Hack Request on Dodge `Em

[RJP1138]

I am a new member to AtariAge forums, and this is my first post here. I am a lifelong fan of Atari, and I play it everyday.

 

My latest hobby is creating artwork for MESS to enhance the appearance, and to an extent the gameplay, of my favorite titles, but that is not what this post is really about. In doing artwork for Dodge `Em, and maybe this is more a consequence of the emulation inaccuracies as opposed to the game code but I wouldn't know where to begin to explore that, I noticed that the start of a car's motion through a gap doesn't really match the start of the gap on the screen. It shortcuts it by almost half a car length. I can tell this by using the pause (P) and advance frame (Shift+P while paused) features of the emulator. Likewise the car detects collision with the wall at the other side of the gap before the car actually reaches it. This is problematic at high speed and towards the center of the screen where there is almost no margin to speak of in order to pre-empt the true gap as opposed to the visual one onscreen. With the masking and hay bale graphics in my bezel I can somewhat compensate for that, but if it really is a coding bug, I would love to see it squashed by one of the talented members of this forum.

 

A big hello to V-Gamester Gary from your "best customer". If you are reading this Gary, you know I have a lot to show you this at the Super Flea this weekend. Cheers! To everyone else, thanks for reading, and I hope my hobby is not off-putting to any purists out there.

[Vgamester]

Hey... I made it here... thank you for your intrest in my store...

 

hope to see ya soon...

[Nukey Shay]

It's not an emulation bug...the game does not use playfield collisions. Sprite-to-sprite collisions ARE used, however. Passing though the wall edges was necessary since the game allows you to move between 2 lanes at a time.

 

If you altered the speed that the sprites move horizontally when doing so, possible collisions with the opposing car(s) would no longer be true to the original system. i.e. it would be easier to avoid colliding with the opponent.

 

-or-

 

The vertical speed of objects would be slower to allow the sharper turn though the existing gap - which would lead to an overall easier game (and again, not true to the original system).

 

 

But anyway...

You could do it the easy way by editing the playfield data (near the end of the rom) so that the gap is larger in the outer lanes. Visual appearance might be a little sloppier, tho. Just add or remove bits you want to. You could even erase all of it if you just wanted to use an overlay for the whole shebang instead.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Nukey Shay

[RJP1138]

Thank you Nukey. Time to learn about hacking roms......