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Published: 14 July 2018

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In May this year, an excellent port of the classic arcade game Time Pilot was released for the Atari XL/XL line of computers. And as I found out today, it was created using WUDSN IDE. The complete sources of the game are available for download at http://timepilot.atari.pl and on GitHub. Thumbs up to New Generation for this masterpiece and releasing the source code so others can learn from it.

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Published: 07 June 2018

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This pack contains a disk image in MyDos format with all Atari 8-bit releases of SillyVenture 2k17. It includes a proper 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 a real machine. These are the controls for the menu:

• Pressing any key while 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 download comes with a preconfigured Altirra, which you can run with the required settings by simply clicking the "SillyPack2k17.bat" file. The demo "WePlash" by Nir Dary and Motionride requires a separate hardware configuration with a SIDE II hard disk image. To run this demo, click the "SillyPack2k17-WePlash.bat" file.

I released SillyPack 2k17 at Outline 2017, which was my first Outline. Thanks to Havoc for inviting me; it was great. I had the opportunity to present the pack myself. It was essential to show how much work was involved to get it done with the right quality.

Alpha C did a good job but had difficulty getting all the stuff presented correctly and, unfortunately, sometimes failed. My 10 minutes before dinner hack "No time, No memory, just Outline!" for the 128 bytes compo was shown without sound. And F#READY's excellent Outlove didn't work because the wrong OS was active despite the explicit note in the readme. A pity that one would have ruled the 128 bytes compo hard. Since most of the stuff is shown from emulators anyway, I hope the compo team records the entries upfront next time.

 

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Published: 06 June 2018

Hits: 2374

Features:

• If the title derived from the file name and the title in the cartridge database are equal, no confirmation dialog is displayed anymore.
• Usage of the SHIFT modifier is now the same in the expert and extended menus. When starting and entering with SHIFT, i.e., FIRE+SHIFT, RETURN+SHIFT, or RETURN+SHIFT+CONTROL, the configuration registers of "The!Cart" remain unlocked. Using the CONTROL modifier in addition, i.e., RETURN+CONTROL or RETURN+SHIFT+CONTROL, indicates that the inner menu of the cartridge containing the entry is started instead of starting the entry directly. Note that FIRE+CONTROL alone cannot be detected on the Atari due to how POKEY works.
• Built-in MyPicoDOS and flasher software from hias updated from version 4.05T (2014-04-07) to 4.06T (2017-09-24):
  • A ".CAR" file loader was added to load cartridge images up to 512k from the disk into the "The!Cart" RAM without flashing them. Very useful for fast test cycles during development.
  • Attract mode is now disabled when using joystick navigation.
  • Added directory and drive switching using a joystick.
  • Bugfix: Don't disable high-speed SIO if reading a directory fails.
• The generated unit test cartridges now contain more details, including the "The!Cart" mode used for emulation. In addition, the VBI is now active, so the cartridge can be interrupted using TurboFreezer to analyze problems on the actual hardware.
  

Fixes:

• A bug added in the 2018-05-05 version that can prevent entries from being added when they are in the cartridge database was fixed.
• The content type "XEGS 32 KB" is now correctly mapped to the "The!Cart" mode for "XEGS 32 KB" instead of "Switchable XEGS 32 KB" in the extended menu. With this, cartridges that use bank numbers with bit 7 set now work correctly, for example, "Castle Crisis".
• Import conversion for Williams 32 KB ROM is more robust now and always generates a new filename for the converted file.
• File and conversion errors occurring while adding new entries are now reported correctly in the status bar.

Details

Published: 05 May 2018

Hits: 2356

Features:

• Import of Williams 32 KB ".ROM" and ".CAR" files now automatically converts the file to a Williams 64 KB".CAR" file in case only the Williams 64 KB bank switching scheme is supported by the flash target type of the workbook.
• The new Atari800 cartridge types and corresponding content types for "Atrax 128 KB" (68), "aDawliah 32 KB" (69), and "aDawliah 64 KB" (70) have been added to the cartridge detection and unit test generation. Note that they are not supported by "The!Cart" itself. But if you have used "Atarax 128" (17) (which is supported by "The!Cart") in your existing workbooks, you have to re-classify the corresponding entries now as "Decoded Atarax 128" (17). This is an incompatible change, but I want to be 100% in sync with Atari800 and its definitions.
• The cartridge database has been updated to Kr0tki's version from 2018-04-24. Now, 839 instead of 737 known titles, 807 instead of 717 known content types.
• If a matching entry in the cartridge database is found when adding a file, the user is prompted to decide if the proposed title from the database should be used. 
  
  
  
• The About dialog now also displays the number of supported content types.
  

Fixes:

• Import of Maxflash Programming ATRs now automatically converts the ".ATR" file to a ".CAR" file only if the flash target type of the workbook supports the Atarimax bank switching scheme.