself. It wasn't until many years later that Lance took over that task.

 

http://www.gooddealgames.com/interviews/int_Harry%20Dodgson.html

 

and there is more if you look and listen... it is great that you sold products from one person or another over time... you are always looking to obtain different rights for software or products any way you can that is cool... but once again we go to the sources find it's not exactly what you say it was.... that pesky internet... I do hope for more stuff though.... I am sure you know how to find old usenet posts and of interviews thru out time..... I think he was very gracious in that interview by the way.

no he did not do it totally on his own. all through the process i was there. i took over distribution by the third cartridge. harry called me and told me i was right, it was to hard to do programming, and selling at the same time.

 

i also ended up building the cartridges to. harry has had some health problems, and things might be fuzzy for him now. but since his wife called me two days ago to keep me updated as to his health, i can see why things got fuzzy.

 

and yes i saw that. but harry is not well. but that is a good idea, if he survives, i will get him to change it. till then, where were you when all of this was going on? you seem to be in charge now, how did you attain such stature?

 

all the people i knew from atari, or meet through atari, i never heard of you? nor was i ever informed that you were going to be the one who had the power to determine how the atari market was to operate. so, who are you, and where did you get that power?

[JoSch]

Can you both please stop the bickering?

[video61atarisales]

Yep. Good ol Lance Rinquist.. Biggest BUTT-PIRATE there ever was in the atari scene. Likes to "aquire" rights to others work and then threaten legal action against those who won't bow to his awesome authority.

 

Ask Sal Esquivel and Pete Meyer how Lance "Aquired" the rights to the software they have written in recent years.

 

Something along the lines of:

 

"Guys, some of the original games companies from the 80s are going to try and sue you for similarity to their products.. Better sign the rights over to me so that my lawyers can protect it all..."

 

Lance is a slimy piece of filth that has been slithering through the Atari community, leaving a stinking trail of disgust for decades..

 

Don't give him your money, don't take him seriously, and don;t worry about his ridiculous legal threats.

you got caught, get over it.

[MEtalGuy66]

you got caught, get over it.

No idea what you are referring to.

[video61atarisales]

No idea what you are referring to.

of course you do. how else would you know about any legal claims i made, from the bill of sales i produced.

[peteym5]

This thread is INFLATEing in ways I never intended. Maybe I should have the moderator let me rename this thread "history of treachery, hacking and piracy."

 

I got the latest modification to speed up INLFATE. I got that 27K game binary to decompress from a 16K cart area into RAM about 3.0 seconds, about 0.5 seconds faster from what I started with.

 

Using compression is important because it is allowing to games into the next cartridge size smaller, for example a 32K game can be put into a 16K cartridge, or to add more stuff onto the bigger cartridges. There may be pricing and availability issues with different cartridge sizes and types.

 

I do programming for the Atari 8-bit and always looking for ways to help others and improve what I am working on. Posting on here is sometimes like tip-toeing mind field, say something that can be construed to be about anti-piracy, you are attacked.

 

Again, for those who seriously want to work with me, I am posting updates on Inflate here. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/264720-inflatedeflate-improving-the-speed-of-decompression

Edited April 26, 2017 by peteym5

[MEtalGuy66]

Lance, I assure you I have no idea. Thankfully, I haven't had the misfortune of being involved in any business with you. The only official papers I've seen related to any of your "business" have been ones that others have publicly posted on this forum. So, thankfully, I haven't "lost" anything.

 

And I'm a pirate myself. I have no reason to try to buy anything that you consider yours.. Id much rather see it distributed for free. I have a job that pays my bills just fine. It has nothing to do with Atari software.

 

I just hate to see others waste money on stuff you have laid claim to.

Edited April 26, 2017 by MEtalGuy66

[Irgendwer]

[+MrFish]

Lip-synced

Edited April 26, 2017 by MrFish

[flashjazzcat]

Worst bit of miming is around 0:52 where Jack Buchanan keeps holding a note after closing his mouth.

[gozar]

This thread is INFLATEing in ways I never intended. Maybe I should have the moderator let me rename this thread "history of treachery, hacking and piracy."

 

I got the latest modification to speed up INLFATE. I got that 27K game binary to decompress from a 16K cart area into RAM about 3.0 seconds, about 0.5 seconds faster from what I started with.

 

Using compression is important because it is allowing to games into the next cartridge size smaller, for example a 32K game can be put into a 16K cartridge, or to add more stuff onto the bigger cartridges. There may be pricing and availability issues with different cartridge sizes and types.

 

With today's technology, there is no need to resort to any tricks. Use an AtariMax cart, STM324 microcontroller, floppy disk, etc. By putting 128KB on the cart, you game can run on lower specced machines (>64K) too. Allows more time to be spent on development and less on deployment, while increasing profit margins. As Jon said, using EPROMs have to be "the most expensive storage medium known to man".

[peteym5]

 

With today's technology, there is no need to resort to any tricks. Use an AtariMax cart, STM324 microcontroller, floppy disk, etc. By putting 128KB on the cart, you game can run on lower specced machines (>64K) too. Allows more time to be spent on development and less on deployment, while increasing profit margins. As Jon said, using EPROMs have to be "the most expensive storage medium known to man".

 

Finally something related to compression. Well with any of those AtariMax, and other flash carts, we have to buy them in bulk, put our games on them, and sell them. Also run the risk of those games somehow being erased. We are currently have no plans to do games on floppy or SD drive cartridges. Video61 has many of those 16K cartridge Atari and 32K/64K Williams boards in stock that was purchased decades ago.

Edited April 26, 2017 by peteym5

[+MrFish]

why it started the whole homebrew scene. my friend harry dodgson and i started this whole scene.

 

"Homebrew" is just a more recent name for things that have been going on since computers have been in the hands of consumers.

 

APX, Shareware, and little home startup businesses by hundreds of folks back in the day, like Alan Reeve, were there.

 

Some of them grew into more, but it's just people making software and selling it without being a "big business".

Edited April 26, 2017 by MrFish

[peteym5]

For those still interested in what I am doing with compression, I had to make an update last night after finding a bug. I am posting it in the programming sub-forum.

 

Now I have to remind people that improved routines do not get used in any of my games until they are proven to work correctly. If I see a problem, I just stick with an older routine.

 

I am intending to use this improved fast inflate thing with the next Secretum Labyrinth or whatever I may call the next RPG/Adventure game. I am looking to put this game on a 64K or larger ROM cartridge and use compression on top of it.

[peteym5]

I looked at the exomizer decrunch source. I believe it can be optimized a little, but I had issues trying to get this to work. I tried to use it for Tempest Elite about 3 years ago, and it always seem to decompress to some other memory location.

 

I got the inflate to expand what it needs for the 16K Venture in just under 3 seconds with the latest updates, around 2 seconds faster than the unmodified version of deflate, and around a half second faster than what is on the existing retail cartridge.

 

What I am developing for Secretum Labyrinth 3 is I combined several songs into a single RMT file, use a common set of instruments and same instrument numbers. A 7k file contains 4 or 5 songs instead of 1 fitting into a 3k song. So if we need to change the music when going to a different dungeon, it simply changes the song line, no need to inflate another RMT file into RAM. I will have several of these combined files in the cartridge, maybe have 10 different songs playing in different parts of the game. So Inflating faster will help reduce delays when playing the game. The plan is to put the game on a 64K Williams or a 128K XEGS. Flash carts are also being considered.

Edited May 5, 2017 by peteym5

[Marius]

What I am developing for Secretum Labyrinth 3 is I combined several songs into a single RMT file, use a common set of instruments and same instrument numbers. A 7k file contains 4 or 5 songs instead of 1 fitting into a 3k song. So if we need to change the music when going to a different dungeon, it simply changes the song line, no need to inflate another RMT file into RAM. I will have several of these combined files in the cartridge, maybe have 10 different songs playing in different parts of the game. So Inflating faster will help reduce delays when playing the game. The plan is to put the game on a 64K Williams or a 128K XEGS. Flash carts are also being considered.

 

Back in the day I composed songs in CMC format. Back then it was really great, but today with all the fabulous RMT songs, I guess it is too outdated. It was pretty general practice to have more than one song in one file. There were even loop-commands available to loop a certain part in the song so it would not drop by accident to the start of the file (Which would be another song). Downside was though that CMC was limited to a certain amount of song lines and patterns so when you wanted three or four tunes in one file you had to create short tunes. IIRC the pretty cool game 'Simple Minds' from ANG software had a few CMC-tunes in one file.

 

A serious downside of inflating/deflating is that your game won't run on 16K or perhaps even 48K machines. The benefit of carts in general is that your machine does not need lots of ram to play awesome titles.

IIRC Tempest Xtreem was on a 256K cart. Is there a reason why you won't use those anymore. I can understand you want to use smaller carts if you have them in stock, but perhaps it is easier and better for the game to use a bigger cart?

 

I find the achievement of making the process of deflating (and inflating) faster interesting though. It might be useful for other coders and projects too.

[Wrathchild]

I looked at the exomizer decrunch source. I believe it can be optimized a little, but I had issues trying to get this to work. I tried to use it for Tempest Elite about 3 years ago, and it always seem to decompress to some other memory location.

 

I've favoured exomizer for cartridge work (e.g. A8 ports to the 5200) and use the following pattern:

exomizer sfx $2000 -n -t 168 -Di_table_addr=$300 -Di_load_addr=$8000 -o Embargo.sfx Embargo.rom@$2000

i_load_addr is where I want the resulting code to be stored / run from.

The first $2000 is the "Jump to address" after the decompression is done.

(I have used that as a chaining method too, i.e. jump back to the cart to do something else.)

The final '@' value after the binary is its loading address.

Of course this means each compressed section has its own decoder code which isn't efficient space wise.

I'm also yet to use a method by which multiple sections could be encoded with the same key and then have just a single routine call with can be called with their memory start locations to decompress them.

However, for other cartridge work where the 'get disk sector' IO calls were replaced with something to get the data from the right bank/offset in the cartridge, I went for a simple RLE approach

[peteym5]

I decided to just work inflate, as I am busy with getting some games ready themselves. I believe by speeding up and optimizing inflate, it runs as fast as exomizer or RLE. Still need someone to do an independent bench mark. I benched marked it with the Venture 16K cartridge which takes 3.5 seconds to go from power on until the title pops up, used a version I optimized 3 years ago. Standard Inflate takes about 5 seconds. The newest optimized version got it under 3 seconds.

 

I looked into customizing Deflate C source, but it looks like this gets everything from an external source. I would need to port it over to VB.NET to understand what is going on because I am not too fluent in C. I want to change that 3 to 258 copy length minus 2 thing to exact number of bytes it needs to copy. This will make a custom inflate more compact and decompress little faster. Any customized version of Deflate/Inflate will mean that standard Inflate will not be able to expand the memory blocks. I can also make a Windows form application with this also so I don't need to keep going into the command prompt to make the deflate files.

Edited May 11, 2017 by peteym5

[peteym5]

Since this Inflate routine does not use any graphic calls, it can be adapted to easily run on any 6502 based system. 5200 & 7800 for Atari, Commodore, and Apple. One thing I did was compress all that text information that displays under the game title. Like copyright, authors, credits, story, game options. Some games had well over 2k worth of texts cycling onto the screen. I did this to a few games like the upcoming "Miniature Golf" and "Surround'EM" because those games has many different options and I wanted to open up additional space for more features. However, after a recent event in the 5200 area, I have another reason to compress everything for those title screens to make it harder for someone to do something again.

Edited June 15, 2017 by peteym5