Shawn Jefferson

Beta1 just posted on the blog, with a few screenshots. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/18/entry-12012-beta1/ Game play is fully ported now. Highscores, monster memory, character and game are all being saved to flashcart. Highscores and monster memory persist across multiple games. Give it a try and please report any bugs! PS. Adding the cartridge image here too: AtariMoria_55beta1.bin

Atari Moria 5.5 Beta1. Requires VBXE. Atarimax 8Mb cartridge image (old style banking) Uses RAM under the OS. All gameplay features of Moria v5.5 have now been ported, including monster memory. As you continue to play the game, you learn more about the monsters you are fighting and that memory is cumulative over multiple games/characters. You can recall those details when looking ('x' examine surroundings) and when the identify a character command is used ('/'). Please report any bugs! I haven't ported one wizard command ('@') which allows you to create objects. It's a really low level command that without knowing the structures and values is pretty useless anyway. Equipment display and dungeon with new characters in background. All "popup" windows now have the line underneath. Looking around. Interesting items are highlighted in blue when using 'x', examine surroundings command. The monster memory recall. Another in-game shot, looking at an item. Turned out to be a Wand of Heal Monster. Download: AtariMoria_55beta1.bin

With VBXE installed or without?

Have someone make an ATX!

Looks like a tool that lets you load in a picture and then type text over top of it. It's in basic with some USR calls.

Yea, that happens. However, the questions were answered, and this is a discussion forum, where we like to discuss Atari topics. It's not a wiki where we collect questions and answers and try to document everything Atari. Just my view anyway... thread drift also happens and should be tolerated to a certain degree to foster communication (such as it is) and discussion. The illegal/published opcodes/stock/upgraded Atari arguments are always interesting. The interesting part to me is how heated people can get over what is essentially a hobby with no real world value or actual goal except "fun". Obviously some folks enjoys creating software using illegal opcodes, for performance, or just to be clever, and others like to do some hardware hacking on their Atari's. It's too bad sometimes those endeavors are at odds.

They do today.

I personally like the Atari ST Monitor option... Nice to have an Atari branded monitor!

http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/documentation/ Scroll to the bottom of the page.

Maybe they were never flashed properly in the first place? I've never seen any problems with mine after flashing.

I think you are misunderstanding some fundamental things. There is no reason to hack any games, no reason to remove any encryption. The issue with SD card speed is likely that the Lynx is reading one byte a time from the "cartridge", and it expects the next byte to be available pretty much immediately, and that's not just for encryption, it's for any data load from cartridge. Saint has a working prototype already as he mentioned using flash memory.

Sure, right after you tell me of the long lost Ultima V port that I missed.

I'm sure Eternal Dagger was released for the Atari 8-bit. Yep, here: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-eternal-dagger-_1882.html

How is what you are doing different than what Atarimania has been doing, or are you working with those folks?

It don't think it's possible. The 2600 video is completely different than the Lynx, not to mention the memory mapped cartridges (forget banked cartridges altogether!) Most 2600 "adapters" of the time (Atari 5200, Coleco) were just Atari 2600s in a small shell that passed audio and video straight through into the main unit.

My understanding is that it's also a philosophical stance by the owners of the site. They don't agree with the current model of certificate trust. Which is fine, each to their own. But users have been trained (and for good reason) to distrust any site that pops up warnings about it's certificate. I disagree with their stance on this personally, and I think they should just pony up the couple of hundred dollars (maybe less?) for a real trusted cert. In this context however, unless you are logging into the site (ie. providing some confidential information to the site, like your username or password) then accepting the risk isn't a big deal. I don't expect every user to understand this of course, or have the background and knowledge to make that decision, and neither should the owner of the site... Another risk, which I don't believe is valid here, is that while encryption protects against leakage of confidential information, like username and password, it also helps protect integrity of the data from man-in-the-middle attacks. There are other ways to validate downloads (SHA256 hash verification for instance) though, I suspect you aren't worried about someone altering your Atari software in transit anyway. Using a http site has the very same issue of course.

Sometimes you can't use self-modifying code, for instance, running code from cart. I think we sometimes obsess about speeding up specific pieces of code, when really they are "good enough" and you'd be better off working on gameplay or other mechanics. Not you, specifically of course... just in general us 8-bit programmers.

Credit where credit is due. It was all Karri and Wookie I believe! All I did was some initial work with Uz's cc65 to get the lynx target going (using mainly the work done by Bastian Schick.) Mainly because I wanted to mess around with the Lynx but didn't like K&R syntax and wanted a more "modern" compiler that I was used to using with the Atari 8-bit. Karri has done some amazing work getting the target usable from there.

I believe it is possible to upload code to the Happy drive, or at the very least change low-level settings... at least I believe that's what the VAPI software does to archive disks, and maybe even what some of the original Happy backup software did. (With some copies, you had to run the copy on a Happy drive or it wouldn't work for instance.) But I don't know details... but there are folks on this board who would.

If mixing fonts in the disassembly window is not possible, than it doesn't make much sense. I'd assumed that you could display multiple fonts in the same window, but I've never done any windows gui programming.

Yes, I know... I always found using DIS6502 sort of "jarring" though due to the use of the Atari font everywhere. IMO, it would have been better to use it only where required. But of course, beggers can't be choosers and I'll take it however it's made.

Blech, it's horrible though... they basically turned U4 into Japanese Anime.

Maybe I'm a heretic, but this is a windows tool, why bother using an Atari font in the first place? Just switch it to a windows font that doesn't have the limitations, plus it will look more "windowsy". Could be I don't understand some requirement though... I suppose for certain display items you want an Atari font, but not all.

Released Atari Moria 5.5 alpha3 for testing... please let me know any bugs. Atarimax 8mbit cartridge image, old style banking, cartridge type 42 Requires VBXE Uses RAM under the OS (XL/XE only) Moria is almost 100% ported over... only the look command and maybe monster memory recall (currently I'm not planning on implementing it due to how much memory it needs, but I may change my mind.) Dungeon generation is on average 2-3 seconds due to swapping out the 32-bit random number generator doing 32 bit divides, with a 16-bit one optimized for 6502. Also fixed several bugs and did some polishing (message if VBXE is not detected for instance, and cart bypass if OPTION is held down so on real hardware you can reflash your cart easily.) See if you can destroy the Balrog... and let me know how it works and any bugs you find.

Joystick control is a little more complicated that I had hoped, and I wanted to get this much faster dungeon generation version uploaded. Level generation is in the order of 2-3 seconds (!) now, with the simple swap out of that random number generator. Also fixed: - added a message if VBXE is not detected - added bypass to boot if option is held at boot (to flash another image onto cart) - added a line at the bottom of inventory and other message pop-ups. - fixed a bug where you could pick up more items that you should have been able to (causing a crash or video corruption.) AtariMoria_5.5alpha3.bin