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Hi all. After one month of hard work, I've completed Thunder Soldier for Intellivision, a run-and-shoot game. All started because I was doing experiments with parallax scrolling and it looked pretty good. It has five stages and their respective bosses. Just shoot everything. Soon to be available from Homebrew Inc. In the meanwhile you can enjoy a video preview of the game

Good news! I spoke with Electron over the phone in the early afternoon today. @tebe has also recently been in touch with him (possibly after my conversation with Piesiu, whose Atari I am currently upgrading after his win at Lost Party). An NTSC palette is to be agreed upon in the coming days, and a complete set of cores with the NTSC palette is planned for release in September. There is both agreement and willingness to proceed. It's just a matter of finalizing the palette. I also talked about this with @flashjazzcat today. Thanks also @candle for re-engaging on this topic. Perhaps we can finish this topic together with combined efforts.

again, i belive the purpose of this thread was to agree on certain vbxe palette suitable for all NTSC users and then, pass this information with agreed palette to the Electron or me (to pass it to Electron) via lets say - PM that did not happend IIRC, thus nothing else did not happend either i think there are some tools for palette manipulation written for sdx, but these are all third party stuff setting up palette is pretty straight forward, and can be done using basic if someone has inclination for it, or in any other language this code is to be executed once per power up (simplyfying) and no residend code is needed why there was no NTSC VBXE palette? Noone requested this when this project was managed, and when Lotharek bought intelectual rights for it, all development of the core was stopped - first - there was virtually no space left on the device to be utilised, second, core was pretty mature and all of issues there were reported back were fixed anyways, if you have that one palette that was agreed on, and can be used to please you all - please send it, it would be super nice if it could be sent in the format as files above getting compiler to work on modern setup after intel took over altera is another issue, but lets say there is a will to do that

laoo_b.mif laoo_g.mif laoo_r.mif

Not to be mean, but why does he look like someone photoshopped a face on the bottom of their big toe?

I've updated multisprite.h in cc7800 to implement DMA Masking vertical scrolling, an idea by @RevEng. It's working like a charm. Previously, my vertical scrolling feature was implemented by drawing a black curtain on the bottom of the screen (consuming DMA, ROM memory of the curtain and a palette color for the black). Now, vertical scrolling consumes less DMA where sprites are displayed in the bottom (46 DMA cycles in that zone vs 10 + 32 * 3 + (8 + 31 * 3) = 409 cycles in the DMA Masking zone). This leaves more DMA cycles for displaying actual sprites, and it uses no ROM memory neither palette color. Now my sparse tiling example in 320BD mode can use the P4C3 color (orange), and now uses all the available colors like in Rikki & Vikki ! 320BD_sparse_tiling.mp4

and they said this thread was dormant

Hmmm, I cannot help see a resemblance. Damn good job.

There are already several threads on this. It's a cart dumper like the Retron, so there's no way for a multi-cart or menu-driven device to work. That's why the included multi-cart has dip switches, so it works like individual cartridges. It needs to dump the cart's contents into memory. That's also why many homebrews with additional chips won't work. The 2600+ is primarily for those who want to play *most* original cartridges from back in the day. Everyone else will be disappointed in the limitations.

Most cat's are liquid, but Garfield's a gas:

I quite like the idea of the pico rotated by 90 degrees such that the USB socket is pointing downwards towards the cartridge port. I've had a quick look at the shell and it looks like I can accomodate that without too many changes. There don't seem to be any major downsides to this approach for the standalone cartridge. Stay tuned. Robin

Here's the summary for Week 34, running from August 21 - 27. We logged 3004 minutes of eligible play, playing 98 games on a total of 15 systems. Top 10: 1. Pokémon Gold (Game Boy Color) - 509 min. (#4) 2. Reknum Souls Adventure (NES/Famicom) - 460 min. 3. Sword of Fargoal (Commodore 64) - 128 min. 4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 124 min. (#3) 5. Swords and Serpents (NES/Famicom) - 120 min. 6. Sky Diver (Atari 2600) - 101 min. 7. Record of Lodoss War (SNES) - 95 min. 8. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 74 min. 9. Destiny of an Emperor (NES/Famicom) - 60 min. 9. Treasure Hunter G (SNES) - 60 min. Pre-NES top 10: 1. Sword of Fargoal (Commodore 64) - 128 min. 2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 124 min. (PN#2) 3. Sky Diver (Atari 2600) - 101 min. 4. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 74 min. (PN#8) 5. J-Bird (PC DOS) - 49 min. 6. Centipede (Atari 2600) - 30 min. 6. Go Fish! (Atari 2600) - 30 min. 8. Air-Sea Battle (Atari 2600) - 29 min. 9. H.E.R.O. II (Atari 2600) - 27 min. 10. Asteroids Attack (Atari 2600) - 25 min. Top 10 systems: 1. NES/Famicom (23 games) - 856 min. (#2) 2. Game Boy Color (8 games) - 679 min. (#6) 3. Atari 2600 (23 games) - 538 min. (#1) 4. SNES (5 games) - 225 min. (#7) 5. Game Boy (10 games) - 190 min. 6. Commodore 64 (2 games) - 143 min. (#4) 7. PC DOS (3 games) - 93 min. (#8) 8. Genesis (5 games) - 60 min. 9. Arcade (4 games) - 57 min. 10. Game Gear (4 games) - 55 min. Pokémon Gold (Game Boy Color) celebrates its entry into the 5000 Minute Club (total 5432 min) by becoming the overall most played game this week, ahead of newcomer Rectum ... I mean Reknum Souls Adventure. On the pre-NES list, Solar Fox is just outnumbered by Sword of Fargoal. Both the NES and Atari 2600 sport 23 different games each this week, of which the NES is played on average 13.8 minutes more on each game.

Hi all, This is a short post but with an important message... During the fantastic @ZeroPage Homebrew Live yesterday, James experienced a problem with the joystick fire button moving from the title to the selection menu. I really thank him and his ability to find bugs because it was not easy to catch it 😜 Obviously I tested the game with several hardware configurations and devices and all was working fine but finally, using a TAC-2 joystick, I have been able to replicate the problem... and to solve it 😎 For this reason I have just released a 2.6 version absolutely identical to the previous one, except for a minor fine tuning in the fire button reading routine. May be it was already working perfectly for you or maybe not but, in anycase, you can find the new version 2.6 in @Philsan website: https://www.santellocco.com/atari/spacetaxi.htm Thank you all as usual... Andrea

It seems Poland can not only create dramas but also great endings to them.

@KrunchyTC this thread might be interesting to you, and here's a link to a small bitmap demo I did. Press Select to switch between 320A and 160A modes. https://raz0red.github.io/js7800/?cart=https://atariage.com/forums/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=910920

Has anyone confirmed whether or not his mother is even really proud?

I find that comment very offensive. I met toes that are quite smarter than John Phelan (and easier to understand). 😤

Well .. looks like we have the answer from the Legend! Although he does go on about the Atari VCS alot .... which we all expect. It's his baby! And don't forget, you may need a Babel Fish translator. God Bless old JP! A broken dumper! That does not sound good. Maybe a dose of 'Gastro-Stop Plus' will help the problem.

NO, NO, NO! You guys are doing it all wrong! I see an awful lot of ignoring going on around here. This is not a thread to be ignored! The title clearly says NEVER MIND. You must NEVER MIND this thread. With that in mind, here is me, NEVER MINDING this thread. P.S. How would you like it if the entire WORLD saw your junk before you could!

I’ve never even heard of it. That’s my opinion.

Here you go… 1. Do they still ship the games from their website ? According to the site, yes, but you will probably end up with two outcomes, and this is based on many members feedback and personal experience. A. It will never ship and you need to get a refund from PayPal B. Maybe it will eventually ship after waiting days and days with no order update whatsoever, and only then after threatening to file a PayPal refund. 2. Is it safe for me to buy from them ? See above with regards to actually getting your item. As for ‘is it safe to buy from them’ from the context of is it safe for your mental wellbeing and having to deal with the regret of spending your hard earned cash on a pile of garbage game and packaging…that’s very debatable. 3. Will I get my items for sure ? See answers to question 1. 4. When I’m in the website, I can’t find a way to add the items in a cart like I have to pay each item separately ?! Sorry, can’t help with that one, but considering the website looks like it was built with Frontpage 98, I am not surprised you are having this issue. 5. Do you guys know any website or place online that sell (Homebrew games )? because I’m still looking for many many homebrew games for my collection 😭 Try the AtariAge store of course, or the Songbird Productions store. For homebrew ST ports contact Gaz who is another brilliant resource. I hope this was genuinely helpful.

Here you go: GCC263_TAR.GZ

Emotionality and romanticism are our national traits 😜

You've inspired me to redo the Palette & Sprite bits page to hopefully make it easier to understand & use

Hey, leave me out of this! I'm making an effort to be nice and say nice things. I'm glad that fine fellow got the thing he paid for. What thread is this you tagged me in? Oh, the Retro77 Atari 2600+. I don't want one because I don't have any cartridges anymore, and I can play Atari games on other potato computers I own. But I guess it looks nice, and the price is OK for the 2023 market. I'm interested in playing that "new" Berserk game but not $30 for a cartridge interested.

Actually, anything with the name "Paul" on it is automatically worth at least 50 bucks more.

Thanks, but unfortunately I think cc7800 still requires a lot of documentation to explain all the features and macros already available. An expert in Maria and C will probably find it straightforward, but as of today it's far from reach from the majority of game designers. A best starting point certainly is 7800Basic, which is wonderfully documented. But at least it's good to have a choice, especially for people who have 20+ years of experience in C. Volunteers for documentation are welcome ! I'll do everything possible to provide all the necessary explanations and help.

Built another PlusCart. To save on contact wear from transferring between different consoles under test. (Totally not a laziness reason :p)

LOL. Since those particular 'resources' appeared at the back of the older version of the FX core manual freely available to anyone with an Internet connection, I doubt rights violation will be a problem.

It has been so boring and forever taking! Some good winds a while back, but then dead for a looooong time. We are still not quite in the main storms, just in between two outer bands. It has apparently tightened up and gained strength, expected to hit as a category four hurricane. I am still not expecting to take a direct hit, just a glancing blow off the east, but even the wind forecast is nuts. A little neat thing I learned about Tallahassee a while back. They (smart people) went to Atlanta and did some war gaming with the weather and predicted that if we took a direct hit from a category three storm, we would be without most utility services for up to 18 months, half of the homes in the city would be destroyed or damaged beyond livability and never rebuilt, over half of business would close permanently, and we would suffer more than 50% infrastructure loss. I am assuming that accounts for the 22 mile distance from the coast and roughly 150ft elevation. I am not surprised, considering the effects of Hurricane Hermine: 80% of our communications infrastructure was down for several days; while power was out city-wide initially, about a third of the area was brought up quickly, other areas were brought back up slowly (I regained power on the third day,) with some areas without power for months; amazing amount trees down. Aftermath of Hurricane Hermine Left: Old St. Augustine Rd. seen from Southwood Plantation Rd. Right: Large tree uprooted at entrance to Florida Department of Emergency Management on Shumard Oak Blvd. I need to get to bed and catch a little shut-eye, but I can never sleep leading up to a hurricane. Morning is going to be busy. See ya'll on the flip-side!

Brilliant game. I even designed some labels for it back then.

Here is version 3 of the Delay Macros: DelayMacros(Ver3).zip This version does better byte optimization when page boundaries are involved. The algorithm continues to look for which routine saves the most bytes, but now a few more scenarios are considered. Overall the routine is essentially just a delay loop with some extra bytes outside of the loop to make up any remaining cycles. In version 3 a scenario of having the extra bytes before or after the loop is now considered, where as version 2 just had them after the loop. Allowing this new scenario potentially prevents the page boundary crossing from happening. Sometimes it uses less bytes when the delay loop does not have a page crossing, and sometimes it doesn't. Other times no matter where the routine goes a particular delay will always use the same amount of bytes (although the routines for page boundary and non-page boundary have to be different to make the same delay, obviously!). Therefore, a given delay has to have every scenario checked and total bytes considered to find the best solution. I've included an excel sheet to show the total bytes for all delays with and without page boundary crossings. The range of the algorithm is now 14 instead of 8, because that is where the routine takes its first branch to do a loop. It was very inefficient for byte usage when delays were less than 14. I'm not saying it is the most efficient routine for a 14 byte delay (it is general purpose after all), but it is hard to justify having a routine with a delay loop in it unless it does at least one loop. One more thing... If a page boundary is not encountered then the delay always takes 5-8 bytes which IMHO is not too bad. Only when a page boundary is encountered are 9 bytes occasionally needed. However, version 3 of the delay routines negates using some these 9 byte delays by finding other versions that work. I'm pretty happy with it overall.

Here's tonight's batch. Whew! Should be able to get the remaining Signature Editions shipped in the next couple days.

Even funnier is he's asking $200 for JagZombies.

Obviously, that's bootleg Quad POOKY. Here's OEM Quad POKEY:

Hello guys The Fujiyama 2023 started one and a half hours ago. Here's a picture from 16 minutes after midnight. Wild guess: 15 to 20 people are already present. Sincerely Mathy

I changed and fixed some stuff. 7 years later. Why did I come back to this? A request on the 2600 hacks about someone wanting different holes for the original Atari Golf game. Ball directions changed. To hit the ball left, be on the right side of the ball. To hit right, be on the left side. Diagonal shots are allowed too. Just move the joystick in a circular direction. I may change it and make it use a paddle controller. Has driving controller support gone in bB yet? Yes, I know there has been a golf game for the 2600 game made since then, but I just wanted to work on mine to chase the boredom away! 2600golf7.bin

Well, no, that's it. I just sat at it like a half an hour ago and traced it down to the exact same issue (not reading the forum beforehand, it would have saved me the 30 minutes). The routine in question initializes the VBXE registers as well as the shadow registers (VBXEFXS). This routine was first in the main RAM, but wanting to lower the memlo I moved it to the VBXE RAM not noticing that it disables itself in the process. During init time it worked, because the "leftovers" of the driver were still in the main RAM, and later, well, just lo and behold, how often I use the reset key, if this crash was unnoticed for so long... Thanks for finding this bug, in any case, it has nothing to do with your code. s_vbxe.sys rc_vbxe.sys

Too bad (or sad!) that X:8 was never finished! It had so much potential and looked so good. @Xuel: If you ever find the time or motivation to finish this game, we would all be very happy.

There is actually only one binder--it comes with the card. The other manuals came shrink-wrapped with the disks and you just added the manuals to the binder. BITD, they were actually harder to find than the card was--nobody had them in stock. I actually ended up buying mine from a TI store in downtown Riyadh from the guy who was the importer for Saudi Arabia. He had the three disk packages--but none of the cards, so his disk set was pretty useless to him there. I bought them, which saved him from a loss--and got me the disks I couldn't find anywhere else.

Yes, but support for full screen mode is limited to sympathy. But the gamebase projects wanted it. Make sure Classic99 is not running. Go into Classic99.ini under the [video] section and set "StretchMode=3" (0 is no stretch, 1 is GDI, 2 is DirectX, 3 is DirectX full screen. The resolution is set by "fullscreenmode", but set that inside Classic99 first and then exit. Or read the manual for the options.) In full screen mode you won't see the menu and won't have an easy way out. You can use alt+enter to go back to windowed mode, but of course on exit that will re-write Classic99.ini. Under the [emulation] section: Set "enableAltF4=1" to make Alt+F4 close the emulator. This is 0 by default and the keys are passed to the TI. Under [video] you can also set "LockFullScreen=1" to make alt+enter not toggle back to windowed mode. But then if you don't have enableAltF4 set there is literally no way to exit the application and you'll have to kill it. There's no way to access the menu in full screen mode.

@ZackAttack has put together an intriguing ROM using the new ELF/StrongARM "bankswitching" format. This particular ROM, Wushu Masters, has given me a real headache and for the longest time it looked like this: Obviously wrong but it wasn't at all obvious what the problem was. All the ARM instructions it uses are used by other ROMs which work just fine. This morning Zack pointed out that I wasn't executing the .init sections in the ELF file. I was loading them but not executing them. As the name suggests, these sections point to initialisation functions that must be run before the main() function. A quick change to the emulator and the problem immediately resolved itself: simplescreenrecorder-2023-08-29_20.59.41.mp4 Selectable characters, scrolling background and great colours. I hope @ZackAttack finishes this. It looks to be tremendous fun 🙂

Thank you! The interview was a ton of fun, and it's great to see folks playing! I was impressed to see y'all power through the whole game, and was glad to give a "director's commentary." Your website and interviews are great resources, and I knew I "made it" when I found my first 7800 game reviews on 7800Forever :) Apologies for being off the radar - I'm working on finishing up (and starting) some 7800 projects, so hopefully you hear more from me soon...

See... you just keep proving him right. In that video, he literally said it's NOT GOING TO SELL 102 MILLION. And if these articles that keep popping up are to be believed, seems like it's definitely NOT 102 million.

Since Stella does not support bezels yet, I am sure it is black. However there a different kind of bezels, some a quite discreet.

I had some related thoughts too. But nevertheless, I will not actively support incompatible hardware. If it works fine, if not, not my problem. Make the hardware compatible to the original!

Imagine how many units Nintendo could have sold if they had Shark! Shark! RAB was right- they should’ve taken notes

Piko 2 has Football Madness Worms Collection has Armageddon Bitmap Bros has Speedball 2100 Gremlin has Actua Soccer and Hardcore 4x4 Piko 3 has 40 Winks Those are all of the PS1 games until the Duke carts hit.

I am sure the target audience for the 2600+ is more casual than the hardcore audience here. It has gained a fair amount of discussion on my channel, way more than the average video. Lots of fair points are being raised here on all sides. I for one am looking forward to testing this unit and have reached out to Plaion. If anything, this offers a modern device that can play Atari 2600/7800 carts. At the end of the day, more people are going to be playing Atari and for me that is a good thing.