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Legacy versus ARM-based 2600 Game Development


Thomas Jentzsch

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I get the idea of why we use the ARM and I'm glad we have it. It means we can have games that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. There are still a lot of old original games I love and a lot of new ones. I don't pay any attention to 4k or 32k or Melody boards. I only care about the games. If they are fun to play, then they are doing what they were meant to do. I just wan to say to all the great "Wizards" here, keep making games the way you want to, with the technology you choose to use. I figure most people playing the 2600 feel the same way. 

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10 hours ago, scrummy said:
  • I like to think of the Atari of our collective imagination.  It is 2020 and they are still making cartridges for the VCS/2600.  Naturally they would use whatever tech was available to make the best games possible.   
  • The only limits would be the acceptable consumer price-point.
  • If new tech allowed better games to flow through the TIA, then so be it. 
  • If new tech allowed better print quality on boxes, manuals, and posters, then so be it.
  • If new tech allowed internet connectivity, iphone control, speech recognition, then let it be. 

It is 2020 and enthusiastic fans are making games for a system they love.  

 

-If you choose to make something in 4k of space, without modern programming tools or hardware, then you will earn all due respect, and it will be understood that you have a fascination with working in that scenario.  If on the other hand you use everything at your disposal, then you will also earn all due respect. 

 

I see no problem with placing a logo on enhanced carts, but that decision, like all others, should be left to the games creator.   

 

 

That's not to far off from their vision for the Atari Pong Challenge contest in 2012:

 

In the first phase of the contest, Atari received nearly 90 submissions from independent developers looking to remake Pong. After a comprehensive review, seven finalists were chosen for consideration by a celebrity judging panel made up of Nolan Bushnell, one of the original founders of Atari, Dave Castelnuovo of Bolt Creative (Pocket God), David Whatley of Critical Thought Games (geoDefense), and Mike Schramm of TUAW. In addition, the Atari community weighed in on the final ranking, with over 200,000 total votes logged for the various finalists. Ultimately, the winners announced today represent the top choices from Atari, the Atari community and the judging panel.
 

8 hours ago, Cafeman said:

What is the distinction of Melody vs ARM games?  Same thing?

7 hours ago, Albert said:

In the context of this conversation, yes. We do have another ARM-based board (called the Aria) that uses a less powerful chip that allows more interesting bankswitching techniques (as well as onboard RAM, such as SARA support). And that board also allpws writing to the flash RAM space. Star Castle Arcade uses this feature to store high scores and the current color palette selection.

I think if you have also used Melody to previously host the SARA chip games selection or any legacy formats from the early 80's it's an ambiguous indicator.   

 

Does Aria support CBS RAM+ games too? How about SuperCharger games?

 

I'm also curious if you've ever reprogrammed an actual CBS RAM+ cart like you have with SARA carts - this has been discussed in theory, but the dumper example was defective and I have not heard of anyone actually reprogramming one. The Atari Flashback Portable had it's own version of CBS RAM+ that was a little different and interesting to figure out, but it would be nice to see someone reproduce a functioning example of the old CBS RAM+ tech like you have done with the SARA carts to have a phsycial model to compare and better understand.

 

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Touchie subject and i understand both sides of the fence. The way Andrew broke down the description of BUS stuffing and melody boards really clears up the process and workings. Personally i have had a quick read on those threads but never looked into the finer details so im assuming this is a higher tier then even DPC+ in bB.

 

I think those who code for bare bones 4k hardware are well respected in the AA community without the need of extra reassurance. Boulder Dash and Robot City (to mention a few) hold their own and exceptionally fun games along with many other great bare bones titles. The GP that just want to play games are really not going to care. Even if it's explained to them, how the game was made, restrictions, difficulty and what hardware was used. They just don't care that's why they don't program themselves, they just want to play the games.

 

Im worried about those making breakthrough discoveries like Spiceware - Reveng ect are going to feel deflated/discouraged by the criticism. Just don't want to lose their valuable input as it's essential to progress and development. Even as a bB user i feel a bit on the backfoot and somewhat of a 'cheater' by using these tools because some despise the use of. Personally i like the BASIC language and feel comfortable using it and think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

 

Here i have been waiting for years that Batari would pick the bB project back up again and continue development. I have a hunch he may have discontinued the project for having the same feelings of those who feel discouraged to continue theirs. No idea but a question that sits in the back of my mind.

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1 hour ago, TwentySixHundred said:

Im worried about those making breakthrough discoveries like Spiceware - Reveng ect are going to feel deflated/discouraged by the criticism. Just don't want to lose their valuable input as it's essential to progress and development. Even as a bB user i feel a bit on the backfoot and somewhat of a 'cheater' by using these tools because some despise the use of. Personally i like the BASIC language and feel comfortable using it and think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

 

 

I've tried to be very careful to be explicit about my support for those doing these amazing new innovations on the machine. I don't think it's "cheating" at all, but I do think the distinction between how they are developed is very important. Yes, I agree that the average game-buyer/player doesn't know or care about the difference. And yes, I understand the possibility that those using these interesting new capabilities might be discouraged by the "criticism" such as it is. But there is also the possibility that those on "the other side" will also be discouraged. Nobody wants either situation.


For example, let's just do a what-if and assume that the upcoming "best game" awards are heavily skewed towards ARM games. After all, they are clearly much better games, for the most part. I'm almost of the mind that such awards are a big, big mistake. If we're going to be judging games against each other where it's clearly not a level "playing field" so to speak, then that's not really ideal. I would prefer not to judge, or participate anyway, and just respect every completed game for the great achievement it is.

And in that I include bB games - which are just as valid as ARM games, as are "classic" games - 4K, extra RAM, or whatever. They all take passion and skill to create. The only thing I believe I have ever commented on was my concern that supporting "shovelware" as I saw it called a few days ago would discourage the development of quality games and disillusion those who spend many months, even years, striving for perfection. In that category I put games someone's spent a week or two on, and then put out a cartridge.

 

To address the modern ARM games, and so it's very clear how I view these, I think they are an absolutely amazing piece of quality art/programming. I admire and respect the skill of those making them. I hate the idea of having to compare these games against others or even themselves in some sort of "best/winner" competition.

 

 

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I've avoided this topic for a while, because I like both design philosophies and it's a hot topic. However, I think maybe 4K game developers ought to consider proudly advertising their games as 4K and unassisted. Wear it like a badge of honor. I haven't been here as long as many of you, and I mostly read the threads and work on my stuff quietly in the background, but I like developing unassisted 6502 games. Galagon and Mappy are amazing accomplishments and inspiring. They're making this community greater because they're attracting attention from Youtube and blogs. They're certain to be drawing new people to the site. People who would have never seen the 4K unassisted games are seeing them because of Galagon and Mappy.

 

And as for the ARM and co-processor development, I think it needs to go further. A lot further. Let's step on the gas and stuff a Core i9 in the cart. It'd be the first Atari game with it's own external power supply and cooling system. Pedal to the metal.

 

I've also spent the last few years dreaming of a rebooted 2600 with a normal 6502 chip, 64K memory access, and extra lines to the cart for read/write and clock. All other components being the same. And maybe connect a 3rd button in the joystick port. That's what this is all about. Tinkering and seeing what can be done. This is a laboratory for crazy science experiments. Everyone should be having fun. These are video games after all. They're meant to be fun. We're not filing TPS reports here. If it's not fun, then I think expectations need adjusting. The 1980's are gone and will never come back. We will never again have a game store with all unassisted Atari titles.

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1 hour ago, Andrew Davie said:

 

I've tried to be very careful to be explicit about my support for those doing these amazing new innovations on the machine. I don't think it's "cheating" at all, but I do think the distinction between how they are developed is very important. Yes, I agree that the average game-buyer/player doesn't know or care about the difference. And yes, I understand the possibility that those using these interesting new capabilities might be discouraged by the "criticism" such as it is. But there is also the possibility that those on "the other side" will also be discouraged. Nobody wants either situation.


For example, let's just do a what-if and assume that the upcoming "best game" awards are heavily skewed towards ARM games. After all, they are clearly much better games, for the most part. I'm almost of the mind that such awards are a big, big mistake. If we're going to be judging games against each other where it's clearly not a level "playing field" so to speak, then that's not really ideal. I would prefer not to judge, or participate anyway, and just respect every completed game for the great achievement it is.

And in that I include bB games - which are just as valid as ARM games, as are "classic" games - 4K, extra RAM, or whatever. They all take passion and skill to create. The only thing I believe I have ever commented on was my concern that supporting "shovelware" as I saw it called a few days ago would discourage the development of quality games and disillusion those who spend many months, even years, striving for perfection. In that category I put games someone's spent a week or two on, and then put out a cartridge.

 

To address the modern ARM games, and so it's very clear how I view these, I think they are an absolutely amazing piece of quality art/programming. I admire and respect the skill of those making them. I hate the idea of having to compare these games against others or even themselves in some sort of "best/winner" competition.

 

 

I have to agree that having "best game" as an overall category for awards is not an even playing field. That was one reason i had mentioned my concern to ZPH via PM when majority voted to drop the seperate bB vs ASM ect categories (i felt threatened by assembler titles). Last year there was individual categories for these awards and now that they're dropped it will skew the voting results on both sides, depending who and what views are supported.

 

Personally i think the awards and everything ZPH is doing for the community is brilliant and adds alot of motivation and pushes creativity. However i do believe the barrier needs to be re-implemented one way or another. There is still the <4k cat however both sides miss the chance to shine in "best game" cat. An ARM assisted game may take the title from a well executed 4k bare bones and from a skill standpoint that's not fair. Same can be said for bB DPC+/hardware assisted might miss the boat for the simple fact of those viewing the game written i'll say loosley 'less' skilled and or different tools/hardware assisted ect. Also there isn't even a 32k category for another chance like 4k has.

 

I understand why the decision of these categories were dropped however in reality and circumstances it just doesn't work. Not from a skill/effort based aspect on both sides of the fence. I hate to divide and put up a wall between programmers because we all enjoy programming for the system. Very interesting yet hard to draw-the-line subject.

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18 minutes ago, TwentySixHundred said:

I have to agree that having "best game" as an overall category for awards is not an even playing field. That was one reason i had mentioned my concern to ZPH via PM when majority voted to drop the seperate bB vs ASM ect categories (i felt threatened by assembler titles). Last year there was individual categories for these awards and now that they're dropped it will skew the voting results on both sides, depending who and what views are supported.

 

Well, for "fairness" in awards... maybe a "weighted/handicap" system would work - whatever that may be. Votes for a 1K game would be skewed such that the 1K game could reasonably compete against (say) a 32K game or an ARM-assist game in terms of "best game". A carefully considered skewed/weighted voting system that takes into account graphics, playability, skill level of the programming, hardware assists used, environment (bB, ARM, bankswitch) memory requirements (both ROM and RAM) would then balance out the comparisons and result in a more nuanced "best game" award. The award would be based on an evaluation of all these factors, not just which does the most amazing things visually.

 

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Hi @Andrew Davie and @TwentySixHundred,

4 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:

Touchie subject and i understand both sides of the fence. The way Andrew broke down the description of BUS stuffing and melody boards really clears up the process and workings. Personally i have had a quick read on those threads but never looked into the finer details so im assuming this is a higher tier then even DPC+ in bB.

...

I don't think Andrew's explanation of the Melody/ARM was fully fact-checked, so you might also want to read into other threads on the AA forum.

Note that I'm no expert on '2600 hardware myself, but I did read some threads about the Melody/Harmony, so I'd like to respond to things and put them into perspective.

 

12 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

...

However, in more recent games it's been used for "buss stuffing". That's where the 6507 on the '2600 is effecively bypassed, and the ARM takes over the address/data buss and "talks" directly to the TIA chip. Instead of being limited by the 6507 ability to write data to the TIA (generally a load/store on 6507 takes 5 cycles of the 76 available on a scanline), now you have the ARM effectively able to throw MANY changes to the TIA on each scanline. So you can do things the 6507 will NEVER be able to do. Suddenly you are not limited by the 6507, but only by the TIA. So you can put many more things on a scanline, and do things that games could previously not do.
...

There are no finished Atari 2600 games using "bus stuffing" at the moment; I've read that it was found to be unstable on certain '2600 machines. I know there is a demo version of elevator action using bus stuffing, and that it's on hold since beginning of 2018.

I doubt that any external processor could directly 'talk' to the TIA chip; if you look at the buss-stuffing code examples, you see that the 6507 is still doing the writes to the TIA, and only the value that it writes is being 'bus stuffed' directly on the bus.

Currently released games that use the ARM as co-processor (e.g. Mappy, Draconian) are based around some form of DPC+ (improving on David Crane's DPC chip in Pitfall II).

The latest framework for running DPC+ games is called CDJF, which does a lot of the plumbing for you when sharing RAM between the 6507 and the ARM chips.

 

12 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

...

Furthermore, since you've bypassed the 6507 for actually drawing the screen, why not bypass it altogether - and use the grunt of the ARM to do all sorts of nifty calculations. Multiplex sprites, perform complex AI... you name it. All at 70MHz-120MHz depending on the ARM chip. You now have effectively unlimited memory - well, heaps more anyway - that can be accessed hundreds of times more quickly. You can do many hundreds of times more complex calculations in the spare time between keeping the buss address/data lines all functioning normally.

...

To put that a bit into perspective: a standard melody supports 32K ROM and 8K RAM. If you use the CDJF diver, you'll be down to 6K RAM (which of course is still a lot compared to the standard 128 bytes RAM). The ARM processor in the melody runs at 70MHz, which is almost 60 times faster than the 6507 @ 1.2MHz.

Because reading/writing data from ROM is still relatively slow, I would say that in practice the calculations can be around 50x as complex, probably even less. So certainly not "many hundreds of times".

 

12 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

...

AND, you can write all that in C instead of fiddly assembler code. ORDERS of magnitude easier.
...

Assembler code is actually more in my comfort zone than C, but maybe that's because I had to learn about C's pointers (and pointers to pointers).

Note that when you write '2600 games with support of the ARM chip, you have to be very proficient in *both* 6507 assembly and C. And you still have to know all of the TIA tricks ?

 

12 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

...
The point is, yes the ARM is complete overkill for pure bankswitching support. But it's not being used for just that in the new games. It's being used to totally change the "contract" between the 6507 and the TIA. I'm not saying good or bad - I'm just saying that it's a total game changer, literally. There's just no comparison in terms of what's possible when looking at 6507/TIA compared to ARM capability.

I don't see why the "contract" between the 6507 and TIA changes? IMO the ARM is just making the 6507 smarter/more dynamic; the 6507 still controls the system.

I think that DPC (invented by David Crane for Pitfall II, which was released in 1984) was the actual game changer, right?

And of course bank-switching and additional RAM were also game changers. 

 

Finally, to me as a developer, Stella is the actual game changer!

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

I don't think Andrew's explanation of the Melody/ARM was fully fact-checked, so you might also want to read into other threads on the AA forum.

Note that I'm no expert on '2600 hardware myself, but I did read some threads about the Melody/Harmony, so I'd like to respond to things and put them into perspective.

Thank you for the clarifications and corrections. I do not fully understand what is happening, so I explained my understanding of things - I did preface my whole post with a disclaimer to the effect. I defer to your knowledge on this, and stand corrected where you have pointed out my errors.

 

17 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

I doubt that any external processor could directly 'talk' to the TIA chip; if you look at the buss-stuffing code examples, you see that the 6507 is still doing the writes to the TIA, and only the value that it writes is being 'buss stuffed' directly on the bus.

In other words, the address buss is not modified, but the data buss is. Understood.

 

17 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

 

To put that a bit into perspective: a standard melody supports 32K ROM and 8K RAM. If you use the CDJF diver, you'll be down to 6K RAM (which of course is still a lot compared to the standard 128 bytes RAM). The ARM processor in the melody runs at 70MHz, which is almost 60 times faster than the 6507 @ 1.2MHz.

Because reading/writing data from ROM is still relatively slow, I would say that in practice the calculations can be around 50x as complex, probably even less. So certainly not "many hundreds of times".

You most likely need less instructions to do anything in ARM, particularly with the more complex instruction set, registers, and powerful addressing modes. I don't think it's as simple as calculating the clock speed ratios. You need to consider the capability of the instructions, too. But let's go with 50x. I've seen other figures elsewhere but the point was that it's a LOT quicker.

 

17 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

I don't see why the "contract" between the 6507 and TIA changes? IMO the ARM is just making the 6507 smarter/more dynamic; the 6507 still controls the system.

You no longer require the 6502 to feed everything to the TIA to make games. You can feed things to the TIA with the ARM that you CANNOT do with the 6507 in the same way.

 

17 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

I think that DPC (invented by David Crane for Pitfall II, which was released in 1984) was the actual game changer, right?

And of course bank-switching and additional RAM were also game changers. 

 

Finally, to me as a developer, Stella is the actual game changer!

 

In my view there is a "quantum shift" with the ARM that is not approached by the other technologies you mention.

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I tend to think of Supercharger games as being "not 2600" games, but Supercharger games.  The same with the ARM stuff.  They are "Melody" games.  That's not belittling them or saying they are cheating, etc.  They're just their own thing.  I have no interest in making one, but I understand the appeal and think it will eventually become the only game in town.  If you go to the store and sort by 'Most Popular' you see a trend in each release cycle.  Whatever the big ARM arcade port(s) are sell an order of magnitude more than the others, which sell in increasingly lower numbers.  This is also due to everybody having a Harmony cart now and the availability of the roms.  Nobody does this for sales, but it does kind of show where things are headed.

 

As for the competition, Galagon is this year's Mappy.  Zoo Keeper is next year's Galagon. 

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3 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

Well, for "fairness" in awards... maybe a "weighted/handicap" system would work - whatever that may be. Votes for a 1K game would be skewed such that the 1K game could reasonably compete against (say) a 32K game or an ARM-assist game in terms of "best game". A carefully considered skewed/weighted voting system that takes into account graphics, playability, skill level of the programming, hardware assists used, environment (bB, ARM, bankswitch) memory requirements (both ROM and RAM) would then balance out the comparisons and result in a more nuanced "best game" award. The award would be based on an evaluation of all these factors, not just which does the most amazing things visually.

Im not exactly sure how the categories were cut however i remember watching a ZPH stream where many in the chat were mentioning there wasn't the need for classes like bB DPC+ and ASM ect. Shortly after in another stream it was mentioned that those categories were cut from the awards. That's when i sent the PM to James about my concerns of skewed voting results.

 

AFAIR there was talk about how it shouldn't matter the tools/rom size used, good games are good games. That's all well and good i understand the idea behind it, although it just doesn't play out that way for reasons like this topic IMO. I like your idea however i have no idea how they would implement an handicap based voting system due to the complexity.

 

Personally i think the "best homebrew" category should have been cut while bB, asm and hardware assist categories should have remained. Just keeps the fairness for all sides of the fence.

 

2 hours ago, Dionoid said:

 You might also want to read into other threads on the AA forum.

This topic has really started to tickle my interest in those achievements again and might have to go back for a good read ?

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1 hour ago, s0c7 said:

I tend to think of Supercharger games as being "not 2600" games, but Supercharger games.  The same with the ARM stuff.  They are "Melody" games...

The SuperCharger is a 6K RAM expansion board with a cassette interface, so it expands the VCS in a very similar manner to the RAM board for the 1975 Altair, which shipped with a similar small amount of RAM to the Atari, 256 Bytes vs 128.

 

But we don't need all of the RAM, just more than 128 bytes. So how much? In practice an extra 256 bytes of RAM for a total of 384 is enough extra RAM to do most  SuperCharger Fx as per Tunnel Runner and Escape from the Mind Master.

 

Based on these principles I have written a converter that turns 6K SuperCharger games into 7K CBS RAM+ games and vice versa.

 

A few could be converted to the 8K Sara chip format following the same principles.

 

In the 80's it made a very big difference just weather we had 4K or 16K or 32K - what was possible was largely based on the memory footprint and on the same systems, the memory size created a clearly defined category - the VCS could usually match or surpass the 16K or 32K games on other systems with just 4K and 8K games because it's unique design racing the beam and accelerator hardware for graphics and sound (TIA) conserved memory by design when it was more expensive in the 70's.

 

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A late model Intel processor might be a tad on the ridiculous side.  But anything a normal 2600 can safely power through the cartridge port is fair game....not that anybody doing more engineering than has already been done is likely. But just for fun, it occurs to me that an even more powerful ARM could probably be stuffed in the cart.  Why do this?  Use the 6507/TIA as a video adapter for hybrid retro system.  The "BIOS" of the thing would have a display kernel for a VIC-20 style terminal out.  May as well go the 80s home computer full monty and have it boot to BASIC.

 

The only rule would be TIA for video output.  Otherwise, why do this screwy thing? But a USB port and sd card slot would be fair game.

 

Sure there is no good reason to do this but since when did hacking require a good reason?

 

Maybe this is already mostly possible with a Harmony cart?

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9 hours ago, Dionoid said:

I don't see why the "contract" between the 6507 and TIA changes? IMO the ARM is just making the 6507 smarter/more dynamic; the 6507 still controls the system.

That's not correct, IMO. The ARM defines the queues which control the 6507, which then only passes this info to the TIA. If you look into the 6507 code of an ARM game, you will find only a very few load operations from ROM/RAM. Instead you will see heaps of dummy immediate loads with the values loaded fully controlled by the ARM setup queues. 

 

Pitfall II was different, because there by far the most calculations where still done by the 6507. The DPC mainly allowed to move workload from the busy kernel to the less busy calculation time slots, thus allowing the kernel to do a bit more.

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7 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:

Im not exactly sure how the categories were cut however i remember watching a ZPH stream where many in the chat were mentioning there wasn't the need for classes like bB DPC+ and ASM ect. Shortly after in another stream it was mentioned that those categories were cut from the awards. That's when i sent the PM to James about my concerns of skewed voting results. ?

While I like the categories more than last year (4K is clearly an improvement IMO), I couldn't get through with separate categories too. 

 

But I see the problem for James. We would soon have lots and lots of categories, most of them with only a very few entries. E.g. <=4K, >4K (no ARM), >4 (no ARM, but extra memory), ARM, bB (no ARM), bB (no ARM, but extra memory), bB (ARM) etc. And there would be a lot of discussion about the categories chosen (e.g. why no 16K, no extra RAM category? Or AtariVox vs no AtariVox, or UnoCart vs ARM etc.) and if a game belongs into a certain category. E.g. Star Castle Arcade doesn't use the ARM, except for the flash memory to store the high score directly on cart instead of using the SaveKey. So does this make it it an ARM game then?

 

Nevertheless, I would like to see a few more categories (e.g. ARM, bB and bB (no ARM)) next year.

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While I like the categories more than last year (4K is clearly an improvement IMO), I couldn't get through with separate categories too. 
 
But I see the problem for James. We would soon have lots and lots of categories, most of them with only a very few entries. E.g. 4K (no ARM), >4 (no ARM, but extra memory), ARM, bB (no ARM), bB (no ARM, but extra memory), bB (ARM) etc. And there would be a lot of discussion about the categories chosen (e.g. why no 16K, no extra RAM category? Or AtariVox vs no AtariVox, or UnoCart vs ARM etc.) and if a game belongs into a certain category. E.g. Star Castle Arcade doesn't use the ARM, except for the flash memory to store the high score directly on cart instead of using the SaveKey. So does this make it it an ARM game then?
 
Nevertheless, I would like to see a few more categories (e.g. ARM, bB and bB (no ARM)) next year.


You forgot Quadtari support.
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8 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:

Im not exactly sure how the categories were cut however i remember watching a ZPH stream where many in the chat were mentioning there wasn't the need for classes like bB DPC+ and ASM ect. Shortly after in another stream it was mentioned that those categories were cut from the awards. That's when i sent the PM to James about my concerns of skewed voting results.

 

AFAIR there was talk about how it shouldn't matter the tools/rom size used, good games are good games. That's all well and good i understand the idea behind it, although it just doesn't play out that way for reasons like this topic IMO. I like your idea however i have no idea how they would implement an handicap based voting system due to the complexity.

 

Personally i think the "best homebrew" category should have been cut while bB, asm and hardware assist categories should have remained. Just keeps the fairness for all sides of the fence.

 

This topic has really started to tickle my interest in those achievements again and might have to go back for a good read ?

 

The new category introduced in this year's awards was 'Best ≤ 4K Homebrew: Atari 2600' to help shine some light on the smaller games that might have been lost in the shuffle.

 

The Atari Homebrew Awards were put together to honour the amazing work that is done throughout the year by the people in this community. We've shuffled the categories this year, adding new ones and dropping other ones to make sure that the incredible work that's being done does not get looked over. For the 3rd edition next year we're already looking at expanding further with 'Best Original Homebrew' and 'Best Homebrew Port' to honour those who create their games from scratch and also those who want to port a game that either never got ported to the 2600 or didn't get the quality of port they wanted. This category is similar to the film award categories of 'Best Original Screenplay' and 'Best Adapted Screenplay'.

 

I'm very open to more categories that can help boost up the visibility of overlooked games during the year. The definitions of any new categories have to be extremely clear cut and well defined so there's no ambiguity in which category they belong in. So for category types, some examples can be things like ROM/RAM size, extra processors or the programming language they're made with.

ROM/RAM Size: This year we have the 'Best ≤ 4K Homebrew' category which is similar to 'Best Short Film'. This *could* be divided up further into 8-16 and 32+ but I'm not sure if there's as big of a jump in type of games in the upper range, so the 4K divider seemed like a natural place.


Programming Language: We removed the 'Best bB' category from last year's Awards as it was quite an arbitrary category being based on the they way it was programmed rather than the technology being used. bB games can range from a super tiny game all the way up to a 32K(?) game using DPC+ kernals. After last year it just didn't seen like the best way to group together such a wide variety of types of games. As new ways to program games emerge, such as Spice C, maybe it will be something to revisit in the future.


Processor: In terms of sectioning off games made with extra processors into their own category, this may be a valid thing to look at doing. If you take a look at the number of games in the list below being developed with ARM technology it would be a category with one or two games a year, which doesn't make for a particularly populated category.

 

2012 Space Rocks (SpiceWare)
2017 Draconian (SpiceWare)
2017 Super Cobra Arcade (Champ Games)
2018 Mappy (Champ Games)
2019 Galagon (Champ Games)

2019 Wizard of Wor (Champ Games)

2020 Zoo Keeper (Champ Games)

 

If you section off games made with DCP+ AND ARM games, that may be something to consider. This would make the dividing line between whether you're only using console-only processing or extra processing contained within the cartridge. It would be an interesting exercise to see what the playfield for 2019 would have looked like with this split of categories.

Let me know what everyone thinks!

- James

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
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9 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

2012 Space Rocks (SpiceWare)
2017 Draconian (SpiceWare)
2017 Super Cobra Arcade (Champ Games)
2018 Mappy (Champ Games)
2019 Galagon (Champ Games)

2019 Wizard of Wor (Champ Games)

2020 Zoo Keeper (Champ Games)

You missed SF2 and Scramble. But overall the list is short, yes.

 

Quote

If you section off games made with DCP+ AND ARM games, that may be something to consider. This would make the dividing line between whether you're only using console-only processing or extra processing contained within the cartridge. It would be an interesting exercise to see what the playfield for 2019 would have looked like with this split of categories.

In 2018 there would have been 6 games in the DPC+/CDF category overall (1 ASM and 5 bB). 

In 2019 the numbers would have been 10 (2 + 8).

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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11 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

You missed SF2 and Scramble. But overall the list is short, yes.

 

I checked SF2 and Scramble with Stella and they both report as a 32K DPC+ games so I left them off the list.

image.thumb.png.d55a528674ac4c017d9b5c43ba3a6443.png

 

image.thumb.png.58538b97259db8f37f4d678152101c88.png

 

Quote

In 2018 there would have been 6 games in the DPC+/CDF category overall (1 ASM and 5 bB). 

In 2019 the numbers would have been 10 (2 + 8).

 

Thank you Thomas! Those are encouraging numbers and is definitely something to take into consideration for next year's awards!

- James

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
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Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said:

DPC+ and CDF are not that different. Both use ARM CPU power, CDF is more elaborated though.

Ah! Thank you for the correction.

 

Is there a comprehensive post somewhere that outlines DPC, DPC+, CDF/CDFJ, ARM, Harmony, Harmony Encore, UnoCart and the all the various related/supported bankswitching techniques of each? The classic bankswitching methods seem well documented but not all the newer ones. I'm able to find bits and pieces here and there but piecing them all together makes my head spin a bit.

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