Streemerz bundle

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lidnariq
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by lidnariq »

It's tiny enough it could be fit into almost any corner of the final ROM... I admit that only working with 2KB of main RAM isn't much, but it's enough for simple tests, and ISTR there's a build of TapeDump that fits.
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infiniteneslives
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by infiniteneslives »

thefox wrote: It's not worth it putting 32KB WRAM on the cart just for this, but even with just 2KB available (+CHR-RAM) it would be a nice toy.
Well this would really be more of an advanced user feature. I figured the extra ram would be an option or soldered in by the user if they wanted more than 32kb to play around with. The cable is really more of the barrier here, although i do have a good supply of nes cables.

It is neat to think about the cart supporting development of contest entrees released on future revisions, but admittedly not very likely...
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tepples
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

TapeDump is something I can test with what I have. I'll push out another beta with TapeDump (NTSC) in the toys section as soon as I get a build of Streemerz with a quit command. PAL users will have to record at 40966 Hz or 89179 Hz instead of 44100 Hz or 96000 Hz.
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by lidnariq »

tepples wrote:PAL users will have to record at 40966 Hz or 89179 Hz instead of 44100 Hz or 96000 Hz.
Is this because there isn't a PAL build, or because the build doesn't autoswitch?
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

lidnariq wrote:
tepples wrote:PAL users will have to record at 40966 Hz or 89179 Hz instead of 44100 Hz or 96000 Hz.
Is this because there isn't a PAL build, or because the build doesn't autoswitch?
It doesn't autoswitch. There are separate NTSC and PAL builds.
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by thefox »

The nice thing about the bootloader is that it's completely generic, it could be used for a lot of nice things such as cart dumping, playing NSFs etc. Because most of the time it's connected to a PC, the 2KB RAM limitation is not a huge deal for applications specifically built for it because there's practically infinite amount of memory (albeit slow because of the serial bus) available on the PC side.

But there's nothing new here of course.
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by thefox »

tepples wrote:as soon as I get a build of Streemerz with a quit command.
It may take a while, because I'm working on couple of other (small) improvements at the same time.
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

thefox wrote:I'm working on couple of other (small) improvements at the same time.
What might those be?
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by thefox »

tepples wrote:
thefox wrote:I'm working on couple of other (small) improvements at the same time.
What might those be?
Well, there's the Y scroll adjustment (viewtopic.php?p=101690#p101690) that I may or may not throw in there. It would also be nice to move the text box downwards (by uploading it to the currently visible nametable area, instead of using sprite 0 hit for adjusting scroll after it), but that's a lot more work so I don't know if I'll do it. Also I'm adding buffering for button events, so screen control during screen transitions should feel a little bit better (in v01 controller is not read when a new screen is being loaded, so it can miss a release-and-press sequence).

I don't want to release new versions haphazardly to avoid having a million+1 different versions floating around.
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

At 7 PM US Eastern Time (midnight UTC), hubs of #nesdev was the first to correctly identify two games with Zero Wing references.

And because it might be a while before Streemerz gets a quit button, I'll post the third preview build with these changes:
  • TapeDump added to Toys
  • I Wanna Flip the Sky updated to clear OAM
  • NES15 turns off rendering while updating VRAM, fixing graphical corruption after solving a board
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by infiniteneslives »

Sorry for being slow to chime in. Things are looking pretty solid with the ROM tepples. I didn't notice anything wrong running on my boards with this most recent build. One note: I'm guessing you're aware, but the image for Tapedump matches Russian Roulette. Starting to think that is more of the generic image than something that belongs to Russian Roulette ;).

thefox, any word on when you're expecting the next/final release? Am I correct in saying this is the final item to check off saying the ROM is final/complete? No rush, just trying to see what you're thinking/planning. Even as is it's still pretty complete IMO.

Some updates on my end: Jim's Cool has gotten back on the saddle debugging his CIC now that I got some parts in his hands showing the issues I found. He's had some success in the last couple days, 'broke' parts now work but aren't as stable as they should be. Issues like it not appreciating (rapid) power cycling and such. Sounds like he'll have something ready for us on this front fairly soon. The other thing is I don't need to have the CIC solution in hand before starting assembly of the PCBs. Really I could start right now with soldering all the surface mount components since those aren't going to change at this point.

I went ahead and ordered all the parts to whip up 50 of these last week. I've got everything in hand, but the EPROMs, they should be here this week.

The other items needed are cases and labels. If someone's interested in drawing up a label that'd be great. I think I know someone who can print the labels for me. We'll be getting the cases from retrozone.

Any other boxes we still need to check to wrap this thing up? I think the original goal was to announce the full details of release and things be in production by the end of the year. Looks like we're not too far off from that goal, just got to make sure we keep the ball rolling.
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by thefox »

infiniteneslives wrote:thefox, any word on when you're expecting the next/final release? Am I correct in saying this is the final item to check off saying the ROM is final/complete? No rush, just trying to see what you're thinking/planning. Even as is it's still pretty complete IMO.
The ROM is ready, but I don't have it here. I'm not yet sure when I'll be going back to Tampere where I have the files, but in the beginning of January at the latest.
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

infiniteneslives wrote:the image for Tapedump matches Russian Roulette. Starting to think that is more of the generic image than something that belongs to Russian Roulette ;).
You guessed right. If you download the Action 53 builder, that's the image for "no screenshot assigned". These two activities don't have any graphics to speak of: Russian Roulette is text-based (for now), and TapeDump becomes corrupt (by design) during and after pak-swap.
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Default screenshot (tilesets/screenshots/default.png) from Action 53 0.03
Default screenshot (tilesets/screenshots/default.png) from Action 53 0.03
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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by infiniteneslives »

tepples wrote:and TapeDump becomes corrupt (by design) during and after pak-swap.
My only thought was to maybe shrink down the transformer dude or have a picture of a cassette tape or something of the likes. Def not a need though, just a thought. Or a revolver for russian roulette?

Well looks like we're in good shape then. Jim's cool seems to have fixed the bug in his CIC. He's cleaning some things up and testing the SNES portion before releasing anything. But this is no longer a stopping block for release :)

So not much else left holding us back now. With the other projects I have going on, I should be able to start production before the end of January. With that, how does a FINAL rom and art work due date of Jan 30th sound? Assuming we have some sort of art and I can get cases and labels in hand early Feburary I should be able to start shipping carts by the end of Feburary.

Something else, that's yet to be determined. What do we want to charge? Here is the projected earnings I had way back that still look proper:
Assuming we sold all 50, after covering expenses prizes we'd have:
@$20 ~$175 earned
@$30 ~$675 earned
@$40 ~$1175 earned
+ cost of shipping ~$5.50 for priority mail in the US.

My thought is $30, which is on par for other produced homebrews. And it'd cover a little more than needed for prizes of the next compo.

Does anyone have any input on how to handle the release and sales? Do we want to pre-sell so that anxious people can assure they'll get some of the first batch? Or do we want to have a free-for-all frenzy on an announced date? The presale would be helpful for the pocket book and helping to determine total need but is not required by any means. If we did do a pre-sale I would want to wait for it to start until I had everything in hand and have made up atleast the first couple carts. That way people can see exactly what they're buying and there's no doubt about whether they will actually materialize.

Where/how do we want to sell them? I can sell them on my site if people please perhaps a 'hidden' page linked to from here to start? If someone else wants to handle the sales and everything that's more than okay with me. I just need cash in hand for my expenses before I ship anything out the door. I could also ship directly to buyers or ship a box full to whoever is handling customer sales if it's not me.

Any other thoughts or items I've missed?

Oh yeah, have we decided on an official title??? Do we want to just call it "Action 20 featuring Streemerz" I know a few people I could ask to try their hand at artwork for the label. But it would be nice to be able to provide a title and some input on what we'd like to see on the label. My thoughts are something that's a spin off of the action 52 label featuring some of the top games. Making sure to have something about the compo and nesdev/NA on there.

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Re: Streemerz bundle

Post by tepples »

The current title screen says "STREEMERZ: Action 53 Function 16 Volume One". Now let me break this down:

"STREEMERZ": The game headlining the collection.
"Function 16": For two reasons. One is a shout-out to 100-in-1 Contra Function 16, the first pirate multicart to be emulated. The other is that I don't really want to count the "toys" as games.
"Action 53 ... Volume 1": Provided the next competitions have enough entries, I see doing three more half megabyte volumes like this until we have enough to fill a 2 MB cart, and then releasing the final collection as Action 53.
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