R: R: R: [stella] PCMSG 2.4 (ok, I've had enough...)

Subject: R: R: R: [stella] PCMSG 2.4 (ok, I've had enough...)
From: "Piero Cavina" <p.cavina@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 22:02:22 +0200
> >I'm using it (don't remember if it's the "a")... strangely, when PCAE is
> >set to PAL I get green borders in my game, while on TV they're pink!
Maybe
> >I should ask to John Dullea...
> 
> That's the 2.0 version. The 2.0a was released yesterday. John has
included
> a better PAL palette with it, that I send him. Probably still not
perfect,
> but more acurate than the 'guessed' first one in version 2.0.

OK, now looks like the TV... :)

> It works on my TV now too, so the problem probably is fixed now. But if
> you don't need the ROM space, you could leave the switch in. You'll never
> know.

I dropped the single/continuous fire done whith the player 2 difficulty
switch and used it for the pal/ntsc conversion instead. Somebody might not
like this, but this way I've recycled a lot of bytes.
 
> But that leaves the question, what the problem was.
> What exectly do you mean by removing one line?

The screen kernel, from the top of the screen to the line after the 1-digit
counter, is made of 178 lines.
Then, there's a "filler" loop thad does 192-178 (or 228-178 for PAL) STA
WSYNC's.
With "removing one line" (not very correct indeed) I meant doing 191-178
lines instead 192-178.

> Do you use any timer loops in your game, that don't start and end with a
> STA Wsync? 

The two timer loops (one to wait for the end of Vblank, the other for
Overscan), are like this:

LF20C: LDA    INTIM
       BNE    LF20C
       STA    WSYNC

That is, there's not a STA WSYNC immediately before the start of the loop,
but how could this matter..?

> Didn't you say, that you have a modern multiple standard TV. Maybe that
> one automaticly blows up too small images?

Not at home, but I'm very curious to try the game on it.
It's my girlfriend father's TV, and since I must go there with 1.an Atari
2600 2.power supply 3.cables 4.Supercharger 5.Mac Powerbook I need to find
the good moment... :))

P.


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