HALLOWEEN 4 help requested to complete

[Atari Dogs]

I have been working on this for a few days. It still needs a little polish and the colors worked on. My main problem is my eprom programmer has crapped out. I need to see if Stella supports the keypad controller. I have not seen all of the characters I changed.

 

Yes it is a Whack-A-Mole hack.

 

The story goes like this. You are a bad kid. You kick the jack-o-lanterns at all the houses that had out candy you dont like. Usually you kick regular pumpkins, and sometimes you kick big pumpkins. Every now and then there is a tombstone that you think you can kick, but it is made of real stone and you hurt you toe.

 

Tell me how it looks.

 

pumpkin3.bin

Edited September 8, 2014 by Atari Dogs

[Atari Dogs]

How is it? What do the pumpkins look like squashed?

[TrekMD]

I've downloaded it but I'm having trouble controlling the hammer. The game itself looks good, though!

[Atari Dogs]

I've downloaded it but I'm having trouble controlling the hammer. The game itself looks good, though!

Are you using the kids controller or the keypad controller?

[TrekMD]

Neither. Using emulation. I didn't realize I needed a keypad controller.

[Atari Dogs]

Slight change. This is HALLOWEEN 4 (as opposed to Halloween and the two Salem Frost releases). You must slice Jack-o-lanters to end Halloween and be safe from Michael Myers. If Michael comes up and you try to attach him, he kills you. Easy enough.

 

Two things I can use help on. One is I could not find the hammer graphic. I want to change it to a knife.

 

Second,the game currently uses the keypad or kids controller. Is it possible to change this game, so it uses the joystick and button. It would default to the center box. Hit the button to slash the pumpkin. Push up, down, right, left, diagonally and hit the button to hit those. I think this may add to the difficulty and will give the game a wider audience since it wont need a special controller.

pumpkin4.bin

[Nukey Shay]

The hammer is created using the ball sprite. Using game data, bit1 is passed to ENABL to turn the sprite on or off...and bits 4&5 are passed to CTRLPF to set the ball width. Where is this game data? Well, the programmer just reused some bitmap data @ $xD00-$xD32. The hammer is always facing left because CTRLPF is just making it wider for the handle part w/o repositioning the sprite. If you wanted a more-complex shape like a knife, this display code would need to be rewritten.

Edited July 9, 2014 by Nukey Shay

[Atari Dogs]

Forgive my ignorance, instead of being bigger at the end to be the head of the hammer, can it be smaller to be the point of a knife?

[Nukey Shay]

Yes...the ball sprite has 4 widths, this game is using the 2 widest ones. Try altering the addresses mentioned in the first bank...see all those 5's (%00000101)? Bit 1 is not on, so the sprite is not drawn. Data bytes that do have it on are also setting bits 4&5 (the widest setting @8 pixels)), or 5 only (the next widest setting @4 pixels). You could use bit 4 only (2-pixel width), or neither of them (1 pixel). What I was referring to is that without sprite repositioning, every line is going to be "left-justified"...the pixels all start at the same horizontal location regardless of pixel width.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW the 5's following address $xD1E are shared for gopher holes that do NOT have the hammer shown...so you should only alter $xD00-$xD1D bytes.

[Nukey Shay]

First attempt has a couple of artifacts to correct...but this is the general idea:

 

;original code:
;       lda    #$14    ;2
;       sta    $F2     ;3
;       lda    $F1     ;3
;       sta    $90     ;3
;       sta    WSYNC   ;3
;       ldx    #$FF    ;2
;       stx    VDELP0  ;3
;       stx    VDELP1  ;3
;       stx    REFP1   ;3
;       inx            ;2
;       stx    GRP0    ;3
;       stx    GRP1    ;3
;       lda    #$25    ;2
;       sta    CTRLPF  ;3
;       stx    REFP0   ;3
;       lda    $90     ;3
;       sta    COLUP0  ;3
;       sta    COLUP1  ;3
;       lda    #$83    ;2
;       sta    COLUPF  ;3
;LB7F9: ldy    $F2     ;3 64
;       lda    ($E9),Y ;5 69
;       sta    GRP0    ;3 72
;       sta    WSYNC   ;3
;       sta    GRP1    ;3 3
;       lda    ($CB),Y ;5 8
;       lda    ($CB),Y ;5 13
;       sta    ENABL   ;3 16
;       sta    CTRLPF  ;3 19
;       lda    ($E5),Y ;5 24
;       sta    GRP0    ;3 27
;       tax            ;2 29
;       nop            ;2 31
;       nop            ;2 33
;       lda    ($E1),Y ;5 38
;       ldy    $F2     ;3 41
;       stx    GRP1    ;3 44
;       sta    GRP0    ;3 47
;       sta    GRP1    ;3 50
;       stx    GRP0    ;3 53
;       dec    $F2     ;5 58
;       bpl    LB7F9   ;2 60
;
;replacement:
       sta    HMCLR   ;3
       lda    $F1     ;3
       sta    $90     ;3
       sta    WSYNC   ;3
       ldx    #$FF    ;2
       stx    VDELP0  ;3
       stx    VDELP1  ;3
       stx    REFP1   ;3
       inx            ;2
       stx    GRP0    ;3
       stx    GRP1    ;3
       lda    #$25    ;2
       sta    CTRLPF  ;3
       stx    REFP0   ;3
       lda    $90     ;3
       sta    COLUP0  ;3
       sta    COLUP1  ;3
       lda    #$83    ;2
       sta    COLUPF  ;3
       ldy    #$14    ;2
LB7F9: lda    ($CB),Y ;5 65
       sta    HMBL    ;3 68
       sta    WSYNC   ;3
       sta    HMOVE   ;3 03
       sta    ENABL   ;3 06
       asl            ;2 08
       asl            ;2 10
       sta    CTRLPF  ;3 13
       lda    ($E9),Y ;5 18
       sta    GRP0    ;3 21
       sta    GRP1    ;3 24
       lda    ($E5),Y ;5 29
       sta    GRP0    ;3 32
       tax            ;2 34
       lda    ($E1),Y ;5 39
       dey            ;2 41
       stx    GRP1    ;3 44
       sta    GRP0    ;3 47
       sta    GRP1    ;3 50
       stx    GRP0    ;3 53
       sty    $F2     ;3 56
       bpl    LB7F9   ;2 58
       nop            ;2 60

 

Then the data section @ $xD00 needs editing. The upper 4 bits would now perform horizontal motion HMBL for the sprite (in relation to the previous scanline), bits 3&2 hold the ball width CTRLPF, and bit 1 is used for ENABL. The hammer, for example, would use 0A,0A,0E,0E,0A,0A instead of 21,21,31,31,21,21.

[Nukey Shay]

Ah...I found out what I did wrong (bit0 should be set before passing it to CTRLPF). Here's a binary. You won't notice anything different from the one you posted...but you can edit the data section @xD00 to apply horizontal motion to the sprite. As mentioned above, the upper nibble holds the motion to apply (F-8 = move 1 to 8 pixels to the right, 1-7 = move 1 to 7 pixels to the left, or 0 = no change), bits 3&2 hold the width of the ball for this scanline, and bit1 is used to enable it. Bit0 should be set on all data bytes regardless. Have fun designing a knife!

phack.bin

[Atari Dogs]

Thanks for the help. Since my programmer won't work, i cant put this on real hardware and see the knife i am making so i held off on it. I did some work on my earlier Pumpkin4.bin. to make a few adjustments. Made the Halloween 4 white like the poster. It is too bad it can't be change from the keypad to a joystick. I think it would get a lot more play.

Anyone play the game?

pumpkin5.bin

Edited July 10, 2014 by Atari Dogs

[Atari Dogs]

Minor adjustment to the orange pumpkin when it gets hit. I could get it to start on stella and hit two squares, but the big pumpkin never came down to those squares. Of course it would be cool to get the music scarier, but you cannot have everything.

 

Anyone able to get it two run on a real machine with the kids controller?

pumpkin6.bin

[Atari Dogs]

Took a look at this one again. Remember it used the keypad controller.

pumpkin8.bin

[TrekMD]

I now have a keypad controller and should be able to play this game.

[Atari Dogs]

I am out of town for the week. This game is as far as i can take it. If anyone wants to make more adjustments to it go for it. Like i was saying above, i had wanted to change the blue hammer i to a gray knife. It sounded like Nukey Shay was describing how to do that, but it is beyond my ability. There are also two songs in the game. One that plays all the time i want to keep. The other that kinda sounds like the Looney Toons ending music i would get rid of. I have no idea how hard that would be. If these can be changed, i may try for a small run of this game for Halloween.

[Atari Dogs]

Anyone want to take over and finish this game? I can try to get a small run by Halloween if ot gets done.