Press START to Die of Dysentery

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About this blog

My recently renewed passion for all-things Atari, as well as more general retro-computing, gaming, and development, has me itching to play, explore, discuss, and build such things. What better place than here to cover various Atari/retro-computing related projects, small and large, both hardware and software in a build-log/series and/or how/to format? And I’m sure other history/commentary will creep in as well ...

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DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 18 - Lost on the Trail ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 18 (08/27/24) - Lost on the Trail ... I wanted to drop a quick update on this, as it has been two months since my last post. I'll start that by saying that this is not a dead project, nor something I've abandoned. Being "lost on the trail" is less being "lost" and more some (pleasantly but unexpectedly) extended travel, starting with visiting home for the (British) Silverstone F1 GP (where I grew up)

Torq in DevLog

August 27

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 16 - Hitching the Wagon ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 16 (07/03/24) - Hitching the Wagon ... A little more progress ... Thanks to @MrFish, I've added the very nice oxen and wagon graphics he created (which I very much appreciated!)! You can see how this looks, statically, here, and I've attached the respective .XEX file if you want to see it actually run. This completes 95% of the primary technical eleme

Torq in DevLog

July 3

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 14 - ANTIC antics ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 14 (06/28/24) - "ANTIC antics ..." I've managed to squeeze in two solid days, and several "stolen hours" on various other days, of work on this in the last two weeks. The bulk of this time has been spent taking the code I originally wrote to test various techniques and a) re-writing it to use the various macros and equates/includes I created, and b) adding various moving elements and "graphics". It is still not the f

Torq in DevLog

June 28

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 11 - Now Including ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 11 (06/15/24) - "Now Including ..." A very productive, and quite "Atari", week (and change) ... I read Howard Scott Warshaw's "Once Upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry" (excellent, and well worth the time). I focused on getting my "includes" project to a point where I could just use it, rather than fiddle with it (see below). Finished incorporatin

Torq in DevLog

June 16

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 8 - Famous Last Words ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 8 (06/07/24) - "Famous Last Words ..." I had expected, based on my schedule (a.k.a. “the list of fun events my darling wife is constantly adding to our calendar”) to have gotten the “final” version of the Intro (and “Travel”) screen done. I said as much last time (famous last words) … That was overly optimistic. There has been progress; most of it around some supporting

Torq in DevLog

June 7

DevLog

The Woebegon Trail: DevLog - Day 6 - Oh, Clara ...

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 6 (05/30/24) - "Oh, Clara ..." Poor, sweet, gentle Clara ... Dysentery hath taken thee ... without remorse or pause ... To be fair, I've Died of Dysentery four times, myself, this week ... once, even, before breakfast (which seemed a bit rude) - so it's not just Clara. Nor Harriet; though her days are clearly numbered. If she contracts Dysentery again, even if it is fro

Torq in DevLog

May 30

Tools

Tools: Image2Fnt Converter (Atari 8-bit)

IMAGE2FNT - Converts Bit-Mapped Files to Atari 8-bit .FNT Files This tool was born out of a need, or at least desire, for a quick and easy way to create character sets/fonts for some Atari 8-bit projects I'm working on - most notably my Oregon Trail homage "The Woebegone Trail". As I talked about in this post, I tried a variety of such tools, some free, some commercial, some Atari 8-bit native, some for modern systems. None quite worked the way I wanted them too (even though most a

Torq in Tools

May 25

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 4 - First Code

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 4 (05/20/24) - "First Code" Disclaimers The first thing to say, here, is that this is NOT the actual/final presentation! It is a low-fidelity, coarse, facsimile of it. Its purpose is purely to bring together the elements/techniques that'll be used in presenting the "Travel Screen" (which will also be the core of the "Title/Start" screen, and the architectural hub of the game), to act as a testb

Torq in DevLog

May 20

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 3 - Prep & Practice

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 3 (05/18/24) - "Prep & Practice" Temporal Anomalies While it has been seven days since I started this DevLog, this is only the third day I’ve had time to work on the project to which it directly pertains. And in thinking about that, I decided the counter in the graphic, and number of days elapsed, will be incremented for the number of days of actual work on the project, rather than just th

Torq in DevLog

May 18

Tools

Tools: Fnt2Data Font Converter (Atari 8-bit)

FNT2DATA - Converts Atari 8-bit .FNT files to data blocks for various Assemblers As I started my thinking around how I would build "The Woebegone Trail" (my homebrew homage to "The Oregon Trail"), it quickly became apparent that I would be doing a lot of work with custom character sets (both as actual readable character sets, and as "tiles" for ANTIC MODE 4 displays). Creating those is one thing, which I'll come back to below, but using them is another matter entirely. And I wasn't

Torq in Tools

May 15

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 2 - Dev Tools

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 2 (05/13/24) - "Development Tools" Choosing Development Tools & Environments I’ll start here by saying that my original, nostalgia-soaked, thought was to do this build on actual Atari hardware and software (nominally MAC/65) – just as I would have done if I had undertaken this as 12/13 year-old back in 1982. The attendant nostalgia/purist factor would, however, come at the cost of being tied to a desk. Not tenabl

Torq in DevLog

May 14

DevLog

The Woebegone Trail: DevLog - Day 1

Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 1 (05/12/24) Here begins my “devlog” for “The Woebegon Trail” (working title, subject to change); my build of a “homebrew” Atari 800 version of, or at least homage to, the 1985 (and later) versions of “The Oregon Trail”. Why “Woebegone”? Let’s start with a definition: Woebegone [phn: woh-bi-gawn, -gon] adjective: Beset with woe; surrounded by woe; affected by woe,

Torq in DevLog

May 12

Tools

Tools: Gamestation Pro & THE400 Mini

It would be fair to say that it was the combination of acquiring the Atari Gamestation Pro and then THE400 Mini that re-ignited my Atari retro-focus. I have computer-based ways to do everything they do, but these dedicated units were very appealing for use on the big-screens and group-play without needing a dedicated computer in the living room. Credit where it is due; it was @jonreddick's videos on both units, on his GenXGrownUp channel, that got me interested initially. Things sn

Torq in Tools

May 11

General

Introductions, History & Dysentery

A Brief History I wrote my first code when I was seven or eight. That was hand translated Z80 opcodes on a NASCOM 1. I was utterly captivated from the moment my first “program” (a few dozen bytes) showed output; LEDs counting in binary. Since then, I’ve written and shipped code in every major language, for every significant platform, and on everything from tiny embedded micro-controllers to super computers. Yet it is the Atari 8-bit series that holds my heart and my fo

Torq in General

May 11

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