[DOS 3.3 Question]

Tried it yesterday (po >> dsk) with mixed results: couple of games have worked, couple didn't. May come back to this if I ever find a must-play title that's only .po.

[Working emulators for the Bally Astrocade]

Is there any way to play the games archived in the prg/wav formats?

[DOS 3.3 Question]

That swap trick worked, thanks. But I also have a bunch of files with .PO and .NIB extensions, would it work with these too?

[The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread]

Anybody knows how to get settings to save on exit in libretro emulators in Retropie? I've been tweaking it for ages, encountered numerous problems and managed to solve them, but this is the one thing I just can't get under control. I do have "Save Settings On EXIT" enabled both in rgui, and manually in retroarch.cfg. But the settings I make in Main Menu do not register upon exit, I have to use Save Core Override. And Hotkeys from Input section do not save even then - I have to edit configs manualy from SSH.

 

I know it used to work before - and I think after too - I updated to 4.4.

[No Mans Sky]

Yeah, I misread this quote from the article "With this launch, players across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Steam on PC will be able to explore, fight and survive with friends online" for one meaning that it'll be a shared thing.

 

Still, interested how many players will be present in your "universe" at the same time. ED has 32 I think.

[No Mans Sky]

http://thisgengaming.com/2018/05/17/no-mans-sky-launches-on-xbox-one-july-24-multiplayer-added-to-all-versions/

 

Phew...real multiplayer. This is rather huge.Game changer, if I may use this tired cliche.

Of course, I'm pretty sure the ususal suspects are already flooding comment sections and will be looking out for for a slightest misshap/bug, then declaring the game broken. I don't think though teh devs would be crazy enough to advertise this without some solid fundation... The multiplatform crossover is also rather impressive, isn't this some sort of a first, where you can play together across all the consoles AND the PC?

 

I'm actually more of a SP person, though in this kind of universe I can see the how this can work and be rather exciting. It's all rather mind boggling, what with buildings and all that, is this even possible, server wise? Depends on the scale I guess. But neither Star Citizen or ED can go wild with numbers and they had more time/moolah to spend on that.

 

Interesting overall, even if I can't play it myself atm.

[DOS 3.3 Question]

Is there any (easy) way to convert DO to .DSK file format? I'm forced to use Linapple (Retropie) and it only takes .DSK.

 

Pardon if this is not the right place to ask. But I know zilch about Apple II and the above formats apparently relate to DOS 3.3?

[IRATA.ONLINE - a PLATO community for Retro-computing fans!]

Perhaps youtube is not the best place for this kind of stuff. I would concentrate on forums/blogs such as these and other net places where olden computer enthusiasts gather and get their news from. There are still enthusiasts of TRS-80 for example Maybe it's also worth contacting outlets such as RetroGamer - if you haven't already.

 

I'm not a big fan of reddit in general but it did help with some of my obscure projects. The exposure is huge, problem is it's only for one hot minute, especially if the hivemind there doesn't like it for some reason.

[Classic computers emulated and dispalyed on a CRT TV]

Well, again, I'm not saying there's anything particularly wrong - I did not start this topic to seek help with some particular issue.I just wanted to compare notes with somebody who has similar setup. Overall, I'm happy with the IQ, as for composite it's not too bad and as for scaling the cores are doing pretty good work, much better than of previous 4.3 version anyway.

 

Being curious though, I wonder how do they arrive at the numbers for scaling, as you can see yourself they do not exactly match for Commodore (if we assume that visible it's 402x292 as per previous link, or no, wait, perhaps it's 403 x 284 if you lisen to the good folks at progettogemma ). Since there's border it does not matter anyway because they made it so vert 320x2 "game space" area fills my 640 vert CRT okay. Though that leaves bars at top and bottom of course (480-2x200...)

 

I wonder if anybody managed to get non-libretro Vice displaying properly - that's what I was using before last update and had like 384x240 in the settings, which looked okay-ish, but there's so many different video settings in this emu I could not ever get it right with even those "official" values.

 

Spectrum shows the same values - 640x480 - for both border and no border. Then sometimes when in "no border" the Integer will default to 192x3 values. Sometimes, that is. Best of all, border version produces quite surreal NTSC colour artifacts, but when in no border mode these disappear. It's all rather bizarre.

 

The core provided values were never 100% certain anyway, it took me some time to figure out there's an error in vertical ones for SNES and PCE, causing awful "rolling" artifacts, but I was convinced this was a fault of something else and wasted lots of time trying to fix it.

[No Mans Sky]

They are a small team, nothing like Bungee yet people seem quite willing to forgive them for the Destiny fiasco.

The whole NMS brohuaha was yet another example of how toxic, unfair and hypocrytical the modern groupthink-driven gamers can be. The released game was nowhere near as bad or broken as the hysterical backlash would have it. In fact, it was mostly hated on even before launch, by some anti-Sony folks or the ones who failed to understand what procedural generation entails.

 

Sure, there was lots of hype - not exactly a first in the gaming history, I suppose. But lots of it was generated from people's assumptions, not the facts. I think some really expected this tiny team to release a GTA/WItcher-level production, both in style/gameplay and money pumped in - only because of the Sony name attached. There was also a lot of dishonest noise - such as the endless harping on about multiplayer, despite the fact that for the last year before launch it was denied by the devs numerous times.

 

I got it at launch, both because I love procedural games and Elite, which was its spiritual predecessor, and if somebody tells me there's a real-size universe with explorable planets to check out, I'm in. I was not only not disappointed, but quite awed that they managed to pull it off. The sense of freedom and the visuals were quite staggering. As somebody said above here it is also quite old school in its design principles, free-to-explore do-what-you-want, with minimal narrative (the whimsical one in place was actually the low point for me) or other modern cinematic trappings.

 

It's one of the few games I actually miss playing now (I move a lot and had to get rid of my AAA gaming rig last year)

[IRATA.ONLINE - a PLATO community for Retro-computing fans!]

Doomsday 2000 used to run on DEC machines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Thunderbolt.

To be honest I have minimal knowledge of the mainframe world, so I have no idea about how compatible these things were and if this game is suited for PLATO. I know it's possible to run it on something called OpenVMS: https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/getting-doomsday-2000-working-on-simulated-alpha-openvms-8-4-2/

 

I never had much faith in the "youtubers" (nor watched any of their stuff) and this email sort of confirms it. If somebody who calls himself an "8-bit Guy" does not know about PLATO and can't spare a minute or two to learn about it, then what hope is there?

 

Still, I hope you don't give up easily, it's an awesome initiative to keep these things alive. It's definitely a niche subject, yeah, I don't really need a youtuber to tell me that people prefer other ways to connect to the Internet, but it's not what retro computing hobby is all about, methinks.

[Best Games to Play on a Smartphone Emulator]

JRPGS and SRPGS would be the most obvious hints, if you're into this sort of stuff and if you specifically ask about emulation. Off top of my head, Shining Force series and Dragon Quest are quite awesome. There's also heaps of amazing strategy games of more Western persuasion for the assorted microcomputers. Rebelstar series for ZX Spectrum is one of my favourites, with Laser Squad still one of the best games ever.

 

Personally, I prefer my NDS for emulating such stuff though. On my phone I mostly play Nethack, emulation-wise I only ever bothered with Level-9 text adventures - another genre suited for touchscreen.

[IRATA.ONLINE - a PLATO community for Retro-computing fans!]

Really great to hear that there's another mainframe hangout similar to cyber1. You can't get more retro than that

 

Any chance to run the Doomsday 2000 game on your setup?

[Classic computers emulated and dispalyed on a CRT TV]

The RPi itself is set to output progressive NTSC in the config. I'm not using strictly "PAL resolutions", only the ones provided by the core itself - whatever they might be when switching between PAL/NTSC depending on game. Eg C64 in (NTSC model) defaults to 384x247 (x2) and 384x277 (x2) (PAL), which, while looking pretty 1:1 (-ish, at least), and not being far off, are not exacty the "original" resolutions I read about (nevermind its difficult to find a definitive answer for that too).

 

ZX Spectrum defaults to 640x480. Not sure why. And so on...

 

Overall, Retropie is great, but also fairly confusing with its multum of configs and options. It's nowhere near as straighforward as "put this resolution in this config and it will work". Or maybe it is, but I'm doing something wrong. Which is why I was hoping to hear from others with similar experience.

[Classic computers emulated and dispalyed on a CRT TV]

Thanks, but I do have the basic settings covered, outputting 240p and no overscan. And the res settings I quoted are hardcoded into libretro cores (I think that's how it works). It's possible to change them but then often you will get artifacting like shimmer or "rolling".

 

I do actually have it set up pretty much all-right, but also an OCD and intrinsic curiosity when it comes to CRTs and "settings" in general, so just wanted to compare notes.

 

Problem with micros and NTSC is that games are usually not marked for region as is the case with console roms. So it's sometimes hard to tell. I'm using Gamebases to check, but these are not always accurate.

[Classic computers emulated and dispalyed on a CRT TV]

Hi folks, my first post on this venerable forum. My teenage self from ~3 decades ago would probably be dismayed by knowing I've joined something with "Atari" in its name - I was a die hard ZX Spectrum/Commodore fan - but hey, times, they're a-changin'

 

Anyway, I was wondering if anybody else here has experience with using CRT TVs for emulated micros. I'm using mostly libretro versions of assorted emus (Retropie on RPi 3B+) and it's a bit puzzling getting the display right - I'm confined to composite (I also do have an RGB mod but no compatible TV at the moment), and also to add to the problem, it's a NTSC set.

 

I'm not 100% sure what are correct resolutions to use in the configs. I'm aiming for 1:1 pixels and artifact-free display - so far using these...

 

Atari 800 - 640x480- native libretro setting: this looks pretty good actually

Amstrad: 768x544 - it works fairly well despite being bigger than RPi 720x480 output, the border is sacrificed

C64: lr-vice same as Amstrad: 768x544. Seems ok.

ZX Spectrum: 640x480: this resolution kicks in when I disable border (to get rid of heavy NTSC artifacting)

 

While these look reasonably good, they do not really match the resolutions from real machines I read about, eg C64 displaying 402x292 (or 320x200 with no border) http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:visible_area

Could this be improved somehow? Or are these really real resolutions?

 

Is there any sort of way to display these without problems on NTSC as well? Games are either too fast in NTSC or jerky in PAL, plus on some micros the colours are out of whack. Even though some of the emus have option for NTSC machines.