pseudografx

AFAIK it's even something like 17 MHz, which is quite a frequency for a machine of that time. I'm not into electronics, but I quess this high frequency is also the reason why VIC-II doesn't steal as many cycles as Antic.

In fact it's not that hard to get a better weapon, I played it today and you get an upgrade after killing every 3 opponents. First is a shuriken, which kills one enemy and has only limited range, then a bomb which can kill multiple enemies also on a short distance. Didn't try the other upgrades.

You can get some better weapons on your way. I remember finishing this game, it's not too long - about 8 levels AFAIK. You start with bare hands but later into the game there are some shurikens and even later you can get some pistol. The most impressive things about this game are the awesome graphics and Gilmore's great music. The playability is much worse though.

I noticed that you do not use vibratos in your instruments - why so? They would add some more variability to the sound.

If there are just short strings on every line (ie. 10 chars per line), you can use PMG for masking the chars and this way have the text use different colour than the background. But such use is very limited. My advice would be to use GR.12 (Antic mode 4) and define a font to be easily readable in 4x8 pixels. Such font is used eg. in Spellbound. This way you can even use more colours on single line (up to 4).

I suggest trying Mappy editor - http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php It is quite powerful, especially when registered.

This one sounds good! And it is probably the first time I hear hardsynth instruments that fit the music. Otherwise I won't overestimate their usability but in this song they just work well (even though the pitch is in some places not absolutely correct).

Yeah, both these songs sound better now. Glad I could help you :-)

Not a bad conversion, though I would work on the drums a bit more - they sound kind of flat. Have a look at the sample instruments packed with RMT to see how e.g. snare is built. I would then implement the improved drums to Space Harrier as well.

The magic word is "inverse". While sprites in Gr.8 are only visible over playfield (color reg. 710) and pixels (color reg. 709) are in front of them, you can achieve more colours by making everything inverse - i.e. fill the whole screen with value 255 and then draw to it with playfield colour. This way, if you underlay sprites, your graphics will show with the colour of the sprite.

I am starting this thread so that everyone can share their knowledge about this years expected game releases. So far the only game I know of (or am allowed to talk about) that should be finished this year is Crownland. Anyone else knows any background info about 2007 games?

Oh great, thanks, I was planning to start the poll myself, but you were faster :-) I placed my vote to Nibbly. Here are my two cents - links to the games so that everyone can check them out: Accion: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5458 Astro4 Road: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5265 Cavernrunner: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5460 Flowers Mania: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5288 Fujiama Run: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5363 Getris: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5157 Head On: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5457 Klony: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5392 Light Up!: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5459 Ms. Bulimia: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5259 Nibbly: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5318 Plague Attack: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5461 Scorpions (&2.0): http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5174 / http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5463 Sudoku: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5141 Sudoku Sweep: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5472 Venus Express: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...l=venus+express Voyage to Home: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5462 Vulcano: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5300

Well, It does have great use of color.. And I didn't ignore it. I played it back when it came out. I disagree about "game of the year 2006".. I think Crownland (the Super Mario Clone) was a MUCH bigger accomplishement, overall. Well, Crownland is definitely a fantastic game, but it is still in production, so I'm afraid it cannot qualify as a 2006 game. Perhaps we should make voting for the true best game of 2006 - in fact last year was really plentiful regarding new game releases. IMHO the best year in this millenium.

Not in Doom, but afair games like Heretic/Hexen let you look up/down while using the Doom engine. I think Hexen was built on Quake 1 engine, but I may be wrong... Anyway, IMHO this engine is a little bit too sluggish, perhaps some optimizations could still be made. Or maybe the viewport could be reduced in favour of performance (narrow playfield?).

It's really interesting to me. I made suggestions over about 3 years and Raster doesn't even give 2 cent for attention. PG wanted a longer envelop for the instruments (which is a logical thing! ) , Raster made it.... 3 years ago, I asked for the same... nothing happened .... First, longer envelopes weren't requested by me. Second, it is up to Raster which feature will he implement and which not. I don't think he will ever add a feature for you if you talk to him in such a tone. I also asked Raster for a feature which he does not want to implement but I respect his rejection. After all, he is the author.

A very nice game! Looking forward to the next

The Page 6 archive in fact only contains issues up to #30.

I just encountered a bug in the radar - the player position appears in the playfield rather than the radar map. Also the music became out of sync after a fer rounds.

I tried several configurations and finally found out what caused the problem - an incompatible ROM image (R3-800XE.ROM). After switching to R2-800XL.ROM the game started to work. Thanks for suggestions though.

I get a blank screen after I press fire on the title screen. Am I doing something wrong? I use Atari800Win PLus 4.0.

I have some reserves for making graphics and music/sfx for anyone who needs them. Currently I'm quite busy though, but in the following weeks it should get better.

Well, if only 3% are left, you should be able to replay it in VirtualDub (ignoring the error messages it displays).

This one really looks better, even if the ingame graphics would still need some facelift Jakub's music is great, looking forward to the SAP file

There must be some bugs in the inventory code. When I keep on collecting items, the ones that are already in the inventory start to shift up. Until a certain point I cannot select the last item in the inventory. After a while I was also unable to pick up any more weapons even though the inventory still showed about 5 free slots. Later I was able to select the last weapon in the inventory but when revisiting it, the last weapon was not highlighted as the one used. I was also able to choose from empty inventory slots.

I think the not so well visible stars are done so at a purpose - some of them are quite well hidden and you can easily overlook them :-) I didn't meet the fire problem in the emulator - just one press and (after the text goes down) the level starts. Perhaps your joystick configuration in the emu is different.