Donkey Kong source code

[Donkey Kong source code]

I wonder which version of the source this is? Landon indicated the official release was not his final - the death sequence isnt perfect something about overlapping cells) - anyhow, if would be interesting is someone could compile this and see if its different than the official cart in some minor way.

 

The as-released-to-manufacturing version of DK was assembled with CAMAC (a Cross version of the AMAC assembler running on the Home Computer Division's MV-8000 minicomputer).

 

The listing file I see is dated Feb 24th, which seems early for completion of the project. If the enclosed code corresponds to the listing file, that's not a good thing because the listing ends at address $A59E, and I distinctly recall there being about 18 bytes left in the ROM (which would have had a limit of $C000). There's stuff missing from the PRN file (and the PRN file has errors). Maybe the PRN file is out of date with the rest of the code.

 

Additionally, someone's clearly been into this code trying to make it work under the Atari coin-op assembler and maybe MAC/65. Might have been me (I honestly don't remember). So I'd be surprised if this built at all, or if it did, if it worked.

 

Curt should find the source code to MadMac next (though 6502 assemblers are very easy to find).

[Donkey Kong source code]

Finally! We can find that easter egg...

 

 

This is cute:

 

;;HISTORY: ;;

;;Nov '82 - IDS, initial coding ;;

;;Dec '82 - more coding, hair pulling, general cruftiness ;;

;;Jan '83 - schedule screaming, rampant insanity, accusations ;;

;;Feb '83 - semi-winnage, accompanied by cries of anguish and threats;;

;;Mar '83 - Lucifer announces a cooling trend

 

 

Other interesting things in the code:

 

killage level (bump Mario off if he ever gets here...) - Arcade kill level?

 

Sadly no easter egg mentioned in the comments. I knew it wouldn't be THAT easy...

 

Tempest

 

Boy, that brings back memories.

 

About cute comments: I was young, and overworked, and too tired to care. :-)

 

About "kill level" -- it's just an invisible platform with a "kill" bit set. Land on the platform and Mario dies. That's all.

 

About easter egg comments: It's probably in there, but you won't find it in comments. Look for some place that is checking the scores and levels and doing some ANDing and so forth.

 

I think it's pretty cool that this is finally released. Have fun. (Curt should find Super Pac-Man and do that one, too...)

 

 

-landon

[the excellence of Donkey Kong]

I have Landon's e-mail address but I'm not sure he wants it made public though (better safe than sorry), so I'll point him to this message. He seemed like nice guy when I chatted with him and I know he'd love to read all these praises about DK.

 

Incidentally he said his initials are hidden in the game but he can't remember how to trigger them. He said it was really strange and not something you'd do by accident.

 

Tempest

 

Can anyone get inside the program and find out?

 

It's something on the order of: Get 5 lives, get your score to end in 700, then die by falling onto the second platform of the conveyer-belt level when the count-down timer has a 7 in the second to last digit. Do that, quit the game prematurely, and you'll see "LMD" in tiny letters in the middle of the screen. Totally not worth the effort. (Really don't take these instructions as gospel and then complain that they don't work. They won't. It's been 25 years since I wrote that stuff and I have no earthly idea of the precise trigger, just that it was a bastard to achieve).

 

These crazy conditions are easy to gang up in a small amount of code, running against the game state, that you can mis-comment ("frobblegob the middengrot") so no one looking at the sources (even) can tell what the heck is going on. Now probably somebody with a diassembly will figure it out by tomorrow morning and then complain about the easter egg being not worth it. Well, yeah, I said that.

 

I was going to do something more accessible and a little more spectacular (the name DONKEY KONG happens to have the same number of letters as my name, heh), but ran out of time and gumption and ROM space. DK took a little over five months to do (from design documents in late October of 1982 to signing off on the final ROMs in early March. I was feeling extra crispy towards the end, and didn't want to wreck an official test pass (and worse, have to explain why) for vanity's sake.

 

The moral of this story is, of course: Get your easter eggs in early, since you won't have time at the end. :-)

[Atari 400 Donkey Kong Jr.]

I always thought the 8-bit version was top notch. Interesting little tidbit. The programmer for the game tried to pull a fast one on Atari. They were behind schedule, but said that they could "speed things up" if they were properly compensated. Atari's management was not too pleased about this (they wanted to fire the programmer). I think they ended up getting Landon Dyer to finish up the rest of the game or at least to speed things up. I'll have to look at my memos.

 

Tempest

 

At least half of this is not true: I didn't have any code in DKjr.

 

I guess I'd believe the bit about thinly veiled extortion. The lead engineer on DKjr was a real piece of work (he was indeed laid off pretty early in the Great Fall). I remember him trying to write a bunch of DKjr in FORTH [shudder], having lots of performance problems [duh], and being very secretive about his work (he wouldn't let his boss look at it). I vaugely recall some foo-fah-rah about him wanting to be paid more (I think he succeeded in this).

 

I'm pretty sure that all of the nasty, hideous FORTH garbage was tossed out, and that the poor junior engineer who had to share an office with the Real Piece of Work finished things off pretty well, with no apparent psychological damage.

 

Lesson I learned: If a fat, bearded engineer says, "But this would be so eeeeasy in FORTH!" just fire him right then and there. You think I'm kidding, right? I'm not. Even though it's been 25 years, I still wince when I think back on that fiasco.

[Final Super Pac-Man Binaries Released]

> Special thanks go out to Landon Dyer, who programmed the 5200/8-bit

> version of Super Pac-Man, for allowing the release of these binaries.

 

A couple of nits:

 

1. I did the 8-bit version of this (somebody else did the port to the 5200. Since the chipsets were essentially the same, I assume this was just changing some equates for register locations and integrating the different controller).

 

2. I didn't have anything to do with releasing binaries (they almost certainly leaked from the duping lab).

 

I always felt that the difficulty maxed-out around level twenty or so, whereupon you could play until you got bored.

 

Anyway, it was fun to write. Cheers.

 

 

-landon