Sunday, July 16, 2017
Menace [upgraded]
Monday, August 31, 2015
Alien World
The action is relentless and immediately hits you with a ton of pitfalls like red-hot streams of molten lava that shoot up from pools of glowing red death. It isn't long before you feel a little Blood Money creeping in as the scrolling alternates between horizontal & vertical. However, I liked the parts that don't automatically scroll - allowing you to move at your own leisure. Gravity always plays a part in affecting your movement, think Flappy Bird or SantaFly!
Graphically, Alien World is truly outstanding with ultra-smooth scrolling - best experienced using a real Atari ST. Everything is exquisite - rich colours, detailed sprites and fluent movement. Sadly, audio is a different story with no in-game tune and weak sound effects. A few decent chiptunes would have been perfect for a game like this.
Gameplay is what matters and I'm impressed with this tough shooter. Sure, it has a learning curve that is nothing short of immense but Blood Money fans are going to love it. Then again, like so many 16-bit games of the era, it's really really tough and demands a cheat. However, a challenging game that drags you back for that "just one more go".
Friday, July 08, 2016
Z-Out
8BitChip has adapted this for hard drive installation w/ a level skip feature.
Floppy disks can be downloaded using Old Games Finder.
Here are some nifty cheats :
> pressing J + K together gives infinite energy.
> pressing J and a number between 1 - 6 (on the main keyboard) to skip levels.
> pressing K and a number between 1 - 3 (on the keypad) to jump stages.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
MOD Players
This page proves nothing. Well, except that the Atari STe can easily handle those Amiga MODs with quality playback, no matter what program you decide to use. They're all great. It just depends on your own needs: if you need a GEM player then any of the above is a good choice to install onto your hard drive/ultrasatan.
Yes, they are all great in their own way but I really loved how CD Player can be stacked up and left to play while you're doing something else. Also, JAM is great and can handle a wide variety of different formats too. Ultimately, I think Sirius is best (for me) with its astounding 50Khz playback, so I tend to prefer this above all others.
Monday, April 02, 2018
PP's Enhanced Games
Saturday, April 02, 2022
shooter.prg
When nerds play...
I'm not big on social media, as you know, but one of the reasons I remain on the cesspool that is Twitter is to follow people like Jonathan Thomas. Yep, that same dodgy fella who developed Pole Position for the Atari STe and then dared to update Lotus Turbo II in ways we never thought possible back in the day. Okay, I guess he's not a bad lad...
Anyhow, his tweets are often fascinating because he pokes deep within the depths of ST games. It's here that weird techniques are discovered or he experiments with probable improvements. He also playtests enhancing performance by utilising the Atari STe hardware. All this coding talk is way over my head but intriguing nonetheless.
So, onto his latest 'project', a horizontally-scrolling shooter for the Atari STe not too dissimilar to Menace, R-Type, etc. Although it's early days, Jon is using the hardware scrolling with the sprites/particle effects handled by the Blitter. There are no DMA sound effects but I cannot complain as he was generous in sending me an early beta lol
I asked Jon for his thoughts and prospects for what might eventually be a new Atari STe game. Although he replied that he had no concrete plans for a full game, he did hint toward several extremely promising short-term goals:A title screen (we will need a name for this!)
16x16 sprites for a selection of individual enemies
Each sprite will use 10-15 predefined attack moves
A couple of (2-3 minute) stages with increasing difficulty
A "game completion" screen
Multiple DMA sound effects
Chipmusic hopefully by (fingers crossed) Dma_Sc
Having "played" this beta, I must say it's impressive along with the prospect of what's already been achieved in a short time. I really liked the feel of the joystick controls and collision detection is spot-on. Border rasters indicate the remaining CPU time for future development opportunities so demonstrate great potential. Yes, you might say I'm excited!
If like me, you love hearing what other people are doing with their Atari STs then take a look at Jon's Twitter stream. It's amock with weird programming gizmos (that I shall never understand) as he enjoys dismantling many Atari ST games. I can only imagine the dorky entertainment Jon has with his Atari STe and I hope that continues.
Update: Jon has started a source repository for those interested in helping out.
Saturday, March 20, 2021
Sophélie
Aesthetics?
Monday, March 15, 2021
TRS-80 emulator
DIR 0 - will produce the contents of Drive 0DIR 1 - will produce the contents of Drive 1. Easy, right?DIR 1,/BAS - this displays the same list but filters for BAS files.
CAT 1 - this provides an alternative way to load programs!
BASIC RUN "DANCING/BAS,1"
Don't forget to read the docs as README.TXT is there for a reason... Okay, I'll nag no more!
Most (all?) disk images found on the internet won't be compatible with the Atari ST. Thankfully, Sander has a utility to convert these for 2nd Life and it works a treat from what I've seen so far. Hence, how I got to play Hamburger Sam, Berserk, erm Robot Attack and the sluggish Temple of Apshai.