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Understood
@abarthRegistered January 27, 2024Active 6 hours, 9 minutes ago
324 Replies made

With which printer setting do I print the template to get it out in the right size?

  • This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by abarth.

Yes, they desgined the PCBs last year in preparation of the release and populated them with other games in the meantime.

Perhaps the contact person, if he really has the ROM on hand, will release it to Vintex in August 2026. Would be a 30 years anniversary present.

After a lot of struggle and testing I have a quite stable V1.44 version.

Change notes:
– music added!! To all stages, incl. P1 win stage, P2 win stage, lose stage, …
The credits for these great songs go to Tronimal.

Tracklist:

Title Song: Delight

Singleplayer Normal:
Blue Ocean Remix
Darkstone Remix

Singleplayer Hard:
Hideout
Hypergolic Blastoff

Multiplayer:
Left to right: Observing Jupiter
Top to bottomw: Decampment
Hard: Gone Missing
Odd: Terminate

– Tronimal reference in title screen added
– “VUS” changed to “VES” in title screen since I learnt that it is either VUEngine or VES, but not VUS
– Singleplayer win limits increased: Normal: 6->8 and 10->13, Hard: 7->13 and 11->17

Known bugs:
– The music in the second stage of singleplayer normal is cut-off sometimes

Credits also to KR155E and Jorgeche for their UGE-importer for VES.

Thanks to Jorgeche again for helping me with the multiplayer code.
And yes, he told me that multiplayer stages with obstacles are unstable, but I could not resist to leave them where they are. I have tested all four multiplayer stages and the only bug I found was that in the odd stage the winning screen appeared only on player 1´s screen and not on player 2´s. This happened once out of four tests. The other three times the winning screen was shown properly on both screens.

Thank you!
When does the game save?
And is the ghost supposed to still poo when the clean bar is totally empty?

I am also not really optimistic anymore.
The “backlog of orders” is the excuse for several months now.
I am not sure if so many people order from Vintex.

It was heavily debated, but there is a UK offer at the moment:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/116971749938?itmmeta=01KEEZN480ZSGMVNMCDXJX0YNK&hash=item1b3c0f4232:g:CSYAAeSw1bBpOZMl
It could be a bootleg, or a copy, or a self-made rebuilt.

According to my newest mail from them they plan to open orders and shipping from January on (for both Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers).

Another tiny update:
Pong Ultimate V1.41!

Change notes:
– 4th multiplayer stage modified: reduced ball speed, reduced paddle bounciness, adapted disk spawn angle, paddle start positions fixed, fixed a bug where only one invisible obstacle is spawned after the 90 seconds.
– changed the bounce sound of the invisible obstacles in multiplayer stage 1, 2 and 4.

Know bugs:
– In the 4th multiplayer stage in rare cases the disk spawns still in an angle that it bounces endlessly between the small middle walls.

I have also tested the three other multiplayer stages, I have not encountered severe bugs. It works quite well and is quite fun when playing with a friend.
Remember to keep automatic pause function off.

Kinda. I am waiting for Tronimal to complete the spooky song, which can only be done when the audio editor in VUE Studio is finished, which I don´t know when this will be. Besides that I do not plan to add other things, since the story is complete and my coding skills do not allow me to add mindblowing stuff like seen in Test Chamber.

Thank you for sharing this precious information!

New version of Pong Ultimate!
V1.4

Change notes:
– 4th multiplayer stage added! “Odd mode” lets the players control 2 paddles on each side. On has to defend one half of the screen on each side. The paddles have “P1” and “P2” on them (with the writing being vertically mirrored to have a clean appearance during moving). On top of that they are -2 and +2 in z-direction of the screen to have a more visual difference between them. P2 has a slightly larger area to defend, that is why the paddle moves a bit faster than the paddles of P1. This minor offset is to prevent the pong ball from flying endlessly between the middle walls without having the possibility to let it pass outside of the screen.

Known bugs as always: the P1 paddles spawn a bit inside of the middle walls, but they can be removed by moving them up or down respectively.
And keep the automatic pause function off!

Left D-Pad controls the left paddles, right D-Pad controls the right paddles.

Have fun!

  • This reply was modified 7 months, 3 weeks ago by abarth.

Two player mode would be cool for the VB version too 😉

@norty:
I have asked them last week, they told me: “… getting close to the big day. The final bulk of PCBs came last week.”
They start building as soon as they can.

So nothing really new here 🙁 Don´t know if they have the ROMs (Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers) already but I doubt it.

UPDATE with regards to V1.33:
PLEASE DISABLE AUTOMATIC PAUSE FUNCTION FOR BOTH PLAYERS! IF ENABLED (EVEN FOR ONE PLAYER) THERE ARE SEVERE GLITCHES.

Perhaps this is also valid for older versions. When I tried the game alone on two systems I always chose automatic pause function off, so I don´t know for sure. But it is likely. So please set the function to off.

There is a tiny update to Version 1.33:
Change notes:
– ball speed reduced in 3rd multiplayer stage (hard mode)
– confirm sound added to title screen when choosing a stage
– small corrections in 1st and 2nd multiplayer stage where the invisible obstacles were already hitable before their actual appearance
– Chalvo is visiting the 3rd multiplayer stage! But he doesn´t like to be hit by balls, so he disappears when he is touched by the ball. But he then appears again with another face later on. Can you get all four Chalvo faces? (Chalvo stays the same when not being hit in the set time frame).

As always there is a bug. When playing the 3rd multiplayer stage in multiplayer mode for the 2nd player Chalvo sometimes does not disappear after being hit, instead he vanishes only when the ball touches him again (but the ball then passes through without deflection). It does not obstruct the gameplay, but I wanted to mention this.

Since my brain is too small to understand the engine it is like it is.

Quick update:
I changed the FM16W08 FRAM to FM18W08 FRAM on the Fishbone and on the Virtual Picross cartridge.
Sadly it still does not save progress, neither for Fishbone nor for Virtual Picross.

That is great news! Thanks for sharing.

To not lose my knowledge to these save patches I have a summary:

Save patches Jack Bros 1.4, Red Alarm 1.2, Space Squash 1.2, Bound High 1.0, Vertical Force 1.1, Nester´s Funky Bowling 1.0 seem all working fine.
V-Tetris 1.1 only saves in mode a and freezes during erasing the save by pressing L + R + Left D-Pad Down + Right D-Pad Down on the title screen.
Waterworld 1.1: reset highscore does not work, but the highscore saves.
T&E Golf 1.1: on my reprocard L+R buttons are mixed up.
Mario Clash: only the latest 1.3 patch (from Github, 7th of May) works correctly without highscore mixup and so on, and it saves the the last successfull level, so if you have reached level 30 and then play level 20 again during next startup levels up to level 20 are selectable.

  • This reply was modified 9 months ago by abarth.
  • This reply was modified 9 months ago by abarth.
  • This reply was modified 9 months ago by abarth.

A new release!
Pong Ultimate V1.3

Change notes:
– Multiplayer stage left to right and top to bottom have no dwarf boxes anymore, instead after 90 seconds (60 seconds for the top to bottom stage) arbitrarily spawned invisible obstacles are added (two in total per stage, not near the paddles but in the half nearer to the obstacles which are already present from the beginning). A sound is introducing the new obstacles, and in the left to right multiplayer stage a note says “invisible obstacles added!”.
– New multiplayer stage! Now with two controllable paddles. Player 1 defends left and upper left area, player 2 right and lower right.
– Reworked title screen

I have tested all three multipayer stages and they are stable as far as I could test them.
The singleplayer stages still have the arbitrarily spawning post-process effect boxes, since there the effects are working.

I have added a padded ROM with 16Mbit for flashboy users.

Have fun!