The 7800GD (New 7800 Flash Cartridge?)

[VectorGamer]

I don't know...I purchased a Harmony and still have a combination of 68 Homebrews, Hacks and Protos. I didn't purchase my Harmony with the intent of not purchasing future Homebrews. If i like a game, I will support the developer and buy it. Besides, I still like to swap out individual games, but that's my preference.

 

 

I will never sell any of my games homebrew or original. Even with sd carts I will still buy homebrew games.

 

I'm a player not a collector. I have no attachment to game cartridges as I just want to play the game.

 

I've supported the home brew community the past 7 years but if I buy a home brew and some time later the ROM becomes available as a free download then I no longer have the need for the cartridge and up on eBay it goes. And the winning bidder on my auction may be a collector that missed out on the initial physical release of a home brew so it's a win for them.

[78001987]

Lots of different takes on this here. I guess being an optimist myself, I see it from the viewpoint that the majority of people involved in the 7800 homebrew scene appear to be a different breed than certain other homebrew dev scenes. There seems to be a more honest and trustworthy community here - for the most part. Maybe because it's such a niche audience. At any rate, I guess I just wonder what margin of sales some people are expecting from these games realistically? when I see a game sell through multiple rounds of cart runs, getting into the hundreds of sales, I guess the last thing on my mind is that a small margin of people might pirate it.

 

Also - someone mentioned it earlier, but there have been occasional gluts of crap homebrews that water the market down. Honestly, how many horror movie 2600 hacks do we really needs? No, I don't want to play a video game about a masturbating panda.

 

but as far as the pirating - when you work on something for yourself in a creative capacity, there's always going to be an element of piracy/freeloading. Coming from being a musician myself, it's expected that people will share your material (if it's any good) and in most cases the best you can hope for is to make back what you spent, and maybe a little more. Expecting to make huge profits with such a small market and tight margins is a bit pious.

 

I have 20ish Homebrew 2600 and 7800 game carts that I've bought from the AA store or users here. Every single one of them was a game where the Dev shared the WIP roms for play testing and bug testing during development. If it weren't for emulators or SD carts, I probably wouldn't have bought any of them, because I was burned so many times on crap commercial games over the years.

[RevEng]

Last reply, as this all boils down to if you believe the 7800 Harmony situation will follow the 2600 situation.

 

1. The "homebrew apocalypse" thread has nothing to do with harmony, which predates the apocalypse thread by years. Al and predominant devs have posted about the decline in sales in these forums.

 

2. There are no 2600 or 7800 homebrew devs with expectation of "huge profits". If that was the case, we'd mow a few people's lawns and make in an afternoon what we make for months and years of effort.

 

3. Different developers are motivated by different things. Some want to have a cart at the end of the process, but that may not be a reality if the economy of scale isn't there. Some get stoked by sales numbers - check out the apocalypse thread for prominent examples.

 

My own motivation is to do it for the art of the thing - I argued as much in the homebrew apocalyse thread. But declining motivations for some developers isn't a good thing on the 7800, where the active dev count is very low. I've personally worked hard to cultivate resources and attract more devs, but its feeling like a losing battle.

 

Lastly, the attitude that homebrewers looking to make coffee money are pious and seeking "huge profits" makes me want to chuck it all. People clearly don't value the time and effort spent on these things.

[78001987]

Last reply, as this all boils down to if you believe the 7800 Harmony situation will follow the 2600 situation.

 

1. The "homebrew apocalypse" thread has nothing to do with harmony, which predates the apocalypse thread by years. Al and predominant devs have posted about the decline in sales in these forums.

 

2. There are no 2600 or 7800 homebrew devs with expectation of "huge profits". If that was the case, we'd mow a few people's lawns and make in an afternoon what we make for months and years of effort.

 

3. Different developers are motivated by different things. Some want to have a cart at the end of the process, but that may not be a reality if the economy of scale isn't there. Some get stoked by sales numbers - check out the apocalypse thread for prominent examples.

 

My own motivation is to do it for the art of the thing - I argued as much in the homebrew thread. But declining motivations for some developers isn't a good thing on the 7800, where the active dev count is very low. I've personally worked hard to cultivate resources to attract more devs, but its feeling like a losing battle.

 

Lastly, the attitude that homebrewers looking to make coffee money are pious and seeking "huge profits" makes me want to chuck it all. People clearly don't value the time and effort spent on these things.

Well, maybe pious is the wrong word, and I apologize if I offended. maybe more just "unrealistic".

 

I've only seen evidence of really one or two devs in the 7800 scene who exhibited this kind of attitude/approach, and neither of them are active in the 7800 scene anymore now - mostly because of how their attitude was received and responded to here. I pay less attention to the 2600 dev scene as there are so many things happeneing at one time, and while some are fantastic (Roland's Ballblazer, or Dintar's Pac-Man) some are dreadful and derivative.

 

But I will say - I have seen some rather unpleasant and occasionally repellent "Diva" behavior in dev scenes all over, be it here, or even much worse in the Sony PSP homebrew scene or the Sony PS3 homebrew scene. There ae tons of great people, and so many great tech advances with this stuff that keeps people coming back, but yeah - it can only take one person with a certain attitude or outlook to sour things - and that can go both ways.

[tep392]

I would be more concerned about Al making enough money to support this site and the inventory that he has invested his money into so that we have all these homebrew games available to purchase. I'm not saying the needs of the devs aren't important, but I think we are extremely fortunate to have someone like Al here to support our hobby. It is extra impressive when you compare the availability of Atari homebrews to other systems like Colecovision and Intellivision where most games are made with a single run, so if you miss out, your at the mercy of the resellers.

[78001987]

I would be more concerned about Al making enough money to support this site and the inventory that he has invested his money into so that we have all these homebrew games available to purchase. I'm not saying the needs of the devs aren't important, but I think we are extremely fortunate to have someone like Al here to support our hobby. It is extra impressive when you compare the availability of Atari homebrews to other systems like Colecovision and Intellivision where most games are made with a single run, so if you miss out, your at the mercy of the resellers.

THIS.

 

It's too bad there's no way to prevent resellers from creating a fake market price for that stuff. like putting a tracking device on homebrew games and destroying them remotely when they appear on eBay.

[accousticguitar]

I've personally worked hard to cultivate resources to attract more devs, but its feeling like a losing battle.

 

Developing games is much nicer when there is a flashcart available for testing the roms on real hardware. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the 7800 yet.

[Bill Loguidice]

Developing games is much nicer when there is a flashcart available for testing the roms on real hardware. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the 7800 yet.

 

Not strictly true. There are plenty of Cuttle Cart 2's in circulation. It works great.

[accousticguitar]

 

Not strictly true. There are plenty of Cuttle Cart 2's in circulation. It works great.

They might be in circulation, but I've never seen one available for a reasonable price.

[RevEng]

Developing games is much nicer when there is a flashcart available for testing the roms on real hardware. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the 7800 yet.

There are options. I enjoy using my MCP DevCart by CPUWIZ, and I suppose the Euro slot cart would work well for development work too.

 

I'm not against flash carts. I just am making some apparently unpopular observations on them being a mixed blessing for the dev community.

[Trebor]

There are options. I enjoy using my MCP DevCart by CPUWIZ, and I suppose the Euro slot cart would work well for development work too.

 

The MCP DevCart has played a huge role in the advancement and testing of WIP games. It has been leaned upon immensely in providing valuable feedback to various developers.

 

I'm not against flash carts. I just am making some apparently unpopular observations on them being a mixed blessing for the dev community.

 

I am very much for flash carts and there are indeed pros and cons. A mixed blessing is an excellent and balanced perspective.

[CPUWIZ]

 

The MCP DevCart has played a huge role in the advancement and testing of WIP games. It has been leaned upon immensely in providing valuable feedback to various developers.

 

Thanks, the WIP upgrade for it is something none of these other carts can do. Debug breakpoints with full disassembly on the PC, including all supported illegal opcodes. My health has been shit (really shit) and work has been busy, otherwise I would have posted about it (other than my private blog).

[PacManPlus]

Here's hoping your health improves quickly.

[CPUWIZ]

This can not really be fixed.

[phoenixdownita]

This can not really be fixed.

I'm so sorry to hear that, you have my sympathies and my wishes that it stays manageable.

[RevEng]

Ditto on phoenixdownita's sentiments for me, WIZ.

 

These meat bodies suck sometimes.

[Jinks]

This can not really be fixed.

That sucks! We all break sometimes. Getting old.. I hope things turn around for ya on the flip side.

[Andromeda Stardust]

When you see someone remove a cart from the system while the powers on or someone try to force a cart in the wrong way you to will pine for a method of loading games thats idiot proof

I have removed and inserted tons of carts from systems while powered on, and have never had any hardware damaged as the result of hot swapping carts. While I don't condone the practice in general, I've yet to see any evidence that this can destroy games or systems. I've lost a few SRAM saves here and there though glitching or connection issues or more likely 20+ year old batteries that were already on the brink of failure.

 

I've seen a lot more modern systems and devices get bricked when one of the firmware updates most companies seem to release on a weekly basis, fails. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, et al are all guilty of excessive patching. IMO, a "patch" should only be applied to add features or fix serious bugs, not every day of the week while play cat-and-mouse games with the hackers (hint: the hackers always win). That just gets in the way of people's enjoyment of their games. Nothing says buzzkill like putting a new game into the system and waiting hours for updates.

 

Old cartridge systems that either have no OS at all or a permanent mask ROM that cannot be updated, are nigh impossible to "brick" as the result of glitching or data corruption. If it crashes, you just reset or power cycle and "blow the carts" to bring it back to life. And oftentimes they run exactly the same as 30 years ago despite the years of abuse they've endured through multiple owners.

 

30 years from now, there will be far more Ataris and NESes still in service than Xbones, PS4s, or Wii-Us due to corrupted firmware and/or dead optical drives.

[Schizophretard]

This can not really be fixed.

Within the last couple of months my wife's uncle was diagnosed with lung cancer. My wife and I were there when they told him how bad it was because her doctor was concerned about her cell count and therefore we just so happened to be at the cancer center at the same time. They showed him a scan of his chest, told him it was stage 4, and that he only has a couple weeks to live but could possibly extend that to up to 10 months if he did chemotherapy. I'm no doctor but based on what I saw in the scans(softball size masses filling up his entire chest within and outside of his lungs) I thought they were being generous with that possible 10 months. They started the chemotherapy, it wasn't showing any signs of improvement, and we all took that as the 10 months isn't going to happen. So, the family set up a party for him so that he could have one last get together with his whole family. It felt kind of creepy to me because it felt like a funeral with him still alive. He couldn't really participate because he was already bald and struggling to breathe with an oxygen tank. That added to the creepy feeling because we were all partying around him with him dying in his chair. Maybe a week later they did the scans again to see how it was progressing. They told him that the masses were completely gone, that he can quit the chemotherapy and then do radiation to eliminate anything they can't see, and then he will go through remission. He wanted an explanation for how it went from a couple of weeks up to 10 months to being pretty much cured. They couldn't give him one because they said that he is the first cancer patient to walk into those hospital doors to get that kind of diagnoses and then come back to discover that it completely vanished practically over night. So, now he is back preaching in his Church and believes it was a medical miracle. I don't personally believe in miracles but if I were to attempt to do so I think I would have trouble refuting his claim because the first word that comes to mind when I think of those original scans and them claiming they have completely vanished is "miraculous". Anyway, the moral of my story is that I don't believe in miracles but I also don't believe there is such a thing as "This can not really be fixed." either. So, I'm going to echo PacManPlus by hoping your health improves quickly. Get well soon.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Miracles can and do happen btw, whether you believe they were caused by divine intervention or chaotic events.

 

Just curious, what were his thoughts on the "party" you guys threw him when he was practically on his deathbed? After he recovered and all. Maybe it is true what they say when laughter is the "best" medicine?

[Schizophretard]

Miracles can and do happen btw, whether you believe they were caused by divine intervention or chaotic events.

 

Just curious, what were his thoughts on the "party" you guys threw him when he was practically on his deathbed? After he recovered and all. Maybe it is true what they say when laughter is the "best" medicine?

 

I'm not sure. He is a quiet type. He looked kind of depressed at the party but it is hard to tell. I can say this. He is very strong and stubborn. Like right after his first scan and pretty much getting a death sentence the first things he wanted to do was work on everyone's cars that he lives with because he felt they had to be fixed and then he wanted to go back to work. So, everyone had to force him to not work on the cars and he was put on disability. My wife and I were there when he was reading the disability papers in front of his wife, kids, and grand kids. It was the most depressing paper I have ever heard anyone read. It had things like,"When is the patient expected to return to work? Never.", "How long is the patient expected to be disabled? Life.", "Will the patient's condition ever improve? No.", etc. Everyone else was crying but he just folded up the paper, handed it to me to give to uncle Ron(they work together), and told me to tell him who to give it to. By his body language it seemed that he was more pissed that he wasn't able to go back to work than that he was dying. He is the kind of guy that is more concerned about his responsibilities than himself. For an example, he has been paying for life insurance for years, after his diagnoses he asked them how much his family will get, and they told him that they will get nothing because it doesn't cover lung cancer. In other words, everyone else was thinking,"Oh no! He is dying!" while he was thinking something more like," I have bills and a family to take care of! This disability crap is bullshit! I got to get back to work! How am I going to pay our mortgage when I'm dead and my life insurance won't give them anything?! I need to fix these cars because no one else will once I'm gone!" Anyway, the reason we were there the night he was reading those papers is because my wife and him have been distant for the last few years, she never got to say good bye when cancer took her grandma, and she wanted to make sure she didn't miss the chance with him. I think he said what she needed to hear. From what I heard as he was hugging her was things like,"It is okay. I made the choice to smoke and have to face the consequences. This is the price I have to pay and after I do so I'll be fine." and then he whispered something to her that made her cry and smile at the same time. I asked what he said and she said,"I love you, Turd Bird." That is the nickname he gave her when she was born. She was born premature and had an identical twin in the womb but only she survived. He used to always tell her the story about how she was so tiny that he could fit her in his hand because she was a little turd bird. Anyway, instead of laughter his medicine seemed to be a refusal to die because he has responsibilities,"Somebody has to pay these bills!"

 

Anyway, concerning miracles, you know those mothers lifting cars off their babies because adrenaline gives them super human strength kind of stories? Well, Andy(her uncle) did that once for my father-in-law. The car jack dropped the car on him and he was suffocating. Andy ran right up to the car and lifted it right up. I didn't know the family then but when they tell the story they explain it like he looked like superman because it didn't look like it took a lot of effort.

[Andromeda Stardust]

That's amazing an amazing story...

[Trebor]

This can not really be fixed.

 

I do believe in making the seemingly impossible, possible and finding hope in a hopeless situation.

I'm even a stronger believer in the power of the mind and how much it can influence our physical well-being.

Stay focused on the happy and the positive. Never underestimate the importance and intrinsic value of your presence and both the known and unknown impact your actions have in helping others.

At the very least, thank you for sharing and being a part of the AtariAge community - It is appreciated.

[Inky]

Sorry to hear about your health CPUWIZ. You've always been a stand up guy to me.

[Jazzoff2000]

Yes, the cuttle cart 2 also had a pokey. I intend to have pokey support via a suitable hardware model.

Keen as mustard, mate!