January 2011 Blog Posts

The last post promised a discussion of collision detection.  Well, actually the last Atari-based post was regarding a portable Windows solution for 2600 development.  The Atari-centric post before that was a script for setting up a Linux-based 2600 development environment.  But before that, I'd promised collision detection, and now, here 'tis... Collisions on the 2600 are extremely simple to conceptualize as well as handle.  A collision occurs when one object is drawn over another.  More specifically, when two objects have bits enabled on the same "pixel", you have a collision.  This distinction is important to make, actually, as two...

Greetings. So, I use PortableApps on an external hard drive formatted with TrueCrypt.  It’s a tasty, secure setup.  As with any of my computers, I try to do a re-install maybe 2 – 3 times a year to keep things fresh-n-tasty.  Whenever I do this with this external drive, I inevitably go through an initial PortableApps frenzy, installing / creating a bunch of apps on my menu I end up never using.  This time, however, there is an exception… Ladies and gentlemen, I present: the Portable Atari Programming System (with Machine Emulator and Archived References) (md5).  Or if...