Tuesday 27 October 2015

And now...the bugs report

It's been now five days that i have released the first version of OdySim and now it is time for a small bugs report: James Brolly wrote to me that he tested out the OdySim this past week-end and saw these kwirks/bugs/etc:

* The "F8" switch: when you press it, it displays another menu with other games but the problem is that once you enter in a game (in menu 2) and exit afterwards, you come back to menu 1. He also suggested to put another picture (below the menu) that would state "press ESC or use F8 to cycle through game menus". That is a great idea! And this bug was already on my "fix-it" so this will be fixed in the next version.

* The "spots" (the big white squares for bats) and the reset buttons in the Tennis game aren't working. I just test it before posting this and he is right, i can't move those spots or reset the ball. That is weird because last time i checked it, it was working fine. Must be a tiny mistake in the code i left out without rechecking. Like Homer would say: "DOH!!"

* And the last thing, which isn't a bug or whatsoever, is the ball speed by default. James wrote that the ball is moving a bit too slow and he is right on that part because the ball speed is set to 200 by default but you can change the ball speed whenever you want (if it is part of a game) but when i started to code the OdySim, it was set to 300 instead of 200 but put it at 200 for testing the simulator and i never put back the original ball speed intended. I will put back the ball speed to 300 as before.

So thanks to James, the next version will be better. Oh and he also suggested to have different windows size resolutions, both in 4:3 and 16:9. When you try the F1 button, this adapts the screen to the resolution set on your PC monitor or TV screen as i have shown in a previous post how the OdySim looked like on a big LCD TV screen at 1920x1080 resolution. So this leaves only to code the different windows sizes.

Oh and also, if you check out the OdySim manual, there is the instruction of Odball and Mentis Cohorts but the games aren't in the simulator. That is because i was still waiting for an answer from Robert A. Vinciguerra (aka Rev.Rob) and my email came back with the mention "Mailer-Deamon". So looks like there is no way to contact him, and even more, he sent some Mentis Cohorts games to people who paid a copy of his game in advanced and either they received it complete, half-complete or with missing parts. After which he never logged back on AtariAge and never replied back to anyone so i will put Odball and Mentis Cohorts in the next version of OdySim even if i never had his permission officially.

So i'll be working on the "bugs" in the following days and also start to simulated the accessories so stay tuned folks! =)


--- Sly DC ---

Thursday 22 October 2015

Today...is THE day!

First, i wanted to say sorry if i neglected the OdySim for a couple of days, i just wanted to help out the MESS team with emulating the NEC uPD77xC dedicated game chips series and now most of the information has been analysed, it was time to get back to the OdySim.

So today...is the day that i'm releasing the first version of the OdySim and i think that many of you was waiting for this. This took about 3 years (in spare times/illness/scanning/coding/etc...) to finally arrive to this version, the worst was the menu (front-end) that took more time then the simulator itself. I'm no coding expert, just a beginner in LUA and before that i've learned some HTML and before that...Atari BASIC..yup..BASIC! Now that tells you how old i am...LOL!!

Source of the simulator will be available in the future,and today i'll be releasing the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions (for the 64-bit version, i will need someone to try it out since i'm only using Windows 7 32-bit). Also, please download the OdySim manual (in PDF) to know how the simulator works, especially if you never tried a Magnavox Odyssey. The only major difference between a Mgnavox Odyssey and the OdySim is that the simulator has a self-centering English. I coded this so that it would be easier to play and the best thing is that engineers at Magnavox had this idea back then.

So download the Windows version you need and also the manual. For the simulator, just unpack it in a folder and run the executable..voila! All download files are in the upper-corner of this blog (under Links). So try it out and please send me comments, ideas, a 6-pack of Coca-Cola (lol!)...have fun! =)


--- Sly DC ---

Wednesday 14 October 2015

It's been a long Thanksgiving week-end

My kids had 5 days off from school for thanksgiving and when i have my kids, i barely touch the computer so this means "no update" or whatsoever. Now that they are back with their mother (i already miss them :( ), i'm back to work on the OdySim.

But i did work on it in this long week-end (while the kids were sleeping) as i was trying out which resolution i will take for the 16:9 ratio (widescreen) and i think the 1280x720 will be just fine. But since the original Odyssey is displaying at 4:3, i was thinking so that the OdySim will display like this:


So this would be the 4:3 on a 16:9 display, which does make sense. Because if you take a 4:3 screen to display like a 16:9, everything is looking a bit "squashed", like this:


Or check out pictures on the OdySim on a 48-inch TV post to see how the OdySim looks like. So which display is better, the upper one or this one below ?



--- Sly DC ---

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Don't worry...be happy!

Ah crap...now i have this "tune" in my head...(Don't worry...be happy!). Well just writing that i'm still working on the OdySim manual and it's going slowly but surely. This week-end, i was trying to fix an Bandai TV-Jack 2500 and i have finally fix it 2-3 hours ago, so i will make a longer video of this extremely rare game console in the days to come  and also a simulator but for that, check from time to time my LĂ–VEMESS blog.

In the meantime that i'm finishing the OdySim manual, here's a list of things that i will add in version 0.2 (or future ones) of the OdySim:

* Able to choose 4:3 (normal) or 16:9 (widescreen) ratio screen.
* Add all the rest of my homebrew games.
* Add "Odball" and "Mentis Cohorts".
* Add "Odyssey Evil" and " Spirit Portal" of  ManCaveArcade (in a future version).
* Put all Released games (28 in all) in alphabetic order in the menu.
* Simulating the accessories (game aids).
* And also other "surprises".

As for the accessories (game aids), i will begin with these games: Hockey, Simon Says, Haunted House, Percepts, Soccer, Basketball and Dodgeball. And the games that don't have any accessories to add are: Cat and Mouse, Dogfight, Handball, Shooting Gallery, Shootout, Prehistoric Safari, Ski, Submarine, Table Tennis, Tennis, Volleyball and Futbol (Telematch de Panoramic).


--- Sly DC ---


Friday 2 October 2015

Nintendo and Magnavox (part 2)

Looks like i'm not the first one to discover that Nintendo and Magnavox made a team-up in the beginning of the 70's. Martin Picard did wrote about this for the "international journal of computer game research" in December 2013. Instead of copy-paste the text, it's gonna be way simplier if you go here: http://gamestudies.org/1302/articles/picard and read the whole thing (it's worth it, trust me).

Also,  Brittin Shauers wrote about the connection between Nintendo and Magnavox in an article called "Before there was NES (part 3) on August 20 of this year (2015). Just click HERE to read the article (and all the other parts too if you don't know the history of Nintendo).


--- Sly DC ---