Can anyone program a message into Crystal Castles?

[m11sccr]

Admittedly I don't know very much about Atari or programming in general...but here's the story:

 

My girlfriend is a big fan of the Crystal Castles arcade game because her dad used to play it all the time in their basement. After he passed away about 10 years ago, they had to sell the machine, but I know this game holds a lot of meaning for her because it brings back fond memories. I'm hoping to propose in the next couple of months and was trying to think of creative ways to do it...which leads me here:

 

Is it at all possible to take the Atari 2600 cartridge version of Crystal Castles and program a message into it? For example, after she completed Level 3, it would trigger a message scrolling across the screen. I certainly don't have the ability to make this happen, so I was hoping someone here might have a suggestion (or just tell me that this is a pipe dream). I'm even willing to pay a programmer for their services if this is a possibility. Please let me know and we can discuss further.

 

Thanks!

[gauauu]

It's a 16K Rom with what appears to be some small chunks of blank space in there. It might be do-able, but it would be tight, and you wouldn't have much space for text. If anything it'd have to be a short message. I haven't actually attached a debugger or looked at the disassembly to verify what I'm saying though.

Edited August 3, 2016 by gauauu

[m11sccr]

Thanks for the reply. What would it take to verify this information? Is this something you'd be able to do? What would you need from me?

 

Thanks

[toiletunes]

There is a 'stickynote' cart you can have made, but it would 'boot' directly to your message. Ask the store, they might be able to make one with a Crystal Castles label- give her the cart, she plugs it in, and ta-da!

[CPUWIZ]

It's a 16K Rom with what appears to be some small chunks of blank space in there. It might be do-able, but it would be tight, and you wouldn't have much space for text. If anything it'd have to be a short message. I haven't actually attached a debugger or looked at the disassembly to verify what I'm saying though.

 

Don't mistake the 256 byte blank chunks with actual ROM, they are mapped to the SARA chip required to make the game run.

[gauauu]

 

Don't mistake the 256 byte blank chunks with actual ROM, they are mapped to the SARA chip required to make the game run.

 

Ah, that makes WAY more sense. I spent awhile staring at this game, trying to figure out where it stored everything in ram. Looks like I was wrong, thanks!

[+Nathan Strum]

Might be less work to re-create just the title screen portion of it, and have that switch to a message.

[m11sccr]

I appreciate the replies so far. You guys are speaking another language so I apologize if my questions sound stupid, however: I'm not so much concerned with keeping the entire game in tact. Would it be possible to eliminate portions of the code? For example, remove the 4th level entirely and replace it with the message, and once the message plays the game skips right to the 5th level?

Also, I could keep the message very short if there appears to be some wiggle room.

 

Again, if anyone thinks there might be some options here I'd be happy to send copies of the game out and compensate you for your time. Please let me know.

 

Thanks

[Crimefighter]

How cute, a marriage proposal!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Most likely it would be easier to convert the 16k ROM into a 32k ROM. Then you have plenty of free space for a nice font, the message and the code for displaying it.

[Tyler Frisbee]

This isn't exactly what you're asking for, but this may be the easiest solution that really anyone here could do. Rather than messing with the code in the game, the easiest, quickest solution may be to just get someone to write a program in either assembly or batari Basic that'll just display the message without the game. Then at the Atari Age store, you could send them the program and have them burn it to a cartridge with the Crystal Castle labels. Give her the cart, have her plug it in, and it'll immediately display the proposal; sorta like what toiletunes mentioned. I know it's kinda a cop-out, but worst case scenario, if one of these guys can't figure out a good way of inserting the message, this may be your best bet and it'd definitely work. Really anyone could easily help ya with that

 

EDIT: Actually toiletune's version of that was a lot easier, this pretty much does exactly what I said: https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=846

Edited August 4, 2016 by Tyler12464

[maibock]

I know very little about 2600 programming, but what a fantastic idea!

 

Good luck man!

[Keatah]

I think the immediate message would work better!

 

But in any case it's amusing and good to see another proposal involving videogames.

Edited August 5, 2016 by Keatah

[m11sccr]

First, I'd like to say that I really appreciate all the feedback.

 

While the "immediate" message may be the only viable option, I've still got about 2 months before this would take place, so I may leave this up and try to see if anyone comes up with a solution to the original request. We don't actually have the atari set up or anything, and part of the surprise would be her actually getting to play crystal castles for the first time at our place.

 

As it gets closer to deadline I may have to re-evaluate, but for right now I'm gonna hold out hope that someone might be able to program a message into the actual game, even if it's just a short one. Please feel free to keep the suggestions coming, this is great!

[+Atarius Maximus]

I can't help with modifying Crystal Castles, but I'll repeat what was already mentioned about potentially using a custom message cart instead. I helped someone out with that a few years ago. I have two samples that both display "I love you Jill! Will you marry me?" and scroll it across the screen. I didn't write the code, these are old demos from Eckhard Stohlberg and Alex Hebert that I modified. I'm Attaching the binary files as well as DASM compatible source and they are easily modifiable. If you want to change the text, search the code for the text "marry me jill" to change it to what you want, then run "dasm marrymejill.txt -f3 -omarrymejill.bin" to compile it.

 

marrymejill.bin

marrymejill.txt

marrymejill2.bin

marrymejill2.txt