Igor Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 (edited) Hi all, I wanted to give a quick update on what's happening over at Atari Gamer. We are moving all Atari Lynx related content over to Atari Lynx Vault and all our shop content over to K-Retro Gaming. Please update your bookmarks! As a result of this change, the following will not be immediately available: Online Lynx Emulator, Collection Tracker, Game Ratings, News, Beta Tests. If you are interested in contributing content to Atari Lynx Vault, or helping with moving content over to the new system, we are seeking editors and maintainers. Why is this happening? First - the Atari Gamer branding is changing to K-Retro Gaming to allow us to expand to providing games, replacement parts, and mod services to other game consoles. And second - The content management system running Atari Gamer is out of date and Google AppEngine (where the website runs) will no longer allow it to run after the 30th January 2024, so in order to preserve all content we switched to a new and modern content management system and chose a website domain that better suits the subject matter. Since we are operating this website in our spare time, on top of full time family and job commitments, some features had to be dropped. Edited November 14, 2023 by Igor 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 Bookmarked the new sites! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 4 hours ago, Igor said: As a result of this change, the following will no longer be available: Online Lynx Emulator, Collection Tracker, Game Ratings, News. Granted, this is your stuff and you can do as you like of course but that doesn't sound like a terribly good thing. I can't even pinpoint which one being the worse of the losses but game ratings no longer available at all and news? Sounds more like an archiving of the old site and dead end that will eventually disappear after a few years. Will miss the OG Atari Gamer site. So will the AtariGamer domain be re-directed to the K Shop stuff or something? In which case if 90% of the product becomes for everything else but not the Lynx, I guess I don't understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 I'm sad for the online emulator not ported to the new site. It is a good tool to make test my games to friends that doesn't have a lynx or an emulator on their PC. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Clint Thompson said: Granted, this is your stuff and you can do as you like of course but that doesn't sound like a terribly good thing. I can't even pinpoint which one being the worse of the losses but game ratings no longer available at all and news? Sounds more like an archiving of the old site and dead end that will eventually disappear after a few years. Will miss the OG Atari Gamer site. So will the AtariGamer domain be re-directed to the K Shop stuff or something? In which case if 90% of the product becomes for everything else but not the Lynx, I guess I don't understand. Perhaps I should have been more clear in my wording - all content is backed up and can be migrated over, so all news and game ratings can still be preserved, however given that the news section hasn't been updated since May 26 2022, I don't see it as a priority item. As for game ratings, this is a nice to have, but I consider having an up to date game database data to be higher priority. If you can code and want to put int 20+ hours on top of your usual job, I'll be happy to have a hand in moving all this content over. This is definitely not archiving of the old website, not sure where you got that from. If you look at the AG website and the ALV website now, they look very similar but ALV has much more up-to-date content. So this is a win for all the Lynx fans. As for redirections, as I said in my initial post, all Lynx content is moving from AG to ALV, and that means AG will be redirected to ALV too. Again I say that we are looking for editors and maintainers, this is the best way anyone can help to keep all the information current. Edit: Updated my wording in the initial post. Edited November 14, 2023 by Igor 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 1 hour ago, Nop90 said: I'm sad for the online emulator not ported to the new site. It is a good tool to make test my games to friends that doesn't have a lynx or an emulator on their PC. The emulator had problems playing games from the game database for a while. If you mean that you just want to be able to drag and drop a ROM, that's much easier to do and I can look into porting that part over. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fadest Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 Would be nice to have an easy way to put the emulator on an itch.io page, just like GB & NES. Writing this, I think @drludos did it for Growing Ties... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 4 hours ago, Nop90 said: I'm sad for the online emulator not ported to the new site. It is a good tool to make test my games to friends that doesn't have a lynx or an emulator on their PC. "Installing" Felix isn't a big deal. As you just need to unzip it and get a go together with your game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 3 hours ago, Igor said: consider having an up to date game database data to be higher priority. A lot of work, wow, but: Some of the demos are sorted slightly weird: For example: Lynx 128 byte Demo: Outline The name is "Outline". The other part is only for "Youtube" search. Same for gol249, TuEf or Rotozoomer. Missing: LynxNIC2000, Nostalgia ... Maybe link also to pouet (if they allow): https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform[]=Atari+Lynx&page=1 BTW: * Maybe add a drop-down menu for Developer/Publisher. * No search for type possible. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 8 hours ago, 42bs said: A lot of work, wow, but: Some of the demos are sorted slightly weird: For example: Lynx 128 byte Demo: Outline The name is "Outline". The other part is only for "Youtube" search. Same for gol249, TuEf or Rotozoomer. Missing: LynxNIC2000, Nostalgia ... Maybe link also to pouet (if they allow): https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform[]=Atari+Lynx&page=1 BTW: * Maybe add a drop-down menu for Developer/Publisher. * No search for type possible. Thank you! this is the kind of feedback I need, I'll address these hopefully today Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 10 hours ago, Fadest said: Would be nice to have an easy way to put the emulator on an itch.io page, just like GB & NES. Writing this, I think @drludos did it for Growing Ties... Yes he did and I was wondering how, it seems to be the same RetroArch framework I've been using, just with a single ROM. Of course with multiple ROM selection and streaming from a database it was more complicated, so would be keen to know. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+madman Posted November 19, 2023 Share Posted November 19, 2023 That's good to know, Atari Gamer has been my go-to site for Lynx cart info, especially in terms of variants. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drludos Posted November 19, 2023 Share Posted November 19, 2023 (edited) On 11/14/2023 at 10:30 PM, Igor said: Yes he did and I was wondering how, it seems to be the same RetroArch framework I've been using, just with a single ROM. Of course with multiple ROM selection and streaming from a database it was more complicated, so would be keen to know. Heya! IIRC, we actually discussed it a few years ago, as both of us used a HTML5 (WASM) port of Retroarch to play Lynx game online. On my end, I used the Toadking's port, available from here: https://toadking.com/retroarch/handy.html (@Nop90 you can load a rom file from you PC and play it online using this page) Using javascript, I simply configured the game to play a single ROM. I'm attaching the HTML file (with javascript dependencies and growing ties prototype as a demo rom) to this post if this can be useful. This is the package I use on itch.io to allow people to play the game without requiring them to download an emulator. And Igor it's great to see Atari Gamer evolving into Atari Lynx Vault, and that you are still keeping the site alive! lynxhtml.zip Edited November 19, 2023 by drludos 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 20, 2023 Author Share Posted November 20, 2023 5 hours ago, drludos said: Heya! IIRC, we actually discussed it a few years ago, as both of us used a HTML5 (WASM) port of Retroarch to play Lynx game online. On my end, I used the Toadking's port, available from here: https://toadking.com/retroarch/handy.html (@Nop90 you can load a rom file from you PC and play it online using this page) Using javascript, I simply configured the game to play a single ROM. I'm attaching the HTML file (with javascript dependencies and growing ties prototype as a demo rom) to this post if this can be useful. This is the package I use on itch.io to allow people to play the game without requiring them to download an emulator. And Igor it's great to see Atari Gamer evolving into Atari Lynx Vault, and that you are still keeping the site alive! lynxhtml.zip 446.74 kB · 0 downloads Do you mind if I change that to some demo ROM so I can put it on the game jam page? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drludos Posted November 20, 2023 Share Posted November 20, 2023 9 hours ago, Igor said: Do you mind if I change that to some demo ROM so I can put it on the game jam page? Please feel free to do so, I'm glad if it can help you :). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drludos Posted November 20, 2023 Share Posted November 20, 2023 18 hours ago, Igor said: Do you mind if I change that to some demo ROM so I can put it on the game jam page? I found out that there is an updated (and much improved) HTML5 port available here (loads of cores supported for various consoles, from the 2600 up to the Jaguar): https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro You can even directly use it online, here with the "Handy" Core: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy You can even embed it, or simply call it while specifying the URL to an online ROM, maybe that'll allow to keep the online emulator functionality without recoding it for the new website: https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro#how-to-use This can also be handy for @Nop90 to send link to friends to play your game online: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy&rom=https://example.com/mygame.lnx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 20, 2023 Author Share Posted November 20, 2023 26 minutes ago, drludos said: I found out that there is an updated (and much improved) HTML5 port available here (loads of cores supported for various consoles, from the 2600 up to the Jaguar): https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro You can even directly use it online, here with the "Handy" Core: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy You can even embed it, or simply call it while specifying the URL to an online ROM, maybe that'll allow to keep the online emulator functionality without recoding it for the new website: https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro#how-to-use This can also be handy for @Nop90 to send link to friends to play your game online: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy&rom=https://example.com/mygame.lnx Oh that's perfect, with the embed it should work, thanks for that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted November 21, 2023 Share Posted November 21, 2023 On 11/18/2023 at 7:59 PM, madman said: That's good to know, Atari Gamer has been my go-to site for Lynx cart info, especially in terms of variants. I suppose this is or was my concern in regards to the site changing. Clearly a ton of work has been put into making AtariGamer the ultimate Lynx portal for anything and everything Lynx-related. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 22, 2023 Author Share Posted November 22, 2023 16 hours ago, Clint Thompson said: I suppose this is or was my concern in regards to the site changing. Clearly a ton of work has been put into making AtariGamer the ultimate Lynx portal for anything and everything Lynx-related. Yeah it's been a labour of love, but since Google is going to turn the site off in January 2024, it's either lose it all completely, or move it over without all the features available right away. If anyone wants to help, I'm open to it, but so far it's only been myself and my wife doing all the work. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 On 11/21/2023 at 9:20 AM, drludos said: I found out that there is an updated (and much improved) HTML5 port available here (loads of cores supported for various consoles, from the 2600 up to the Jaguar): https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro You can even directly use it online, here with the "Handy" Core: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy You can even embed it, or simply call it while specifying the URL to an online ROM, maybe that'll allow to keep the online emulator functionality without recoding it for the new website: https://github.com/BinBashBanana/webretro#how-to-use This can also be handy for @Nop90 to send link to friends to play your game online: https://binbashbanana.github.io/webretro/?core=handy&rom=https://example.com/mygame.lnx I ended up using http://emulatorjs.org because that has a very easy to use "code editor" that generates the embed zip file for you. Have it set up for Chasm Warden now, so that's playable in the web browser (https://atarilynxvault.itch.io/chasm-warden) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jgkspsx Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 I have not been a very good helper. Can I work on anything? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 4 hours ago, jgkspsx said: I have not been a very good helper. Can I work on anything? I'll talk to you about it on Discord, thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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