July 2010 Blog Posts

In our previous post in this series, we went over the environment within which our 2600 game must live.  It is a harsh, barren environment by today’s standards, which makes this all the more bitchin’.  Anyway, let’s take a quick look at what we’ve covered: Our game will be running through a 1.19Mhz 6507 CPU.  This CPU can direct commands to a custom Atari chip – the Television Interface Adapter (TIA) – which we use for updating the display, receiving collision notifications, and initiating audio.  The TIA, indeed the entire system, is clocked so that it is in sync...

On my Dice.com jobs feed today.  I didn’t realize there’s more than one: ~ZagNut congo,cognos,dice.com,wtf

Greetings. Now that we have an IDE set up for creating our 2600 game, we need to know what we’re actually having to program.  Here’s a breakdown of (what I’ve garnered is) the core of the Atari 2600 architecture: We have a game cartridge [A], our program ROM.  We have [B], a MOS 6532 RAM / IO/ Timer (RIOT) chip.  [C] is a MOS 6507 microprocessor, practically identical to the 6502 of fame.  Last we have [D], a custom Television Integrated Adapter (TIA) chip designed specifically for the machine. The links above will give...

I had at one point been farting around with algorithms to "solve" efficiently a problem where, given a dartboard with R regions of values V0, V1, ... VR, find the set of regions with the greatest minimum sum you cannot get with N darts.  This is basically the Postage Stamp problem (see also the Coin and Knapsack problems). One of the solutions I was working on used some Linq.  A central component to the solution was to find that least sum.  So I used Linq to find all “throwable” sums (say set ST), then compare that...

Greetings… I have always had an urge to test my programming patience against the Atari 2600, but to start, always lacked the game idea.  I have a two year old and 6 month old, and recently in my lack of sleep, had a revelation for the lamest game ever.  I have since not been able to stop my attempt to realize this game. This series will be for aspiring Atari 2600 programmers.  I know there are many, many of you out there.  Perhaps seeking fame, perhaps fortune.  Either one won’t be found in this endeavor.  IT IS THERE...