Galagon for A8 Computers?

[YSG2020]

It’s fun to push the limits of the hardware and software. I think that’s what true hobbyists do that drove the creation of home computers in the 70s.  Retro computing is no different as there is now a plethora of technological advancements well past the basic capabilities of our original A8s, that theoretically can be adapted and plugged into them. 
To each his own...

For me though personally it is similar to resto-modding classic cars.  Can you do it? Sure. Should you do it? In most cases I’d say leave it as close to stock as possible to maximize and maintain the original feel and nostalgia of the car that made it so special in the first place.  Adding power steering and some new wheels is fine, but hacking up and modifying the body and interior is where I think crosses the line into poor taste and devalues/debases the original vehicle.

Edited April 7, 2020 by YSG2020

[_The Doctor__]

and even with old cars, some modification to the look and feel are completely non damaging and reversible. Gauges , seat covers and other treatment can be added look great, add function, but can be removed without ever known to have been there. With todays tech, you can tie a cooler or heater for your food or behind even and take them out without a trace when done. Stereos can pretend to be of the era but are modern inside, directly swappable without destroying harness or dash... dimension exact... on and on... no damage and the original can be swapped right back in... many hidden goodies too. Tricking out an old ride can be an artform.

[Jetboot Jack]

Surely the problem that the Harmony (Melody) completely negates is it runs on a stock system. Whatever the cart contains in terms of extra hardware, to the user it is stock hardware doing something amazing.

 

And historically this method of increasing performance has been part of the games industry from the get go, bigger ROM’s, bank switching, chips to add features etc have been a staple of cartridge based game development since day one...

 

Whereas upgrades like VBXE etc are (yes I had a heavily upgraded system or two) creating niches of niches, ever smaller subsets of users. Think Sega 32X vs Nintendo SFX...

 

I personally think the idea of suped-up carts is the best way to go to expand the A8’s abilities - they work on stock systems and have no impact on the user or their hardware...

 

sTeVE

[kiwilove]

Although I never had a NES - I gathered that it did increase the capacity of it's RAM making games much bigger - for it's last cart titles.  Guess it never went as far as adding extra computing power.

My original irk about Galagon was that it was presented as a new 2600 homebrew game - but I would regard it as being a 2600+H game to save someone ordering it, and then plugging it into their 2600 (minus Harmony hardware) - expecting it to run.

 

I've nothing against moding original hardware to make it do more - it's just like with an Atari 800 with 16K - and then getting extra memory and then plugging it in.

 

Harvey

[Wrathchild]

I'm not sure the 2600+H is a necessary dependency, certainly with the STM32F ARM micro in the UNO cart you could easily have a board with no SD socket and provide a title self contained within the firmware and so house in a normal case looking like a normal game. I should think the same applies with an AVG cart and so would imagine that board, components and case cost is not prohibitive (€20-25 ?).

[_The Doctor__]

I don't understand... I plugged the game in and it worked, why would I modify my machine? what is this hardware you speak of? Did someone modify my machine and I didn't know it?

[Gunstar]

22 hours ago, jamm said:

It's not idiocy, it's just that people draw the line at what hardware is "too much" at different places. 

 

I could write a program that captured my PC screen, converted it to 320x200 bitmap, and sent it to my 800XL via an SIO2PC interface, and conversely sent my joystick movements from the Atari back to the PC.  I could then use that setup to play Quake.  It'd be a neat trick, but I don't think anyone here would say that I'd gotten Quake to run on the 800XL.  Why?  Technically it'd be true: through this method, I would've added gigabytes of RAM and storage, an Intel-compatible CPU instruction set, and many orders of magnitude additional processing power to my Atari.  In the case of SIO2PC, it's something the A8 hobbyist community has done for decades, but only thought of as an extension to storage. 

 

In my slightly different, theoretical example, I would've gone well past the line most of us would consider too far removed (in more ways than one) from the original machine to consider an "accomplishment" of the original machine anymore.  And yet, one could argue (and be technically correct, IMO), that it's no different from any other expansion or extension that's been available from the very beginning.  Like plugging in a cartridge.

 

Sure, I think some of these complaints about upgrades are silly, but they're no different from things I would say if the upgrade were past the line I draw in my own head about this.

 

 

 

That's a lame argument grasping at straws to defend idiocy.

[jamm]

I'm starting to see why this community is as small as it is.

[_The Doctor__]

please don't be turned off though, we can grow beyond this again. There are some real *ss hats in other platforms too, they'll just drowned out or run out!

[Jetboot Jack]

On 4/7/2020 at 11:53 PM, kiwilove said:

Although I never had a NES - I gathered that it did increase the capacity of it's RAM making games much bigger - for it's last cart titles.  Guess it never went as far as adding extra computing power.

My original irk about Galagon was that it was presented as a new 2600 homebrew game - but I would regard it as being a 2600+H game to save someone ordering it, and then plugging it into their 2600 (minus Harmony hardware) - expecting it to run.

 

I've nothing against moding original hardware to make it do more - it's just like with an Atari 800 with 16K - and then getting extra memory and then plugging it in.

 

Harvey

I think you're not getting the way this is supplied - it's on a Melody board, so you just get a regular cart that plugs into a stock 2600 - you don't need a Harmony AS WELL to play the game...

 

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=page_view&p=atariage_melody

 

As Wrathchild says and as the extra hardware carts supplied by the games industry for the last 40 years - it's invisible to the user, it's a game, on a cart that does AMAZING things on my console/computer.

 

Just a regular cart to the user...

 

sTeVE

Edited April 9, 2020 by Jetboot Jack

[+Sauron]

On 4/8/2020 at 1:41 AM, Jetboot Jack said:

Surely the problem that the Harmony (Melody) completely negates is it runs on a stock system. Whatever the cart contains in terms of extra hardware, to the user it is stock hardware doing something amazing.

 

And historically this method of increasing performance has been part of the games industry from the get go, bigger ROM’s, bank switching, chips to add features etc have been a staple of cartridge based game development since day one...

 

Whereas upgrades like VBXE etc are (yes I had a heavily upgraded system or two) creating niches of niches, ever smaller subsets of users. Think Sega 32X vs Nintendo SFX...

 

I personally think the idea of suped-up carts is the best way to go to expand the A8’s abilities - they work on stock systems and have no impact on the user or their hardware...

 

sTeVE

This exactly. Although it offends some people's sensibilities for some reason, including the needed upgrades for a game in the cart and distributing them in that manner is the best way to go about it. There are simply too many advantages to it to do it any other way. 

 

[kiwilove]

9 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said:

I think you're not getting the way this is supplied - it's on a Melody board, so you just get a regular cart that plugs into a stock 2600 - you don't need a Harmony AS WELL to play the game...

 

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=page_view&p=atariage_melody

 

As Wrathchild says and as the extra hardware carts supplied by the games industry for the last 40 years - it's invisible to the user, it's a game, on a cart that does AMAZING things on my console/computer.

 

Just a regular cart to the user...

 

sTeVE

My bad - I was going by the old standard - whereupon Harmony was a plug in cart? that upgraded a stock 2600 to it's new capabilities.  I didn't know about the updated model whereupon it is now on a single chip? and such low cost that it doesn't add all that much extra for a regular 'standard' 2600 game cart.  Much like 7800 cart titles that offers better sound (over it's default) by including a better sound chip - Shame on Jack Tramiel for passing the cost onto the consumer, when it should have been standard.

 

I still go by the comment that Galagon was not possible back in the day because Harmony employs tech not available within it's time frame when 2600 popularity was at it's highest peak - and able to be purchased by the consumer affordably.

 

Much the same applies to Rasterconverter images in a similar/dissimilar way?  That it's not a drawing program but a conversion one relying upon a much faster powerful computer to convert images down to Atari 8-bit graphics standard.  Even if you were able to use the power of a Atari ST to do the job - it's still what it is - showing the real power is the more powerful hardware - that has to do it's job.

 

For me - I like to see the original hardware being used to it's limits.  I'm not a fan of modding the original hardware - mainly because I can't do that myself and with VBXE - it's target audience is so small, I can't see developers keen to support it because of this.  We've still waiting to see some VBXE games that make us all go gaga over it.

 

I'd guess there'll always be missing arcade titles that someone would like to see - done up to arcade like standard on standard 48K Atari 8-bit machines (also the 5200) - but it'll require the time and effort to do it.  These are titles which are within the limits of the standard hardware - using all the various programming tricks possible on it.  There has been substandard efforts done - probably due more to budget/time restraints but also that particular team involved, did not have the necessary skills and experience to pull it off successfully.

 

The 2600 was an amazing machine for it's time frame - but I was never enticed by it.  I was waiting around for when a decent graphics standard was available.  Even I didn't know of the full graphic capabilities of the Atari 400/800 - as there was only Star Raiders, Pacman and Shamus to go on - but a few months later - Encounter and Blue Max appeared - and many others.

 

I'm usually not that 'thick' - so I was going by outdated info.  Maybe that video that went gaga all over Galagon, should have mentioned that the cart did have the Harmony chip inside it - and that's why it costs a little bit more than the usual price?

 

Harvey

[_The Doctor__]

the 5200 was designed for many things to be added via the cartridge port, what do you think the pass through pins were for? many things were possible but few have ever used these to advantage. Atari dropped the full pbi from the 8 bit line with the excuse it wasn't used enough, so we had to make adaption cards to convert eci back to pbi. The 5200 pass through was on most 4 ports I think but don't remember, same situation, but you could easily pass audio and video through the machine in that way. Just because everyone didn't do a thing doesn't mean they couldn't do a thing. I might add just because you didn't see a thing, doesn't mean someone didn't see and do that thing.

Edited April 10, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[Rybags]

5200 only had audio in.  7800 has video as well though very likely that would totally override what the system generates.

[_The Doctor__]

glad someone knows what I mean

but the 2 port 5200 had video in on cartridge port pin 24 as well...

http://www.atarihq.com/5200/5200faq/04_06.html

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[Wrathchild]

Shame it misses the r/w line as an UNO cart equivalent could be done for it.