CPFace

I know I'm a bit late to this party, but I have a request if you're still accepting them. I'm a big fan of Activision's Space Shuttle, and I can live with the graphical glitches, but the way it uses the color/mono switch makes it awkward to play on the portable since you have to hold the button down to keep it in Mono mode. The game is already designed to use the left difficulty switch for the same functions, but only if the color/mono switch is in mono mode. An effective fix would be to hardcode any check to the color/mono switch to zero. Distella won't disassemble an 8k ROM, and I don't know enough about disassemblers in general to attempt this myself. Does this sound feasible at all?

Thanks for the help!

The power switch on my Game Boy Color no longer functions, and it seems like my GBA SP is moving in the same direction. Can anyone recommend a fix, recommend a website with information, or recommend a repair service?

I got this one! And I like it! But then again, I'm rather easy to please -- if I can play Pong and Adventure, I'm golden. Emulation seems decent. There's a bit of that fuzziness that you get when you try to cram a game into a smaller resolution, but for the most part it's accurate. Interesting thing about multiplayer is that, if you choose a game that's two-player-only when you're by yourself, you control both players simultaneously. So you can practice Sky Diver and the like without a friend. Extra features include a trivia game (eh), scans of 2600 manuals (clear and readable) and arcade game ads (not really readable), and "Army Battlezone", a much more complicated version of Battlezone. Supposedly commissioned by the US Army as a training simulator, it has lots of extra controls on the touch screen. I think my favorite part is that they took advantage of the touch screen to give the arcade games improved controls. There's a slider for Pong and Tempest, and you can either use the screen to simulate a trackball (which works all right) or actually touch and drag your cursor for Centipede and Missile Command. And of course high score tables are saved. Yeah, games like Slot Machine and Hangman are lame, but they can be a laugh when you're taking a break from something else, and they actually make a certain amount of sense as portable games. Yeah, it's greedy of them to make us pay for two volumes, but it's not like there's a lot of games I really want these days. There are some valid complaints to make, but the package was very well done for what it is, and if there's a game on there you like, it's not likely that you'll be disappointed with how it's been treated.

Well, speaking personally, I'd like to get this game into the hands of everyone who wants it. When Neo approached me and offered to do a limited run, I figured that'd be fine, I really wasn't expecting to see so many people interested! If there's still a lot of demand after the first run sells out, there'll be another run one way or another. I know that Neo's time and resources are limited. If he's willing to do another run, I'd be thrilled. If he can't, then I'll start looking into some other options, whether it's through the Atari Age store or... well, who else does a lot of Atari cartridge production these days? The boxes are likely to remain a limited commodity just because of the added expense, but ideally, I'd like to see this go on until everyone who wants a copy gets one.

Wow. It's so... pretty. o_o

Well, see, I find video games fascinating as a medium because they have so much potential to do so many different things. I love the "simulated fantasy world" style of video gaming, I love the "interactive movie" style, and I love the "pure game" style. What's more, I'm beginning to suspect that the best games are not the ones that try to do everything, but the ones that pick a style and try to do it as well as possible. I love Phoenix Wright and I love Super Mario 64, even though they're not really "difficult" in the same sense as, say, Pac-Man or Space Invaders. And for the record, I never have and I never will make a claim to be any good whatsoever at video games. I know my place. I like a good challenge, but I've never really felt compelled to be a "master" of any particular game.

Well, a work in progress that was on indefinite hiatus for a year until neotokeo offered to produce cartridges, but yeah, a one-year work in progress.

Heh, yeah, new version is amazing. I've been sitting on this thing for over a year, neo and batari make it look like a real game in less than three days.

Yeah, I always wanted to enter something like that Minigame Comp. Pretty sure something'll come along to beat me too. I just really like the idea of people being forced to play something I wrote, even if only for the time it takes to pass a judgement.

Wow. Wow wow wow. Sorry, I know you guys are all familiar with the details of this already, and you've no doubt had the time to work it around in your minds, get over the initial shock, and perhaps calm down about it a bit, but... Tonight is the first time that I've found this topic. I can't not post something. And I'm sorry, because I really have nothing to add to the conversation except my total and complete shock over the idea that the Flashback 2 Portable might yet live. You guys were in my shoes once, right? You don't mind if I just rant out of my mind about this for a bit, right? I love my Flashback 2. I love it real good. If I could... if I could just have a portable device that could play a 100% faithful Adventure, I would be the happiest man on Earth. That's all it would take, really. It's not hard to make me happy. And yet, I've always considered such a thing to be a sort of fairy tale, something that could never come true unless I gained something approaching proficiency with a soldering iron and made it myself. But this? This makes my highest expectations look like nothing. I mean... A retro system that's actually a system and not just a self-contained toy? That'd be kickass enough even if Atari restricted us to binaries that we bought through them, but giving it the ability to run (theoretically) any arbitrary Atari 2600 binary? If I had a portable game device that I could load up with my own games -- my very own programmable Game Boy -- I would, ironically enough, never leave my home, not ever again. I remember how ecstatic I was the first time I saw something that I wrote running on my TV through a Supercharger. I can't even think what it'll be like to be able to carry that around in my pocket and show it to other people. I'm almost afraid to get excited about this system. If I hope for too much, I might be in for a letdown. But the potential for this is massive. I could see this posing serious competition to my DS, not to mention my home consoles. I would buy it at any price. I really hope this goes through. Good luck to everyone who's involved with it. You guys are amazing. But really, I'll be happy just as long as it has all of the hardware switches and it plays Adventure.

Ah dunno. Any suggestions?

Man. I've really fallen behind here. O_o Guess I'd better start catching up on version 1.0. Here's something anyway: up2.basup2.bas.bin This is a little thing I've dreamt up called Because It's There. The object is to climb to the summit of a mountain while avoiding a giant, rolling snowball. At the game select screen, press Select to choose which mountain you want to tackle: 1) Mount Molehill -- A 2000 foot climb, perfect for beginners. Things don't move too quickly, so you can learn the ropes. 2) Mount Kumquat -- A more challenging 10,000 foot climb, with a faster snowball. 3) Mount Everest -- The highest peak on Earth, this mountain will challenge you to a 29,025 foot climb, and things move fast. 4) Mount Babel -- The ultimate challenge. This is a mountain that never ends, and no bonus lives are awarded. How high can you climb? Press Reset or Fire to start the game. Press reset to start the game over, or press select to return to the mountain select screen. You get a ladder and a bridge to help you on your climb. To use a tool, press the fire button and push the joystick in the direction you want to lay it. Press up or down to extend a ladder in that direction, and press left or right to extend a bridge in that direction. Look out, because a snowball will roll right across your bridge if you leave it out! Press the fire button again to retrieve your tool (you don't have to be touching it) so you can deploy it somewhere else. You can only have one tool out at a time. You start the game with three lives, shown as the squares in the lower left corner. You lose a life if you get hit by the snowball or you fall off the bottom of the screen. A bonus life is awarded every 2000 feet that you climb. You can have, at most, four lives. It's written for bB 0.35 so... keep that in mind if you're going to look at the code as an example.

Thanks a lot to everyone again for your suggestions. I ended up getting a Supercharger with some games, and tonight, I got the chance to test every game I've made on my Atari 2600. And it's a fantastic feeling. Now I'm wondering if I want to attempt the hardware modification and continue making 4K games, or if I want to start digging deeper and learn to program for the Supercharger as my main platform. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to distribute games in audio format, but I'd have a much smaller audience. Decisions, decisions...

Whoo hooo! Thanks, that's been bugging me. I changed the value to 46 and recompiled everything I have. Everything's rock solid at 262 scanlines.

Heh, I must've missed that. Well, right now I'm still using version 0.35 alpha. I found the fix for the floating point calculation bug when I was in the forums, but I didn't find the scanline fix. That'd be great. Yeah, the MaxiCart is listed for $85. Krokodile Cart looks useful too. Might just have to go on their waiting list. c_c

Wow! O_o That MaxiCart sounds like just the thing for me. Thanks for mentioning it. The store seems to have been down for maintanence all day, but if they still have them in stock, I'm definately scooping one up.

Wow, thanks everyone. Yeah, I was poking around the store, looking at the stuff you've got there. Probably just going to end up biting the bullet and getting a proper EPROM burner. Thing is, when I run my game on z26, the scanlines are only 260 instead of 262, but they're constant. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or not. O_o I programmed it in bBasic, and it seems like a lot of games written with the default kernal for that language run at 260 lines. And Uzumaki, thank you. I've got the ROM and related instructions for my game in this topic: melbourne tatty If you wouldn't mind trying it out and making sure it's not doing anything peculiar, I'd really appreciate it.

Hmmmm. Well, thanks for the information. And yeah, these are 4K ROMs I'm talking about. Gotta admit, those sound like some fairly grim prospects to me -- two more pieces of discontinued hardware for me to try to track down. Guess we'll see to what lengths I'll pursue this hobby, eh?

So it's been a while since I've done any Atari 2600 programming. And so far, all of my testing has been on the z26 emulator. This is for two reasons -- one is that I haven't had hardware to test it on, and the other is that I'm pretty clueless as far as hardware goes. Well, now I have hardware to play it on. So I'm fishing around to try and see what my options are. What do you folks recommend? Can I trust the z26 emulator to catch any peculiar behavior my games may have? Should I just take the plunge and hook up with one of the cartridge-producing services out there? Or should I try and get a test cartridge together before I start getting involved in all of that? And if a test cartridge is the way to go, what's the best way to go about it? What, in your experience, is the best way to go about transfering a game binary into the system on a temporary basis? (Presumably, if there are many problems, I'd like something that would be relatively inexpensive/easy to rewrite.) I guess when it comes right down to it, I'd be mostly doing these for my own amusement, but I'd like to keep a proper distribution open as an option. I dunno, what do you guys recommend?

It's not a puzzle game -- the problem of assigning random values to the variables was the puzzle. The game I'm working on may yet be a fairly generic dungeon-crawler. The routine was intended to randomize contents in the maze. Problem is, if I go the route I've chosen, it's going to take half a kilobyte of my ROM space just to store the random scenarios! O_o Depending on how things go, I may just have to resort to non-randomized maze contents.

And, as it turns out, I've decided to just have a number of pre-generated "scenarios" for the program to choose from to save code, execution time, and RAM.

I consider Jym more of a warmup exercise, just something to see if I could move sprites and dots around on the screen. Pong Kombat, I'm not sure how much attention I want to draw to it. I got permission from Stephen Gagne to adapt his idea, but obviously not from Atari or Midway. So melbourne tatty is more like... my first game using an original concept that I consider robust enough to consider publishing? As for changing wall behavior or unsticking the player, I think I'm most likely to go with unsticking the player, but I would implement that as a difficulty option. Learning to anticipate the behavior of the walls really is meant to be part of the game's challenge.

Writing a kernel, eh? Wahoo! That's the exact piece of the puzzle that I'm interested in. I would really appreciate some advice for that.

I'm looking for advice for a routine I want to write. I have an idea how it could work, but I was wondering if anyone had any more efficient ideas. All I'm looking for is a general strategy -- code is appreciated, but not necessary, and if you do decide to code it, assembly is just as good as BASIC. Here's the behavior I'm looking for: The variables a, b, c, d, and e must all be set to random numbers from 0 to 7. Every value must be unique; there can be no duplicates. The variables a and b are already determined when the routine begins. They may change between calls to the routine, but they are not randomly selected. (It can be assumed that a and b are not equal.) The routine has to finish in a predictable amount of time and, of course, operate as quickly as possible. The program can't sit and reselect random numbers until the conditions are met because how long it takes can't be predicted. The routine doesn't have to be statistically perfect -- it's okay if one number or another has a slightly higher chance of being picked as long as the outcome can't be predicted. Here's the basic strategy I've come up with so far: Use temp1-6 to hold the numbers 0-7 that aren't equal to a or b. Maybe shuffle their values around a bit. (Pick two of them at random and switch the values around, repeat a certain number of times.) Select one of them at random, put the value into c. Select one of the remaining values at random, put it into d, repeat for e. Anyone else have any suggestions?