Mini XY asteroids

The only real reason to want closeups of the design would be to copy it in some way... and this has since been proven. Like you said, Scott's designs are simplistic, and looking at original Atari schematics would be more helpful for pretty much any other need.


Nobody disagrees that he wanted to reverse engineer the design. We agree that this is the only reason someone would want that info. In fact, that much is so obvious, there's nobody to 'catch' doing anything here. That was apparent when he made his post.

My point is that you're assuming his intentions are/were nefarious in some way. And you had no way of knowing that, both then, and now.

Nothing has been 'proven since'. Yes, he wanted to copy it. So what? I'm sure you've made copies of other peoples' work, to play around with them, in order to understand and create the many great freeplay mods that you've done, which I use and enjoy. That's how we learn a lot of stuff here.

Knowing what we've seen from this person, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that he just wanted to play with the thing, understand how it works, learn a few things, and maybe try to integrate it into his design. Purely for fun, and the technical enjoyment and curiosity of it. Nobody besides him had any way of knowing what his intentions were beyond that. It's only if he's going to try to do something commercial with it without Scott's permission that it would become a problem, and there was/is no evidence of that.

And as long as he's doing this in the comfort of his own home and bench, is there anything wrong with that? Should he be accused of doing something wrong?



It was actually the opposite. It was a fight reflex from being caught. If he really was doing nothing, and someone accused him of it, then he could have given an honest reason, rather than flipping out and lying about why he needed it.


That's your perspective of the situation. One could just as easily say that it was the fight response for already having been attacked. He didn't throw the first punch. And I get (as I'm sure you can as well) that there's nothing more annoying than being accused of doing something wrong, when that isn't the case.


Both sides escalated things here. It happens. Reach out and give the guy an olive branch, via PM.
 
Nothing has been 'proven since'. Yes, he wanted to copy it. So what?
I think you're giving him way too much credit. He's talking about selling the FPGA board:
I have a few extra boards, but only put together one at this time. I'd sell some of them if there was interest.

And he wants to get the Braze code running on the FPGA board and/or duplicate it:
He wanted to get the Braze code to work on his Asteroids Deluxe FPGA.
I left the facebook group hours before I even read that thread, when I was asked to send my Multi to him
He confirmed what we all wondered. He said he wants to duplicate it. "Hell yes" he said.

But you think he's just trying to get the Braze code running for his own enjoyment? From my understanding, he's not even the one doing the VHDL or vector board. I'm assuming it's this James guy: http://forum.gadgetfactory.net/index.php?/topic/2709-fpga-vector-games/ , who based the VHDL off MikeJ's from fpgaarcade.com . The bottom of the vector board says (c) James Sweet. On that note... where's the credit to those guys from him? 13 pages (okay, 10 before the meltdown) and it looks like he's taking all the credit.

DogP
 
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I think you're giving him way too much credit.
...
But you think he's just trying to get the Braze code running for his own enjoyment?


All I'm saying is neither you nor I know.

For me personally, yes, I'd give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and get all of the facts first. Else if you do happen to be wrong, you risk doing something really shitty, and alienating another member of the community. Maybe you're ok making that leap with the info that is available. I am not.



bottom of the vector board says (c) James Sweet. On that note... where's the credit to those guys from him? 13 pages (okay, 10 before the meltdown) and it looks like he's taking all the credit.
DogP


Who's taking all the credit? I don't see him saying he created everything from scratch, or otherwise being dishonest about that. Just because he isn't mentioning every other person whose work might be incorporated into his, doesn't automatically mean he's being dishonest.

Do you mention the names of the every person who wrote the original code you modified for every one of your freeplay mods, or the tools you used to do the mods?

It's not uncommon for people to use other parts of people stuff in their stuff. The question is whether or not it's being done above board. (And IMO that only matters if you're looking to sell or distribute anything.)



Here's what I do know:

What I do know is that even though he's apparently been around since the RGVAC days, he's new to this community.

He also is new to the existence of Braze's work.

He also has attempted to reach out to Braze, and got no answer (like everyone else who has tried to contact Scott lately). So maybe he's under the (incorrect) impression that it's a dead project, and he's looking to revive/continue it, the way many other folks in this community have done with other games/boards/code, etc.

Maybe he's simply uninformed about the fact that Scott's work isn't dead the way other projects are (and is more just in hibernation, if anything), and that a lot of people would not be ok with remixing and reselling it.

Maybe he just wants to mess around with it, and if he was able to come up with something useful, he'd approach Scott to work out something above board. (You don't know.)

He got a LOT of feedback from people expressing a lot of interest in the multi Ast/AD/LL kit, and was given the impression that the original creator was not immediately interested in making more of them.

Bottom line, purely looking at the numbers, it is far more likely that he's either working on something in good faith, with legitimate long-term intentions (or perhaps only for personal/educational/private use), OR he's just misinformed about a few basic facts about the community and Scott's work, rather than being some intentionally nefarious asshole looking to blatantly steal someone else's stuff and resell it for profit. (Which honestly would just be really stupid, as there's no way to do it and not very obviously and publicly be stealing). He's obviously a smart guy, and IMO too smart to do something so obviously dumb.

So yeah. I could absolutely be 100% wrong. But the fact is I don't know, and I'm giving him credit until I have facts to the contrary that go beyond speculation.
 
My perspective: The guy decided to pick up his toys, cuss out a select few and go home. He was being challenged by a few people and the guy acted like a kid would act. If a few guys giving him a hard time on a forum was enough for him to completely write off the community so quickly... I'd hate to see how he handles himself in the real world.

My god man... ignore those who annoy and move on. It's not as if the vast community came down on him like a ton of bricks. A few gave him a little heat and the guy folded like a cheap patio chair. Yes... it's unfortunate. He seemed like a nice enough guy... and evidently he knows a thing or two about this stuff.

Just an outside observation...
 
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For me personally, yes, I'd give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and get all of the facts first.
Fair enough... I guess we just disagree there.

Who's taking all the credit? I don't see him saying he created everything from scratch, or otherwise being dishonest about that. Just because he isn't mentioning every other person whose work might be incorporated into his, doesn't automatically mean he's being dishonest.
I think the fact that he's taking any credit for the FPGA/vector board is being dishonest. Does any of this (quoted from james1095: http://forum.gadgetfactory.net/index.php?/topic/2709-fpga-vector-games/ ) sound familiar?:
Asteroids Deluxe - Fully working, no high score save yet but that was never implemented by MikeJ who originally released this on fpgaarcade.com

Asteroids - Works but several of the sounds are missing which really detracts from the game. If someone wants to work on modeling the missing sound circuits that would be cool.

Lunar Lander - This is not working at all yet and I'm banging my head against the wall trying to determine why.
It can run at this time, Asteroids (Without some sounds) and Asteroids Deluxe. The FPGA is either setup for Asteroids hardware or for Asteroids Deluxe hardware with VHDL code not both at the same time, then the rom for the game that the hardware is setup for is placed in an Eeprom on the daughter board and plugged in. The daughter board contains this Eeprom for code, A serial Eeprom for high score saves (not implimented at this time) a DAC
Plus the fact that he doesn't know VHDL, and was asking for help here: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=401147 , tells me that very little, if any, of the FPGA side is his original work. And he's saying he has parts and boards to sell some vector boards... at least he could mention that "oh, BTW, the vector boards I'm offering to sell were actually made by this other guy, James Sweet." Instead he says:
Here are some pictures so you can get a better idea of what is going on. The board on the right is the Cyclone II FPGA board (You can get them on ebay for under $20) the board on the left is what I call the Vector Game PCB.
According to the silkscreen, James Sweet calls it the FPGA Vector Arcade.

I'd say those omissions were dishonest... misleading at best.

Do you mention the names of the every person who wrote the original code you modified for every one of your freeplay mods, or the tools you used to do the mods?
I try to give credit where it's due... for example at the bottom of: http://projectvb.com/nss/snes_adapter.htm , you'll see:
Thanks to:
Martin Korth (nocash) for reverse engineering the Instruction ROM, removing the need for the security PROM... plus general SNES/NSS related information.
Maximilian Rehkopf (ikari_01) for creating the SuperCIC CIC clone.
MAME Team
and in regards to the Double Punch Out mod I did to my board:
thanks to 2600 for the kit, and the help getting it everything set up.
Pretty much every ROM hack I've done has been simply using MAME, CPU manuals/datasheets, and schematics.

DogP
 
I think it would be cool to build a 25" B&W vector monitor and put it in a cabinet that is 95" tall (Almost 8 ft) Everything on the cab would be 32% bigger than the std upright cab - coin door, buttons, marquee, bezel - it would even use special, larger tokens. The purpose of this size difference would give the illusion of being at 10 yr old height again. I think that would be something. Put it in a special like-sized room with a couple of other like sized games and that really would be something.
 
I think it would be cool to build a 25" B&W vector monitor and put it in a cabinet that is 95" tall (Almost 8 ft) Everything on the cab would be 32% bigger than the std upright cab - coin door, buttons, marquee, bezel - it would even use special, larger tokens. The purpose of this size difference would give the illusion of being at 10 yr old height again. I think that would be something. Put it in a special like-sized room with a couple of other like sized games and that really would be something.

You want to be @ 10yr old height again?

Misery01.jpg
 
I think it would be cool to build a 25" B&W vector monitor and put it in a cabinet that is 95" tall (Almost 8 ft) Everything on the cab would be 32% bigger than the std upright cab - coin door, buttons, marquee, bezel - it would even use special, larger tokens. The purpose of this size difference would give the illusion of being at 10 yr old height again. I think that would be something. Put it in a special like-sized room with a couple of other like sized games and that really would be something.


LOL.... If you build this, can you send me some pictures of it so I can copy it? OOH I mean fix the one I have;)
 
I think it would be cool to build a 25" B&W vector monitor and put it in a cabinet that is 95" tall (Almost 8 ft) Everything on the cab would be 32% bigger than the std upright cab - coin door, buttons, marquee, bezel - it would even use special, larger tokens. The purpose of this size difference would give the illusion of being at 10 yr old height again. I think that would be something. Put it in a special like-sized room with a couple of other like sized games and that really would be something.


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That IS what I AM building! Well, not to play Asteroids but to be my test bench monitor. Although I did get a 15" G05, and using it would be more real-world. So maybe I will make the Mac into a console.

Maybe you need to find an old eMac? :)

emacSide_2.jpg


What you said did make me think of a different way to do it. Make the Mac part just the monitor and put the FPGA board and controls on the keyboard. Could have different "keyboards" to swap in or external harness for real boards. Painting the Mac black and putting side art on it could be fun though...
 
Maybe you need to find an old eMac? :)

Most if not all of the color Macs used Sony tubes, which made for a nice image but is hard to convert to a vector display because of the dynamic focusing part of the yoke. I have a 9" TV I am hoping to use for color so I can stop using a real 6100.

What you said did make me think of a different way to do it. Make the Mac part just the monitor and put the FPGA board and controls on the keyboard. Could have different "keyboards" to swap in or external harness for real boards.

Having the game logic in the keyboard is a great idea!

Painting the Mac black and putting side art on it could be fun though...


bhfront-178_0.jpg
 
Most if not all of the color Macs used Sony tubes, which made for a nice image but is hard to convert to a vector display because of the dynamic focusing part of the yoke. I have a 9" TV I am hoping to use for color so I can stop using a real 6100.

I was actually suggesting you stick your 15" GO5 in the eMac case. But a typical looking small TV could look nice on a workbench.
 
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