Space Rocks (2600)

[Gilles_B]

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

Space rocks is using the DPC+ coprocessor, which is an extension of Activision's DPC coprocessor used in Pitfall 2.  You can read more about DPC+ in my blog post extra hardware!

wow, thanks for taking the time to write this down! Very clear and understandable. Much appreciated. Plus, "buss stuffing" sounds hilarious to me

 

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

DPC+ doesn't really exist, it's implemented by a driver that runs on the Harmony/Melody which contains a 32K ROM with 8K RAM. 4K of ROM and 4K of RAM are used by the driver, leaving 28K ROM and 4K RAM for the game.

More recent projects use the newer CDFJ driver which runs on the same hardware. It's more efficient and only uses 2K of ROM and 2K of RAM, leaving more resources for the game.  

So in theory, using this new driver you'd have 2K more in which to put something like the high score routines. That doesn't sound like much. Would that be enough?

 

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

CDFJ+ is currently in development. Still uses 2K of ROM and 2K of RAM, but supports a newer Melody board with configurations of:

• 64K ROM & 16K RAM
• 128K ROM & 16K RAM
• 256K ROM & 32K RAM
• 512K ROM & 32K RAM

Wow. I can't begin to imagine what would be possible with these. Currently such games would be limited to emulators, no? Since the Harmony/Melody doesn't have the hardware.

[+SpiceWare]

36 minutes ago, Gilles_B said:

wow, thanks for taking the time to write this down! Very clear and understandable. Much appreciated. Plus, "buss stuffing" sounds hilarious to me

You're welcome.

 

Bus Stuffing was figured out by 3 former Commodore engineers back in the day for The Graduate computer upgrade to the 2600, can read about it in "Bus stuffing" like The Graduate. I posted a number of demos that run on real hardware using a Harmony Cart.  The RPG demo also runs in Stella, but not the others because the Bus Driver had changed a lot. We stopped working on it because a number of the Juniors and 7800s don't handle Bus Stuffing correctly, likely due to board revisions.  I suspect if The Graduate had been released then Atari would have made sure those systems supported it.

 

36 minutes ago, Gilles_B said:

So in theory, using this new driver you'd have 2K more in which to put something like the high score routines. That doesn't sound like much. Would that be enough?

 

Draconian's already using CDFJ.  For Space Rocks that extra 2K would make the high score routines possible, but the programming for CDFJ is different from DPC+ meaning that Space Rocks would have to undergo a major rewrite. I'd rather spend my time on new projects than revisit old ones.

 

36 minutes ago, Gilles_B said:

Wow. I can't begin to imagine what would be possible with these. Currently such games would be limited to emulators, no? Since the Harmony/Melody doesn't have the hardware.

 

Prototypes of the new Melody board already exist. I do not know how close they are to finalizing the design.  One issue I'm aware of is the Harmony Encore won't support CDFJ+ because the chips used in the new Melody are different. 

[Gilles_B]

14 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

Bus Stuffing was figured out by 3 former Commodore engineers back in the day for The Graduate computer upgrade to the 2600, can read about it in "Bus stuffing" like The Graduate. I posted a number of demos that run on real hardware using a Harmony Cart.  

Impressive.

Quote

Draconian's already using CDFJ.  For Space Rocks that extra 2K would make the high score routines possible, but the programming for CDFJ is different from DPC+ meaning that Space Rocks would have to undergo a major rewrite. I'd rather spend my time on new projects than revisit old ones.

I completely understand. You've mentioned Draconian a few times. I'll check it out next.

 

Quote

Prototypes of the new Melody board already exist. I do not know how close they are to finalizing the design.  One issue I'm aware of is the Harmony Encore won't support CDFJ+ because the chips used in the new Melody are different. 

Yes, it would be sad if the next generation of homebrews obsoletes our Harmony carts. But on the hand, can't wait to see how far you can push the envelope. So best of success!

[+SpiceWare]

On 11/17/2020 at 8:32 AM, Gilles_B said:

You've mentioned Draconian a few times. I'll check it out next.

 

It's my take on Bosconian.  Link at the very top of the first post will take you to the final build.

 

Alternatively, if you have signatures turned on, you can use the "try" links in my signature.

[Gilles_B]

On 11/17/2020 at 7:51 PM, SpiceWare said:

 

It's my take on Bosconian.  Link at the very top of the first post will take you to the final build.

 

Alternatively, if you have signatures turned on, you can use the "try" links in my signature.

Thanks for the links. I was very impressed with the console detection (which worked on my PAL 2600, btw) in Draconian, and with your links I was able to understand how you did it. Very cool

Edited November 19, 2020 by Gilles_B
misspelled

[+McCallister]

Has anyone else had trouble with loading up Space Rocks Tournament Edition on their Harmony Encore? I've tried loading it several times, using two different SD cards and it's always stuck on the spinning logo. I have the 1.06 Bios and all of the other games that I've tried with it have worked, including the regular edition of Space Rocks.

[+SpiceWare]

13 hours ago, McCallister said:

Has anyone else had trouble with loading up Space Rocks Tournament Edition on their Harmony Encore?

 

Just tried and it worked on my Encore, so don't know what the issue could be. I did the quick bit of:

dd skip=3 count=29 if=spacerocks_te_6.bin of=srte29K.bin bs=1024
cat DPC+20121020.arm srte29K.bin > spacerocks_te_6_encore.bin

 

like I did in Reply 609 for the regular Space Rocks. It's in the Tournament Edition blog entry, hopefully that works for you.

[+McCallister]

2 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

 

Just tried and it worked on my Encore, so don't know what the issue could be. I did the quick bit of:

dd skip=3 count=29 if=spacerocks_te_6.bin of=srte29K.bin bs=1024
cat DPC+20121020.arm srte29K.bin > spacerocks_te_6_encore.bin

 

like I did in Reply 609 for the regular Space Rocks. It's in the Tournament Edition blog entry, hopefully that works for you.

Thank you for trying this out and confirming the game is working!  

 

For others who may have a similar problem, I got the Harmony working fully by refreshing the bios. Initially, I did not think to do that, as it was running the 1.06 and most other games were working, but then I read a  post from sramirez2008, who was having a similar problem:

 

[+batari]

On 11/16/2020 at 3:35 PM, SpiceWare said:

Prototypes of the new Melody board already exist. I do not know how close they are to finalizing the design.  One issue I'm aware of is the Harmony Encore won't support CDFJ+ because the chips used in the new Melody are different. 

Just saw this.

 

The design has been finalized for over a year now and the first production run of enhanced Melody boards came in before the post above.

 

These boards are ready to go should any homebrews need it.

[+batari]

On 11/17/2020 at 6:32 AM, Gilles_B said:

Yes, it would be sad if the next generation of homebrews obsoletes our Harmony carts. But on the hand, can't wait to see how far you can push the envelope. So best of success!

Existing Harmony and Harmony Encore can be upgraded to support the 64k and 128k CDFJ+. I haven't announced this because currently no homebrews are available that require this, and I don't expect any demand unless any such homebrews are released.

 

However, there is one 64k game in development that I am aware of, possibly two, but nothing larger than 64k right now, and the timeline for these isn't clear. Further, it is possible that the 256k and 512k will never be used so upgrading a Harmony or Harmony Encore might be enough, should any such games be released.

[Gilles_B]

3 hours ago, batari said:

Existing Harmony and Harmony Encore can be upgraded to support the 64k and 128k CDFJ+. I haven't announced this because currently no homebrews are available that require this, and I don't expect any demand unless any such homebrews are released.

 

However, there is one 64k game in development that I am aware of, possibly two, but nothing larger than 64k right now, and the timeline for these isn't clear. Further, it is possible that the 256k and 512k will never be used so upgrading a Harmony or Harmony Encore might be enough, should any such games be released.

This sounds great! Are we talking software or hardware upgrade?

[+sramirez2008]

[+SpiceWare]

removed - patched versions did not work.

[Albert]

4 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

@Albert - FYI for some reason neither batari nor I were able to upload the BIN files without zipping, it caused a -200 error.

 

Might be the firewall inspecting the binaries and flagging them for some reason, that's the only reason I could see such small binaries failing to upload.  I can play around with those later and see if I run into the issue, and if so, look at the server logs to see if I can spot the reason why this is happening.

 

 ..Al

[Gilles_B]

On 5/19/2022 at 8:32 PM, SpiceWare said:

removed - patched versions did not work.

Hi. You're linking to this post in the first post, for the release version. Obviously that's not correct any more. What's the correct link?

[+SpiceWare]

16 minutes ago, Gilles_B said:

Hi. You're linking to this post in the first post, for the release version. Obviously that's not correct any more. What's the correct link?

 

Thanks for the heads up! Looks like it should go to this post from June 24, 2017.

[JetmanUK]

On 6/24/2017 at 7:16 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I have created a PAL version of 1.06 for myself, by patching the NTSC version with a PAL menu. I can post it here, when I am back from vacation.

I used to live under a rock (not a space rock) and have only just discovered this game. Is there a PAL60 version? I see that there are a few different versions of the game, not just the region, which is the one to play? Thanks

Edited May 29 by JetmanUK

[Thomas Jentzsch]

3 hours ago, JetmanUK said:

I used to live under a rock (not a space rock) and have only just discovered this game. Is there a PAL60 version? I see that there are a few different versions of the game, not just the region, which is the one to play? Thanks

I was talking about the Harmony BIOS. Someone posted in between while I was writing.  

 

Any yes, there exists a PAL60 version of Space Rocks.

[JetmanUK]

5 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I was talking about the Harmony BIOS. Someone posted in between while I was writing.  

 

Any yes, there exists a PAL60 version of Space Rocks.

Ah gotcha. 

Is there a link here somewhere please?

[Bomberman94]

Does a PAL version of the Tournament Edition of Space Rocks exist? 🤔

[+SpiceWare]

On 5/29/2024 at 3:04 PM, JetmanUK said:

Is there a link here [for PAL60] somewhere please?

 

I know I answered this via email, but will add this here in case anybody else runs across this issue.

 

The PAL60 version can be found in this reply from 2017. While it's labelled PAL it's really PAL60, there is no PAL50 version of Space Rocks.

 

At the time using _PAL_ in the filename was OK, but it now causes an issue with Stella ver 6.1 and newer as this was added in 2020:

Quote

• Added auto-detection of display format based on filename.

 

The PAL part of the filename is telling Stella to use PAL50 mode even though the scanline count is 262:

 

2 options are:

• rename the file so its spacerocks20121129_PAL60_encore.bin
• override the TV Format to PAL60 in the Game properties:

[+SpiceWare]

On 5/29/2024 at 4:03 PM, Bomberman94 said:

Does a PAL version of the Tournament Edition of Space Rocks exist? 🤔

 

No, we were under the gun to create it in time for Classic Game Fest and I didn't make a PAL60 version. Last time I tried to build Space Rocks I couldn't as our compilers have changed since then and my new Mac cannot run the virtual machine with the old toolset.

 

The Tournament Edition is basically the No Mans Land easter egg, which can be triggered in the PAL60 version.

 

 

 

The name comes from the No Mans Land easter egg in Medieval Mayhem.

[Bomberman94]

10 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

 

No, we were under the gun to create it in time for Classic Game Fest and I didn't make a PAL60 version. Last time I tried to build Space Rocks I couldn't as our compilers have changed since then and my new Mac cannot run the virtual machine with the old toolset.

 

The Tournament Edition is basically the No Mans Land easter egg, which can be triggered in the PAL60 version.

 

 

 

The name comes from the No Mans Land easter egg in Medieval Mayhem.

Cool - i didn‘t know that yet! Will try this soon 🥳

[+Al_Nafuur]

Here is the 20121106 version converted by @JetSetIlly to the ACE/DPC+ banking of the UnoCart (UCA firmware required!) and the PlusCart. PlusCart users can also find the binary in the PlusStore folder "Public ROMs/Homebrew/DPC+ ACE".

 

Spacerocks_20121106_stm32.ace