Got some good ideas for programmers!

[Synthead]

Here's one idea - What if you were able to link your Atari's right controller port up to your PC to play games with your Atari online? The controllers are just serial ports - if parallel is suitable, serial-parallel cables are readily available!

 

Another - what if you programmed something hardcore where one player would play upon two axes? That would be insane.

 

And one more - why not get more cycles out of your Atari by downsizing the refresh rate? By going 30 fps instead of 60 fps NTSC (25 fps/50 fps PAL), you could calculate a lot more before you had to refresh again. Imagine the graphics you would be capable of then!

[Nukey Shay]

Here's one idea - What if you were able to link your Atari's right controller port up to your PC to play games with your Atari online?  The controllers are just serial ports - if parallel is suitable, serial-parallel cables are readily available!

This was discussed before. Feasable - yes, practical - no. And not only the hardware would need to be created, but the software as well. A better solution is just to improve one of the existing emulators to allow netplay.

 

 

Another - what if you programmed something hardcore where one player would play upon two axes?  That would be insane.

Playing upon axes IS insane. Dunno what that has to do with Atari tho.

 

 

And one more - why not get more cycles out of your Atari by downsizing the refresh rate?  By going 30 fps instead of 60 fps NTSC (25 fps/50 fps PAL), you could calculate a lot more before you had to refresh again.  Imagine the graphics you would be capable of then!

The graphics would be worse...since every other frame would consist of nothing but a blank screen...and the drawn screen has no way of benefiting from the cycles saved (each scanline still only has 76 machine cycles in which to display it's data before the next one is to be drawn). Think "strobe light". If it's a method of doing more calculations to GET that data ready to display, that can already happen while the TIA is turned off. See all that black area above and below the scanlines holding graphics? The computer is doing stuff there.

[Synthead]

Well ... thanks ...

[Nukey Shay]

No prob

Think of a 2600 game as being in 2 halves...the display kernal, and the rest of the program. The main program routine is normally executing each of these halves 50 or 60 times a second (which must happen, since that is what the television refresh rate is). When the display is being drawn on the screen, there's usually not much time to do anything else...so all of the pointers and such have already been set up by the rest of the program (which happens off-screen). If the timing is missed during the display, the hardware just dumps whatever exists in it's registers onto the next scanline...which is why if you turn on the console without a cartridge, you'll get those random bars that fill the screen top-to-bottom - the ram is not cleared automatically, and the console is just dumping the register contents onto the screen line after line So the first step in games is to clear out all of the registers and begin with a clean slate. The TIA is turned off, some pointers are initialized, and then turned back on and synchronized with the television. The display portion runs...grabbing values from the pointers that had been set up and spilling them into the registers...and the TIA is turned off again. That finishes a single picture or "frame" on the television. Then, the rest of the program executes and updates the pointers and such for the next frame to grab...as well as do any side jobs that need to be done (like playing sound effects, reading the joystick, etc).

Since the display kernal is the most crucial part of the game, it (or at least a rough copy of it) is usually designed first...with the rest of the program being designed -around- it.

[Synthead]

I know, I'm actually studying Atari programming right now

 

Haven't coded much myself, but it's very interesting