41 replies to this topic

[Wrathchild]

Hi all,

Sorry for a late contribution, I spent the last weekend staying with my brother and his family near Zurich where we attended the (wet!) Sonisphere festival where Ian was taking photos.

Back to Sinistar, as well as doing the 5200 port for Ken from his prototype A8 xex image I also had to make some fixups to the original XL code to knock out some developer cheats. Last week I did the port of the A8 executable version to a Maxflash cart image. Although this is just a relocation of code & data from ROM to RAM making it similar in structure to the 5200 version, it requires a machine with 48K RAM to play it on. As only the lower 16K of RAM is required when the game runs, I am ready to begin work on a bank switching version of the cart which will ultimately let the game run on 16K machines.

In coding the cart version I found the same locking bug during the startup of the game reported here. The original code sets the shadow registers for DMA but not the actual H/W registers and so although on the whole standard machines and O/Ss get away with loading but others won't. The fix Fandal has done () for the xex was correct so I've no need to release another, Ken had posted up the other version before I had a chance to warn him.

Also, MrFish was right - there was no intention in producing corrections to the the known problems within the game.

Best wishes,
Mark

Edited by Wrathchild, Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:28 PM.

[Tempest]

Wrathchild, on Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:24 PM, said:

I also had to make some fixups to the original XL code to knock out some developer cheats.

Such as? I have the original rom and would be interested in hearing what those cheats were and how to enable them.

Tempest

[Wrathchild]

After checking again, it appears the A8 version still has this enabled (), so I'll let you return to the game.

[Nesbroslash]

Beware 8-bit owners.......EDIT:Whoops, wrong system, but same graphics.

Edited by Nesbroslash, Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:09 PM.

[Allan]

Wrathchild, on Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:24 PM, said:

Also, MrFish was right - there was no intention in producing corrections to the the known problems within the game.

How come? The 'letter' bug seems pretty consistant and would seem like a pretty easy bug to find. It always starts with the same letters A,B, and a couple more which I forget at the moment.

Allan

[Madaracs]

Stephen, on Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:36 PM, said:

I was never any good at this game, but I suck at most games and that doesn't stop me from playing

Amen, brother.

[Mr.Amiga500]

Nesbroslash, on Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:57 PM, said:

Beware 8-bit owners.......EDIT:Whoops, wrong system, but same graphics.

I love that.

[mos6507]

I never understood the rationale for NOT fixing an unfinished prototype. I always felt that the argument "oh, we want it to be an accurate historical snapshot" was really a convenient cover for the fact that nobody was available with the chops or the free time to finish it. Elevator Action for the 2600 was a game that really needed to be finished, for instance. To go through the effort to make all the packaging et. al. for a game like Elevator Action with known flaws seems really wrong to me. I don't have any sentimentality for protos having bugs and being unfinished. Some of the best stuff that has ever happened in the homebrew scene have involved treading on sacred ground. For instance, the River Raid hacks that Thomas did, or Sprintmaster DC. These are, first and foremost, intended to be games, games to be played, not merely historical digital artifacts.

I think Sinister should be finished and why not add AtariVox support while you're at it?

[Shawn Jefferson]

Wrathchild, on Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:24 PM, said:

Back to Sinistar, as well as doing the 5200 port for Ken from his prototype A8 xex image I also had to make some fixups to the original XL code to knock out some developer cheats. Last week I did the port of the A8 executable version to a Maxflash cart image.

You have a maxflash cart version? Have you released it anywhere? DOH! Forget it, I see it way up near the first post.

I remember way back in the prototypes thread that the original programmer had some stipulations to release... were those lifted?

Edited by Shawn Jefferson, Wed Jun 23, 2010 5:59 PM.

[tjlazer]

Here is a Maxflash image I made for a 1Mb Flash cart.

Attached Files

•  Sinistar Maxflash 1Mb.atr   42.39K   104 downloads

Edited by tjlazer, Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:31 PM.

[Yautja]

Hi there,

Forgive my ignorance, but... why has Atarimania already featured Sinistar as a 1984 game?

http://www.atarimani...star_13338.html

I mean, isn´t the one published here a brand new port?

- Y -

[ZylonBane]

Yautja, on Thu Jul 8, 2010 5:26 PM, said:

I mean, isn´t the one published here a brand new port?

Yes, it's a brand-new 26-year-old unfinished prototype port.

[eegad]

Just stumbled upon this thread. Hmmmm. Glad to see a version of Sinistar surface. Slightly confused though. The .xex version only seems to run in PAL on emulators. Then there's an .atr version that runs as NTSC. Any way to get an .xex that runs as NTSC??? (on a real Atari....I want to add it to an AtariMax cart, but with such tight memory constraints, I'd rather have an .xex than an .atr)

[MEtalGuy66]

YEah it'd be nice to have the NTSC version in EPROMable format too. Id like to have a permanent cart, but mxflash carts are expensive. Is the code set up for XEGS supercart banking or some other ROM access scheme?

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:19 AM.

[Wrathchild]

As it stands the cart version works by copying the existing code out of the cart into place in ram, meaning that it needs a 48K machine to run on. The next step for me was to try and organize the code so that it would play on just a 16K machine. In doing so I guess an XEGS flavour could be done as well as the MaxFlash. As that won't happen for at least a month, I'll see if I can knock up 48K version on an XEGS cart image sometime this week.

Regards,
Mark

[_Fandal_]

MEtalGuy66, on Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:18 AM, said:

YEah it'd be nice to have the NTSC version in EPROMable format too. Id like to have a permanent cart, but mxflash carts are expensive. Is the code set up for XEGS supercart banking or some other ROM access scheme?

Try my 32 kB XEGS cart image. I works fine under emulator but it needs some testing on real HW...

F.

Attached Files

•  sinistar_xegs_32kb.zip   16.89K   81 downloads

[Warriorisabouttodie]

mos6507, on Wed Jun 23, 2010 5:33 PM, said:

I never understood the rationale for NOT fixing an unfinished prototype. I always felt that the argument "oh, we want it to be an accurate historical snapshot" was really a convenient cover for the fact that nobody was available with the chops or the free time to finish it. Elevator Action for the 2600 was a game that really needed to be finished, for instance. To go through the effort to make all the packaging et. al. for a game like Elevator Action with known flaws seems really wrong to me. I don't have any sentimentality for protos having bugs and being unfinished. Some of the best stuff that has ever happened in the homebrew scene have involved treading on sacred ground. For instance, the River Raid hacks that Thomas did, or Sprintmaster DC. These are, first and foremost, intended to be games, games to be played, not merely historical digital artifacts.

I think Sinister should be finished and why not add AtariVox support while you're at it?

I agree, but i think it's great the prototype was released in it's original form first. If someone wanted to (and had access to the code and the ability) then why not release a new "finished" version too? I wouldn't hold your breath waiting it took many years since it was discovered to get this version released.


Anyway I remember drooling over the 8bit version of this game way back when, so for me it's been a 4 decade wait for it's release and I am just happy to see it. If i really want to play Sinistar I could always play the arcade version anyway.

Edited by Warriorisabouttodie, Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:20 PM.