Wilheim Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 (edited) Hi, everyone! Attached is the first beta of the game "Alternate Reality: The Dungeon" on an Atarimax cartridge. This time, it can save and resume the characters from cartridge. I will appreciate your testing and feedback on it. There is a .CAR image and ATR to program it on real hardware. You can also change the format into a bank 0 maxflash cartridge as well. Many thanks to @Wrathchild, who provided the flashing assembly routines from Steve on this forum, as well as the complete ATR file compiled and deencrypted. Regards!! Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.car Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.atr Edited June 6, 2020 by Wilheim 17 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 Looking forward to taking this for a spin Well done! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 1 hour ago, Wrathchild said: Looking forward to taking this for a spin Well done! Never saw that drunk guy in the back before. It's so funny 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 6, 2020 Author Share Posted June 6, 2020 Yeah, I still remember that once I sold a dragon on the bar. Giving more technical detail: the loading routine was completely rewritten in the zone $CC00-$CFFF, hence the need to have at least 64K RAM. Also, I implemented two "virtual disk drives": One is for the game and data (D4:) and the second for the character disk management (D1:). The flash cartridge uses 16 64K sectors, so I decided to use 1 64K sector to the character disk header (The ARCHAR! ID, character name and rough data) and another 4 sectors for each save state. Then, in my writing routine, it verifies if the disk sector written is the first one for the character, by comparing it to a table. If that's so, it erases the entire sector first and then writes the first disk sector, giving space to write the following ones. Additionally, when a format command is sent, the driver does a complete erase of the 5 sectors. I also skipped the status command procedure at the beginning, used to detect the disk drives. For those who are interested, in my Github repository I had published the source code for the conversion. I tried to document it the most of it. If there's something you need more explanation, please let me know. One note: if you compile the ASM file, please make a new character disk the first time you execute. If you don't do it, it hangs when you try to remove a character without initializing it first. Here is the link of my Github repository: https://github.com/Wilheim1977/ARDungeonCartridge Cheers! 6 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebiguy Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 3 hours ago, Wilheim said: Attached is the first beta of the game "Alternate Reality: The Dungeon" on an Atarimax cartridge Thanks for this work! Is there an AtariMax cart version of The City? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 AR:City is a completely different beast But can be tamed... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 5 hours ago, Wilheim said: Hi, everyone! Attached is the first beta of the game "Alternate Reality: The Dungeon" on an Atarimax cartridge. This time, it can save and resume the characters from cartridge. I will appreciate your testing and feedback on it. There is a .CAR image and ATR to program it on real hardware. You can also change the format into a bank 0 maxflash cartridge as well. Many thanks to @Wrathchild, who provided the flashing assembly routines from Steve on this forum, as well as the complete ATR file compiled and deencrypted. Regards!! Hi Wilheim, I would like to give a big thank you to in a couple of ways. First of all, for the game itself. I've never been able to get into AR, not because of not wanting to but because the disk accessing was just a bit too much for me. Swapping disks constantly really ruined the experience (which seems a good one from my quick test of the game). The Atarimax route is so much better. Also, for providing the source code which includes the Atarimax routines in a MADS compatible format. I have a copy of the .a65 file with the writing code in, but haven't got around to converting it to MADS (not that it would be too hard). So you've saved me some time. Thank you. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 7, 2020 Author Share Posted June 7, 2020 17 minutes ago, snicklin said: First of all, for the game itself. I've never been able to get into AR, not because of not wanting to but because the disk accessing was just a bit too much for me. Swapping disks constantly really ruined the experience (which seems a good one from my quick test of the game). The Atarimax route is so much better. Also, for providing the source code which includes the Atarimax routines in a MADS compatible format. I have a copy of the .a65 file with the writing code in, but haven't got around to converting it to MADS (not that it would be too hard). So you've saved me some time. Thank you. Glad you like it. Enjoy it! About the cartridge writing routines, please take note that I used a customized version that works only with the second 29F040 chip, that is, banks $40-$7F. I did it that way because I don't need to flash/erase/write the first chip on this game, and tried to do the writing as fast as possible. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 3 minutes ago, Wilheim said: Glad you like it. Enjoy it! About the cartridge writing routines, please take note that I used a customized version that works only with the second 29F040 chip, that is, banks $40-$7F. I did it that way because I don't need to flash/erase/write the first chip on this game, and tried to do the writing as fast as possible. That's good to know, thank you. I'll keep an eye out for this in the code when I come to implement the code into my routines. Much appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 23 minutes ago, Wilheim said: customized version that works only with the second 29F040 chip, that is, banks $40-$7F I thought that the AtariMax 1mb cartridge only had one 29F040 chip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 7, 2020 Author Share Posted June 7, 2020 24 minutes ago, Roydea6 said: I thought that the AtariMax 1mb cartridge only had one 29F040 chip. Each 8 Mbit cartridge (1 Mbyte) has 2 29F040 flash roms (4 Mbit - 512Kbytes). That is because there is no 8Mbit flash roms on 8 bits per address. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 The AtariMax 1Mbit = 128KBytes = 1 x Am29f010 The 8Mbit = 1024KBytes = 2 x Am29f040 The 010 chip is 128KB and the 040 is 4 times that, so 512KB Hence 2 are required in the larger cartridge. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 7, 2020 Author Share Posted June 7, 2020 (edited) New version, with some improvements: - Optimized initialization routine, by putting them during the credits text screen. Now it boots faster! - Feature added: now if you turn your computer with OPTION pressed, it will boot the disk. This way you can reflash the cartridge if you want or dump it to backup into an ATR file, using the cartridge dumper attached on this post. - Added credits for the cartridge conversion. I think it's fair enough. The first 3 files are the game in CAR, BIN and ATR format, and the fourth one is a cartridge dumper I shared a while ago. You can dump the cartridge with that utility. Useful to back your character up in any moment. I will update the sources on my GitHub repository as soon as I can. I'm commenting it before the release. Cheers! Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.bin Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.car Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.atr DiskDumper.atr Edited June 7, 2020 by Wilheim 5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 (edited) Just checking, are you actually able to Copyright this conversion (as it is a derivative of the disk conversion I made - which itself is a derivative of the original)? Edited June 7, 2020 by Wrathchild 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 7, 2020 Author Share Posted June 7, 2020 (edited) 45 minutes ago, Wrathchild said: Just checking, are you actually able to Copyright this conversion (as it is a derivative of the disk conversion I made - which itself is a derivative of the original)? AFAIK, no, that's why I'm removing a "(C)" in a hidden message in the source code, as well as in the credits in the next revision. Edited June 7, 2020 by Wilheim 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 8, 2020 Author Share Posted June 8, 2020 (edited) New version. New features: - Removed the "(C)" in the credits and the hidden greetings. - Removed the SPACE BAR waiting routines when saving and resuming characters. Thanks to @Wrathchild for his feedback and suggestions. The repository was also updated: https://github.com/Wilheim1977/ARDungeonCartridge Cheers! Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.atr Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.bin Alternate Reality - The Dungeon.car Edited June 8, 2020 by Wilheim adding github link 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilmoo Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 It's possible I'm in the minority on this, but an extra second or two on the initial boot screen would be nice. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 (edited) 4 hours ago, evilmoo said: It's possible I'm in the minority on this, but an extra second or two on the initial boot screen would be nice. I agree with you. I like looking over the credits. Edited June 8, 2020 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 8, 2020 Author Share Posted June 8, 2020 I think I can do that. Maybe I could add a skip feature from the credits screen for those who don’t want to wait. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfollett Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 Just curious how this will work if burned to a real cartridge for use on real hardware. You posted you create a virtual "D1:" for character management. How will this work on real hardware if you want to save/load to a physical disk including importing from City character floppy disks where the game was saved by a dungeon entrance. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted June 8, 2020 Author Share Posted June 8, 2020 46 minutes ago, bfollett said: Just curious how this will work if burned to a real cartridge for use on real hardware. You posted you create a virtual "D1:" for character management. How will this work on real hardware if you want to save/load to a physical disk including importing from City character floppy disks where the game was saved by a dungeon entrance. You can save using character using the flashing properties from the cartridge. Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice City character transfer. I tested on real hardware and it works! Here’s a link showing that: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8guy Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 Now we just need a great label for our carts? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 the only way this would work as a quote burned real cartridge would require a new cartridge hybrid, part ROM, part Ram or Flash. otherwise we'd have to make ROM that still interacts with the floppy and not the flash disks..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 3 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said: part ROM, part Ram or Flash Eh? @Wilheim has this working on an all-Flash device, a physical AtariMax 8Mbit cartridge. It would still be possible to permit disk saves, it's just that the implementation has chosen not too, e.g. by injecting another question such as 'do you wish to save to disk or cartridge' before asking for the slot #. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 (edited) Eh? I was answering another members question about a ROM based physical cartridge still interacting with the disks. If such a cartridge were to exist, you might just interact with the disk and play, copy the player disk etc to cart ram and play,or even take the player and flash it. Several ways to go about it, Might even be an interesting MyIDE II project- who knows. It's not like there haven't been plenty of ROM based programs utilizing disks for data.... Edited June 8, 2020 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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