Very fun; well done!  I think it has about the same audience as the SECAM compatibility on my demos/games. Maybe less so I approve wholeheartedly. Thanks for posting.

You could have a simon-like game where you have to remember phone numbers.

I run the Narrow Band Television Association forum - mostly dedicated to mechanical and early electronic television. On that forum are a number of extremely knowledgable television engineers who were involved in such stuff in the '60s or so. I suggest a visit and asking questions there!

NBTVA Forum

This kind of question makes me so fucking angry at Atari's incompatible "2600+"
People will assume it's the game's fault for that machine's inability to run such cartridges.

Quote from: Thomas Jentzsch on 06 Nov 2024, 09:39 PMIf people are asking why, what shoud/can I tell them?

Tell them to ask me, I suppose - as it was me who called in the cancellation clause.

Quote from: Thomas Jentzsch on 06 Nov 2024, 08:31 PMIf Albert doesn't make this public, IMO we (I) should post on AtariAge soon. Agreed?

Yes.

Quote from: Thomas Jentzsch on 06 Nov 2024, 05:06 AMHave you ever heard back from Albert regarding this?

Not a word.

BBG Boulder Dash will cease being sold on AtariAge on December 12th 2024.

A little while ago I turned 60 years old. I don't feel 60 - that's old man age!

But, turning a certain age does give one pause to think about "what's next", and what one's true priorities are. I feel like I've been central to Atari 2600 for almost 30 years now, that I've been a significant contributor in helping keep the platform remembered, relevant, and loved.

I adored creating new and interesting graphical effects and "showing off" my work. I also loved helping others program the machine, and sharing my knowledge. Over the years I've seen brilliant programmers come and go, who have left me in awe at their prowess and creations. And I've forged partnerships with some in various fields of Atari 2600 hardware and software. It's been a great pleasure working with Thomas, seeing ZPH thrive and survive, working with Wolfgang on the PlusCart, Rob on the MovieCart, seeing Albert build up AtariAge into the behemoth that it became - Bomberman for his testing, and many more. How could I forget JetSetIlly - and his amazing Gopher2600 emulator, which it has been my great pleasure to be a tester for. Apologies if I haven't named you all individually - there are so many over such a long time. What a great community of people.

And of course, I've had very unpleasant dealings with Atari the company. I'm not a fan. They did offer an "apology" which I found superficial, insulting, and self-serving. Pretty much the ubiquitous "straw" for me; they could have fixed things with a bit of genunie sincerity, and at no cost. So sad.

I am delighted to have as my last formal "release" the "Boulder Dash 2 DEMO" that I did a few months back. It's got some nifty stuff happening. Although benefiting from ARM on the cartridge, I still feel it is a genuine '2600 title which used the TIA in innovative ways to create amazing gameplay and graphics. That one will be my legacy, I think - although very very few people seem to know about it. Probably because by that stage I had abandoned AtariAge forums.

Writing such software is not easy, but of course nobody owes me anything for doing so. I did that sort of stuff for my own enjoyment. And yet, the feedback (or even "thanks") I received from those recipients was minimal. And I kinda feel hypocritical for saying that - on the one hand yes I do it for me, not for plaudits -- but on the other hand how much do you give before feeling you're being "used". One has to ask "why are you doing this stuff?" So, with that said I think anyone reading will realise I've decided to retire from Atari 2600 development. Call it an extended break, if you like. But at this stage it feels permanent.

I'm putting this out there in public because I've had a few enquiries asking if I am OK.  No, I am definitely not OK really; this feels like a loss of a longtime friend to me. But it's time, I'm pretty sure.

Quote from: Al_Nafuur on 02 Sep 2024, 12:25 AMA certain "Andrew Davie" announced this about 5 years ago here:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/293315-sokoban/?do=findComment&comment=4391823

I am not sure, but I don't recall ever using the name "Sokoboo Plus", and this is what threw me initially. I only have a very very very vague recollection - perhaps a manufactured memory, even - of doing anything related to loading levels from a "PlusStore backend".  I do worry, actually, that I'm starting to forget things as I am getting older. Seriously.

Quote from: Al_Nafuur on 01 Sep 2024, 05:55 AMSokoboo Plus is the version which loads the levels from a PlusROM internet backend in a random order. I am not sure if all levels in the database are solvable

I don't remember this at all.

Quote from: killersquirel on 31 Aug 2024, 03:50 PMIThis game's difficulty totally crushes me though. I think I managed to pass one level once, but that hasn't happened since. Is there something that I am missing, or is this game just brutal?

Um... you must have... accidentally got a.... corrupted version. Only explanation I can think of. Ahem!

Quote from: DirtyHairy on 21 Aug 2024, 06:30 PM

Quote from: Bomberman94 on 21 Aug 2024, 05:28 PMThe last files (elite_ICC1 ... 3) don't run on my light sixer via PlusCart - only black screen.

That's because of the undefined symbol.

TY both for the report. Unusual I didn't notice this via Gopher. I will investigate that later. Part of working with bleeding edge tools/systems. Meanwhile, here are fixed files that hopefully work!

Here I've done a lot of optimisation on the 3D engine - and despite this binary looking similar to previous ones (just a ship viewer), it is running much faster; particularly the triangle draw. It's a real challenge to get any speed in the systems - rendering thousands of pixels per frame (for e.g., a ship up close is rendering around 15K pixels) is time consuming and difficult to do in the overblank area. Very difficult.

So I'm at a bit of a "take a break" phase, thinking about future options. Maybe wait for a dual core alternative hardware option, or possibly try to get interrupts working and have the screen draw interrupt the rendering code. But that may not be as attractive as I first thought, so probably dual-core is the best option. Dunno, we shall see.

Controls:  up/down = move closer/further from ship
left/right = rotation around y axis
button+up/down = rotation around x axis
button press/release with no direction = change ship

This should run on the latest Gopher and PlusCart versions.
Stella will soon have the ability to run it, too.

The attached binaries are different ICC resolutions (ICC1, ICC2, ICC3).  The ICC2 and ICC3 will run without significant slowdown, but ICC1 will probably lag when things are up really close.

OK, not as simple as I thought. Yes, a divide by 0 will cause the problem. But there are other cases.
Like this one. In the following code...

                fpint temp = (p1->x - p0->x) * ymax - p0->y;
                fpint temp2 = (p1->y - p0->y);

                if (!temp2)
                    x = 0;
                else
                    x = p0->x + FPINT_DIV(temp, temp2);

This is the ONLY usage of FPINT_DIV in the entire program.
With the FPINT_DIV there, Gopher will not run - here's the output.

➜  Gopher2600 git:(maintenance_work) ✗ ./gopher2600_darwin_arm64 ../sentinel/source/bin/sentinel.elf
* error in RUN mode: debugger: preview: cpu: starting a new instruction is invalid mid-instruction
➜  Gopher2600 git:(maintenance_work) ✗

That's binary #1. Note I have explicit trap for zero so there's no divide-by-zero happening. Could be an overflow I suppose.

If I replace the FPINT_DIV(temp, temp2) with "temp/temp2" all works OK. That's binary #2.
Note, I did check that "if (!temp2)" and tried "if (temp2 == 0)" just to be sure. No change.

The code is on the fixed-int branch, and pushed.
This problem code is in graphics.cpp around line #368

Quote from: DirtyHairy on 09 Aug 2024, 07:04 AMIf you send me the binary using FPRINT_DIV I can likely tell you what's wrong with it.

Many thanks for the offer, and sorry for the delay in response. A bit of down-in-the-dumps the past few weeks for me, I'm afraid. Haven't had the motivation.  Problem is now found - see my post (just now) responding to JetSetIlly.. See follow-up below.