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DEBRO

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DEBRO last won the day on March 21 2010

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    Atari game programming

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  1. @Thomas Jentzsch and @m.o.terra kaesi I see that. If @ZeroPage Homebrew decided to do this then I would lean more to a “Best New Artist” type of category for new emerging homebrewers.
  2. But is that the fault of Champ Games? They are winning the categories because their projects warrant the award.
  3. Hi there, This was news to me as a hobbyist. I never thought or imagined that game companies had to re-certify their updates but it makes sense. And to Ben's point, the changes are not substantial enough to warrant the cost. Not likely...this is owned by Atari so I can't release it and again, not enough to warrant the release. Seeing this helps. I'll see if I can take a look at this release to see if I can find anything that might cause this. I don't have the source for this release any longer so I'll have to dive into the ROM to reconstruct it. This will take some time. Thank you for sharing the screen captures.
  4. Hi there, Yes, that would be me. I guess I can talk about this now. I'll add some history too. I may miss somethings so I might come back to fill in. Let's start with playing digitized samples from the 2600. Back in 1997, Eckhard Stolberg posted a demo to the [stellalist] of playing digitized speech from the 2600. This same technique was used in Quadrun to get the game to repeat the game title when the game cart was started. I'll stay out of the particulars for this thread. Now fast forward 7 years! I reverse engineered Berzerk and posted it to the [stellalist] at the end of 2004. When I reverse engineered the game I noticed that the data for having the robots fire diagonally was in the ROM code however the mechanism to activate the diagonal firing was not present. You'll find some old threads here on AA discussing this and even a hack to enable the diagonal fire. In that hack there was also some graphical changes as well. Now enters Mike Mika... Mike had the bright idea to give Berzerk speech to simulate the arcade experience. He took my reverse engineering code and the demo posted by Eckhard and married them together. This resulted in the the Berzerk: Voice Enhanced cartridge that is currently being sold in the AtariAge store. This is a 16K cartridge. It does not have the robots firing diagonally or the graphical changes however it does have a title screen and includes the voice samples..."INTRUDER, ALERT! INTRUDER, ALERT!", "CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT!", and "HUMANOID MUST NOT ESCAPE!". This is where some things might get cloudy... In March 2023, Atari acquired the rights to a dozen arcade games from the Stern library which included Berzerk and Frenzy. I'm not sure if I reached out to Mike Mika saying how cool it would be to have his speech enhanced Berzerk released by Atari or if I reached out to Atari to discuss Mike's work. Either way, some how (and I can't remember the details) we all got connected. I was asked by Atari if I could get the diagonal hack in a speech enhanced cartridge. Being that I already had the code and items plugged in I responded with yes and it should be fairly simple and easy to do. To do this though, I needed the speech source code from Mike. Mike looked through his archive of source code (which I would love to see someday) and couldn't find it. Time continued to progress. It just so happens that I was upgrading to a new computer during this time too. I was going through old HD looking for data I needed to transfer and guess what turned up? I found the source to BerzerkVE on one of my old HDs! Now the work begins... I started using Mike's samples and combined my hacks to produce a ROM. This was doing the summer of 2023. Atari would ask how things were progressing and I would respond all was well since I had the source to BerzerkVE. Here is where things get interesting. Keep in mind, I'm not a game developer by trade. I have a regular position for another company and do Atari code and reverse engineering as a hobby. Atari on the other hand is a game corporation with deadlines to meet on their projects. I continued to work on the game off and on...more off than on because again...it was the summer of 2023. I kept saying to myself, I need to finish this work for Atari and it won't take long. I took a vacation with my family (again...summer) with intentions to spend time finishing Berzerk for Atari. Well...family fun got the best of me and I didn't touch that work all week. When I returned from vacation, I had a message in my inbox from Atari saying they needed Berzerk so they could submit it for ESRB ratings. Again...game corporation with deadlines. I wish I had known about this deadline when I started because we wouldn't be where we are now if I had. I responded that I could get something to them but it wouldn't be the complete game or complete as I saw it. Atari told me that would be fine. They could submit what I had to the ESRB and release the updated finished game on the cart. What I (we) submitted to the ESRB was a 32K ROM with... modified graphics to look more inline with the arcade robots firing diagonally extra life bug corrected original Berzerk would end the game if you got more than 127 lives startup bug corrected there was an issue on some 2600s with the original Berzerk when it started it making it unplayable BerzerkVE has a bankswitching issue that may prevent it from starting up the following digital samples GOT THE INTRUDER! GOT THE CHICKEN! HUMANOID MUST NOT ESCAPE CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT Some keen AA users will notice that this doesn't have all the speech from BerzerkVE...and you would be correct. To save a few bytes of ROM, I changed the routine to produce the digitized speech. In doing so, that meant I needed to modify the speech data slightly. This why it didn't make the ESRB build and the final cart. For the final build we had the additional samples of..."GOT THE HUMANIOID! GOT THE CHICKEN!", "GOT THE HUMANOID! GOT THE INTRUDER!", and "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!". The samples would alternate based on how the player escaped the previous maze. So if the player exited the previous maze without destroying all the robots then "...GOT THE CHICKEN!" would play when the player lost a life. If the player exited the previous maze destroying all the robots then "...GOT THE INTRUDER!" would play when the player lost a life. Also, to mix up the speech slightly so it wouldn't get too monotonous..."INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!" would play occasionally as you exited the maze. As an added "bonus" the final build also contained a way for the player to disable the digitized speech if they tired of hearing it. This was controlled by the left difficulty switch. The samples would play when the player had the left difficulty set to PRO or A. The samples would be disabled when the player had the left difficulty set to AMATEUR or B. I also, want to add that I reached out to Bob DeCrescenzo @PacManPlus for more digitized samples and he promptly filled the request. Bob used these samples for his excellent 7800 port of Frenzy in the AA store. I had to compress these samples to fit within the ROM limits of the 2600. A title screen was planned with an easy way to chose game selections too but I ran out of time. Again, referencing hobbyist have no deadlines however corporations do. Also, each build delivery contained ROMS for NTSC, PAL60, and PAL50. I know some would want to know. This was a lot, I know but hopefully it will give some history as to how this came about. I'm not sure why you are having issues with this game on your 7800. It is a standard 32K Atari ROM. Anyone else having issues with this and their 7800?
  5. I vote for Rikki & Vikki. It would appeal to old and new gamers. Great puzzle game play, great graphics, and cut scenes.
  6. Actually, I forgot. The animation was slowed down slightly to show the fragments.
  7. That seems odd. This routine would not or should not have changed and it is the same number of animation frames. 🤔
  8. I reread preface (again). Now I get it. 🤦🏾‍♂️
  9. Hi Matt, Nothing really to call out. It uses all 4K though some optimization could be done. The PAL50 version is ~17% slower than the NTSC version which is typical for Activision releases.
  10. Hi there, This one had been sitting on my HD for years and needed to be finished. This would complete the Atari2600 game library of Steve Cartwright. I've included switches for NTSC, PAL50, and PAL60 builds. There is also an assembler switch for CHEAT_ENABLED to build a non-defeat version. Enjoy MegaMania
  11. I guess I’m not following the book theme. Could you help me grasp it?
  12. Hi there, As the title says this is the Atari version of Millipede reverse-engineered. The masterpiece done by Dave Staugas and the one we got on cart in 1984. Hopefully I got this some what correct. There is A LOT going on in this 16K ROM. I left the graphics data in the code just as the ROM would need it. Sorry to the graphic hackers, but I didn't take the time to make it "easy" to hack the graphics. If you are interested in changing the graphics then know they are interleaved. They are separated in the code by their scanline or zone similar to how 7800 graphics are defined. You can find the appropriate graphic number by using the ID_ constants. For example, the second and third graphic data items in their corresponding zone would represent the 2 animations for the Bee, the 4th through the 7th graphic data items in their corresponding zone would represent the 3 animations for the Earwig, and so on. There is a scoring bug in the code. When hitting a Millipede segment with the DDT cloud you score 3X the "head points" and when a Millipede head is hit with a DDT cloud you receive 3X the "body segment points". You can see this in the CheckCloudCollisionWithMillipede routine. Dave mistakenly uses D7 high of the segment state to think that meant a Millipede head segment. Instead, having the state value high means the item is a Millipede body segment. I've including switches to build NTSC, PAL50, and PAL60 versions. There is also a switch to easily build a trainer or cheat ROM that removes all deadly touches (i.e. play forever). Hopefully, I'll get back on the GCC prototype version one day. I was making great progress on it with this and Centipede done. It is interesting how bit masks for the Atari Millipede are similar to the GCC version. From an interview done by Into The Vertical Blank: Lost Credits (HD): The Secret Atari Heroes of GCC (full version) GCC says they would have started their conversion before Dave would have started his for Atari. Maybe they're similar because both used Centipede as a starting point? GCC would have had the original source code to Centipede since they developed it. Would they had given or shared the source code with Atari? Did Dave or people from Atari reverse-engineer it before Dave did his Millipede? I wonder... Enjoy Atari - Millipede
  13. Hi there, I actually have been sitting on a reverse engineering of Millipede asking myself this question. I could post it as is but the graphics data is interleaved and may make it harder for someone to change the graphics. I’ve been debating having another tool create the include files for the graphics from another easier read and manipulated input that may be more straightforward in changing the graphics. I like your Python approach. Maybe I post the reverse engineered code as-is for now and revisit this.
  14. Thank you @littaum for the reply and testing. @Thomas Jentzsch is correct. Going from COLOR -> B/W -> COLOR should put a 7800 game in pause mode. This would work for games that look for a proper debounce to trigger a pause. If the game does a check for B/W only (i.e. a press vs. proper debounce) then switching to B/W should trigger a pause.
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