Bill Loguidice's Blog, page 71
February 21, 2018
Pay what you want for the Humble Comics Bundle: Image Expo 2018
Here’s the link. Offer expires 2018-03-07 11:00:00 PST.
Image Comics exposed! To celebrate the Image Expo on February 21 this year, we’ve teamed up with Image Comics for a new bundle. Get awesome titles like Big Hard Sex Criminals: Book One, God Country, I Kill Giants, Spawn Origins Vol. 1-4, and more. Plus, you can also score the Image Expo Sampler, ONLY available from Image Expo 2018… and this bundle!
Pay what you want. All together, these comics would cost over $657. Here at Humble Bundle, you choose the price and increase your contribution to upgrade your bundle! This bundle has a minimum $1 purchase.
Read them anywhere. These comics are available in multiple formats including CBZ, PDF, and ePub, so they work on your computer, e-readers, iPads, cell phones, and a wide array of mobile devices! Instructions and a list of recommended reading programs can be found here.
Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the publisher, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and The Humane Society of the United States via the PayPal Giving Fund. If you like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!
The Humble Comics Bundle: Image Expo 2018
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February 20, 2018
Name your price for a bundle of classics including Torment: Tides of Numenera, Age of Wonders III, Wasteland 2, and more!
Here’s the link. Offer expires 2018-03-06 11:00:00 PST.
A classic never dies. Revitalize your game library with the spirit of classics past! Get titles like Torment: Tides of Numenera, Age of Wonders III, and Wasteland 2 – some direct sequels, some spiritual successors, but all awesome.
Pay what you want. Normally, the total cost for these games is as much as $234. Here at Humble Bundle, though, you choose the price!
On Steam and DRM-free. All of the games in this bundle are available on Steam for Windows, and most for Mac and Linux too. Broken Sword 5 – The Serpent’s Curse, Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure, and Xenonauts are also available DRM-free. Pay $1 or more to access Steam keys. Please check out the full system requirements here prior to purchasing.
Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the developers and, if you’d like, a charity of your choice via the PayPal Giving Fund. If you like the bundle or like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!
The Humble Classics Return Bundle
The post appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
Budget Atari and Capcom arcade cabinets to see release this fall!
As reported by Polygon, Tastemakers is releasing a new Arcade1Up series of 4 foot tall home arcade machines for just $399 each. Set to come out this fall, the only catch is that these 3/4 scale arcade machines have to be self assembled, although Tastemakers is promising that the process is a simple one.
The Centipede headline cabinet also comes with Breakout, Millipede, and Missile Command, and features a trackball, which is good for everything but Breakout, which really needs a spinner. The Asteroids Deluxe headline cabinet also comes with Asteroids, Major Havoc, and Tempest, and features the classic Asteroids-style button configuration, as well as a spinner, which is needed for both Tempest and Major Havoc. The Capcom machine appears to just have Street Fighter 2.
All of these cabinets feature a 17″ LCD screen. While that rules out a true vector display for the Asteroids Deluxe machine, I have to say that that one is the most appealing to me because of the more authentic controls. Of course, the Centipede machine does have a certain appeal, even if I can’t see myself enjoying Breakout with a trackball. Hopefully the Tastemakers custom emulator is up to snuff and the build quality is reasonable considering the amazingly low price.
The post Budget Atari and Capcom arcade cabinets to see release this fall! appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 19, 2018
The Ubisoft Sale is Live – Great PC Games!
The Ubisoft Sale just launched in the Humble Store on Monday, February 19 at 10 a.m. Pacific time! The sale will be live through Monday, February 26 at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
The post The Ubisoft Sale is Live – Great PC Games! appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 16, 2018
Official Atari 2600 Game Journals Available for Purchase!
The Adventure Journal
Officially licensed and designed to look like the original game cartridge, ADVENTURE: The Atari 2600 Game Journal features endpapers with color screenshots of gameplay (including an Easter egg planted by the designer) as well as an insert with instructions from the original game manual. With black-edged pages and sticker artwork showcasing the iconic orange dragon, ADVENTURE: The Atari 2600 Game Journal is a pixilated trip down memory lane.
Asteroids
The Asteroids Journal
Officially licensed and designed to look like the original game cartridge, ASTEROIDS: The Atari 2600 Game Journal features endpapers with color screenshots of gameplay as well as an insert with instructions from the original game manual. With black-edged pages and sticker artwork showcasing the iconic rock-blasting spaceship, ASTEROIDS: The Atari 2600 Game Journal is a pixilated trip down memory lane.
Missile Command
The Missile Command Journal
Officially licensed and designed to look like the original game cartridge, MISSILE COMMAND: The Atari 2600 Game Journal features endpapers with color screenshots of gameplay (including an Easter egg planted by the designer) as well as an insert with instructions from the original game manual. With black-edged pages and sticker artwork showcasing the Cold War-inspired nuclear control room, MISSILE COMMAND: The Atari 2600 Game Journal is a pixilated trip down memory lane.
Example of a blank journal page.
The post Official Atari 2600 Game Journals Available for Purchase! appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
Weighing in on known defect rates for the Commodore 64
Inspired by a discussion on AtariAge, I was curious if there were any defect rate numbers available for the Commodore 64 to see if it indeed was significantly more failure prone than select contemporaries like the Apple II and Atari 8-bit, and how the percentages worked out (not that we’d likely ever get numbers for any of those other systems). As such, I asked the question on a big Commodore 64/128 Facebook group.
As expected, no one has been able to produce any hard numbers (again, likely a difficult, if not impossible, proposition for the vast majority of these companies; as a point of comparison, when we were writing the CoCo book, there weren’t even good sales numbers available). Besides the usual anecdotes about having issue x, y, or z, and never having any issues, etc., Bil Herd, legendary Commodore engineer, was able to provide some color commentary on the topic:
“Production did whatever they had to do to hit the numbers. They didn’t necessarily talk about it and we were not allowed on the production floor when I first got there.
This changed over time, I would like to think I was part of it, as I got to know the head of production (at the local bar no less) and I was adamant that we could lower the failure rates if they let us see what was going on. In one case I recommended protection diodes on the test jig as I think they were blowing out the chip on one of the ports (not even immediately, static discharge can break something later).”
In regards to the common practice of filling the power supplies with epoxy: “That was one thing we were not able to change until the 128 as the supply was procured by Commodore Japan and blessed at the highest levels.”
“C64 reliability was all about the VIC chip and a couple of other custom chips. In the early days even the best ones sparkled (so we changed the Kernal so the unused character cells on the blue screen had the foreground and background characters set to the same color, they still sparkled but it was the same color as the background).
I got there just as they were going to a Beryllium lead frame to help pump the heat out of the die.”
In regards to a comment about making a product purposefully short-lived: “Yes we never would have tried to make something fail or not last as long (as affordable) People get upset when they hear that I would not have added cost to a product if already was projected to last 3-5 years. Quite simply I would not have stayed one of the lead consumer designers if I put extra (unnecessary) cost, especially at the sales numbers of millions. (Think of 5 million dimes).”
In regards to a comment about the “nasty” power supply being the source of most of the reliability problems, randomly cooking parts as they failed, etc.: “The VIC I actually melted the case.”
“Failures take many forms also, for example there were many units that started off violating the DRAM timings and then it got worse with heat. The DRAM contents could get corrupted which may do things like result in a reboot 20 minutes later. Back then if a home computer occasionally reset it wasn’t considered to be all that unusual.”
“The C64 suffered from high ‘infant mortality’, once it got a couple of months old it would probably function like any other piece of technology for the day.”
On the idea that the biggest problem someone saw was blown out SIDs (but who lived in an area with a lot of static electricity in the winter): “The C64 SID design actually violates one of my design rules that I use. My opinion is that whenever there is a large capacitor attached to a chip it should be current limited and possibly diode protected.
The issue is that when power is removed from SID that there is a residual voltage on the cap and now it has more voltage on that pin than the other pins including VCC.
The instantaneous current flow could be quite high and also violates the pin spec of the chip and forward biases stuff, etc.”
And as a follow-on to that last comment and the idea of wouldn’t it be something as simple as a drain resistor to sort that: “Usually a resistor in series, it usually can be so small so as not to add an RC pole in the case of a filter (like SID). I told the guy that tried to redesign the SID (for HMOS and other things) that he should heavily JFET/Diode protect that pin but I rather doubt he did. I don’t think he ever really listened to a SID playing either.”
The post Weighing in on known defect rates for the Commodore 64 appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 15, 2018
The Fighter Sale is now live – great Steam fighting games!
The Fighter Sale just launched in the Humble Store on Thursday, February 15 at 10 a.m. Pacific time! The sale will be live through Thursday, February 22 at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
The post The Fighter Sale is now live – great Steam fighting games! appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 14, 2018
Pay what you want for The Humble Book Bundle: SF & Fantasy by Angry Robot Books
Here’s the link. Offer expires 2018-02-28 11:00:00 PST.
Angry Robot, happy readers. We’ve teamed up with Angry Robot Books for our newest bundle! Jump for joy over titles like Kojiki, The Burned Man: Drake, and An Accident of Stars. Plus, your purchase will support Worldbuilders!
Pay what you want. All together, these ebooks would cost over $139. Here at Humble Bundle, you choose the price and increase your contribution to upgrade your bundle! This bundle has a minimum $1 purchase.
Read them anywhere. These books are available in PDF, ePUB, and MOBI formats, meaning you can read them anywhere at any time. Instructions and a list of recommended reading programs can be found here.
Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the publisher and Worldbuilders via the PayPal Giving Fund. If you like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!
The Humble Book Bundle: SF & Fantasy by Angry Robot Books
The post Pay what you want for The Humble Book Bundle: SF & Fantasy by Angry Robot Books appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 13, 2018
Name your price for The Humble Hunie Sekai Bundle
Here’s the link. Offer expires 2018-02-27 11:00:00 PST.
Love blooms with the cherry blossoms. Let the fairy of love sweep you off your feet with some romantic visual novels! Get KARAKARA and KARAKARA2, HuniePop, Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms, and more from Sekai Project and HuniePot. Many are voiced in Japanese or English, for a little extra fancy with your romancy. (*^‿^*)♡
Pay what you want. Normally, the total cost for these games is as much as $223. Here at Humble Bundle, though, you choose the price!
Redeem on Steam. All of the games in this bundle are available on Steam for Windows, and some for Mac and Linux too. Pay $1 or more to access Steam keys. Please check out the full system requirements here prior to purchasing.
Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the developers, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund via the PayPal Giving Fund. If you like the bundle or like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!
The Humble Hunie Sekai Bundle
The post appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
February 12, 2018
Pay what you want for The Humble Book Bundle: Functional Programming by O’Reilly
Here’s the link. Offer expires 2018-02-26 11:00:00 PST.
More awesome tech ebooks for you. We’ve teamed up with O’Reilly for another bundle full of top-quality books! Get titles like Functional Thinking, Clojure Programming, Learning Scala, and Programming Rust. Plus, your purchase will support Code for America!
Pay what you want. All together, these ebooks would cost over $515. Here at Humble Bundle, you choose the price and increase your contribution to upgrade your bundle! This bundle has a minimum $1 purchase.
Read them anywhere. These books are available in PDF, ePUB, and MOBI formats, meaning you can read them anywhere at any time. Instructions and a list of recommended reading programs can be found here.
Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the creators and Code for America via the PayPal Giving Fund. If you like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!
The Humble Book Bundle: Functional Programming by O’Reilly
The post Pay what you want for The Humble Book Bundle: Functional Programming by O’Reilly appeared first on Armchair Arcade.
