Blue Azure Posted February 7, 2013 Share Posted February 7, 2013 Maybe you've been tracking the progress of disassembling in the ROBOTRON X thread in the main user's group. The BIG question is do we have what we need to develop the PAL version of the NTSC ROBOTRON? I know nothing about the PAL v. NTSC requirements on the 7800. So I need help on this one. As we know this is the only original 7800 title not ported to PAL. This would be HUGE if we could do this... The latest ROBOTRON disassembly... RobotronDisassy2013.rtf Thanks, BLUEman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenfused Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 The most important thing will probably be adding some blank lines to the top and bottom. I don't remember and have access to the required number for ntsc and pal at the moment. Essentially u need to add some display list list entries the point to an empty display list entry (0,0). I am guessing more than likely maria is executing things at the end of the current list which can lead to garbage and wasting some clock time or even cause dli execution. Beyomd that the game may need some speed tweaks and possibly color adjustments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Azure Posted February 8, 2013 Author Share Posted February 8, 2013 Thanks Ken for your response. True, there's more lines in PAL vs. NTSC and I forget the specs as well. All you say makes sense to me. It's not something that can be done in an hour, obviously, and maybe not even in a day. It's way beyond my 7800 knowledge at the moment. There has been some discussion about "PAL" before. Here's one thread, but there's more elsewhere I'm sure... http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/166451-pal-frame-timing/page__hl__+pal%20+lines#entry2057088 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 from Eckhard Stolberg: In MARIA mode the palettes of the NTSC 7800 and the PAL 7800 seem to be pretty much the same. The only difference is that PAL TVs don't have a tint control, and that the red-green balance (that's what 'tint' controls, right?) is fixed a bit on the greener side. I tried Atari's palette test program on my NTSC 7800 connected to a multi-standard TV. When I shift the tint slider so much toward the 'green' side that the turquises move down one row, then I get about the same palette as when I use Atari's palette test program on my PAL 7800 connected to the same TV. from Eric Ball There may be a slight difference in the CPU timing between PAL & NTSC, but there are the same number of cycles per line. The bigger difference is the frame refresh (50Hz vs 60Hz) and the number of lines per frame (312 vs 262) which means you have 50 more visible lines and need additional DLL entries. (Which is typically why NTSC games crash on PAL 7800s, due to a mis-triggered DLI, or show garbage at the bottom of the screen.) It's possible for a game to detect whether it is running on an NTSC or PAL system and adapt as required. The additional lines can either be blank or used to expand the play area. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 More specfic on what Eckhard wrote about (Thanks for the link Eric!)... NTSC 7800 Color Chart: $0 GREY $1 GOLD $2 ORANGE $3 RED_ORANGE $4 PINK $5 PURPLE $6 PURPLE_BLUE $7 BLUE1 $8 BLUE2 $9 LIGHT_BLUE $A TURQUOISE $B GREEN_BLUE $C GREEN $D YELLOW_GREEN $E ORANGE_GREEN $F LIGHT_ORANGE PAL 7800 Color Chart (referencing the NTSC rows): $0 GREY $E ORANGE_GREEN $1 GOLD $2 ORANGE $3 RED_ORANGE $4 PINK $5 PURPLE $6 PURPLE_BLUE $7 BLUE1 $8 BLUE2 $9 LIGHT_BLUE $A TURQUOISE $B GREEN_BLUE $C GREEN $D YELLOW_GREEN $E ORANGE_GREEN PAL throws NTSC $E all the way to the top. NTSC $F does not exist under PAL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 You will need to adjust the speed tables by 5/6 to account for the different frame rate. Table values are in "frames between moves". The values are fairly small so there will be rounding errors but the speeds should match within about 5%. Here are my calcs for the hulks. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Azure Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 Thanks all for your responses. Just know it's months before I could get to this, and I'm not the best-equipped to do it as I've never done a PAL conversion before. BLUEman. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted February 25, 2013 Share Posted February 25, 2013 More specfic on what Eckhard wrote about (Thanks for the link Eric!)... PAL throws NTSC $E all the way to the top. NTSC $F does not exist under PAL. Note: the 7800 (and probably the other Atari 8 bits) have a trim resistor which affects the color. Color is via a delay line tap and the resistor changes the delay and thus the color. So some of the differences may be due to how the trim resistor is set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robotrondev Posted November 26, 2013 Share Posted November 26, 2013 How you guys getting on with this? Any progress? Scott T. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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