SillyPack 2k20+1 SE and SillyPack 2021 WE released

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Published: Saturday, 03 September 2022 00:00

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Both packs contain a disk image in MyDos format with all Atari 8-bit releases of SillyVenture 2020+1 Summer Edition and SillyVenture 2021 Winter Edition. They contain a results viewer which also acts as a menu from where you can directly start all releases and read the readmes. The menu remains memory resident, so you don't have to load it again every time. This makes watching the graphics entries and listening to the music entries much more fun, esp. on the real machine. These are the controls for the menu:

• Pressing any key during loading the menu takes you to the DOS shell.
• Pressing RESET in the menu performs a cold start.
• Pressing RESET in while a release is running returns to the menu, if possible.
• Further controls are displayed in the menu itself.

The downloads come with a pre-configured Altirra which you can run with the required settings by simply clicking the "SillyPack2k20_1SE.bat" or "SillyPack2k21WE.bat" file.

Programming the Atari XL/XE - Part 14,15 and 16 released

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Published: Friday, 02 September 2022 00:00

Hits: 2785

After a loooong break, the next three parts of the tutorial series on Programming the Atari XL/XE are now available. This time you learn how to use POKEY to create sound effects, how to include Raster Music Tracker (RMT) music into your own code, and how to obtain RMT modules from the Atari Sound Music Archive. A big thanks to Tim Tennyson who motivated me to get back into creating the tutorials. Now that I have a proper setup with Open Broadcast Studio, it's really fun again.

Site Update

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Published: Friday, 02 September 2022 00:00

Hits: 949

• Joomla access now automatically redirects from "htttp://" to "https://"
• A global Demozoo link has been added in navigation area
• Demozoo Links have been added for all productions
• Missing "Chick OnChips" release has been added to productions
• Productions are sorted and exported automatically when saving the "productions.ods" database

Little 50 VCS Music released at Silly Venture 2022 SE

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Published: Monday, 22 August 2022 00:00

Hits: 136

This excellent VCS music was created by Bart Wasil (BeWu) for the Atari VCS music competition at SillyVenture 2022 SE in Gdansk. I had the task of turning it into a ROM file, which was an unexpected challenge, as the TIATracker module has 126 patterns and exceeds the 4k limit for a single ROM bank. So I had to split the source by hand and created an 8k bank-switched ROM. The tune ranked a well-deserved 1st place in the competition and is definitively one of the best VCS pieces of music ever created. I'll really happy to have been part of the release and to see what can be done with TIATracker. Here's a comment from Jérémie Glafouk on the inner workings of the song "Very clever use of only 2 channels with such a rich sound (drums + bass + chords + melody). Using percussion for arpeggios. The 'double' bass using 2 instruments (out of only 7 possible instruments in TIATracker) also is really smart and works so well. And the mixing is really perfect with the only 2 channels."

I've also used the occasion to recompile Glafouk's "Snake It" song with the lasted TIATracker player and uploaded it also. It ranked 2nd place in the Silly Venture 2020+1 SE in Gdansk.

The downloads of the modules, the binaries, and the source is available in the Atari 2600 / Demos section.