The prior update stirred up interest in Stay Frosty in the Holiday Cart Forum. Supercat didn't care for how the melt trail worked, to which I replied it was just a kernel test to make sure it showed up on the correct scanline, while atari2600land and vdub_bobby asked for clarification on the planned game play. I clarified that while the ultimate goal would be to put out all the fire on the level, that the logic for that hadn't yet been written so collecting all the ice was a temporary placeholde
Thomas Jentzsch and I had a brief discussion about the snowman's movement:
Thomas: I'd like the snowman's movement a bit more "realistic" (e.g. with a bit acceleration and inertia).
Me: Hmm, hadn't thought about that. Any sample source you can suggest for me to take a look at? Revisions to the movement would start a few days later and would undergo a number of iterations to get it just right. I added some playfield color changes so the ice blocks would match Nathan's mockups (as seen
The first "playable" build! Collect all the ice blocks then exit the bottom right to the next level. These two levels are in the final game.
The snowman controls are a bit odd at the moment, left/right work as you'd expect while up moves you upward. However, if you're not holding up then the snowman will fall unless he's standing on a platform. The middle two digits of the score will show 00 when he's on a platform or FF when he's not.
Changes for this build:
2 fireball sizes, sma
Albert and I had a discussion about the ice and such:
Albert: I like your idea of disabling auto-melt for nighttime levels. Is the idea here to collect all the ice to clear the level and progress to the next? Why don't the fireballs melt the ice? Are the levels going to be differentiated in any way except different layouts of platforms? There's a lot of potential here to turn this into a full-fledged game of its own merit!. Lots of dynamics here with the auto-melting, the ice, the fireba
Nathan and I had a discussion about the fire color, nose and melt trail:
Color cycling for the fireballs did not pan out, we'll see that in the next update, though the idea of changing color above the ice would eventually be used to great effect in Stay Frosty 2 as seen by these early renditions of the ice chest and carrot: My ideas for the melt trail panned out and only used 1 byte of RAM: FrostyMeltY ds 1 ; 76543210 ; 6 = Melt on level 0
I decided to change to use a reflected playfield and drop the updating of PF0 for the upper platforms. PF0's still used to draw the horizon as well as the lowest platform.
Doing this means the snowman can always drop down on the left and right sides of the level. It also adds an additional constraint to the kernel in that you must update PF2 at cycle 48 in order for the left and right sides of the screen to be different; however, it frees up 12 cycles per scanline in the ice and platfor
The following weekend I created a test level to check the update timing for the kernel. The time critical section of the kernel is when the ice blocks are being drawn as everything (snowman & color, nose, melt trail, fireball, 6 playfield updates) had the potential for being drawn:
Looked great, but I had to drop both the nose and the melt trail as there wasn't enough time to update everything during that critical section
36 cycles to update playfields
One problem that crops up with treadmills is static electricity. I've experienced it and for the most part the only thing that happened was a small zap when I touch the aluminum frame of my keyboard - basically I was grounding myself through the USB port on my KVM. With the new 4K monitors I would occasionally experience brief instances of the screen distorting or going black. My monitors aren't routed though the KVM (it's DVI model, not DisplayPort) so I initially thought the problem was r
Nathan and I discussed the fireballs and nose:
Me (from last time): Using Missile 1 for the nose means we can't double or triple the fireball sprite - unless they flicker.
Nathan: Hmmm... I think I'd rather do without the nose then. Does that mean losing the nose on the reserve sprite, as well, or just the player?
Me: The nose on the reserve sprite can stay - there's no fireballs to conflict with at the bottom.
Nathan: The other thing I was thinking about, is having the firebal
On October 29, 2007 I was invited to take part in the 5th annual AtariAge Holiday Cart. The plan for the cart to feature a number of mini games with a slick menu to tie the games together. I contacted my nephew Justin for some game ideas and he suggested "You're Frosty collecting stuff" and "You're Rudolf, running away from the other reindeer because they're taunting you". I then started perusing the private Holiday Cart forum and came upon this idea that Nathan Strum had posted a week earlier
My sister (Chelle) came up for the weekend with my nephew (Zander) and his sister (Aubrey). We took them to the Museum of Fine Arts to see Sculpted in Steel: Art Deco Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1929–1940 Chelle checking out the 1929 Bugatti Type 46 Zander looking at the 1930 Cord L-29 Cabriolet (only took one photo) 1930 Henderson KJ Streamline 1934 Edsel Ford Model 40 Speedster 1934 Packard Twelve Model 1106 Mom checking out the 1934 Voisin Type C27 Aérosport 1934 BM
In spite of the weather not cooperating: we have made some headway! New front door: New board (on the left) has been painted. The white lines aren't streaks in the paint, they're raindrops This side looks done, but needs a second coat in a few spots: Progress made on this side: Not pictured are the north and south sides of the house. North side is finished, south side has paint around the edges, awaiting the paint sprayer for the large open areas.
Thought for sure I'd be back into the 2600 by now, but been too busy with other things like household maintenance. Started off by sanding the garage door to get rid of a small amount of rust. Primed the previously rusty areas with Rust-oleum, then put an additional primer coat of Killz over the entire door as the paint had faded in an odd way (the top-right panel was noticeably darker than the rest of the door). Mom & dad helped replace the board on the left that had started to rot at th
Game of Thrones starts up again tonight so I reactivated my HBO Now subscription. Looks like they finally gotten their act together! Last year the symbol next to Casting By in the title sequence looked like it contained 4 crosses: now you can see that the crosses are actually fleurs-de-lis: Full screen:
To switch inputs on my Dell P2715Q monitors I'd been hitting one of the four buttons(any will do) to active the monitor's menu: Then hitting the second button from the top to specify Input Source: In the Input Source submenu the first and second button move the selection up/down while the third button confirms the selection (fourth button is used to abort - it'll close the menu without switching inputs). It works, but now that I'm having to switch inputs on both monitors* it's become tedio
This was unexpected: With the new monitors I'm now running at 30 bit color depth, also known as deep color. The 24 bit color we're all used to is known as true color. So now that I know I have it, anybody know of something (photo, video, etc) where I can see it in action? Addendum: what happens when switching inputs on the monitor:
I'd planned to pick up an Apple Pencil when I got my iPad Pro, but they didn't have any available and the backorder was for quite a while. I checked their store a couple times in December and January, but never had any luck. I checked online today and they were available in most of the Houston area stores, so I reserved one for in-store-pickup. I then headed out for brunch at Torchy's Tacos, and received "order ready" notification while eating. Pairing the Pencil was super easy - just plug
Just finished getting the monitors installed and cables run to the various computers. Besides my Mac Pro, I have a couple work computers set up at my desk. I had been using a 4-port DVI KVM, but when I checked out DisplayPort KVMs I got a bit of sticker shock - $950 for single monitor, $1400 for a dual monitor. There are a couple cheaper models at $428(single) and $700(dual), but they only support 4K @ 30 Hz. So for now I'm just using the KVM as a K-M and using the monitor's menu to sw
My new monitors arrived early! I bought a couple Dell P2715Q UHD monitors with an ETA of Friday. Of course the 15' cables are still on time, so I won't be able to set them up on the monitor arms until this weekend. Addendum: Hooked up one for testing. Image quality is excellent! Addendum: Max resolution for HDMI Max resolution for DisplayPort
Ran across my Playstation CDs last week and wondered if I could get them to work with OpenEMU. So I took a look at the OpenEmu User-Guide and found the section on CD based games. I thought it was odd that the instructions for a Mac only emulator only listed Windows only tools for converting your CD to use with OpenEMU.
After reviewing the guide it looked like you only needed 2 things:
Rips from the CD. The CD will consist of one or more tracks. For data tracks create ISO files, for audi
Last time around I added jitter emulation to Stella, which became part of the official build with version 4.6.5. The jitter emulation basically moves the screen up/down in response to inconsistent scanline counts, similar to that which occurs on a real TV. I added it because people without an Atari would often write games with variable scanline counts, but not realize it until others play-tested the game on real hardware.
One thing it didn't emulate was a recovery time - if the difference i
As sometimes happens at the start of January, I came down with Cedar Fever - really bad allergies due to the cedar pollen. Technically they're Ashe juniper trees, but they're known in Texas as Mountain Cedar. The trees grow in the hill country (central Texas) so I don't normally get exposed to it - but when the wind blows just right (or maybe that should be just wrong ) the pollen makes it all the way to Houston. How bad can it be? It made it here again this year and I had to take three sick day
Hard to believe, but its been three years since I cut the cord. I did so because I estimated $800 a year in savings while still being able to watch the shows I wanted to watch. Those savings would be what I used to pay DirecTV ($146 a month) less purchasing shows à la cart - buying seasons via Amazon, iTunes, and physical media (Blu-ray & DVD sets). There would be a tradeoff though as I wouldn't be able to watch that content the same day it aired. For most shows it would be minor with just a
After posting about only concentrating on ROM savings, Thomas replied:
He started reviewing the code then came back with:
So I brought him up to speed on DPC+'s FastFetch mode, which overrides the LDA # command for faster access (by 2 cycles!) to the DPC+ registers. Thomas started coming back with changes like:
Our first day of optimizing freed up almost 200 bytes! At this point Stella decided it would show the menu screen, so I saved a quick screenshot while I could as I didn't know i
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