News stories for Episode 217, June 19, 2021 show

News stories for Episode 217, June 19, 2021 show:

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Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

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1) Glen Hewlett (of PacMan transcode fame, amongst other things) put up a video demonstrating smooth, non-flickering sprite animations (on top of a moving starfield no less) that does NOT require double buffering at all. This saves 32K of RAM by not needing a second screen, and is based simply on keeping track of where the scanline is, and not drawing at the active scanline location. It also features a looping background sound sample. He described the technique on an earlier blog post from this past November:

 https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2020/11/22/williams-hardware-scanline-interrupt-and-a-new-way-to-update-sprites-on-the-coco3/

Video/audio demo (on real hardware):

 https://youtu.be/vH-dA7k3RCo

Source code and disk image download here:

 https://github.com/nowhereman999/CoCo-3-Scan-Line-Demo/tree/main

2) Jim Brain @ Retro Innovations has the FlashPak now for sale in his store (in a variety of methods from raw parts you put together yourself up to fully assembled with it's own case). This is 512K Flash ROM pack that features the MMU style bank switching hardware used by the Robocop and Predator cartridges (so that you can make a program >32K), and is flashable from the Coco itself, with no modern computer required. It works on the Dragon and Coco lines of computers. Announcement on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159278971067641/

Github with sample sourcecode, etc.:

 https://github.com/go4retro/flashpak

Store link to view the product and buy it (prices range from $3.00 USD for the circuit board only up to $40.00 USD fully assembled with case):

 https://store.go4retro.com/tandy/flashpak-512kb-coco-dragon-flash-cartridge/

3) Canadian Retro Things (Ken) put up a video showing his first usage and installation of NitrOS-9/EOU (We have now linked to this from the main EOU site as well):

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFl1FwN7Rg

4) Robert Sieg did his first assembly language program test on the Alice 32, using it's more advanced text modes:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/3968292606630865/

5) Pedro (Rocky Hill on YouTube) put up a video showing him combining two projects into one: Putting a Coco 2 display (using RGB2HDMI combined with an HDMI to VGA converter) onto his iMac G3 DV screen:

 https://youtu.be/9cu0CFqIWnc

He also did a follow up video showing his using Aaron's RGB2HDMI solution on his Coco 1, which cleaned up a lot of the noise he saw when using this solution on the Coco 2. Now he has to figure out what is different between them that causes the noise on the Coco 2...

 https://youtu.be/vix40zV71jA

And, lo and behold, late Friday night, he posted a video on that as well:

 https://youtu.be/JUtvEzaimNo

MC-10

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1)

Dragon 32/64

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1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Boat & Aaron have released the next episode of The Coco Show, spotlighting the Missile Command clone, Polaris:

 https://youtu.be/34yElHYa5ZA

I should note that they are doing the live pre-record of the next episode, which is Color Baseball, on their Twitch channel tomorrow. They are pre-recording 3 shows that day, for you multi-platform retro fans (times are approximate): Sinclair Spectrum game "Heavy on the Magick" at 3:00 pm EST Atari 8 bit game "Dropzone" at 3:30 pm EST Coco game "Color Baseball" at 4:00 pm EST Ask the Amigos (their monthly "Ask me anything" segment) at 4:30 pm EST

 https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming

2) Jim Gerrie released Frogs, a port of the game by People's Computer Company magazine originally written by Mac Oglesby from way back in December of 1974! Its not Frogger. It seems to be a puzzle game of sorts?

 https://youtu.be/TEZhle056yM

3) Cuthbert Dragon has put up more real hardware gameplay videos of the Dragon in action. Ones to highlight this week: Shaolin Master Plus - we have shown this before, but unlike the previous video, Cuthbert knows how to play it. It now appears to be kind of a cross between the Karate Champ and Kung-Fu Master games from the arcade:

 https://youtu.be/3AX5_5B-O3U

And a really cool RPG / adventure game hybrid called Tangle Wood, which I don't think that we have seen before. From what I can tell, you wander through an outside map (like in Ultima style games, but you appear to be start as a kangaroo (? - but you can apparently change?), but then you can go inside some things where it turns into kind of a platformer. But, while you are outside, you can also type in some text adventure style commands as well. Really interesting hybrid style game:

 https://youtu.be/44KEXFr2f7M

4) Richard Kelly highlights another Coco 1/2 game from issue #110 of the old T&D Software magazine, called Mazey. It includes some screenshots in the comments, and a good description of game (which I believe is an original game). I have never tried it; anyone else? He put it up for download in the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/permalink/10159291496662641/

5) RetroMantra on YouTube did a comparison video of various versions of Zaxxon, including the Coco and Dragon (with the Dragon's PAL colorset), amongst many others:

 https://youtu.be/0Tab9QIk8VA