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Messages - hcmffm

#1
Quote from: Vectrex32 on November 13, 2016, 06:40:54 PM
I just did an experiment jacking the frame rate up to 120 and it made a big difference with wobble and flickering.
Sounds good. Is there a reason why the Vectrex32 main menu and Moonlander use 30 frames/s and not a higher framerate?
#2
Quote from: crcasey on November 14, 2016, 04:31:03 AM...How do other hardware multi-carts and things like Richard's vecRam manage without crashing out on the revised logic boards?
The missing _CART signal can be gained with some additional hardware, see topic Multicart on no-buzz models in the Vector Gaming forum.
#3
My Vectrex friend had the Vectrex32 cartridge for some time. He tried the Vectrex32 out and did some programming. His feelings were so-so. Apart from the somewhat cumbersome way of developing programs (no real debugging, no hot-code replacement, ...) the way the vectors are displayed made him frown. He said that the vectors would slightly flicker and wobble.
We tried the Vectrex32 on two of my Vectrexes and right: The vectors are displayed a bit wobbly and a bit flickery. This can be seen in the menu (text) of the Vectrex32 and in Moon Lander: All lines wobble and slightly vary their positions plus the whole display slightly flickers. Other games like Minestorm run on those Vectrex consoles display the vectors 100 flicker-free and without any wobble.

Is there a reason why graphics generated by the Vectrex32 slightly wobble and flicker? Could something be done about this?
#4
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 31, 2016, 06:02:23 PM
The missing -CART signal requires a hardware change to the Vectrex32.
O.k., I was afraid, so. It's good that you have a hint in your ebay sales auction for the Vectrex32 till the hardware change happens.
#5
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 31, 2016, 05:21:53 PMI thought the issue was that the cartridge port did not have the -CART signal. Do you have reason to believe it's a BIOS issue? Any idea what the difference between the BIOSes is?
I'm not deep in technical Vectrex stuff and had thought that the different BIOSes cause the problem. So a missing -CART signal (whatever this means) is the problem. Is there are possible work-around or fix for this in sight?

(I think for selling the Vectrex32 to the "masses" it would be quite important that the Vectrex32 runs on all Vectrexes, regardless which BIOS or Vectrex model version.)
#6
Currently, the Vectrex32 (Version 1.0) doesn't run at all on the Vectrex models with the latest BIOS (BIOS checksum 7ADB, Serial #31xxxxxx and 4xxxxxxx). This should be fixed because people who order a Vectrex32 SmartCart might end up with nothing at the moment.
#7
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 26, 2016, 10:54:51 AM
I've just finished version 1.11. WaitForFrame function now supports an optional fourth argument that specifies the analog joystick resolution.
Cool. Thanks for your excellent responsivness and prompt action - much appreciated!  :)
#8
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 26, 2016, 10:53:57 AM
I've just finished version 1.11. The FOR loop now supports STEP, with both positive and negative values. It also supports floating point numbers in the start, end, and step values.

When I upgrade 1.00 cartridges, I'll be upgrading them with 1.11 (assuming a newer version doesn't come out by then)
Wow - that was quick! That's what I call dedication and excellent support! Thank you, Bob!
#9
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 24, 2016, 06:02:29 PM
Another one for the list.
Great, thank you!
#10
Quote from: Vectrex32 on October 24, 2016, 05:51:46 PM
Definitely possible. I'll add it to my list.
Thank you for your prompt reply and adding "STEP" to your list, Bob.
#11
Currently, in analog mode the horizontal and vertical joystick positions are 4 bit, i.e. you have 16 different horizontal and 16 vertical values. These 16 horizontal and 16 vertical values makes placing objects directly using the positions returned by the joystick impossible because there would be only a total of 256 X/Y positions which is too coarse. In other words: Games like Missile Command or Star Hawk couldn't be programmed.

The joystick has a resolution of 256 horizontal and 256 vertical positions, i.e. 8 bit. Is a change to full 8-bit horizontal and vertical joystick values possible?
#12
I lent my Vectrex32 to a friend of mine and he did some Vectrex programming. My friend is familiar with Assembler and C# programming.

A problem he encountered is the missing "STEP" in the for...next loops. With the STEP you can specify the steps of the loop variable, typically positive or negative integer numbers. Sure enough you can work-around this missing language feature and achieve the same as the STEP addition; but this makes programming a bit cumbersome and the code less readable.

Would adding STEP be possible?
#13
General Discussion / Re: Emulators for Vectrex32?
August 23, 2016, 04:48:49 PM
I think an emulator which emulates the SmartCart would be very helpful for developers:
First, developers could try developing but how they go without paying the price of the SmartCart. Second, you wouldn't need to have your Vectrex next to your computer and have the Vectrex on all the time.

Having an emulator that runs original ROMS sounds also like a good idea, but this would be a lot of effort and FAIK there aren't too many ROMs that use the Vector graphics (correct me, if I'm wrong). And aren't the ROMs still copyrighted?
#14
Interesting and important discussion. Perhaps each produced SmartCart could have a unique ID which cannot be modified. When ordering, the person ordering would need to tell the unique ID and the delivered game would run on that single SmartCart, only. (Assuming that the SmartCart "understands" programs with plain sources and source-code protected programs).