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Moon Patrol redux


TIX

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9 hours ago, kiwilove said:

The new little explosions look very nice now - makes me think that the rover explosion needs to match this.  Maybe it's explosion is going too fast so that you can't see the many? frames there.

awwww no love for my exploding tires...   I was so proud of them   :sad:

:P:lol:

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Three very little things, maybe easy to fix:

 

- The "time to reach point x - sorry no bonus"-interruption is about 7 seconds in the arcade, about 11 seconds at the Atari. Even longer if you reach a bonus. Too slow if you are a moon patrol speed runner IMHO. ;-) 

- Musik resets and starts from the beginning if a "rolling rock sequence" starts. Is this an easy fix?

- maybe demo mode could start automatically between title screens? I absolutely love arcade-like attract modes.

 

Cheers

Bern

 

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1 hour ago, biobern said:

Three very little things, maybe easy to fix:

 

- The "time to reach point x - sorry no bonus"-interruption is about 7 seconds in the arcade, about 11 seconds at the Atari. Even longer if you reach a bonus. Too slow if you are a moon patrol speed runner IMHO. ;-) 

- Musik resets and starts from the beginning if a "rolling rock sequence" starts. Is this an easy fix?

- maybe demo mode could start automatically between title screens? I absolutely love arcade-like attract modes.

 

Cheers

Bern

 

in before revision 5 ?

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40 minutes ago, OmaOhneBH said:

in before revision 5 ?

Wow! You are fantastic! Enjoying the game so much here! it runs all day long on two of my CRTs. One PAL, One NTSC.
BTW: There probably is a reason why you fixed the overscan at the right screen side but not at the left screen side? 

 

Bern

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27 minutes ago, biobern said:

Wow! You are fantastic! Enjoying the game so much here! it runs all day long on two of my CRTs. One PAL, One NTSC.
BTW: There probably is a reason why you fixed the overscan at the right screen side but not at the left screen side? 

 

Bern

Sorry, I just see: You already did something! The ugly overscan area at the left screen side in fact is _smaller_ than it was at the original Atari module! But still visible on all of my CRTs. PAL and NTSC.

 

Cheers

Bern

 

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On 11/19/2019 at 7:12 PM, FifthPlayer said:

Is there a way I can configure one of the alternate controllers (Genesis, Joy 2B+) in Altirra?  I have a USB gamepad (SNES layout) and it would be cool to use the Genesis controller support within emulation.

Yes, check the steps in this video ?


Regards

 

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On 11/21/2019 at 9:41 AM, biobern said:

Three very little things, maybe easy to fix:

 

- The "time to reach point x - sorry no bonus"-interruption is about 7 seconds in the arcade, about 11 seconds at the Atari. Even longer if you reach a bonus. Too slow if you are a moon patrol speed runner IMHO. ;-) 

- Musik resets and starts from the beginning if a "rolling rock sequence" starts. Is this an easy fix?

- maybe demo mode could start automatically between title screens? I absolutely love arcade-like attract modes.

 

Cheers

Bern

 

The Moon Patrol hacks production line has closed down for the rest of the year but there is one thing TIX wants to try that I'll look at next year. If that is possible then I will look at these too, the first one would seem possible not so sure about the others.

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On 11/21/2019 at 12:05 PM, biobern said:

Sorry, I just see: You already did something! The ugly overscan area at the left screen side in fact is _smaller_ than it was at the original Atari module! But still visible on all of my CRTs. PAL and NTSC.

 

Cheers

Bern

 

Yes the screen was put into wide playfield mode in order to reduce the overscan areas. My LCD is pretty good but both my CRT and LCD TV still show some on the left. You can see mine here:

 

 

There is discussion about overscan here and a possible hardware fix: 

 

 

In order to "fix" it in Moon Patrol you would have to drop one of the colours. At the bottom of the screen where the buggy is, the four normal playfield colours are green, yellow, light brown and dark brown. The inverse colour is white for the missiles. In order to keep the background colour black you would have to sacrifice one of the normal playfield colours; you need to keep green to blend in with the mountains/city so I guess dark brown would become black. 

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5 hours ago, playsoft said:

Yes the screen was put into wide playfield mode in order to reduce the overscan areas. My LCD is pretty good but both my CRT and LCD TV still show some on the left. You can see mine here:

 

 

There is discussion about overscan here and a possible hardware fix: 

 

 

In order to "fix" it in Moon Patrol you would have to drop one of the colours. At the bottom of the screen where the buggy is, the four normal playfield colours are green, yellow, light brown and dark brown. The inverse colour is white for the missiles. In order to keep the background colour black you would have to sacrifice one of the normal playfield colours; you need to keep green to blend in with the mountains/city so I guess dark brown would become black. 

 

Okay, many thanks for the explanation. So I finally "fixed" the "bug" by opening one of my Sony PVM monitors and calibrating everything including "H-Pos" and "H-Size" for the "De Facto Moon Buggy Redux standard". ?

 

Bern

 

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Thanks playsoft for the reminder that I need to one day go back and fix that design. All it would really take is substituting a SPDT analog switch for the SPST version, and of course updating the PCB layout to match up with the new IC's requirements. The only additional change would be to add a PAL/NTSC selection header to provide the correct 'no-color' bias voltage. I've outlined the required changes below.

 

Original VGATE Board (Video Overscan Eliminator)

v-gate-assemby_orig.thumb.jpg.5ebedb85092a86947ebc2ef9b5e238f2.jpg

 

Required Changes to Make it Work Correctly

 

vgate_changes.thumb.jpg.4ff6a6b51afb5eda9b57cec8ff000de6.jpg

 

Someday when I find the time :ponder: .

 

Link to VGATE Project

 

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Some one needs to point out to this guy that it is the original music of the cartridge version and the sound was screwed up when it was converted to an .xex file, or something like that (was it and 800 to XL/XE OS issue? NTSC vs. PAL issue? I once knew for sure, but I forget off-hand now). Maybe he'll do an update with the latest single-wide pixel version of the enemies and make the correction about the music in it...

 

Not to mention that he has his monitor set for 16:9 ratio instead of 4:3, so everything looks stretched and squashed! (I hate that!)

 

He says he always like the original Atari version, but then how come he doesn't know the tanks were always there?!? And those tri-ball enemies ALWAYS leave a crater with their bombs, if you don't shoot them and they hit the ground, not sometimes! He really doesn't do a good job with this video, he's made errors throughout of what this game always had and what is new! 

Edited by Gunstar
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He is right about "stuff just being randomly dumped in forum threads and not in a central location" - Although can't really throw stones there what with Jaguland being the same ;)

 

Went on a mission this week to find all the 8bit 2019 releases to update the SD card....  that was a PITA.

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2 hours ago, Chilly Willy said:

I love the new version. Moon Patrol was one of my all-time favorite Atari games, and you've made it so much better. And I love the holiday themed avatar. ?

:cool: hehe.. badass Santa is from an Intellivision game I'm working on the side !

check my signature..

Edited by TIX
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On 12/3/2019 at 12:50 AM, Gunstar said:

Some one needs to point out to this guy that it is the original music of the cartridge version and the sound was screwed up when it was converted to an .xex file, or something like that (was it and 800 to XL/XE OS issue? NTSC vs. PAL issue? I once knew for sure, but I forget off-hand now). Maybe he'll do an update with the latest single-wide pixel version of the enemies and make the correction about the music in it...

 

Not to mention that he has his monitor set for 16:9 ratio instead of 4:3, so everything looks stretched and squashed! (I hate that!)

 

He says he always like the original Atari version, but then how come he doesn't know the tanks were always there?!? And those tri-ball enemies ALWAYS leave a crater with their bombs, if you don't shoot them and they hit the ground, not sometimes! He really doesn't do a good job with this video, he's made errors throughout of what this game always had and what is new! 

Sorry to be a contradictory so-and-so - and yes the video is dreadful and he clearly has little knowledge of the game - but in my experience the tri-ball enemies do not always create a crater on the Atari version - it seems to me if the bomb hits too close to an existing floor object the crater is not always created...

 

sTeVE

 

P.S. I am really enjoying playing the smaller sprite version, took me a while to come round to it as the original has been a game I have played since it was released back in the day, but I got there...

 

Edited by Jetboot Jack
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3 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said:

Sorry to be a contradictory so-and-so - and yes the video is dreadful and he clearly has little knowledge of the game - but in my experience the tri-ball enemies do not always create a crater on the Atari version - it seems to me if the bomb hits too close to an existing floor object the crater is not always created...

 

Yes, that's true. So, let's say "nearly always". Compared to the arcade version, it's a bit hard to see what will happen sometimes cause the crater throwing bombs use the same sprite as the normal enemy bombs. In the arcade version, both types are clearly separated.

 

Bern

 

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