peteym5

Latest Jungle Quest Work-in-Progress video. I have the moving platforms working in the game that is using animated font characters. This is one of the things I am adding to make the game different from Pittfall. I am planning on many more additions and changes. If anyone would like to see something in the game, please comment below.

Jungle Quest For Atari 8-bit Work in Progress For July 31, 2022. Some Progress has been made with the game after many years. Now have the main character running around and climbing ladders. Collision Detection works. You may post your comments here or on Atari.IO for a quick response from myself or Video61. Posting on that other Atari forum will not get a response from me there, but on here or Atari.IO. To respond to an earlier comment, the reason why this game had been put aside for many years is that I had been busy with many other Atari game projects. Also, when I decided to come back here, I decided to revamp the programming with all the techniques I learned after putting this game aside. It did take me some time to port over my player/missile multiplexer and align with the scrolling action.

"Now Entering Glory Hole...." I love this show. The two episodes involving Topa in season 3 are fantastic. Explaining what happened with the Kylon I like. Not going to give too much away. I also liked the episode when they went down to the planet and bizarre stuff starts happening.

The issue with Commodre 64, Vic-20, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, TI-99, TRS-80, etc. is these systems had very limited resources by default. The Basic was stored in ROM and could only do what fit inside there. It goes back further to mainframes. So we can get away with GOTO 1000 with a smaller program. But as computers got more powerful, our programming had to evolve with it. Turbo Basic and Basic XE on the Atari allowed you to use labels that you can direct program flow to. The issue I am having is that I am converting stuff from 30+ years ago to Fast Basic, and need to figure out what something does.

Does anyone know of a Sprite Player / Missile Data Editor directly on the Atari 8-bit. Should be able to encode the data, so it can be used within the source code of programs. I have several Font Editors, but those are geared toward 8 pixel high cells.

I got word back that these are do it yourself hobby built game controllers, and never sold by anyone. What they did was use left + right + up to indicate pause and left + right + down to indicate reset. But this is something that should be disabled by default because most developers want their stuff to run on stock hardware. With all the different models of controllers being used all these years, some could trip 3 switches at the same time. I had one joystick doing to me, and I just ordered another one on eBay.

I found out that 7800 Basic looks for these controller functions by watching for input from the directional control bits that would be impossible for a joystick itself to produce. Like pressing left+right+down at the same time. But I had at least one of controller in my history of video games that somehow tripped 3 pins because of the layout. I think having pause, reset, and select on the controller would be great, but I am not aware that anyone made such a controller for the 7800. Anybody here knows something about these?

Some games are just not made for the trackball while others it works great with. I don't think it works good for Pac-Man or Asteroids. But Centipede or Breakout, it is great.

I believe that Atari Engineers made a series of mistakes starting with mapping the control chips at different memory locations and not including a compatible 400/800 OS that will make games easier to port as long as they do not require a keyboard. The other mistake is of course the controllers. If the PIA remained with 4 port. Atari and other companies would had been able to port a huge library of games over to the 5200 back in 1982. Just make all the stuff take input from the console or controllers. I do not see any probably with the 32K cartridge port, and could had even included an adapter to play 400/800 games. The system would had cost about the same and would be been serious competition to Coleco and Intellivision.

Here is part 2.

Came across this on YouTube. Thought it would make an interesting discussion here on Atari.IO. I know there are now many solutions an alternatives to the original 5200 controllers. Many people are selling repair kits, offering to repair controllers, and these thumbpad controllers. With these, do you believe the 5200 is now a worthwhile system?

This is something I thought about from time to time and wondering if there were any games out there that actually used the low-res modes. (OS Graphic Modes 3,4,5, Antic Modes 8,9,10) I know some games use half resolution modes (Graphics 7, Antic 13.) I even used it for Surround'Em, to help the game have that retro feel. I am looking for a list of games released professionally. I know some people may do some Basic programming with these also. Maybe some commonly listed programming samples.

How many people know about a movie about Nolan Bushnell and Atari being made? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1243923/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_5

I can tell anyone looking to programming. YouTube in recent years has become a great resource about this stuff. In any programming languages. Rather if it is on older or new machines. There are 3 building blocks. Sequence: List of tasks in order desired to be done. Selection: Doing tasks if conditions are true or false. Iteration: Doing a list of tasks that can be repeated. May do it while or until one or more conditions are true or false.

I agree line numbers were also a major issue with earlier Basics. Programmers tend not to include comments to save memory. Plus some basics can execute GOTOs faster than GOSUB RETURN. All you see if GOTO 3000, without knowing what happens at line number 3000. This is also known a "spaghetti code." When I learned about structure programming in college, my whole world of game making changed. It is also other Basic's available for the 8-bit that changed things like Turbo Basic XL, Basic XL, Basic XE, and recently Fast Basic.

7800 Basic does. Actually 7800 does not have line numbers as it is a cross platform compiler that you edit code with a text editor.

This has been a topic since the later 1980s. Is that using GOTO's in Programming is bad. At least unconditional straight GOTO statements. The theory is the more GOTOs a program has, the more bugs it has and the harder it is to fix something if it is not functioning correctly. I know the default Atari Basic, makes it hard to write programs without using them, because you need to do IF-THEN-GOTO to execute code that takes several lines if a condition is true. Also need GOTOs to create Loops in Games or other programs. I know Basic XL, Basic XE, Turbo Basic, and Fast Basic include statements like IF ELSE ENDIF, REPEAT UNTIL, WHILE WEND, DO LOOP. These reduce the need of GOTOs. With Atari Basic, I need to use GOTOs with IF statements to simulate the function of a Block IF. This is also happening with Atari 7800 Basic.

I updated the link for this video. Always found it interesting.

A few years ago, I had a discussion with a few friends about taking old stock NES controller or similar pads, create a 7800 compatible board and plug, and resell them. There is a site selling these for $10. But that is already adding a lot to the final price after the mark up. You always have an option to have someone 3D print some also. A lot of this will depend on your potential market. I did searches and see there are many shells for the xBox, Playstation, and other systems. You may need to cover up the unused holes. https://www.retromodding.com/products/nes-controller-shell?variant=41029607096476&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic

If these keypad domes work, maybe someone can order a lot and repair 5200 controllers using them.

I understand it was suppose to have the original Antic/GTIA chip to make it backward compatible, but have an extra display chip (one for Atari ST) for modes with more onscreen colors.

I would like to thank everyone that came forward and privately assisted me getting the program to compile on my Windows PC. C++ is a new language for me, I only did two CC65 projects last year and was not ready to do Windows Applications.

I need to emulate an Atari 5200 Bank Switching Cartridge format in either Atari8004Win and/or Altirra. I know both are programmed in C, which I only learned and started to use within the last year. I don't have a lot of experience with the language at the present time. So I am looking for some C programming GURUs to assist me on making some additional entries in possible bank switching schemes. I hope there are some fluent C programmers on here.

I am very interested in the board. I still need to learn how to set up a bank switching ROM. I know it is better to have one portion of the memory mapped at all times, and one that is switching. Like 2K always mapped and 2K switching. If all 4K switches at once, I am not sure how one would have the program in one bank, and access data or subroutines in the other bank without CPU intensive programming.

How many people here are into Real Time Strategy games? Games like "WarCraft", "Age of Empires", "Empire Earth", "Rise of Nations", "Command & Conquer", etc. I am looking to see if it is possible to do such games on the Atari 8-bit, and want to see how much interest there is. I know it be very limited and would be very primitive compared to even a DOS based PC. I recently installed the original MS-DOS based "WarCraft", and I realized this is closer to a format that might be doable on 80's tech computer systems. To make these games multiplayer, it might need a device like Fujinet so two people can have their own screen. This is a possible future project that I am considering, and would only go forward if there is enough interest. It has many challenges, like how I am going to display units from two opposing sides, graphics mode to use, selecting units with the joystick, or can we use a mouse with the Atari. I know it probably be more suitable for Atari ST or a VBXE system with a 65816 upgrade.