Pitfall 2: How does the sound travel from the cart?

[high voltage]

I have a feeling that all the accolades (no pun intended) and celebrity worship seen in threads like this can actually scare these people away. That is most likely why Nolan Bushnell never came back. Get a grip guys.

 

Nah they wanted celebrity worship, that's why they left Atari

[+SpiceWare]

 

" Space Rocks is being released at PRGE so you can check it out there as well. Another game will be announced at PRGE - it really shows off DPC+ music with custom waveforms."

 

Any info on this other game, such as stage of development, etc? It sounds intriguing.

 

 

I posted the initial build on October 29, 2008. I rebooted it to use DPC+ on September 13, 2010. Work on this game fed back into DPC+, fixing bugs and adding improvements like interrupt driven music during execution of ARM code. It also lead to a number of updates to Stella, such as ARM emulation.

 

A lot of work and collaboration have gone on for it - there's 1,715 replies in the main topic, 255 for the music topic, 504 playtesting, and 245 scattered over a few other topics (these are in a restricted access sub forum). For contrast, the Space Rocks Topic only has 454 replies (there's additional replies in the 56 blog entries, but I don't see an easy way to count them).

 

I thought we were done, but then Thomas and Omegamatrix helped out with another round of optimizations that freed up a lot of ROM, so we're reworking a few things to make it even better. The plan is for the finished game to be shown next month at PRGE, though we'll continue play testing and will fix any bugs that show up before the game becomes available.

Edited September 3, 2013 by SpiceWare

[macdlsa]

I recently played again Pitfall II, testing one of my CVBS-modified PAL 2600jrs connected to the livingroom TV (a 2004' Philips LCD)...

Great image quality (ok, I still prefer my L6 connected to "its" Mivar 20" CRT, but it's a different matter... ), perhaps not a great playing, definitely... BUT I discovered a thing that I'd never seen before !!!

I even don't see anything about it here or in other Atari's sites, so I'm goin' to explain what it is (and sorry again for my "school-English"...) :

 

Maybe because in the 80's I did have much "spare" time and I did not need any "pause"...

 

then: abandoning the controls (in a "safe-zone", of course ) for a certain time period (5 minutes ?) the music stops !

 

The thing I immediately thought to ask to Mr. Crane is if in that way the game goes in a "pause mode" or is it simply a kind of enhancement of VCS' "movement detection routines" ?

Edited September 4, 2013 by macdlsa

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

I recently played again Pitfall II on my VCS, testing one of my CVBS-modified PAL 2600jrs connected to my livingroom TV (a 2004' Philips LCD)...

Great image quality ( I still prefer my L6 connected to "its" Mivar 20" CRT... ), perhaps not a great playing, definitely... BUT I discovered a thing that I'd never seen before !!!

I even don't see anything about it here or in other Atari's sites, so I'm goin' to explain what it is (and sorry again for my "school-English"...) :

 

Maybe because in the 80's I did have much "spare" time and I did not need any "pause"...

 

then: abandoning the controls (in a "safe-zone", of course ) for a certain time period (5 minutes ?) the music stops !

 

The thing I immediately thought to ask to Mr. Crane is if in that way the game goes in a "pause mode" or is it simply a kind of enhancement of VCS' "movement detection routines" ?

 

 

I do not have answers for you but just wanted to say NICE LOOKING SETUP.

[+Random Terrain]

With this method one could create almost understandable speech - with the consequence of stopping the game and turning off the display since the CPU's entire processing time would be taken up by the process.

 

Speaking of making understandable speech, roland p told me about Voder earlier this year:

 

youtube.com/watch?v=0rAyrmm7vv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAyrmm7vv0

 

youtube.com/watch?v=5hyI_dM5cGo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hyI_dM5cGo

 

I bet someone with a big brain could figure out how to produce phonemes by only fiddling with AUDVx, AUDCx, and AUDFx, since some tone frequencies almost sound like a human voice already. For example, you can make a T sound using tone 8, starting at frequency 31 and flipping over to zero and maybe ending at 1, 2, or 3:

 

www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-program-tone-toy-2008.html

 

I've been hoping that instead of using digitized speech or an external speech synthesizer, we could track down or bring out the phonemes that already exist inside of the Atari 2600. We could have a collection of phonemes that programmers could play in a sequence to make words or maybe even sing. Programmers would no longer have to waste space on digitized speech or hope that players have an external speech synthesizer. The amount of space needed for Voder-like phoneme data would be much smaller than what is needed for digitized speech. The best part is that the display wouldn't need to be turned off. We could have understandable speech while people play.

 

I've tried to find phonemes by randomly goofing around with Tone Toy 2008, but with no real understanding of phonemes or how sound works on the Atari 2600, it could take a few thousand years. I'm confident that someone who knows about phonemes and Atari 2600 sound could create Voder-like data that programmers can use in their games.

[+McCallister]

 

I posted the initial build on October 29, 2008. I rebooted it to use DPC+ on September 13, 2010. Work on this game fed back into DPC+, fixing bugs and adding improvements like interrupt driven music during execution of ARM code. It also lead to a number of updates to Stella, such as ARM emulation.

 

A lot of work and collaboration have gone on for it - there's 1,715 replies in the main topic, 255 for the music topic, 504 playtesting, and 245 scattered over a few other topics (these are in a restricted access sub forum). For contrast, the Space Rocks Topic only has 454 replies (there's additional replies in the 56 blog entries, but I don't see an easy way to count them).

 

I thought we were done, but then Thomas and Omegamatrix helped out with another round of optimizations that freed up a lot of ROM, so we're reworking a few things to make it even better. The plan is for the finished game to be shown next month at PRGE, though we'll continue play testing and will fix any bugs that show up before the game becomes available.

 

So, was this mystery game Stay Frosty 2? If so, it looks quite impressive from the video.

[+SpiceWare]

 

So, was this mystery game Stay Frosty 2? If so, it looks quite impressive from the video.

 

Yep, too bad he didn't get further along. Thanks!

[MissCommand]

BTW, Love the music in Stay Frosty 2!