Author | Lightnews

TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · 1d

The MADSEL circuit is very interesting, delivers a great speed increase for pixels. Another interesting aspect is it uses no sprites, objects plotted using glyphs or line fills for the landscape. The satellite/smart bombs are plotted with leading edge pixels and pixels removing the trail.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · 2d

Play testing Atari Missile Command for release shortly on the Acorn Electron +16k of sideways RAM. Using Plus 1 Mini for joystick option with a repo Atari 2600 joystick.

Starting level 4 within the service menu. All options supported including languages.

www.ramtop-retro.uk/Plus-1-Mini....

Playing high level with satellite and smart bombs.

Change colour interrupt and see where joystick firing bases are mapped to on screen.

Require a second coin entered to play a game.

Service menu showing options that can be changed.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · 2d

Repton 3 Redux Final sneak peek coming next year.

Features:- integrated editor, attract/demo mode, high score, collect earth for points, cracked eggs behave like rocks, freeze spirits/monsters enable quick getaway, different screen walls including last level mirror.

Electron version video.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Aug 31

Latest version of BeebEm available. Without such great work as this I don't think I'd even attempt any retro development as such.

BeebEm BBC Micro Emulator @beebem.bsky.social · Aug 30

BeebEm 4.20 is now available. Lots of new features and bug fixes, including:

* FSD format disk images
* Teletext adapter emulation
* Disk and tape image icons
* Tape and serial port emulation
* Full screen mode bug fixes
* Saved state files

And lots more...

Download here: www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/

BeebEm - BBC Micro and Master 128 Emulator

www.mkw.me.uk

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Aug 20

Three ultimate versions of Elite for the Acorn Electron in a single compendium.

Elite has been really well served here by the efforts of Mark Moxon.

Mark Moxon @markmoxon.bsky.social · Aug 20

I'm pleased to announce the #Elite Compendium for the #Acorn #Electron, containing three amazing hacked versions of Elite on one disc.

It includes a brand new version: musical Elite. On the Electron!

Lots of details here: elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_...

#retrogaming #retrocomputing #bbcmicro

The disc menu on the Electron version of the Elite Compendium

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Aug 19

Recognisable and programmable speech on the Acorn Electron?

Quite amazing to behold.

Negative Charge @negativecharge.bsky.social · Aug 19

Some further progress! The ROM version of Speech! is now working on the Acorn Electron. The speed difference, and hence the quality of the sound, is quite dramatic.

Hopefully that's the whole disk and demo programs converted now. I'll package this up properly and post a link on Stardot.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jul 10

Outstanding piece of work that gives Acorn Electron owners the ultimate Elite for their machines. Also with an added speed boost from the original by using sideways ram to run time critical code in.

Mark Moxon @markmoxon.bsky.social · Jul 10

It's done! I have just released the Compendium version of #Elite for the #Acorn #Electron.

This massively enhanced version of the original game contains pretty much every feature of #BBCMicro Elite, but on the Electron. Just add 16K of sideways RAM.

Links in thread.

#retrocomputing #retrogaming

Lave in the Compendium version of Acorn Electron Elite

The Constrictor mission in the Compendium version of Acorn Electron Elite

A Dodo station in the Compendium version of Acorn Electron Elite

A Thargoid in the Compendium version of Acorn Electron Elite

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 25

Practical Wireless Tele-Tennis articles of '74 were reissued as a booklet a few months after. Picked up then, spent the next two years building it as a teenager. Etched my own hand-drawn PCBs with Ferric Chloride which is truly awful stuff. Was a messy contraption in a too small box but it worked.

TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 5

Sound generation is definitely a black art on the Electron!

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 5

That combination could be about right. Didn't go down that route myself as it interferes too much with sound generation as I'm trying to output up to four channels at once. You might just get away with it though in Elite.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 5

Missile Command on the Electron utilises the RTC interrupt and then burns off cycles to reach the city area for a palette change. Not entirely wasted as it uses some of this delay to synthesize three poly-counters, running in constant time, used in POKEY sound.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 3

Some of you may remember him in the funny BT ad from the 80's playing General Custer.

youtu.be/zwaOP710lVY?...

British Telecom - 'It's for you hou - Custers last stand'

YouTube video by ADSchoolUK

youtu.be

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Jun 1

Fascinating insight into the inner workings of a computer game, particularly those where you're left wondering how a great technical effect was achieved.

A must-have feature to have in any development environment of this kind.

0xC0DE @0xc0de.bsky.social · Jun 1

Electroniq WIP. New feature now online: view RAM as pixels in any selected (or automatic) screen mode. It is a great way to see what is going on 'behind the scenes', in a hidden screen buffer for instance. Try it yourself at 0xc0de6502.github.io/electroniq/

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · May 29

Some top tier work that's going to bring out the best possible performance on the Acorn Electron playing Elite.

Mark Moxon @markmoxon.bsky.social · May 27

I am working on speeding up #Elite on the #Acorn #Electron.

It's going well. On the left is the original; on the right is my enhanced version. It's all down to sideways RAM and backporting faster code from the #BBCMicro and #C64 versions.

More details in thread. (1/4)

#retrocomputing #retrogaming

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · May 27

It's a bit more than lift and shift you've got to know what you're doing and why.

I've found your code deep dives to be most informative and picked up a few ideas from them that I'd never get looking at by myself.

Looking forward to seeing more of this Elite project.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · May 27

Electron R3R vertical scroll is in hardware, horizontal scroll in two self-modifying routines run in swr. Speed improvement makes the game quite playable. As many critical routines run here to squeeze the best out of it.

Using same in Missile Command running in MODE 1 that is even more restrictive.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Apr 5

Atari Missile Command for the Acorn Electron + 16k of sideways RAM.

Progress remains good, moving as much as possible out of the main memory map into the SWR memory space to get the fastest speed possible.

No sound at present, going to be a challenge to emulate a POKEY chip on here.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Dec 16

Compared with the BBC and it's many swr boards to cater for it's a doddle. Just run through the available slots to test making sure that if it's less than slot 8 to de-select the basic ROM at slot 12 before selecting the swr.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Dec 16

It took a few days as it was in a friend's computer which didn't help. The board in question was from IFEL and the firmware has since been updated to remove this "feature".

TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Dec 15

Writing Atari Battlezone one recent BBC micro swr board gave me trouble : behaved exactly as it should except writes from within the swr address space to the swr address space failed. The swr test routine places code in the swr to test this behaviour and skip to the next bank to test if it failed.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Nov 24

Fun fact : when Superior Software announced they were re-issuing this the industry said why bother? Everyone who wants one has got one.

They then went and sold 20k+ units.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Nov 24

Fun fact : when Superior Software were testing this they had to borrow my 6502 second processor as they didn't have one themselves.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Nov 22

All the map packs from the original, AWIFS, Life of Repton and Repton Thru' Time are included together on the disc image.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Nov 22

It is when compared to the original version. Only in the last week of testing did I manage to get the horizontal scrolling working correctly, before it suffered from some quite pronounced screen tearing.

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TubeULA @tubeula.bsky.social · Nov 22

Repton 3 Redux.

Running on an Acorn Electron with Plus 1 & GoSDC and using OSSC to show it working fine on hardware instead of an emulator.

stardot.org.uk/forums/viewt...

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