22 replies to this topic

[Rom Hunter]

http://www.atarimani...ames_26459.html

http://www.atarimani...pace_27172.html

http://www.atarimani...ture_28556.html

Many thanks to Scott Stilphen for donating these to Atarimania.

More interesting prototype ROMs in my V8.0 collection this X-mas...

[user42]

Awesome!

[Tempest]

So do Los Angeles Games and Innerspace only have title screen differences?  I would assume yes?

Elf Adventure looks interesting.  I've never heard of this one before.  Almost looks like a homebrew hack of Adventure.

[Wickeycolumbus]

Very cool of him to release these!

Anyone else having trouble with Elf Adventure?  It doesn't seem to work in Stella 3.5.5.

[Tempest]

Two questions:

1. Was Track and Field ever released in PAL format before this prototype?  

2. Does the NTSC version display the alternate title if plugged into a PAL machine like the Atari 8-bit version does?

[Wickeycolumbus]

While I haven't checked, I doubt the NTSC version would display a different title screen on a PAL console.  There isn't really a way for the program to check the console type.

[Rom Hunter]

 Tempest, on Tue Aug 7, 2012 12:08 PM, said:

Two questions:

1. Was Track and Field ever released in PAL format before this prototype?  

2. Does the NTSC version display the alternate title if plugged into a PAL machine like the Atari 8-bit version does?

1. No, Los Angeles 1984 Games was to be the European release of Track & Field.

2. Nope.


Innerspace has different in-play graphics (the spaceship and radar stations are different).

IMO Imagic should have kept the original graphics and game title.

Innerspace sounds much cooler than Laser Gates.

Edited by Rom Hunter, Tue Aug 7, 2012 3:31 PM.

[Wickeycolumbus]

No one else is having problems with Elf Adventure?  Won't load at all for me.

[edweird13]

 Wickeycolumbus, on Wed Aug 8, 2012 4:35 PM, said:

No one else is having problems with Elf Adventure?  Won't load at all for me.

I can't get it to work either. I have tried all the different bank switching with no luck.

[Rom Hunter]

Indeed, Stella doesn't accept it.

But Z26 does on my PC.

[Eckhard Stolberg]

 Rom Hunter, on Thu Aug 9, 2012 3:38 AM, said:

Indeed, Stella doesn't accept it.

But Z26 does on my PC.

The reason for the difference is that Stella randomizes the RIOT RAM, while z26 sets it all to zero. The game only initializes certain parts of the RAM and accidentally relies on the rest to be zero. Therefore it might not work on a real VCS either.

Elf Adventure has a routine where it copies the address for an indirect jump from a ROM table to RAM. It reads the index into this table from one of the uninitialized RAM addresses. Therefore the index is incorrect in Stella most of the time, so when the game does the jump it ends up in the wrong code and crashes.

Edited by Eckhard Stolberg, Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:43 AM.

[theloon]

Digital Press mentions that a design document exists for Elf Adventure.  I can't find any links to it though.
http://guide.digitpr...mf?gameid=48705

[Tempest]

 theloon, on Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:38 AM, said:

Digital Press mentions that a design document exists for Elf Adventure.  I can't find any links to it though.
http://guide.digitpr...mf?gameid=48705

Yeah I saw that as well.  Hopefully they'll be made available some day.

[Rom Hunter]

Here's another one for you:
http://www.atarimani...stic_28557.html

Again donated by Scott Stilphen.

[Tempest]

Neat!  Does the equipment to make it work exist as well?

[Wickeycolumbus]

Very cool to see stuff like this get released

 Rom Hunter, on Thu Aug 9, 2012 3:38 AM, said:

Indeed, Stella doesn't accept it.

But Z26 does on my PC.

Thanks, works for me now too.

[stephena]

Stella has a commandline argument called 'ramrandom' which fixes this.  Setting it to 1 randomizes (the default), setting to 0 makes the RIOT RAM contain all zeroes.  Unfortunately this isn't accessible from the UI; you need to launch from the commandline or edit the config file directly to change it.  Incidentally, the reason this is a setting is that different consoles have different behaviour.  My two test systems in particular (light sixer and vader) both seem to randomize RAM.

EDIT: I don't recall when I added this, so I don't know if it's in 3.5.5.  I suggest upgrading to the latest version (3.7.2).

[Omegamatrix]

All of my consoles had randomized ram too, so this rom will crash most of the time in real hardware. I'm not sure what it will do in Harmony cart in multi-game mode because I haven't tried, but I do know the RIOT ram is fixed when using the Harmony cart like that. Still hoping one day for 7800 detection with the Harmony, but its been a long, long time...


Incidentally, I found the Colecovision 2600 adapter always had the RIOT ram initialized to all zeros.

[Tempest]

Have the roms for all those 3-D Amiga games been released yet?  I thought they were going to release the roms once the repros sold out.  I assume this hasn't happened yet?

[Nukey Shay]

Elf Adventure is easily fixed by just adding a cold start loop (6 bytes).  Removing a couple of unneeded JMP's covers that.

Now can somebody tell me what this thing is supposed to be doing?

Attached Files

•  ElfHack.bin   4K   81 downloads
•  Elf.asm   106.9K   47 downloads

[Gateway]

Weird. Only seems to be about 5 or 6 rooms and no collision detection yet.

[Tempest]

Supposedly there are several versions but I think this is the only one that has been released.  I need to look into this one and add it to my page.

[Nukey Shay]

Collisions work fine from what I see.  You can steal objects that the two "faces" carry above them (and they chase and attack you to get the object back).  I realise that everything is just placeholders - probably including the limited kingdom area - because this is easily expanded once the game engine is complete.  I'm just trying to envision what the concept was going to be.