on 8/13/00 1:46 PM, Glenn Saunders at cybpunks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I actually think the better project is to port 5200 Tempest to the
> 400/800/XL/XE and add driving controller support for that.
Except then you're not programming for the 2600 any more. ;)
I remember Matt really wanted to hook that driving controller up to his Jag
to play some Tempest 2000 (did you ever do that? I think I recall seeing
how on the net). That really is the perfect game for the driving
controller. Maybe if the kernal's too tight in Tempest "2600" to use the
driving control, it's time for Tempest to undergo a rewrite. Too bad I'm
still stymied for time to even start messing with my game again. It's rough
having a full time job. ;^D
===
As a short aside, Eckhard I got your request to port pcx2grp to the Mac.
Fraid I can't email you directly -- my emails get bounced back. Apparently
your ISP has had some trouble with bellsouth spammers before.
I don't know C (Distella compiled without a hitch and I had help porting
DAsm (was using RAsm until then which was Mac-specific -- and I refused to
use anything called "OrgAsm". Geez.)), so I'm having a little trouble
compiling pcx2grp. Seems there's an "itoa" call that's not ANSI.
Matt was able to make things work by replacing that line in Linux, so I'm
relatively certain I'll be able to get an OS X version up and running this
week. But Matt's fix was apparently also non-ANSI and the Mac (OS 9)
doesn't like it.
Here are the lines, with Matt's hacks.
/* Original line */
/* itoa(abyte,achar,16); */
/* Hacked line */
snprintf( achar, 3, "%x", abyte );
/* itoa(abyte,achar); */
Sorry I can't be of any more help right now. I'll play with it some more
this week. On my learning front, I just finished reading most of Dan
Appleman's guide to the WinAPI for Visual Basic. What a hack of a language
(I like it. ;). But it's sure not helping my nearly non-existent ("Hello,
world."-level) C skills. Anyhow, I do program in at least one real language
(Java) so I hope to figure out what's going on in pcx2grp later this week.
I actually did get it to compile by commenting out that line, but got
complaints that the pcx's I was using weren't the right size and color
depth. I knew they were, and wondered if there was a MacBinary problem.
Commented out the error checking line (kinda like taking the brakes out of
your car b/c they aren't working as well as you'd like, eh? :^D) and got
pages of zeroes. That is, things looked right, but there wasn't any usable
data from the pcx's I'd put together. *sigh*
Sorry bout that -- I'll keep trying.
Ruffin Bailey
PS I'm still hoping to hack up Chris (sp?) Pepin's VB graphing app so that
it can help with player graphics, but I'm afraid that's back burner for
another few weeks. :(
--
Ruffin Bailey | rufbo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
IMG Staff Writer | Program 4 the Atari 2600 on your Mac!
www.insidemacgames.com | http://homepage.mac.com/mactari
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