"Multi-cart" menu programming project

[Jeff-20]

It's not working for me in VICE. Any specific settings? I've tried soft resets and RUN. The music plays but no visuals.

From the pic, the title line "Multicart-20" is quite nice. Was that done by hand? Graph paper?

[6502dude]

The file is intended to be loaded as a ROM image.

Attach it in Vice as 8K ROM image at $a000 and do a soft reset.

[6502dude]

That's all, what do you think ?

Nice!!!

How about joystick support to scroll up down and fire to select game?

(255 games max right ?)

If menu + music <8Kb then 254 games/utilities is max.
If menu & music >=8Kb then 253 games/utilities is max.

Scott Adams games loader takes 1 away from the 255, leaving 254 for menu <8Kb.

Actual number of games/utilities will be less than 253/254 MAX since games > 8Kb need to use two 8Kb spots.

My idea is to check if exist a Drive from #4 to #30 and if exist automatically load "MULTICART.SEQ" file, if during game selection the user changes filters or set/unset favorite resave the "MULTICART.SEQ" file before start the game.

Neat idea. Where would this be stored to during menu execution?

[Jeff-20]

Thanks. I got it to work. It's beautiful. Simply beautiful.

[KilrPilr]

Great job Anders! I certainly like the updated look and extra features of nbla's menu. More features = more fun. Joystick support is a definitely needed function and I love the idea of loading favourites automatically from disk if present.

Is it not possible to have all pal and ntsc games on the cart? I have both pal and ntsc machines and would love the ability to use the cart fully on both machines. Please, could this be added? Great job so far guys. Keep it up.


Leo

[nbla000]

How about joystick support to scroll up down and fire to select game?

Joystick support is a definitely needed function

Yes another very nice idea, i will support the joystick

For now i've implemented the filter selection (no favorite at the moment)

Where would this be stored to during menu execution?

In ram (any definable address) probably from $1200 (only 3 bytes now for all filters) and 255 or 255/8 bytes (i need to check) for favorite.

[6502dude]

Where would this be stored to during menu execution?

In ram (any definable address) probably from $1200 (only 3 bytes now for all filters) and 255 or 255/8 bytes (i need to check) for favorite.

I did a quick test with $1200 to $1240. This area is not safe to store data as some of the games seem to be using this area to write stuff to.

[KilrPilr]

Is it not possible to have all pal and ntsc games on the cart? I have both pal and ntsc machines and would love the ability to use the cart fully on both machines. Please, could this be added?

[6502dude]

I had a quick look at the MultiCart Master List.xls

This is a nice piece of work.

BTW, for Voodoo Castle under "Have Rom" column the field is "Yex", rather than "Yes"

I think there is room for both PAL & NTSC images, but will need to confirm.

[KilrPilr]

I had a quick look at the MultiCart Master List.xls

This is a nice piece of work.

You will have to thank Leif for that. He created it and i added to it.

BTW, for Voodoo Castle under "Have Rom" column the field is "Yex", rather than "Yes"

noted!

I think there is room for both PAL & NTSC images, but will need to confirm.

Please do, I would really like to see them all on there. Unless there is reason why you think they should be on seperate carts? If you use anders/nbla's menu system you could add pal and ntsc to the filter section so the user can filter out either to suit their needs.

[carlsson]

From the pic, the title line "Multicart-20" is quite nice. Was that done by hand? Graph paper?

It is Monotype Corsiva, "drawn" in Photoshop. Then I transferred it pixel by pixel to a text editor, converted it into 8x8 blocks and added the character data. So yes, quite a bit of hand work. I remember Marko Mäkelä wrote some tool to convert logotypes in PPM format to data when we did Veni Vidi VIC! back in 1996, but it would take me just as long to find that tool. In particular since my version of Photoshop doesn't handle PPM, PGM, PBM files.

[carlsson]

By the way nbla000: nice work! As you probably figure out, I have a lot of other commitments, so I didn't have too much time for improvements myself, but with open sources this really should be a community work.

Just let's hope that nobody from outside goes and "steals" the project and starts to manufacture carts to sell on eBay - probably with credits removed - before the project is officially complete. One never knows who is lurking.

[nbla000]

Just let's hope that nobody from outside goes and "steals" the project and starts to manufacture carts to sell on eBay - probably with credits removed - before the project is officially complete. One never knows who is lurking.

I fully agree! in any case it's relatively easy to disassemble the ASM code just to change credits so we can only hope in the people honesty and to the fact that the Vic-20 is not so popular like the C64 so no much interest in a large scale production.

Is it not possible to have all pal and ntsc games on the cart?

Looking your works in PAL/NTSC sorting i must to say that a lot of games declared as NTSC only, works in PAL too using arrows or joystick in the title screen to center them.
I think that there are at most 20/30 carts that works in NTSC only and no any cartridge that works in PAL only, i've fixed a lot of NTSC only cartridge to works in PAL and i think that 6502dude may easly add them.
Another solution may be to use just one rom (The original NTSC version) and modify just few bytes by menu. The problem is that the cart image is moved in $A000 ram but the ram is setted as read only to avoid problem with some cartridges, but since all my fixes works in ram too if the read only status of the ram may be setted by software this solution it's practicable.

I did a quick test with $1200 to $1240. This area is not safe to store data as some of the games seem to be using this area to write stuff to.

Ok my menu requests are:
255 bytes to store lobyte filtered roms
255 bytes to store hibyte filtered roms
255 bytes to store filtered rom nr for various operations.

Ram to read and save from/to disk:
32 bytes to store favorite status ( 256/8 ) i'm not lazy!!!
2 bytes to store filters status
1 bytes to store music on/off or may be off/music1/music2/musicN

since bytes from $1800 are used for custum char i may use ram from $1300 to $15ff and from $340 to $362 any problem ?

MultiCart Master List.xls

I need a volunteer that recheck the PAL/NTSC flags and set new filters flag, so for each cart i need this information and in this order:
0 NTSC
1 PAL
2 Shot em up
3 Platforms
4 Arcade
5 Adventures
6 Educational
7 Tools

I think that flag 0/1/5/6/7 are absolutely necessary the others may be changed, for example MAZE instead of Shot em up or others, another flag may be Programs/Carts to distinguish original carts from my PRG2Cart conversion if 6502dude add these too.
If 8 filters are not adequate a may add other 8 (total 16) by add another byte * 255 in ROM (170 at the moment) and rewriting some routines.

[idrougge]

Re: PAL and NTSC:
I don't know how much common cartridge games tend to fiddle with the video registers, but if they don't, wouldn't it be possible to simply adjust the registers in the menu to set the screen up correctly?

[carlsson]

Once the cartridge image is switched in, it can position screen as it wants. It would be possible to fill the multicart with patched cartridge images, that for most part work with both PAL and NTSC by simply padding out the routine that repositions screen to default position (which is the most common scenario). It would however mean that the multicart does not contain actual ROM dumps, but slightly tampered ones. From a copyright point of view, I suppose it doesn't matter, and collectors won't care either.