OldGuru

From my experience, a new game creation should start on a clean sheet of paper by lising idea for game play, levels and content. The next phase would be to define the graphics and sounds and only then actual coding should take place. I never started that way and always regreted that at some point in time during the programming phase. No matter how you program your new game, Good luck. OG.

Congratulations on a very well done game! OG.

That may imply that you can have no more than 16 games in that cart. OG.

Thanks for the information so far, Can anybody point me to a picture of that dust flap on the 2600 system? Thanks again, OG

Hi, Does anybody knows what is the reason for the 2 plastic pins that are part of the case and are coming next to the PCB? Are they essential? Are there productions runs of cartridges that did not have these 2 plastic pins? Thank you in advance, OG.

Clay, Could you print on the screen the value you read from $KBCODE? You could write a short "debug" routine to print a byte on the screen and use it for that purpose. From my short experience it could speed things up. I could send you mine if you wanted. OG.

Clay, Could you print on the screen the value you read from $KBCODE? You could write a short "debug" routine to print a byte on the screen and use it for that purpose. From my short experience it could speed things up. I could send you mine if you wanted. OG.

Hi, I've been looking at the solution that jsoper came up with. I think that I understand how it works which actually brings the following question to mind: What happens during system reset? If I understand correctly, the uP seeks for the JMP address (start of the code) at $FFFC -> A2=1 and A1=0, this will cause the 74133 to have '1' on its output which will cause '0' on the clock input to the FF. Now, what gurantees that the FF's Q is '0' at this time? it may be either at '0' or '1' (since there is no RESET connected to it) which means that your A12 of the EPROM will either point to the upper bank (if = '1') or to the lower bank (if = '0'). That means that to be safe, you have to duplicate some parts of the code in the two segments (to set the current bank to 0, for example)... right? How do you do that? Do you have to create a special linker for that purpose? Thanks, OG.

Hi, I've been looking at the solution that jsoper came up with. I think that I understand how it works which actually brings the following question to mind: What happens during system reset? If I understand correctly, the uP seeks for the JMP address (start of the code) at $FFFC -> A2=1 and A1=0, this will cause the 74133 to have '1' on its output which will cause '0' on the clock input to the FF. Now, what gurantees that the FF's Q is '0' at this time? it may be either at '0' or '1' (since there is no RESET connected to it) which means that your A12 of the EPROM will either point to the upper bank (if = '1') or to the lower bank (if = '0'). That means that to be safe, you have to duplicate some parts of the code in the two segments (to set the current bank to 0, for example)... right? How do you do that? Do you have to create a special linker for that purpose? Thanks, OG.

Hi, I've desined one for the Vectrex. Same concept could be applied on almost any other system. You can find some more info about it here: http://vgcollect.freehosting.net/myvectrex...x.htm#FullMulti OG.

Check the job section in the following URL, you may find something of intereset there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ Goodluck, OG.

They both (RF - TV signal and power) are passing through the same coaxial cable. The power has a very low frequency - up to 60 Hz (cycles per second) while the TV signal (RF) is a very high frequency. That way these signals do not interfere with each other. Therefore, you can use the switch box safely. BTW: The same concept it used in cable TV. As you may know, a signal amplifier has to be placed every number of miles so the signal quality will be maintained. These amplifiers require power for their operation. The power is provided on the same coaxial cable that feeds the TV signal. Similar concept is adopted in powerline modems, powerline intercom systems etc. Hope it helps, OG.

Looks cool! Can it be hooked up to an Atari 2600 as well (via an adopter cable or something similar)? OG.

oops... Sorry about the confusion! In that case, I'll contact Carlos directly. Thanks, OG.

Congrats!!! Was it the hint or that youv'e played it a lot? OG.

If you need help coding some more VHDL, just drop me a line. Your project looks great ! What's the Xlinx part you've been using? Great job, OG.

So you should have got an extra player at 1,000 points, didn't you? Indeed, scorring many points in Castle Blast is quite tough. I wouldn't like to torture none of you guys by letting you play till 9,999... Hint: The easter egg can't be found in the 1st level... Good luck, OG.

Hello, Please note that I started selling the remaining cartridges of "Castle Blast" for the Atari 5200. For further information please follow the link below: http://members.bellatlantic.net/vze2j83t/p...l/CB_orders.htm If you have preordered a copy of this game in the past, and received an email confirming that, I'll save your copy till the end of September (9/30/2002, 11:59PM). If you won't claim it by then, it will be sold to somebody else - without any further notice. Thank you, Ronen.

Spending a lot of time at AA booth at the show, I felt that most of the interest was around the 2600 homebrews. At AA booth was a setup of 2 5200 and 2 7800 (playing 2600 cartridges) consoles. I thought that most of the interest was around the 7800 setup. Don't get me wrong, many people stopped by the 5200s setup and played both the demos and the released titles. As far as the individual games are concerned, I thought that HH3D was a very nice game with nice graphics consdiering the short development time. This game, appeared from "nowhere" and made it as CGE2K2 release. Impressive! Advanture II has a great looking graphics which really reminds later generation systems. I'm just curious to know if the compression code is complete so all the graphic can fit into one 32K EPROM. Definitley looks promissing. Koffi has a great game play, graphics and sounds. It is my favorite game for the 5200 so far. The game play is not trivial though and requires some basic understanding of what needs to be done and how to do that as well. OG

Search for Best Electronics in Google. They have it all. OG

I've ordered from Jemeco (www.jameco.com), Jameco #44901. It depends what type of paper you are using for your lables. If it is really thin (as mine) you'd 'see and feel' the excess glue from the label removed... However, if you use a thicker paper (similar to the original used by Atari) I don't think you need to remove it... OG.

Thought you may want to know that during the assembly of all Castle Blast cartridges I found that: - About 15% of the EPROMS were failing on the console (while programmed and verified o.k on the pocket programmer). - 3% of the PCBs had shorts and 1% had disconneted traces (all fixed manually, BTW). - 1% of the cases could not be reused as some parts got broken when the case was opened for the first time... You may want to take that into account when ordering your materials... O.G.

It plays really nice - if you move it slow (normal play)... I have not implemented "balistic" movement (which means that the faster you move the DC, the further the bat/paddle moves)... I actually use a built in BIOS function to rotate a vector list. This way I have 360 deg. (which are supported by 256 values - i.e., the resolution is 360/256 deg. per increment) and it really looks nice and the movement is smooth. You may want to download the BIN and run it on a vectrex emulator to see for yourself. In my mind, makeing the ball movement is the tougher part of all - at least on a vector based system... never thought how easy/difficult it would be to implement on raster based system. OG.

Hi Calamari, Man, you've beat me on that one... I've coded a similar game for the vectrex called "Rounders". My idea was to port it to the 2600 as well... There is no need for that now, huh? http://vgcollect.freehosting.net/myvectrex...ex.htm#Rounders is where I have some information about the vectrex title. I was using the Atari 2600 Driving controllers or the original controller for that game. I guess that now I'll have to look for something else to do on the 2600... Good luck on that one, OG.

I used to have one till it broke - back then, when it used to work, we didn't have the Y2K splash screen coded yet... I then got a 4-port console and since then never tried the code on a 2-port console... Thanks for testing that, it could have been quite a pain to ship cartridges to people and then find out about the 2-port vs. 4-port BIOS differences... OG