the official Channel F thread!

[Mikebloke]

28 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Have you informed @evietron so the design can be corrected?

I will do, as I don't think the two models have any difference in the cartridge caddy sizing, the UK consoles are literally US shells with different logo sticker on it. I think the issue was obviously a costing one to keep it cheap, but I think the yellow section needs to be longer to guide the cartridge in as I struggled to get the pins in all the way. 

 

Guess im doing a crash course in soldering and understanding a multimeter XD

 

Edit: I'm basically autisticly meltdowning because it was working fine until I opened my console, I'll contact her when I'm fit to communicate with people again XD thanks for the advice again e5frog... 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Mikebloke

[Mikebloke]

Ok posted on the Backbit Forum for now.

 

In the meantime I have a first version ready for Submarine for the Channel F, this is a first release version, I imagine I'll get a manual and updates out tomorrow.

 

 

Download here: subf8.bin

How to play:

 

1 key on console: player is submarine (blue), destroyer (green) is automated

2 key on console: player is destroyer (green), submarine (blue) is automated

3 key on console: player 1 is submarine (blue), player 2 is destroyer (green)

All games have escort (red) automated. 

Left and right to move your respective ship on the screen

Plunge / Push down shoots missile

Submarine player has to shoot either Destroyer or Escort for 1 point

Destroyer has to shoot Submarine for 1 point

First to 15 wins the game, game can be reset anytime, either in game or at end of game with 1,2,3 keys on console as above.

Game plays in "attract mode" on boot up

 

Things to do for final port version:

 

Slight pause and flash at hit (all ships)

Sound (like usual, the last thing I touch)

Manual in usual style

Fixing up some graphics so its more stable looking

Changing the positions slightly for TV

Fixing the screen wipe to light green to get grey (I'm wondering whether wiping whole screen grey then trying to get light blue makes more sense, I'll play around with it tonight / tomorrow - the thing that will take the longest to do the least change).

Possibly including one more game type (no red escort ship)

 

The original PC-50X game had a space ship game included as well, but its much more dull as it involves shooting a missile that fills the line down making it extremely easy to avoid. The second space game the ships are hidden until firing (again, making it incredibly easy to dodge).

 

Like all my ports, I always plan a form of "plus" version someday to make it more challenging and fun, but my main intention is just to port weird or similar timeframe games to the Channel F in as natural a form as I can.

[Mikebloke]

Updated version, this may be the final version but I think there is still some tweaks needed.

 

Download here: subf8.bin

 

Ships flash colours, pause movement and also cannot fire new bullets when hit

Two sound effects, one for being hit (all ships) and for submarine missile (feel free to mute!)

Sped up the display of ship movement to avoid as much flicker

Fixed a small bug where the Destroyer missile goes blue on the submarine line

Increased the range of movement on the right hand side to compensate for varied ship sizes

 

What hasn't' been done:

 

From original game:

 

The two player game in the original game is actually escort free, so just the destroyer and submarine, I could do this potentially

4th game type of the hidden ships unless firing - my next thing is can I add this in easily and potentially keep it in 2kb, I will see.

Ambient "submarine" sound of a sonar ping like noise - I think I've done well to get the other two in, even though they are grating on the ears, not likely to be able to create anything that can run while other things are going on

 

For Channel F:

 

Adjustment for tv screen - haven't looked into it yet.

Fixing the screen wipe. Tried a number of different things, including wiping screen grey first and painting lower bit light blue, it doesn't like it, so the green wipe first will remain (a pain, not sure if this is an emulator only issue and would be fine on a console).

Manual in the Channel F style - if only because I'm working on another little game I want as a screenshot for the "coming soon" section.

 

I've worked to keep it within the 2kb range, there is no reason not to push it beyond it other than challenge. I think with some optimising I could still do the above todo list and keep it within 2kb.

[Mikebloke]

Got round to finishing the game as much as I'm likely to do for now. Hope you enjoy it!

 

subf8.bin

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMARINE.docx

 

There is now a "night sea" mode through button 4 on the console which switches the game to black and white - ships only appear when firing (or being hit).

I have attempted to adjust the distance to the sides to make it TV able - no way to test this right now unfortunately  This means there is a smaller moving / firing area so its not so wide.

Manual is now done as well.

I've kept the game in 2kb, no real reason to restrict it, its more just an achievement for me and can be cut down more than this, I haven't tried to optimise much, but it could be.

 

I've kept the Escort in the standard 2 player mode, the reasons for this is that in the original Night Sea mode, the Escort is there and appears when the Destroyer fires. While it might be "fun" for the destroyer to not have a indefensible target for the Submarine player to hit on its side, I felt that a 2 ship firing situation gives no real tactical gameplay and a reason I've never been keen on implementing it in etiher this port or the Atari 2600 port I tried to do years ago. Essentially you just end up trying to fire on each other but get to move out the way first. This way, although the Submarine player does have a very obvious advantage (the Escort ship is always predictable route wise, and the Submarine is a smaller ship to hit) it also gives the destroyer a chance to hit the submarine as that player tries to focus on the escort. In tests with my children, the age difference helps even out the Submarine advantage and it is possible to hit the Submarine player fairly often. However, Submarine as a game is always a biased game in favour of one player. Rather than doing the modern thing of "evening" it out to be "fair", I've kept the spirt of the biased game by allowing Submarine player its significant advantage.

 

Any plus version likely have buttons change game elements so it can be more versatile with its options (2600 style), escort on/off, one player or two player mode, hidden ship mode on or off etc.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Mikebloke
wrong words when children are looking over my shoulder

[e5frog]

There should be a proper shell made for the backbit to fit better. 
Instead of the "handy to move around between systems"-option a more permanent design would be nice. Something larger, videocart-looking to dock into or a replacement shell entirely for the backbit.
I might get one as well if I happen to fall into a pit of money.

Why are the binaries 2046 bytes and not 2048?
Only took a quick look, hoping to get a game in later.

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by e5frog

[Mikebloke]

13 minutes ago, e5frog said:

Why are the binaries 2046 bytes and not 2048?
Only took a quick look, hoping to get a game in later.

 

It'll be me setting it wrong for the signature, I'll fix it next time! 

[e5frog]

Maybe some kind of collection cartridge should be made with all the unreleased games...? 

[lazzeri]

3 minutes ago, e5frog said:

Maybe some kind of collection cartridge should be made with all the unreleased games...? 

I’ll take a copy! 🙂

[e5frog]

.... everyone needs to get a BackBit...   it's actually cheaper

$134 with the adapter. I would need to pay $8 fee and 34$ tax - and $20 shipping - so only $196, feels like it will never happen.  😢
I could ask a friend to ship it though - and save $42 by escaping tax...     

https://store.backbit.io/product/backbit-pro/


If anyone feels the need to sponsor me with a BackBit I'll make a proper Channel F cart shell 3D drawing for 3D print. That baton she's come up with is an eye sore. 


BUT, some nice design to put on the shelf, increasing the Channel F library IS pretty nice.

[+fdr4prez]

4 minutes ago, e5frog said:

everyone needs to get a BackBit

Has the issue that @Mikeblokehad with it getting stuck in his console been determined that it was a 1-time issue, or a design issue of the shell?

 

I'd fear for others purchasing this when there is risk of it getting stuck into the console. 

[e5frog]

4 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Has the issue that @Mikeblokehad with it getting stuck in his console been determined that it was a 1-time issue, or a design issue of the shell?

I guess you'll be careful the second time...

[lazzeri]

8 minutes ago, e5frog said:

.... everyone needs to get a BackBit...   it's actually cheaper

(…)

BUT, some nice design to put on the shelf, increasing the Channel F library IS pretty nice.

   I feel that those are two different markets to be fulfilled.

 

   Of course a multicart is a highly useful little thing, a cart that you can keep plugged on your console to play whatever you want, whenever you wish. That’s the “player’s market”. I really should aim for a copy to myself.

 

   But a boxed copy of a dedicated cart, the “collector’s marked” is something else entirely - the fetish of having a beautiful thing, carefully crafted.

 

   And you’re not forced to pick a side: you can have only one of those, or both.

 

   There’s multicarts for a lot of systems, like Atari 2600, Coleco, NES, Vectrex… you name it. But the collectors still hunt down the boxed games. 🙂

[Ashevent]

I like owning all the official carts and a multi-cart for the rest unless there's something super awesome to me which..dammit, e5frog's stuff is so nice i do buy the separate carts too..lol. but truth be told, the multi-cart is what i use the most for the Fairchild and my verctrex. 

 

to each his own, nothing wrong with any way you wanna play or collect. i dont think im getting the plus of a 3d printed backbit is it cheaper to update with a new board versus buying a whole new multi-cart or that is can hold multiple multi-cart boards depending on what you wanna play thats the bonus? 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Ashevent

[poppalarge]

The main benefit of the backbit is the price. You buy the backbit itself for like $130 - then you buy the adapters for like $20 each which stay in your various consoles/computers. So instead of buying multiple multicarts for $100 or $200+, you buy the adapters for $20. You just move the backbit itself from adapter to adapter, using the same SD card to hold everything. Then a secondary benefit is you can easily update the romsets you have on the SD card in the backbit. Like lazzeri got at earlier though, it's way more useful for the player's market as opposed to the collector's market.

[Ashevent]

15 hours ago, poppalarge said:

The main benefit of the backbit is the price. You buy the backbit itself for like $130 - then you buy the adapters for like $20 each which stay in your various consoles/computers. So instead of buying multiple multicarts for $100 or $200+, you buy the adapters for $20. You just move the backbit itself from adapter to adapter, using the same SD card to hold everything. Then a secondary benefit is you can easily update the romsets you have on the SD card in the backbit. Like lazzeri got at earlier though, it's way more useful for the player's market as opposed to the collector's market.

Ahhh, gotcha. Thanks for educating me! appreciate it. 

[e5frog]

I'm selling two Multi-Carts for $150, it's the last two I have chips for atm. 
Need to raise $300 for car repairs (left back wheel bearing).   

 

I'll give you guys a chance to reply before I shout out about it. 

About 2 weeks before delivery, so no long waiting times. 

Let me know. 

[Ashevent]

9 hours ago, e5frog said:

I'm selling two Multi-Carts for $150, it's the last two I have chips for atm. 
Need to raise $300 for car repairs (left back wheel bearing).   

 

I'll give you guys a chance to reply before I shout out about it. 

About 2 weeks before delivery, so no long waiting times. 

Let me know. 

Ugh, sorry to hear about bearings! I have one of yours already. I'll check back, and If no one from her wants one I'll do a shout out on IG and hopefully find a buyer. 

[CreeB]

Ah yes.. channel f.. they used this in wpix's PIXX game.. i always wanted to play the pixx game but they never picked me when i called.. 

 

There was a segment of a show called BARNEY'S ARMY where a similar game called the POW GAME blew up and the guy said,,, "LOOKS LIKE THE POW GAME IS GONE FOREVER.." imagine some kid saw that they'd be angry as crapola.. i would..

[e5frog]

I experimented with stealing frames from Leaderboard on the C64 emulator WinVICE.
I took half the frames and made a set of 16 and changed to Channel F colors.

 

 

Then wrote a cmd program in C++ to filter just the changes from a previous image and got a set of black bmp-images with a little colored scribble on them. 
Had to take the size down a little and shrink height as the Channel F pixels are tall. 

 

...  ...
Stripped the header of the bmp-file and translated the index colors for green, red, blue, background and clear into 0, 4, 8, C and F (because colors set into ports corresponds to $00, $40, $80 and $C0). 

 

 

The conversion program does both the bmp preview of the frame change and the binary file with the Channel F image data, just drag and drop two files (equal in size, my palette layout).

So I now have graphics data with two pixels per byte that I can draw with my new nibbledraw code (very small changes to "multiblit"). 
For clear it just skips the pixeldata transfer, so present graphics stay there, just like the "blit" code does if "clear" color is set.

It's slightly faster than "multiblit", as it doesn't need to decode colors from two bits - but it requires double as much data (which is normally not a problem). 
My example could easily have the graphics compressed (should there be a need for it) a lot with a simple routine and unpacked to RAM, there's a lot of empty space in the frames.

 

 

Move controller in a direction to swing - it's just the hitting, nothing else fun (yet). 
Having the courses drawn up from polygon data would have been really neat... 

 2023-09-11_38_14_Leaderboard.bin

Edited September 11, 2023 by e5frog

[+fdr4prez]

13 hours ago, e5frog said:

I experimented with stealing frames from Leaderboard on the C64 emulator WinVICE.
I took half the frames and made a set of 16 and changed to Channel F colors.

 

 

That's just wow. 

[Dopy25]

Anyone know which VR this is? It's in a early model channel F and there's only this one. No other VR. Would that make it a 7805? Or is this a 12v VR?

 

Symptoms of this console is zero signs of life. No red LED, but there's power to the switch. Volts seem low at the VR, so I'm guessing it failed. I want to replace it, but I don't want to use the wrong one. Google was no help for the ua77m12 and even less help when adding the rest of the info. 

[e5frog]

It's a 7812, 12V regulator.

Check diodes as well, they go pretty hot.

[Dopy25]

On 9/21/2023 at 12:07 AM, e5frog said:

It's a 7812, 12V regulator.

Check diodes as well, they go pretty hot.

The voltage rectifiers? Is there any way to get those in the original footprint, or would I open them or remove the whole thing and replace them?

 

Thanks for the info on the 7812. I wasn't sure if that was it, or if there was something whacky involved.

[e5frog]

Not sure what you have in yours, they're often four loose diodes soldered to the board. 

[+jgkspsx]

On 9/24/2022 at 11:03 PM, jgkspsx said:

Has anybody seen this style of box before? Was it indeed used for refurbished units as the person auctioning it for charity donations on Facebook guesses?

 

It turns out that this was a box used by Zircon for refurbished units: 

 

And there is one on eBay right now from somebody with an, ahem, notably handsome avatar with no bids and a $5 minimum in case weird old cardboard floats your boat: https://www.ebay.com/itm/296138581515