danwinslow

http://www.3dgamers.com/games/wolfenstein3d/downloads/ http://www.3dgamers.com/news/more/1096481428/ http://www.gamespp.com/sourcecode/wolfenstein.html http://www.wolfenstein3d.co.uk/coding-setup.htm

Well, the display slots idea would handle both of the boundary cases you mention, but it could possibly generate a lot of DLI's I guess...if all sprites were on the same y, then the 'first' four would get displayed, then the next four, so for 16 sprites, each one would get displayed every 4th scan...which would be pretty blinky I would imagine. If all sprites did not overlap ( which might be impossible, depending on how tall your sprites are ) then there would always be a free slot in the display slots array. My feeling is that without special screen arrangements and limitations on movement it will just be too unwieldy and slow. Allowing for full and free motion of 16 sprites is just not going to be easy Maybe you could prevent overlap in certain cases...ie., when you know that the proposed motion for a given sprite would move it into overlap, you could block that motion.

Well...it would work a *lot* better if you had the sprites all being the same vertical size...and if you had the screen divided up into 'zones' that were as tall vertically as the sprites...and the sprites could only fit into zones, ie., no single scanline vertical motion. That way it would be very clear when something is overlapping something else. Otherwise you are going to have to do lots of compares. But thats pretty restricting, so how about : One thing maybe is to not only have your regular ring buffer, but also have a special 4 slot array for holding the 'active' sprites info. As your scan line moves into the display zone for a sprite, you copy that sprites id number into the 'active' buffer in slot 1..keeping track of the start and end y scanlines...then as you move down the screen, keep inserting sprites as you run into them...until your 4 slots are full. If you run into any more while your slots are full, they don't get displayed. Also watch the ending scan lines, and as the scan line moves beyond the bottom of any sprite thats in the active buffer, you remove him and thus next time you run into a new sprite you want to start displaying you will have an empty slot. You'd also need to bump some kind of counter for each sprite, in order to remember which ones got displayed last pass...if you only paid attention to the sprites that are valid for the scan line and have the *lowest* usage count, that should swap in some of the ones that got left out last pass.

I am not really sure what you are trying to do....what do you mean by 'zone'? Are you trying to get more than four sprites on a scanline, or just more than 4 sprites to a screen, or both? If I understand, for the case where you have more than 4 sprites on a scanline, you could just cycle through them 4 at a time, which is what that 'ring buffer' idea from the article is about. You have them sorted into an array, and you bump the start point by four each time, wrapping back around at the end. But it still seems like you could have cases where a single sprite would overlap more than 1 'zone'....not sure what you could do there.

At first I thought the 6502 was brain dead due to lack of registers. Then I realized that the entire page 0 ( first 256 bytes of ram ) is nothing *but* registers.

Uh..well I dunno. You'd need some sort of LocalTalk/10baseT adapter...the LocalTalk port is just a serial port if I recall correctly. SOme kind of old Apple to Ethernet card maybe?

I know...I said it was an unnecessary comment

I don't know about earlier versions of TOS, but it works under the TOS I have on my TT030 and Falcons. You could run either of those OS's on a Mega as far as I know. Really though I think the easiest and cheapest would be dial up. Still, 75$ for a working atari ethernet card is not all that much, if you ask me. Stuff is getting rare these days.

In the unneccesary comments dept., I feel compelled to mention that the sprite display strategy you are calling a 'ring buffer', technically is not a ring buffer. A ring buffer is a double ended queue that has a read pointer and a write pointer, usually implemented as an array and two indexes. It's used in communications and other 'producer/consumer' applications, especially when multiple threads could be reading and writing to the buffer at the same time. The pointers wrap around back to the start if they go off the end, so thats similar to what you are doing, but really thats the only similarity. What you are doing with the sprites is just a sorted list, with a windowing algorithm to control which ones and how many are 'active' at any one time. It's much more like a classical scheduling algorithm than it is a ring buffer.

There are a couple of ways to get it on the internet. Through dial-up you could get it on via a SLIP type connection with the STIK software : http://www.flinny.demon.co.uk/download.html You can use a Daynaport SCSI ethernet : http://www.anodynesoftware.com/ethernet/main.htm Or, you can use a Ethernec : http://hardware.atari.org/ether/ http://home.arcor.de/thomas.redelberger/prj/atari/etherne/ Here's one for sale : http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW I have a couple of the Ethernecs and they work great. As far as IDE goes, you could use a SCSI-to-IDE adapter, This is a small board that puts a 'fake' SCSI interface in front of a standard IDE. You would still need some good scsi driver support, such as Extendos or HDdriver.

Isn't a jump to $C000 the Omnimon addr?

Are you using the composite or the tv connection? If the composite, check your cable to make sure the Chroma is coming out. If its TV, make sure you are actually using a color TV . No, really, check the color knob setting.

? What do you mean by 'original windows'? And why old toshiba...if all you want is a crappy laptop there are plenty to choose from.

That sounds right. You will need to remember to flip the bytes around so that the LSB comes first...but if you load the word at 560 with the address of a valid dlist, it ought to take. You might need to hit wtsync or something to make sure the switch happens during VBI. It's been a while so I don't remember exactly but what you are saying sounds right.

He is trying to save ebay fee's. The fee is calculated on the price less shipping charges. The bidders know this, most of them, and so the bid is lower than it probably would be otherwise.

No, that dropped out would make it around 100.

How much would you pay for the following : An adapter that : 1. Provided a standard RJ45 ethernet connection. 2. Provided a 16MB RAM 'hard disk' emulation. 3. connected via standard SIO cables. 4. Could be installed inside the atari or used externally 5. Imposed very little overhead in terms of RAM or processor speed on the atari. 6. Came with libraries for C, Action, Assembler, and Basic for using the ethernet card, both as a full standard TCP -IP API and as byte stream file operations. 7. Was reliable and hardy, with no moving parts. Would you pay 50$? 100$? 200$? I am not asking for an idea of profits, I am wondering how much I need to keep the component cost down. Right now the component set will cost around 150$ in hardware. I don't know if people would be willing to pay that or not. There is no soldering and very little assembly required.

Haha 'While you were out' we replaced your crusty old sixer with a BRAND NEW PSP! yay!

Put cocked mousetraps in the boxes? Replace them with Commodore/TI99 stuff? Or maybe like 60 copies of the TS1000 tape software "The Accountant"?

I got one for a single french fry and a ball of lint. No, not really. Let's hear the BK tale.

Even shrinkwrapped those things are a dime a dozen.

Well, it could theoretically have been stored on some disk sector if the disk you booted from ( or had in the drive while 'frying' ) had been previously used to store text. An entire sector gets loaded even if only 1 byte from it is actually used by the current file, so old junk from deleted files may still have been there. It seems pretty highly unlikely but I suppose its possible.

KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT KILL CLINT

I am getting ready to hook up a 64k sinclair to the internet. Really. What I'll do once its on I dunno. Not much, probably.

I reccomend a mega 1/2/4 or a mega STE. They are pretty compatible and are easier to find HD's for. If you want an HD for any of them you'll have to get one that already has one...the boards and forth and pretty rare now a days. Keep an eye on Ebay.