Bryan Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 (edited) I'm making 75 of these. The price is $30 + $2 postage in the US and $5 for airmail elsewhere. The game image is 64K and uses my new bank-switching cartridge PCB. The boards are on the way so I will begin shipping in about a week to 10 days. PM me for details!! -Bry Edited May 23, 2005 by Bryan 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted May 16, 2005 Author Share Posted May 16, 2005 Here's what the boards will look like (they will support up to 512K): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elthesh Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'm making 75 of these. The price is $30 + $2 postage in the US and $5 for airmail elsewhere. The game image is 64K and uses my new bank-switching cartridge PCB. The boards are on the way so I will begin shipping in about a week to 10 days. PM me for details!! -Bry 855867[/snapback] Now we're talkin! This is an awesome port! Next up, the Dragon Warrior series right? lol Good job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
video game addict Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 4 player? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 4 player? 855937[/snapback] Yes, though I've only been able to test that with me being two players and my wife being two players. I've been testing this one for Bry and have to say, he did an incredible job with this. I was really surprised to see such an amazingly large game come to the 5200. More importantly, his board design allows for games the size of Legend of Zelda to be programmed for the 5200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 4 player? 855937[/snapback] Yes, though I've only been able to test that with me being two players and my wife being two players. I've been testing this one for Bry and have to say, he did an incredible job with this. I was really surprised to see such an amazingly large game come to the 5200. More importantly, his board design allows for games the size of Legend of Zelda to be programmed for the 5200. 855950[/snapback] Yup, It is fantastic. The funny part is that I never played Mule before this. Man was I missing out. How many great 8-bit games and new ones can be programmed on the 5200 now. Maybe this is time to plan for another Connecticut get-together with Mule being the starring game? Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens. Allan 855955[/snapback] I second that one. Lode Runner's one of the best games ever made (and no that NES version doesn't cut it). CT gathering would be great. Especially now that we've figured out what was going on with 4 player mode in Castle Crisis. I'm surprised there aren't more replies to this thread yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
video game addict Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens. Allan 855955[/snapback] I second that one. Lode Runner's one of the best games ever made (and no that NES version doesn't cut it). CT gathering would be great. Especially now that we've figured out what was going on with 4 player mode in Castle Crisis. I'm surprised there aren't more replies to this thread yet. 855968[/snapback] Years ago I played Loderunner for weeks until finally I had a nightmare about so I had to stop for a while. I wonder how many screens you could fit on a 512K cart. What would be cool is to have everybody designs screens for it and but them all on the cart. Lodarunner screens are easy to design and a screen editor is included with the disc versions of the game on the Atari computers. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports? 855970[/snapback] Not on the version I've been testing. It's recognizes the number of ports on the console accordingly IIRC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killersquirel Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 I just saw this thread. I'm up for another CT get together. I haven't really played M.U.L.E. before and I'm up for playing this with people that have played the game before and know what's going on. -mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 The game takes a little while to learn, but is not nearly as complex as modern games. Instructions: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 Wow, very nice. I know how much work that must have been! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted May 16, 2005 Author Share Posted May 16, 2005 I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports? 855970[/snapback] You need a 4-port to play 4 player. On a 2 port you must select 1 or 2 player (or computer demo). Wow, very nice. I know how much work that must have been! 856032[/snapback] Don't get me started. The game is filled with self modding code (which has to be relocated or patched before it can be put in a ROM cart), and it uses high memory for a lot of things which required shifting all the code around, changing all the address calculation tables and routines... ack!!! -Bry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted May 16, 2005 Author Share Posted May 16, 2005 (edited) Here's the info on the board in case anyone wants to get to work on Lode Runner. The addresses from BFC0-BFFF control banking. Up to 4 address lines can be controlled, giving a maximum of 16 banks. Depending on where you solder in the EPROM and GAL, you can have 16K banks or 32K banks. The 16K option works like an Atari XE cart. Only the lower 16K changes, while the upper 16K is always the last bank. This allows you to keep much of your code in place while you swap out the data needed for a particular level or whatever. The game can be 256K in this mode (16 banks * 16K). The 32K option swaps the entire contents of the cart on a bankswitch. It takes a little more care to make a game work this way (hint: put the stuff you really need in RAM), but you can have up to 512K this way (16 banks * 32K). You set the bank by reading from the target address. The 4 bankswich lines are grouped in pairs, so setting all 4 may take 2 reads (see below). You only need to worry about the ones you're using (i.e. a 64K game in 32K mode only needs the lowest one). BFC0-BFCF sets the high 2 bits. BFC0-BFC3 sets high 2 bits to 00 BFC4-BFC7 sets high 2 bits to 01 BFC8-BFCB sets high 2 bits to 10 BFCC-BFCF sets high 2 bits to 11 BFD0-BFDF sets the low 2 bits. BFD0-BFD3 sets low 2 bits to 00 BFD4-BFD7 sets low 2 bits to 01 BFD8-BFDB sets low 2 bits to 10 BFDC-BFDF sets low 2 bits to 11 Any access to BFE0-BFFF sets all 4 bits to 1. This way, you don't have to worry about what bank your cart will power-up in. The 5200 BIOS will (unwittingly) initialize your cartridge to the topmost bank as it reads the cartridge startup information. Anyway, that's about it. The board uses a GAL20V8 to do the bankswitching, but you can omit it and use it as a standard 32K board. -Bry *edit* I changed my GAL equation to swap the BFC0 and BFD0 ranges to what you see above. This way the reserved banking area is smaller (starts at BFD0) if your game uses 4 or fewer banks. Edited May 20, 2005 by Bryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nems Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 This is exciting news! I'll definitely be ordering one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 What other games can we raid from the 8-bit computer line to put on the 5200? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laner Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 That is awesome... I was playing MULE on my C64 just this weekend. Great little game - I'll definitely be grabbing a copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yuppicide Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 The NES Loderunner was horrible. I loved the C-64 versions and being able to make my own screens. I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens. Allan 855955[/snapback] I second that one. Lode Runner's one of the best games ever made (and no that NES version doesn't cut it). CT gathering would be great. Especially now that we've figured out what was going on with 4 player mode in Castle Crisis. I'm surprised there aren't more replies to this thread yet. 855968[/snapback] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted May 18, 2005 Author Share Posted May 18, 2005 (edited) I just had a thought about the bankswitching... I'm thinking of swapping the FFCx and FFDx ranges. That way a smaller game could use everything up to FFD0, and only larger games would need to worry about the FFCx range. Of course, you're thinking, "it's only a 16-byte difference." but somehow it feels a little cleaner to me. Humm... (the board wouldn't change, only the GAL file) -Bry Edited May 18, 2005 by Bryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted May 20, 2005 Share Posted May 20, 2005 Is this available yet? I must have one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted May 20, 2005 Share Posted May 20, 2005 How about this for the next port? http://www.grandtheftendo.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted May 20, 2005 Author Share Posted May 20, 2005 Is this available yet? I must have one. 858683[/snapback] I just got an email that the PCB's have shipped. The GAL's should arrive today. -Bry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted May 20, 2005 Share Posted May 20, 2005 Count me in! I used to play this game for hours. PM me when you're ready to ship, and I'll get you the $$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts