littleman jack Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Nice game! I'd be interested in a cart if it's ever released on one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Weis Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 looks like a really fun game! hope there is a release on cart for this great game. CIB even better. Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tremoloman2006 Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 Love this game! Please put this on a cart so I can buy it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Bell Hopper will be released on cart with 3 other games, as part of the 2600 Christmas collection The Byte Before Christmas! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littleman jack Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 Good news. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bfstats Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 Looks great! I'm in for a BOXED release. Nice to have members who program cleverly-executed games. A bonus for all of us: members who can whip up box art from scratch. Admirable work, Gentlemen! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tremoloman2006 Posted December 5, 2011 Share Posted December 5, 2011 That's AWESOME! I miss the Christmas carts that used to get released each year. Hopefully that tradition will start back up starting with this release! It will be a Merry Christmas indeed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted December 5, 2011 Share Posted December 5, 2011 (edited) I played this for a little bit today. Neat little game! Got as high as 128,130 and liked the stereo effects when ringing multiple bells at the same time. Edited December 5, 2011 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHoboInYourRoom Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 (edited) Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I just heard of this game today and I have to say that Bell Hopper is the first game in a while that actually gets my blood pumping! Within a few tries, I was able to get my score up over a million (EDIT: 39.3 million now). Thank you so, so much, Tjoppen, for the NTSC port (wow, my Harmony really is becoming the only cart I use)! Can't wait for The Byte Before Christmas! P.S.: Might I also say that Nyantari 2600 is spectacular. Edited January 4, 2012 by TheHoboInYourRoom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted January 5, 2012 Author Share Posted January 5, 2012 Thank you I've of course scored a bit higher than a few millions.. Too bad the cartridges got delayed by RL stuff, but hopefully we'll be able to get them out within a reasonable time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted December 25, 2020 Share Posted December 25, 2020 Happy Holidays! ZeroPage Homebrew will be playing Byte Before Christmas (Bell Hopper) on tomorrow's (Fri Dec 25) stream LIVE on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch! Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/ Games: Mean Santa (2009) by John K Harvey @Propane13 VCS Dreidel (2019) by Karl Garrison @Karl G Santa Simon (2006 | 7800) by Matthias Luedtke @Schmutzpuppe Byte Before Christmas (2011) by Mike Saarna @RevEng, Jarod Kitchen @jrok, Tomas Härdin @Tjoppen, Illya Wilson @PAC-MAN-RED, Todd Holcomb @Byte Knight Santa Jump (2020 Hack of Amoeba Jump) by Scott Dayton @neotokeo2001 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spectreman Posted October 26, 2021 Share Posted October 26, 2021 Thank your dor the game and the paddle support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ComputerSpaceFan Posted December 16, 2023 Share Posted December 16, 2023 Hi there, forgive the necro-bump but My Arcade just enabled paddle control support on their Atari Gamestation Pro this week and although a bunch of great homebrew ROMs now work in it, Bell Hopper does not. The rabbit just goes to one side of the screen and stays there. Any ideas why and if this is patchable? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted January 31 Author Share Posted January 31 On 12/16/2023 at 7:20 PM, ComputerSpaceFan said: Hi there, forgive the necro-bump but My Arcade just enabled paddle control support on their Atari Gamestation Pro this week and although a bunch of great homebrew ROMs now work in it, Bell Hopper does not. The rabbit just goes to one side of the screen and stays there. Any ideas why and if this is patchable? Hi, coincidentally this old game of mine came up in conversation recently so hopefully I'm not too late in replying. What is the actual hardware on this machine? I bet there could be many reasons why it isn't working. Also the forums switching to requiring email rather than username for login almost made this account impossible to log into. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted January 31 Author Share Posted January 31 Oh and also, how do demoscene productions run on that machine? Do you have a 2600+? It just uses Stella, so I imagine it should work. I wonder what the Atari Gamestation Pro uses.. Based on some videos, MAME maybe? I don't see the purpose of these machines when you could just use a Raspberry Pi or an old laptop, or a real machine + Harmony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ComputerSpaceFan Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 4 hours ago, Tjoppen said: Oh and also, how do demoscene productions run on that machine? Do you have a 2600+? It just uses Stella, so I imagine it should work. I wonder what the Atari Gamestation Pro uses.. Based on some videos, MAME maybe? I don't see the purpose of these machines when you could just use a Raspberry Pi or an old laptop, or a real machine + Harmony Hi Tomas (ignore my reply in YouTube since you have now replied). I don't have a 2600+ cuz the Gamestation Pro is better for my needs. If it's not possible to get Bell Hopper to recognize the Gamestation paddle no worries. Awesome game for those who can enjoy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted January 31 Author Share Posted January 31 3 hours ago, ComputerSpaceFan said: Hi Tomas (ignore my reply in YouTube since you have now replied). I don't have a 2600+ cuz the Gamestation Pro is better for my needs. If it's not possible to get Bell Hopper to recognize the Gamestation paddle no worries. Awesome game for those who can enjoy it. I'm not sure what emulator the Gamestation runs, so it's somewhat hard to figure out what might be wrong. If you could figure out what it uses that would be great. Seems the hardware landscape gets worse for homebrew devs as we now have to take into account all this oddball hardware. I mostly used Stella and a mouse when developing, and the light four-switch "Darth Vader" plus the 2600jr for real hardware testing. Not sure what the Flashback 2 uses for hardware, maybe some form of reimplemented TIA + 6507? If it's FPGA based then maybe there's a firmware upgrade. Other games using 12-digit displays, especially with early HMOVE, might also be good test beds. Demos too. Seems to me the best way to play 2600 games is still the original hardware + flash, or a regular computer running Stella with suitable USB controllers. Atari actually seems to make a decent wireless joystick+paddle combination controller that works with Stella. There are some other paddle controllers on the market as well - no need to give Atari any money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted January 31 Author Share Posted January 31 This discussion about modern hardware and wireless controllers also makes me wonder if it'd be worthwhile to make a wireless paddle controller. It should be possible with either an RF or IR link, and a digital potentiometer on the receiver side connected to the controller port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fluxit Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 18 hours ago, Tjoppen said: I'm not sure what emulator the Gamestation runs, so it's somewhat hard to figure out what might be wrong. If you could figure out what it uses that would be great. Seems the hardware landscape gets worse for homebrew devs as we now have to take into account all this oddball hardware. I mostly used Stella and a mouse when developing, and the light four-switch "Darth Vader" plus the 2600jr for real hardware testing. Not sure what the Flashback 2 uses for hardware, maybe some form of reimplemented TIA + 6507? If it's FPGA based then maybe there's a firmware upgrade. Other games using 12-digit displays, especially with early HMOVE, might also be good test beds. Demos too. Seems to me the best way to play 2600 games is still the original hardware + flash, or a regular computer running Stella with suitable USB controllers. Atari actually seems to make a decent wireless joystick+paddle combination controller that works with Stella. There are some other paddle controllers on the market as well - no need to give Atari any money. It uses Stella, but not a current version at present. 22 hours ago, ComputerSpaceFan said: Hi Tomas (ignore my reply in YouTube since you have now replied). I don't have a 2600+ cuz the Gamestation Pro is better for my needs. If it's not possible to get Bell Hopper to recognize the Gamestation paddle no worries. Awesome game for those who can enjoy it. @ComputerSpaceFan If you are willing to upgrade your firmware with my patch, I have Bell Hopper working on the GsP with paddle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted February 1 Author Share Posted February 1 Oh it's just a detection failure? Is it not possible to set what controller "mode" to use on a per-ROM basis? Stella sure allows that, but maybe the Gamestation integration doesn't. I suppose a separate directory for paddle games is a reasonable fix. Won't help with games that use a combination of paddles and joystick though, which I've had some ideas around. This just leaves the Flashback 2 issue, but I'm going to chalk that one up to an incorrect TIA implementation. Still, would be interesting to see how other titles that display text using similar techniques fare. The demo 2600 BC by Genesis Project might be a good test ROM since the greetings text uses a very similar text display routine to mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted February 1 Author Share Posted February 1 Come to think of it, I think we made The Byte Before Christmas so that you can have both joystick and paddles connected. I don't quite recall though, and I don't want to open my mint condition copy to test it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted February 1 Author Share Posted February 1 Yep, just checked. Versions 4-6 of the game supports paddles in the right port that can be switched to by pressing fire on the paddle. Joystick in the left port, also switched to by pressing fire on the joystick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fluxit Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 29 minutes ago, Tjoppen said: Oh it's just a detection failure? Is it not possible to set what controller "mode" to use on a per-ROM basis? Stella sure allows that, but maybe the Gamestation integration doesn't. I suppose a separate directory for paddle games is a reasonable fix. Won't help with games that use a combination of paddles and joystick though, which I've had some ideas around. This just leaves the Flashback 2 issue, but I'm going to chalk that one up to an incorrect TIA implementation. Still, would be interesting to see how other titles that display text using similar techniques fare. The demo 2600 BC by Genesis Project might be a good test ROM since the greetings text uses a very similar text display routine to mine. It's possible, sure, but only via scripts at this point. Stella's configuration is not entirely accessible, and we haven't been able to get .pro files working either, AFAIK. Hopefully we'll be able to update Stella at some point in the near future. Currently, the Gamestation uses an older version of standalone Stella for paddle games, and a more modern RetroArch based version for joystick based games. This is probably because the people who assembled the software for the GsP had difficulties getting their paddle to work properly with RetroArch Stella. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 4 minutes ago, fluxit said: Currently, the Gamestation uses an older version of standalone Stella for paddle games, and a more modern RetroArch based version for joystick based games. This is probably because the people who assembled the software for the GsP had difficulties getting their paddle to work properly with RetroArch Stella. What a mess! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tjoppen Posted February 2 Author Share Posted February 2 8 hours ago, fluxit said: Currently, the Gamestation uses an older version of standalone Stella for paddle games, and a more modern RetroArch based version for joystick based games. This is probably because the people who assembled the software for the GsP had difficulties getting their paddle to work properly with RetroArch Stella. This explains some things. But it also solidifies my point about not buying these things. Set up a RetroPie or something instead. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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