Any intact Pole Position ATRs online?

[Foebane]

Most of the ones I've seen have corruption in the graphics when the chequered flags are meant to appear, but are there any ATR files anywhere that still show the flags and not corruption?

 

[Rybags]

The first release was by Atari on cartridge only AFAIK. Fairly likely that most of the executable file versions out there are based on cracked cartridge copies.

 

The game would almost certainly have had self-overwrite copy protection and in some cases of cracked games they don't do a proper job and data can be corrupted either due to incomplete crack or introduction of a bug.

 

There were later releases on tape and disk by Datasoft and US Gold though supposedly the Datasoft version has it's own blimp rather than the Atari labelled one.

There's also modified releases, one with track editor and at least one where they've dicked around with the controls for some unknown reason. I remember playing one where the steering self-centering was removed and where the brake/gear functions were different.

 

Whether other versions have the same corruption, not sure. Pole Position is probably one of the most modified games out for Atari, though sadly such issues as poor colour choices and crappy scrolling for the mountains weren't really tackled.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari_search_112.111.108.101.32.112.111.115.105.116.105.111.110._8_G.html

Edited May 7, 2017 by Rybags

[Foebane]

I'm willing to settle for a ROM file if that's the original - after all, I had this game on ROM back in the day.

 

Are there any Pole Position ROMs?

[DjayBee]

Most of the ones I've seen have corruption in the graphics when the chequered flags are meant to appear, but are there any ATR files anywhere that still show the flags and not corruption?

 

Try the attached one.

Pole Position (1984)(Datasoft)(US)!.atr

[Mclaneinc]

Can't see any corruption on this...

Pole Position (1983)(Atari)(US)!.bin

[Rybags]

The link to Atarimania I put up earlier has the commercial releases, and like I said the Atari original is cartridge and they have a copy.

 

It looks to be unaltered - the blimp looks OK and the program writes to cartridge addresses which would probably crash the game if it was run from Ram.

[+DrVenkman]

The link to Atarimania I put up earlier has the commercial releases, and like I said the Atari original is cartridge and they have a copy.

 

It looks to be unaltered - the blimp looks OK and the program writes to cartridge addresses which would probably crash the game if it was run from Ram.

 

When I run the Atarimania rom in Altirra I get screen corruption on the right side (stock 600XL/800XL, 64K RAM).

 

[Mclaneinc]

Is your overscan setting wider than it should be?

 

I'll bet its on Extended when it should be on Normal...

Edited May 7, 2017 by Mclaneinc

[+DrVenkman]

Is your overscan setting wider than it should be?

 

I'll bet its on Extended when it should be on Normal...

 

Wow, you are correct. I've never, ever changed that setting for as long as I've used Altirra.

[Mclaneinc]

These things happen

[_The Doctor__]

maybe the emulator should see that code or detect it and switch like a real Atari

[Foebane]

Thank you, Rybags, that link did it!

 

The ROM for Pole Position is indeed how I played it back in the day, and the same for Defender and Computer Chess, too! My father used to ration me to one game a year, presumably because he figured I should be learning coding rather than just playing games, or because they were so expensive as ROMs.

 

So yes, the original US ROM version has got the chequered flags at the end of the final lap of the race, but I hadn't seen them for so long (instead of corrupted graphics) that I'd forgotten they had a red outline to them!

 

As of now, I'm replacing the current ATRs I've got of those games with the ROMs that I remember owning.

 

BTW, the US ROMs featured on AtariMania were available in the UK, right?

[MrFish]

As of now, I'm replacing the current ATRs I've got of those games with the ROMs that I remember owning.

 

You may be enjoying using Atarimania's site, with all the info and documentation, and downloading carts one by one. But if you're interested in getting a bunch in one shot, download this archive posted by AA user FULS: Atari Carts

Edited May 7, 2017 by MrFish

[phaeron]

maybe the emulator should see that code or detect it and switch like a real Atari

 

A real Atari does no such thing. It always generates the artifact on the right side and it's up to the TV whether it is visible.

[MrFish]

A real Atari does no such thing. It always generates the artifact on the right side and it's up to the TV whether it is visible.

 

You see this kind of thing on real hardware with widescreen LCD's and the like.

 

That's why Michael (mytekcontrols) did that video mod to eliminate overscan for his LCD setup with a real Atari machine.

Edited May 7, 2017 by MrFish

[_The Doctor__]

ok so pole position is a bad example but if the mode is set properly and the program runs properly are you trying to say ALL overscan progams make a mess?

If there is a limit that happens on ALL overscan then it would be quantifiable and the emulator could mask it... and you would think automatically... I don't remember it happening with ALL overscan products but it is possible...

You select the mode you program for it... While I may have tweaked all the televisions and CRT monitors to go edge to edge and for correct aspect ratios how many years ago was that ? 1986 or so...

How about just saying pole position needs to be fixed or... all overscan games do this....

I stand by the Atari put in overscan the program properly written looks just fine. The monitors of the time may or may not have revealed the edge..... all kinds of strange things appear on LCD and modern televisions that do not appear on a monitor of the era no matter how you shrink the screen or move the decode and mask...

that leaves the question.. should the emulator now be redone to show all of the variances from a 1200xl and each other model line and display the unpleasant side effect on and of all lcd screens? but wait it appears differently on different brand televisions too and the emulator doesn't do that the same either.. so if we are going for total signal emulation.. I guess we just aren't getting there yet...

The emulator looks the same on all my displays samsung, sony, westinghouse, jvc, rca, sharp, and olevia..... the real thing does not it looks different on each of them... so maybe the emulator should too since we are splitting hairs.... look thru the forums and you can see a number of examples of the corners not being black or masked on some.... green lines down the left hand side on others.. and on and on..... Maybe a pop up from the emulator saying I see this is an overscan game... shall we mask garbage on the left side?

It isn't really a limitation from that time but rather a difference in decoding done by todays displays some revealing shortcomings other creating issues that didn't exist due to their firmware.... and yes some of the older crt's showed the pole position trash as well as it is a poor example... I have one modern television that cuts the Atari screen in half and ghosts it....not pretty. I also adjusted a monitor or two over time to fit 50hz screens on an NTSC monitor so as not to chop the top and bottoms off... then adjusted width for correct aspect ratio... I am not certain how to do that on the emulator.... seems I can choose 50/60 but what of playing a 50 hz game that happens to run on a 60hz machine with no mods/pal at all on such a monitor... In real life it looks and plays great although sometimes it does play a little faster..... It's an idea... I use emulation very sparingly...... I still can't get proper control of my X Wing Fighter in emulation to blow the death star away properly... I can do it damn near every time on real machine... I am sure it's my fault, and I am certain there is a cure..... no one has told me how yet, no matter how many times I mention or ask, not a peep, I guess I haven't dedicated enough time to figure it out... so rather than spend so much time on it... I just play it on a real Atari... The emulator is amazing... I am not taking any shots at it.... but for an old timer like me I guess it's just not for me yet... It has a bit to go. Please help me destroy the death star consistently on the emulator just as on the real Atari... I am sure it's my fault since that's the answer.... Help it not be my fault...okay?

 

Hey if I shrink the screen too much there is garbage at the top of my crt! it's not there on my laserdisk player but is there on some older vcr tapes.... is that vidtex? or other data? well I know it's not from the Atari but yet it is there from the Atari on certain games and such... it all looks good on the scope... might be the monitor... but it's in spec too... should it be on the emulator? I should hope not! I don't know the answer and maybe this all strikes me a little at the moment.... Maybe the audio oddities that others experience is because of their computer and not emulator maybe my problem center aiming the x wing shot down the port only in emulation is because all of my computers are bad, the HP, both dells and the toshiba as well as my son's compaq all have the same problem some how... I don't know but I get the feeling it will be defended some how... I just want it to be the best it can be... it's incredible all that it can do..... I am glad there was a manual fix for the issue or the poor example pole position.... it still doesn't address why X-wing alignment targetting in the trench always gets shifted to the left.... and before I get jumped on... who knows maybe there's and adjustment to display garbage at the tops or bottom of the screen, but it sure isn't the default.... thank GOD.

 

okay that's a rant I should delete... who knows maybe it will get the cure to X Wing Ecstasy and it will all be worth it.

Edited May 8, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[Rybags]

The garbage on overscan is an attribute of how Antic does it's data fetch - DMA is disabled towards the far right of the screen but Antic still fetches whatever happens to be on the data bus and it can be displayed but will not be in the visible region on most TV sets. It can also cause collisions with PM objects.

The "effect" is similar to what can happen with PM graphics if access to GRACTL is granted on GTIA but you don't enable DMA for PMGs on Antic.

 

Plenty of games have it, we just never saw it in the 80s so wasn't an issue except for the collision thing... the way around it is to just use scrolling but leave DMA in normal width, though the reasoning behind using Wide mode is to get rid of the side border which is at least partly visible on most TVs.

[phaeron]

This is not like TV scanline or NTSC emulation where the artifacts are caused by the TV and they vary widely between different TVs in a visual-only manner. The artifacts are caused by a horizontal scrolling bug in ANTIC and simply may or may not be hidden by the TV. It's a real part of the Atari's video display generation and they are even detectable within the Atari itself via playfield collisions. There is no point in the emulator trying to detect overscan mode based on this because a real TV doesn't either; either it's tuned to show that part of the display or it's not. The overscan region is selectable in Altirra because of the variance in TVs and current versions default to Normal, not Extended. However, this is an actual emulation accuracy issue in that lack of it can break or improperly fix programs.