What is the reason, that is stopping more homebrew authors from developing for the 5200?

[ledzep]

17 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

Tempest with a trak-ball is pretty good.🙂

 

I wish there were more native trak-ball games in existence (arcades), that would make the 5200 more popular because it has the best trak-ball controller (2 fire buttons, keypad) out there, and the rest of it (graphics, sound, speed) is solid.  At the least, there should be more game ideas that can use a Red Baron style flight stick input (like Tailgunner) making the 5200 joystick ideal.  Some games just work better with a trak-ball (Missile Command, Centipede) but I can see using the analog stick as the next best thing.  I'm surprised the 2600 never got good trak-ball support since it had basically everything else.

 

I think another problem is that many very good games that are missing on the 5200 aren't that complicated, so the argument against developing them is probably "It's already on the 2600, nobody is going to care about a 5200 version."  Activision certainly took that approach in terms of adding basically nothing except improved graphics to their 5200 versions of 2600 games.  I would love to have Circus Atari on the 5200 (and include the trampoline variant from Clowns And Balloons) for example, that's a good paddle game.  "But you can play the 2600 version on the 5200 with the VCS adapter."  Ya, I know, but I want the better graphics and more detail and hopefully more game variations.  So the obvious alternative is the 8-bit games being transferred over.  Though I assume probably a lot of them require too much memory, many were floppy disk games running on 48K machines.  But don't modern 5200 carts have a lot of memory?  I don't program that so I have no idea.

 

When I look at Adventure II and compare it to the 2600 Adventure, that shows what the upgrade on many 2600 style games should look and act like.  There should be a lot more options, more detail.  I mean, think of a 5200 version of E.T. or Superman, how those games would really shine on a more powerful console.  Or having more games like Space Shuttle with all those keypad controls.  There are some 2600 games that are so primitive looking and simple, they could be really improved for the 5200 if Atari had just tried.  Miniature Golf, from what I remember, is practically unplayable both because the graphics are so poor it's not obvious what some of those hole layouts are, and the joystick is just the wrong controller for it (the ball has weird physics, too), though I think it's cool that the square from Adventure can have some leisure time.  It would work so much better using a trak-ball and having some identifiable elements to it.  Golf is almost as bad but at least it has a stick figure golfer but he seems to be 40 feet tall compared to the trees.  Same goes for Outlaw and Bowling.  Surround could be a version of Tron's Light Cycles if the resolution was better (not fat LEGO blocks for tails).  And I'm sure everyone would have loved a 5200 Yar's Revenge.

[+sramirez2008]

@ledzep I like and prefer to play the 5200 version of Space Invaders with the Trak-Ball. I’m with you, it would be nice to have more TB games for the console. 
 

Btw, the homebrew Xari Arena is great and allows for 2 players, each with a TB.

[Wrathchild]

It's not all so bad, pretty sure more dual releases have happened in recent times as devs have discovered whas involved in supporting both. I don't have a 5200 but dev using Altirra and later ask a select few to test on real h/w before releasing.

[ledzep]

9 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

@ledzep I like and prefer to play the 5200 version of Space Invaders with the Trak-Ball. I’m with you, it would be nice to have more TB games for the console. 
 

Btw, the homebrew Xari Arena is great and allows for 2 players, each with a TB.

 

Ya, I like the concept of Xari Arena for that, though that's an expensive gaming experience, hahaaha, trying to track down (pun intended) two of those trak-ball controllers.

 

But, I would prefer to play Space Invaders with an all-buttons controller as was designed for the unreleased Asteroids game because that's what was in the arcades.  Keep the game hard like it started out!  And then make Asteroids Deluxe and Space Duel and other buttons games like Star Castle and Space Wars (which would benefit from the keypad for game options).  I wonder why MB never got around to porting their Vectrex games to other consoles, would have been easy money (I know, assembler coding ain't easy, otherwise I'd be doing it) even without the vector graphics.

 

I wish I could get a definitive schematic for a digital joystick for the 5200.  I mean a version that has the 4 directions fixed with (I assume) resistors to spit out the max values for the analog joystick POTs (the min values must be 0, yes?) and then also (from what I remember reading) also include a couple adjusting POTs in case the 5200 isn't recognizing one of the directions because the value is too high/low or it won't center.  I suck at electronics but I would try soldering together one of those, I just don't know the proper values for the components nor how to specifically wire in the POTs.  But having that I'm guessing would also get me an all-buttons controller for free and it would work for Asteroids and Space Invaders.

 

Then I can see the homebrew options open up for the 5200 if we have a common solution for digital sticks so weak players can stop complaining about the non-centering joysticks, right?  And the all-buttons controller would be the go-to for any button games, like Track And Field by Konami, I remember gamers beating the shit out of those Run/Jump buttons in the arcades, hahaahaha.

[+fdr4prez]

4 hours ago, ledzep said:

I wish I could get a definitive schematic for a digital joystick for the 5200.  I mean a version that has the 4 directions fixed with (I assume) resistors to spit out the max values for the analog joystick POTs (the min values must be 0, yes?) and then also (from what I remember reading) also include a couple adjusting POTs in case the 5200 isn't recognizing one of the directions because the value is too high/low or it won't center.  I suck at electronics but I would try soldering together one of those, I just don't know the proper values for the components nor how to specifically wire in the POTs.  But having that I'm guessing would also get me an all-buttons controller for free and it would work for Asteroids and Space Invaders.

 

for the PC, and the PC15 joystick port, it is an analog input.

 

But Gravis made popular, and common, gamepads for it.  Sold millions - or at least quite a few...  still readily available out there.

 

It used a digital circuit that connected to the PC15 analog input pins.  

 

Wouldn't this circuit work for the Atari5200?

 

I don't see why not.

 

A crafty person can do a quick converter cable for a test play.

 

Joystick PC Gameport · AllPinouts

 

Digital joystick:
A second joystick type started in the early 80’s, it was based on a digital circuit, it replaced the potentiometers with regular digital (on/off) switches, it was also known as an atari style joystick. And when Nintendo came out with the know well known joypad many companies like Gravis came out with PC joypads. These types of joysticks pretty much work all the same and are typically wired as in figure 2.

 

Edited June 21 by fdr4prez

[ledzep]

3 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

Digital joystick:
A second joystick type started in the early 80’s, it was based on a digital circuit, it replaced the potentiometers with regular digital (on/off) switches, it was also known as an atari style joystick. And when Nintendo came out with the know well known joypad many companies like Gravis came out with PC joypads. These types of joysticks pretty much work all the same and are typically wired as in figure 2.

 

That's very cool, though it lacks the POTs that would allow for adjustments in the event that a particular 5200 didn't like the inputs it was receiving from the joystick (X or Y).

 

I can't remember where I found this, but I'm almost positive it was on AtariAge, it's more in line with what I'm thinking of -

 

 

I also found this somewhere -

 

 

So I can see in general what I need but I'd like to have something definitive.

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

I'd like to have something definitive.

The best way to find something definitive is to build something for yourself and test it 

[ZippyOasys]

The lack of a basic-type program like bataribasic also hinders homebrew development.

[CPUWIZ]

1 hour ago, ZippyOasys said:

The lack of a basic-type program like bataribasic also hinders homebrew development.

 

Basically, someone needs to write some kernel routines and implement those into the 7800 BASIC interpreter, the assembly output is the same.

[atari5200dude82]

I agree.  There should be more 5200 homebrew releases.  They are plenty of good unreleased titles, that should be finished and released. In my opinion.  Meezbork,  should be worked on and released. It has alot of potential.  Especially  more adventure style games needed.  Plus maybe a dungeons and dragons style games , like on the intellivision.  Would be cool too, with voice.  

[+jgkspsx]

The 5200 is space intensive, failure prone in many ways, has troublesome controllers, has almost no retail exclusives, and is region exclusive. Maybe it sold a million units but I bet most of those are in landfills because so many things tended to break on them. I really admire people for making homebrew for it but it's unsurprising that more people don't. How many people write homebrew for the Portfolio?

[ledzep]

On 6/23/2024 at 8:02 PM, atari5200dude82 said:

I agree.  There should be more 5200 homebrew releases.  They are plenty of good unreleased titles, that should be finished and released. In my opinion.  Meezbork,  should be worked on and released. It has alot of potential.  Especially  more adventure style games needed.  Plus maybe a dungeons and dragons style games , like on the intellivision.  Would be cool too, with voice.  

 

That is something that always baffled me, how we never got ports of Intellivision games for the 5200.  I mean, the controller layout is identical, with just that torturous direction disc replaced with an actual joystick.  Some of those cooler adventure games and sims would have worked, so too would the sports games.  And then Mattel could have bragged about it, how their ports of their sports games sold better than the Atari versions.  I wonder, was there ever a push within Mattel to get that going?  More sales = more money, right?  Wouldn't have to be perfect ports, either, just close enough.  And considering the sales figures for the 5200, there would be no danger of making the 5200 more popular than the Intellivision.

 

Atari bought Intellivision, yes?  Maybe...

[RangerG]

It's a shame. I think of the Colecovision and 5200 as big rivals because that's how I remember it. I will always be a 5200 fan and I remember when it was really cool to have a 5200. But, time has shown how much more support and fandom there is for the Colecovision. The 7800 gets lots more love than the 5200 and in reality it was a clearance console from the beginning and not cool to have, when your friends had the NES or SMS, But, today for retrogamers it seems to be the successor to the 7800 with the 5200 forgotten.