for inspiration only...

Heaven/TQA · June 28, 2005

it might be that i have posted this somewhere sometime ago in the programming forum but it seems that the 2600 guys are looking into the forum there but not the 800 guys...

so here it is...

i posted 2 small intros which use imho a nice trick to support additional ram banks in a single loaded exe file... how?

i run a memory test, set a flag and while loading i put code/gfx into the additional banks if available...if not it doesnt matter as the additional code will be overwritten by the "last block" at $4000... where the xtra xe banks are banked in... but not much logic included... just simple several file segments loaded to $4000...there are small piece of code run after each $4000 segment which would switch the additional banks by writing into portb... so not rocket science...

so f.e. title intro #52 is using the complete $4000 for the unrolled texture mapping tunnel which is not visible in 64kmode... same goes for intro#55 where additional tables and textures are stored there... (btw. the moving tunnel is calculated via lookup tables in realtime so that's why it could be moved around... the method was tought me back in '97 by coder of the c64 crew plush as this "mapping" method seems more common there as you haven't kind of nice mode9 there...)

and in another forum there was the story about the vscrol cache... in the archive there is a mode10 small demo using the vscroll for distorting the picture... have a look...and this is done in realtime... (with some bugs...) and wasn't tested on real machine yet...

just my 2 cents...

all PAL only...

and to 1st time to the public i am posting a .sap done by tatqoo (welll...i forced him...) but its unfinished... but i like it...don't read the credits...just listen and tell me where it is from...

TITEL55B.zip

secondpart.zip

Xebec's Demise · June 28, 2005

That stuff is great and the music is outstanding! If only a handful of you programmers could get together, put up a sourceforge page and work together on making the most incredible Atari game ever, combining together all the best of the outstanding programming, music and content of the demos, showcasing it in a single game. That would be awesome.

Maybe it could be an action adventure about trying to make corporate Atari survive and prosper. In the game, you try to make all the decisions and choices as the head of Atari, with action sequences inbetween.

Many of the things that you see in the demos were never used in any game or software, even though they are amazing. Put all these tricks, graphics, demos and music together in a single game and we would really have something remarkable. It would probably be pretty large in size, but it could take advantage of the 1MB Flashcart nowadays.

A demo you load a few times and watch, but a game can be appreciated much longer and is played indefinately.

A newbie question, how do you run the .asx and .sap files, can you use Atari800win? I guess I need a seperate .sap program?

Edited June 28, 2005 by Xebec's Demise