The Incomplete Works of Infocom, Inc.

[Wrathchild]

In the past I'd condiderd using console keys to loop through values (add 2 / & 15), e.g. Option for background colour and Select for text luminance, Start for background luminance. With checks to skip over when the text and background would have the same level. I wonder if there's an unused byte in the save data that could go into / be restored from? Default back/foreground colour was only defined from Z5 game headers.

[+DrVenkman]

15 minutes ago, jindroush said:

Thanks, the screenshots look great. I think that even the software 80 columns are quite acceptable. VBXE is great, as expected.

What's strange - can you compare running A Mind Forever Voyaging (any VBXE game) in Altirra and on real HW? Because when you check my screenshot of AMFV in the very first post of this thread, you can see, that the 'blue' is also in background, so the letters don't begin on leftmost edge of the blue rectangle. On your screenshot it seems different, the letters begin immediately on the left.

Just restarted my machine and ran that title:

 

On real hardware, you need to power the Atari down and leave it off for a few seconds sometimes for the VBXE to reset itself properly. Also, if you let the Atari go idle for awhile, the usual Atari color-shifting starts to prevent CRT screen burn-in but it only affects the screen border color. It does not color-cycle the text or background colors. I don't recall how long I had the game up before I took the earlier shots - it's been a busy morning around the house and I'm doing about 4 things at once ...

[jindroush]

Great, I was afraid of another RTFM bug of mine. I'm calling VBXE reset, but it seems it's not as thorough as we would like to see.
In any case, it's great to see it running anywhere on the real hw, in one moment I started thinking it wouldn't be possible at all.

 

[jindroush]

5 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

In the past I'd condiderd using console keys to loop through values (add 2 / & 15), e.g. Option for background colour and Select for text luminance, Start for background luminance. With checks to skip over when the text and background would have the same level. I wonder if there's an unused byte in the save data that could go into / be restored from? Default back/foreground colour was only defined from Z5 game headers.

The savegame is in fact the local variables, PC, stack ptr, stack frame, text buffers (one page), stack (2/8 pages), and whole static memory dropped (hundreds of pages usually) to disk. So there is some space to save it.
The decision must be made first - if this should be part of menu (and saving the colors/settings globally for all games) or part of game (and saving it in savegame).

[+DrVenkman]

37 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Looks good to me. That 80-column software mode is some pretty small text (for 320 pixel width).

 

It's okay - there are some high-speed memory DRAM lines from the GBS8220 visible to the eye with some color combinations, and honestly the camera sensor + CRT bloom makes the software 80 column mode look better than it does to the naked eye. Software 80 columns is acceptable on my C1702 monitor out of my Incognito 800 but requires some tweaking of the brightness/contrast controls to yield the best results. Definitely legible, but understandable, VBXE output is lightyears better, as it should be. 

 

As to that, I have an RGB-to-SCART cable that I picked up over a year ago at the recommendations of others, but I need to get a RGB SCART-to-HDMI scaler to try it, which I haven't gotten around to yet. 

[Atari8guy]

1 hour ago, MrFish said:

Looks good to me. That 80-column software mode is some pretty small text (for 320 pixel width).

 

Looks pretty good with Sophia2 and a largish 19inch VGA monitor.  Still wouldn't mind a XEP80 version given all the flavours of that which have arrived recently (XEP80-II, PicoXEP-80, and whatever gets cooked up for the 1090 - which I think is based on the XEP-80 Pico).  However, this is fantastic as it is!!! Nice work @jindroush!!

 

- My use which seems to work great is NTSC, U1MB, with Sophia2.

[drpeter]

25 minutes ago, Atari8guy said:

Nice work @jindroush!!

+++ from me.

 

Am I right in thinking this is the first z4/z5 interpreter ever developed for the A8?

[Wrathchild]

19 minutes ago, drpeter said:

 

Am I right in thinking this is the first z4/z5 interpreter ever developed for the A8?

Yes

[jindroush]

24 minutes ago, drpeter said:

Am I right in thinking this is the first z4/z5 interpreter ever developed for the A8?

Yes, I believe so. Some of the Z4/Z5 games were originally ported to C128, which has 80cols mode and enough ram. Z4/Z5 have 256KB story limit as well. So you would need 130XE, XF551 and possibly XEP80 to run these games, which is pretty 'new' in 1987 and most probably the minimally commercially interesting subset of target audience, plus Infocom was in those years in troubles as well...

But this recent development wouldn't be possible without the work of Inform people (Inform, TXD disassembler, testing suites like Praxix or Czech) and also people doing lots of development in Atari world (Altirra, MADS, VBXE etc). I just had enough time to do it.

Edited August 12, 2023 by jindroush

[+remowilliams]

This is very cool : )

 

A screenshot from my 1200XL via Sophia.

 

[reifsnyderb]

9 minutes ago, remowilliams said:

This is very cool : )

 

A screenshot from my 1200XL via Sophia.

 

Looks like you need an aspirin.  🙂

 

[+DrVenkman]

30 minutes ago, remowilliams said:

This is very cool : )

 

A screenshot from my 1200XL via Sophia.

 

I noticed there's a different version HHGTG than I'm used to. I happen to still own the original copy I bought as a kid - as a Z3 title, it ran just fine on my 48K 800 (and the disk still boots today - bonus ).

[jindroush]

Yes, there are two different versions for 4 games (Zork, Planetfall, HHGtG, Leather Goddesses) in the collection - the Z3 originals and Z5 Solid Gold versions, which have built-in Invisiclues system (HINT HINT). Fifth SG game is broken (Wishbringer) and unplayable by Activision, so I did not include Solid Gold version.

Edited August 12, 2023 by jindroush

[drpeter]

2 hours ago, jindroush said:

I just had enough time to do it.

I think you are too modest!

Perhaps many people could have tackled this over the past 20 years or more, and of course you stand on the shoulders of giants, but you did it  

[phaeron]

6 hours ago, drpeter said:

@phaeron any thoughts?

Altirra emulates specific hardware configurations, not "some memory extensions". It does support priority relative to EXTSEL but this depends upon the specific memory extension, and in general they do not document how they react relative to EXTSEL. The latest VBXE FX1.26 documentation is clear that the priority between extended memory and MEMAC windows cannot be guaranteed and that these windows should not be overlapped.

 

[drpeter]

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Altirra emulates specific hardware configurations, not "some memory extensions". It does support priority relative to EXTSEL but this depends upon the specific memory extension, and in general they do not document how they react relative to EXTSEL. The latest VBXE FX1.26 documentation is clear that the priority between extended memory and MEMAC windows cannot be guaranteed and that these windows should not be overlapped.

 

OK, but while accepting that good coding practice might avoid the windows overlapping (or in the fix chosen here, disable extended memory through PORTB before writing to VBXE memory via the window), the issue here was that the emulation in Altirra of a specific memory extension (U1MB) in conjunction with VBXE seemed to fail, in that in Altirra VBXE memory seemed to have priority over extended memory when writing to active overlapping windows, whereas real hardware showed the reverse behaviour?

Edited August 12, 2023 by drpeter

[jindroush]

If you want to create single game ATRs according to your needs, you may now do it online:

[jindroush]

Updated menu to 0.9.6, removing the annoying overlay, adding software 64 columns driver and couple of other fixes.
See the first post for updated binary and full release notes.