77 replies to this topic

[Bryan]

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

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Edited by Bryan, Mon May 23, 2005 4:15 PM.

[Bryan]

Here's what the boards will look like (they will support up to 512K):

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[Elthesh]

Bryan, on Sun May 15, 2005 8:11 PM, said:

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

Now we're talkin! This is an awesome port! Next up, the Dragon Warrior series right? lol Good job!

[video game addict]

4 player?

[sku_u]

video game addict, on Sun May 15, 2005 10:43 PM, said:

4 player?

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.

[Allan]

sku_u, on Sun May 15, 2005 10:54 PM, said:

video game addict, on Sun May 15, 2005 10:43 PM, said:

4 player?

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.

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

[Allan]

I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens.

Allan

[sku_u]

Allan, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:03 PM, said:

I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens.

Allan

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.

[video game addict]

I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports?

[Allan]

sku_u, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:22 PM, said:

Allan, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:03 PM, said:

I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens.

Allan

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.

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

[sku_u]

video game addict, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:25 PM, said:

I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports?

Not on the version I've been testing. It's recognizes the number of ports on the console accordingly IIRC.

[killersquirel]

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

[sku_u]

The game takes a little while to learn, but is not nearly as complex as modern games. Instructions:

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[classics]

Wow, very nice. I know how much work that must have been!

[Bryan]

video game addict, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:25 PM, said:

I'm just wondering is it supporting 4 players on both 4 ports & 2 ports?

You need a 4-port to play 4 player. On a 2 port you must select 1 or 2 player (or computer demo).

classics, on Mon May 16, 2005 2:06 AM, said:

Wow, very nice.  I know how much work that must have been! 

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

[Bryan]

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 by Bryan, Fri May 20, 2005 1:21 PM.

[nems]

This is exciting news! I'll definitely be ordering one.

[Vic George 2K3]

What other games can we raid from the 8-bit computer line to put on the 5200?

[Laner]

That is awesome... I was playing MULE on my C64 just this weekend. Great little game - I'll definitely be grabbing a copy.

[yuppicide]

The NES Loderunner was horrible. I loved the C-64 versions and being able to make my own screens.

sku_u, on Sun May 15, 2005 10:22 PM, said:

Allan, on Sun May 15, 2005 11:03 PM, said:

I'd love to see a game like Loderunner on the 5200 with a whole bunch of screens.

Allan

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.

[Bryan]

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 by Bryan, Wed May 18, 2005 7:32 AM.

[classics]

Is this available yet? I must have one.

[classics]

How about this for the next port?

http://www.grandtheftendo.com/

[Bryan]

classics, on Fri May 20, 2005 5:45 AM, said:

Is this available yet?  I must have one.

I just got an email that the PCB's have shipped. The GAL's should arrive today.


-Bry

[Lord Thag]

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 $$.