Hidden in plain sight: How Dave Staugas got away with hiding a text message inside TOS?
- Details
- ggn
People who worked on TOS are very clever.
So last year at GEMTOS I was told by the French Atari sceners I should attend Revision and as such I decided to do so.
505 asked me if I wanted to write a report for Atariscne.org and of course I said YES.
Please note that all my comments and views are my personal ones.
My very first Revision, in the meanwhile I knew that Prodatron (SymbOS CPC) was already arriving on Thursday so I also left on Thursday.
Wearing my ABBUC "Tour-Kutte", an initiative of our ABBUC president after I mentioned that we didn’t have sweaters and I was planning to go to several events.
All Atari related events mentioned on a sweater, that deserves a thumb up when you are ready to leave Belgium at 05:00 in the morning. (mandatory eye-bags)
- Details
- Written by: LaSTiC
Read more: Revision 2025 Report
Write comment (11 Comments)Ever wondered how Atari 800 game developers were able to create such great games in the 80s on such limited hardware? Apparently a Cross Assembler was used to help out here: The Atari CAMAC Cross Assembler. It was running on a hardware named "Data General MV/8000".
Recently, some historical interested people rebuild the development enviroment using an an emulator and managed to assemble the Atari classic DIG-DUG, as they say, the first time in more than 40 years and apparently, just like (some of) the development was done back in the 80s.
If you like, have a cup of tea and enjoy ;-)
- Details
- Written by: 505
Matosimi keeps on working on his Atari XL/XE tools. With SwSprEd there is now an online sprite editor for Atari 8-Bit computers so you can easily transform your public transport waiting time into a proper home computing event :-)
Features:
- everything can be controlled by mouse quite conveniently + lot of keyboard shortcuts available as well (see in app Help)
- can be zoomed within browser w/o any issue – could be handy for anyone who’s sight is not that sharp anymore
- your data is stored in local storage (you do not loose your work if your browser hangs or tab gets closed)
- flipping, shifting, copy/paste
- undo/redo
- animate
- several export and import options
- ability to edit sprite of width from 4 up to 24 pixels (1 to 6 chars)
- save/load to *.swspr binary file
The program is said to work hand in hand with his previously reported Atari Fontmaker.
- Details
- Written by: 505
Polish developer Vega, known for his quality conversions of Bubble Bobble, Bomb Jack and others, has published a preview of a promising conversion of the classic Street Fighter II game. It is planned as cartridge for stock 64 KB machines with musics by Miker. There is a gameplay video available in the related Atari-age thread.
Even in this early stage, the gameplay looks way better than the unfortunate ST version from 1993 (not to mention the 4-floppy-disk-swapping horror).
🔗 original forum thread on Atari-age.com
- Details
- Written by: 505
Which took place from August 12th to 14th August 2022.
A very very very non-realtime report!
2025 heads-up!
CiH here,
I wrote a series of Sillyventure reports over some years, none of which have been published before now. There was an idea to revive Maggie for another one-off issue. This would need articles written for it, including party reports. That might still happen *sometime*. There was also an intent for SMFX Mag to take these articles instead, which didn’t happen.
Still, we have our chance now, as this and other reports a bit later on, stumble, blinking into the harsh 2025 daylight. I can confidently predict that there WILL be an SV Summer 2025 report. Possibly written in a half-realtime sense, maybe.
Anyway, I hand you over to my 2022 counterpart for his write-up of the only demo party that averted a 9/11 re-enactment by disgruntled Amiga sceners, the Sillyventure Summer 2022 Edition, in the tall building known as Olivia Star!
- Details
- Written by: CiH
Read more: A very delayed Sillyventure Summer Edition 2022 party report.
Write comment (9 Comments)Well, this isn't exactly "news", but it might have been under the radar of some people out there: using a 3D printer and a mouse kit (basically mouse "innards") it's now possible to build your own wireless USB mouse with strong Atari vibes!
The possibilities are endless: use it as your daily driver on your Firebee, use it on your ST via an USB mouse adapter, connect it to your KVM and control your fleet of Atari machines (using aforementioned USB mouse adapters). Okay, not exactly endless, but the coolness factor is there. I built a few of these back when the STL came out, and they serve me well until today.
(There are even other logo options available, which, according to site policy, we won't mention)
🔗 Get the mouse kit the enclosure is based on
- Details
- Written by: tIn
In 2020 ATARI started reviving a series of classic games creating new Berzerk: Recharged, Quantum: Recharged, Caverns of Mars: Recharged, Asteroids: Recharged, Centipede: Recharged, Black Widow: Recharged, Breakout: Recharged, Gravitar: Recharged, Missile Command: Recharged and Yars: Recharged.
Last year coin-op manufacturer Alan-1 signed an agreement with the fuji shaped company to bring most if not all recharged games back to arcade. Yes, 50 years after Pong ATARI is back to where it all started! Of course one could question the interest in some of the recharged games but the first one to be hosted by a great looking cabinet is Asteroids Recharged and please don't tell me you wouldn't love to play this!
Funny thing in my opinion is that when we were teenagers we would roam arcade halls with eyes wide open watching beauties that we would not enjoy at home. Decades later and now that hires or even 4K graphics are well installed in houses I feel like going back to arcade and play simple but fun games especially if you can play with a friend, I mean a real friend not another anonymous online player.
Should you have a few thousands euros or dollars you would like to get rid of you can also buy your own cabinet from Alan-1!
- Details
- Written by: sts
Retro HQ's James Boulton/SainT of Jaguar GameDrive fame and co-author of an Atari ST emulator of the same name - yes, now you have to guess which name that could be - can't shake his Atari ST roots apparently.
For reasons unbeknownst to us he started to port Dragon's Lair videos (with audio) to our beloved ST - in fullscreen. And as if to make things even more mouth watering, with 4096 colors (supposedly 16 colors per display line) while still having CPU to spare for "game logic" (not my words, mind you, a mere citation).
This might be an unpopular opinion, but the author of this little news piece for one is excited to see this game in fullscreen glory. Heck. Fullscreen.
And as any sensible and self-respecting Atari ST programmer nowadays, SainT developed his own dev hardware in the process (which seems to be UltraDev-light-ish by the looks of it and is planned to be open source). Of course he did.
Doubly yummy then.
🔗See that fullscreen extravaganza for yourself (on a microblogging platform that shall not be named)
🔗And while he's at it: new dev hardware!
- Details
- Written by: tIn
So it seems that the current ATARI owners have decided to give a new life to most of their classic games, I guess we should not complain, right? Following Missile Command Delta and I',Robot here comes Breakout Beyond! The game will be available shortly on all modern platforms and this includes the new VCS.
- Details
- Written by: sts
Steem SSE v4.1.2 R17 was released today for Windows and Linux.
Featuring the following changes:
- Fix palette timing on "Max" border size
- Fix buffer check on medres rendering
- Fix refactoring error in RS232_CalculateBaud()
- Make MIDI out timer optional
- Details
- Written by: Tronic
Read more: Steem SSE v4.1.2 R17 released
Write comment (0 Comments)Today, the trio of mOdmate, Evil and Jade released "Songs in the Key of YM" - a very impressive Atari ST music disk. The demo was two years in the making and features about 3 hours (61 tunes). Every track has been manually edited in native Atari trackers, the covers are made note-by-note, no automatic tools or emulation.
The creative process was partly overshadowed by mOdmate's disease but the team coped with it and the production morphed into a presentation of mOdmate's musical legacy. You will find mOdmates original compositions as well as many tracks by authors he admired on different systems. One can say, the sound design is exceptional, the YM never got that close to the Pokey or SID chip before. He was putting a lot of work into the details of these mostly unpublished songs and was surely looking forward to release these significant creations one day.
mOdmate decided however, that the demo should be released posthumousely. So, here we are.
You will find a very long scrolltext with background information and perspectives of mOdmate's Atari music friends (and also included as a separate text document for old eyes).
The demo is slightly enhanced on STe, TT and Falcon machines with three extra tracks using PCM instruments. It appears to work quite well on anything from an old 1985 ST with 1 MB memory to a Falcon 060. But as always, no guarantee.
Enjoy!
- Details
- Written by: 505 and evil
Earlier today Slippy of Vectronix announced on the Atari-Forum that he has released an updated version of his CycleSplitter tool to ease adapting code to fit in overscan.
Description of the tool from Slippy:
- Expands
REPT/ENDRblocks - Determines cycle usage per instruction and allows manual override
- Splits code into scanline-sized chunks (512 cycles each)
- Injects border removal and stabilizer code
- Pads with NOPs when necessary
- Generates cycle-accurate annotations
- Handles dynamic cycle usages (i.e. movem instructions with multiple regs)
Features
- Processes assembly files with cycle annotations in comments (e.g.,
move.l (a0)+,(a1) ; (20)) - Handles
REPT/ENDRblock expansion - Automatically injects border removal code:
- Left border removal
- Right border removal
- Stabilizer code
- Pads scanlines to exactly 512 cycles with NOPs
- Generates detailed cycle annotations
- Supports custom templates for injection code
🔗 Check it out at the Github repository
- Details
- Written by: evldhs
Upcoming GEMTOS 2025 features a number of contests (music, picture, photo, game) with some additional constraints. E.g. the musics were supposed to feature the vocals "Gemtos" in it.
All entries can be watched and voted for in advance to the event. As you can see, there are some interesting productions, like a complete music video by AD, a new ACE-tracker tune by DMA-Sc and even a new Doclands chiptune done with Arkos tracker.
- Details
- Written by: 505
The demoscene was born more than 40 years ago however it was only 5 years ago when it was officially labelled digital and cultural heritage by the UNESCO, first in Finland then one year later in Germany and Poland. I am very happy to announce that France has now crossed the treshhold and joined forces with these countries. Following a 4 year common work, French demo lovers have managed to make it true; the demoscene is now recognized by UNESCO as digital and cultural heritage here too!
Many thanks to the many people involved, it was a long ride but you never gave up!
- Details
- Written by: sts
Another hard drive solution for the Atari ST series usually isn't anything to write home about, let alone to grace it with an atariscne.org article - thankfully we seem to get swamped by SD card storage solutions for our beloved platform as of late.
But Jean-Matthieu Coulon's ACSI2STM stands out of the crowd - and this article tries to give a very quick glance why this is as close to a tangible storage revolution as we can get without someone reissuing the CosmosEx. Spoiler: you can forget about partitioning.
I can't stress this enough: you can forget about partitioning.
- Details
- Written by: tIn
Read more: In the spotlight: ACSI2STM - the humble hard disk revolution
Write comment (4 Comments)With the next rounds of the ST Online Tournament (STOT) on the horizon, Thomas from Anarcholab has just released a special STOT version of his isometric Minesweeper-alike game "Randominer". The game is scheduled for the STOT round in May 2025.
This version is more suitable for the tournament setting. In contrary to the full game it has only a comparable single level with a set timeframe of 15 minutes. Very nice idea. Another interesting feature: "If your wife/boss come round the corner and asks “Are you playing STOT again???” hit [space] and be safe."
Randominer 1.3a STOT works on a Atari ST with 1 MB RAM (TOS 1.02) but an STE with 2 MB RAM is recommended.
🔗 General STOT on Atari-forum.com thread
- Details
- Written by: 505
Due to lack of own competence, let me just forward this latest article by Tat/Avena, who is dismantling HiSoft's Debugging Line Number format in his blog. I am sure it is another gourmet-read for the one or other.
🔗 Full article in Steven Tatersall's blog
- Details
- Written by: 505
Marty aka ST Graveyard and his team from Atari-legend.com published the full version of their thorough investigation about the Atari STE and Falcon game "The Ultimate Arena". The game has been an actual homebrew wonder of the mid-90 era, when Atari STE game development was generally taken a big step forward and the Falcon game sphere was not fully explored. It was highly anticipated and exceptional, as it was a serious attempt to bring "Mortal Kombat" gameplay to the Atari, including digitized game characters and sound.
Atari-legend's documentary dives deeply into the topic with it's typical, unmatched precision and production quality. The half hour video reportage emphasizes the individual achievement as well as the motivation, production process and outcome of the game, including personal notes of the game creator. It is an amazing travel back in times, when home computers still were machines to make dreams come true. The text script for the production is provided as well. Highly recommended!
🔗 Text script of the documentary on Atari Legend
- Details
- Written by: 505
So it seems that nothing can beat nostalgia as ATARI has launched preorders for 5 new games on the 7800. Even though I am no expert the games should run on the good old hardware as well as on their lastest breed, namely the 7800+ as can be seen below:
The 5 games announced for release this year are
- Details
- Written by: sts
Atarinet.info - an interesting website providing Atari & Internet related content (and more), do now also offer a web-rendering-proxy service (wrp). The service allows to render complex webpages on the server and send the result as simple website suitable for Atari browsers like CAB and various resolutions and color depths.
Resulting output can be rendered as image in various formats or basic HTML for a quick browsing experience on low-end platforms. The tool itself has been developed by Tenox.
- Details
- Written by: 505
