johnnywc

Lol now that I've figured out how to play (thanks for the tips TJ & Steve!) I've gotten pretty good! TJ - I saw what I think was a green caterpillar on one of the higher levels; I avoided it so I'm not exactly sure what it's special traits are. PS I think I found what may be a 'bug', or maybe just a suggestion . One of my strategies for getting a high score is to use the queen bees when there are the most insects on the screen, so I usually wait until the last moment to use them. In one instance, I died (an ant hit the tongue) but I also got the queen bee (as I saw the 1000 point displayed). They must have happened on the same frame; any chance the collision detection can be changed so that if the queen bee is killed on a frame it will supersede the collision detection for the tongue? Either way, I think it would make sense to have either event occur on a frame but not both at the same time. I had to implement something similar in Mappy when detecting the end of level when the last prize is collected vs. colliding with a cat.

Awesome! I thought CBS did a pretty good job with their release; my main issue was the flicker that really bothered my eyes so I could never play it as long. When I originally set out to re-do WoW back in 2007 the main reason was to reduce the flicker, but with today's technology I figured I'd upgrade everything else while I was at it. That's great you still have your original console; I wish I still had mine! I made the mistake of letting a 'friend' borrow it with all my carts when I headed off to college and it was never returned. :/

Thank you very much! Having Nathan (graphics) and Mike (sounds/voice) really helps

That's for sure! One tip: kill the BURWORS (blue monsters) early before they speed up as the monsters they spawn take on the speed of the monster that was killed. Also, since STANDARD is meant to be like the arcade (ie. a quarter muncher), you can try NOVICE for a slower ramp up of the speed (plus less monsters to start). Thanks for the feedback!

No, Atarivox is not required. It's most likely the version of Stella as Darrell suggests above.

Hi TJ, Cool, thanks yes I figured it out and made it up to the 7th hill (well, the 2nd hill the 2nd time around since the demo cycles back to hill 1 after hill 5). One odd thing that may be an issue; my high score before the game was 16,000 and then I got 28K on my next game but it did not show that as the high score (it still said 16K). Also, there seems to be a dark red ant in the later levels that moves pretty quick; is he the same as other ants except a bit faster? What does the spider do when it comes out? It looks like he shows up if you take too long to finish a level and the sun starts going down? Hmmm, I wouldn't want to have it completely skipped so I don't think that would be a good idea. After playing the game I got used to it, plus the ants move during the intro so the gameplay would change slightly if it just skipped to the aardvark in the center. I use that time to plan my strategy for the level. The 5 level limit is a great sales motivation - I can't wait to buy the full version now! Thanks, John

Great work guys! I just played a couple games (I'm not exactly sure *how* to play lol but I'm figuring it out) and so for it plays great! I cleared 2 hills and then some spider thing showed up and killed me. I did get a call during my game and instinctively flipped the color/bw switch to pause; any chance that can be added? I'll play some more and give more feedback... thanks!!! PS The tune and aardvark animated intro after each life is really cool! Any chance you could maybe have it so he moves twice as fast in the intro if you hold down the button?

Thanks! The missing SFX will use the TIA (not the Avox). There are about 50 phrases or so already in the game using the Atarivox, if there is room we will add more!

Hello all, Here is the first playable demo of Wizard of Wor Arcade. It is about 90% complete with an expected release date of April 2019. To Do: finish sound fx, most notably the Worluk death sound and the Wizard background sound and death sound enhancements to ADVANCED mode add TEAM mode, including team score (player 1 + 2 score combined) with high scores, ability to bring back fallen worrior if level complete with extra lives, etc.) ability to create custom mazes (and save them to Atarivox) TO PLAY: From the title screen, use left/right to select the skill level: NOVICE - less monsters, slower monsters, Wizard teleports less frequently STANDARD - most like the arcade ADVANCED - more monsters to start, faster monsters, Wizard teleports more frequently Press SELECT to cycle through game modes: 1 player with and without robot controlled worrior (robot worriors aren't animated on the title screen), plus 2 player. Note that 2 player option is not available if the Atarivox is detected. WoW does support 2 player with Atarivox voice using Nathan Tolbert's joystick multi-tap (allows you to plug in 2 joysticks into port A) which should be available around the release of WoW Arcade. Press RESET or the joystick button to start a game. At the beginning of each maze, your worrior will be in the start area. Press up to enter the maze (he will automatically enter after the timer below the start area reaches 0). Use the joystick to move your worrior around the maze (player 2 uses the other joystick). At each side of the maze is a warp tunnel that will transport your worrior (and the monsters) to the other side of the maze when entered. The warp tunnel can only be entered when it is open (a red arrow is displayed). The warp tunnel is closed once it is used and will open again after a delay. Press the button to fire a missile to destroy the monsters. After destroying a number of the blue monsters (BURWORS), a yellow monster (GARWORS) will enter the maze. Killing a GARWOR will spawn a red monsters (THORWORS). Destroy all monsters to move to the next dungeon. If the left difficulty switch is in the B position, the blue worrior can shoot the yellow worrior. If the right difficulty switch is in the B position, the yellow worrior can shoot the blue worrior. Starting with DUNGEON 2, once all monsters are defeated, the WORLUK will appear. Destroy him before he exits the maze. If you destroy the WORLUK before he escapes, the next dungeon will be a DOUBLE SCORE DUNGEON (all point values are doubled). After destroying the WORLUK, the WIZARD may appear. He moves fast and shoots lightning bolts which are deadly to the worrior. He also will teleport periodically making him difficult to track down. Hit the Wizard with a missile to banish him from the DUNGEON and move on to the next level. THE ARENA The 4th dungeon is a special dungeon (the Arena) that features a wide open area in the middle. A bonus worrior is awarded prior to the Arena. THE PIT The 13th dungeon (and every 6th dungeon after that) is the PIT, a dungeon with no walls! A bonus worrior is awarded prior to each PIT dungeon. WORLORD DUNGEONS Starting with Dungeon 8, the worrior is promoted to WORLORD (and will be referred to as such by the Wizard when he taunts you). The WORLORD dungeons tend to be have less walls and therefore are more difficult when seeking a safe area. GAME OVER The game ends when all worriors have been destroyed (for both players if a 2 player game). If a high score is achieved, use the joystick to enter in your initials. Press up/down to select the initial, left/right to choose which initial, button to accept the current initial and move on to the next one. Pressing the button after entering the 3rd initial will complete the entry. Scores will be saved to the Atarivox if detected. To reset a high score table, press and hold RESET and then press SELECT while viewing the scores. As always, any feedback is appreciated. Special thanks to Nathan Strum for the graphics and cool title screen, and Mike Haas for the wonderful sound fx and speech phrases. Have fun! John wowarc_20181115.bin

2600 core pushed it over the top for me. #294

Thanks Keetah - that was my thought too. I don't expect the 2600 core to play any games that require an extra chip that's not emulated in the FPGA (I would assume Pitfall 2 would not play off the SD card either). If there is a plan to accept 2600 carts and games with extra chips run without issue, I'm in!

I'm very intrigued by this. I spent some time at the Collectorvision booth at PRGE speaking with Brian... he did a great job of showing off the capabilities of the system and it looked great! One question re: 2600 support; it sounds like they've actually added a 2600 core to the FPGA, and that will be able to run 2600 games via SD card. I heard there is a possibility/plan of adding an adapter to play 2600 carts also. If so, will the core be able to run DPC+/CDF games (Scramble, Draconian, Mappy, etc)? I would think so but wanted to confirm. Any info is appreciated! Thanks, John

Hi Philip, Great job on CG - it's coming out great! Let me know if I can help with the flicker management; I'd be happy to share the method I use for Mappy and my other games! My algorithm was derived from the one that Spiceware uses in his games. It's written in C, but could easily be ported over to ASM (assuming you have enough RAM). The key is also being able to reposition sprites on specific lines. For Mappy, I can reposition on 3 lines on each floor since there are no PF or BK color changes (the lines with the doors and trampolines cannot be repositioned on). This still works pretty well since you can reposition both players and the ball once per floor. Looking at Chactic Grill, it looks like you should be able to reposition on every line except the ones where you have the condiments being drawn since you have an asymmetrical PF with up to 4 color changes per line. Thanks, John

Good points Darrell. Also, the multi-tap prototype we're using is for 2 joysticks, but the hardware design/software can be expanded to have up to 4 joysticks on 1 port as well. I suspect Nathan T. will offer a 2 port and 4 port model to meet different price points. Technically you could in theory support up to EIGHT players simultaneously, but I don't know how feasible that would be.

Yup! It's just not obvious in the GIF

First peek at the Mappy box and label. Special thanks to Nathan Strum for his amazing artistic talents! <- PS Also thanks to Nathan for the cool animated Mappy avatar!

And most recently announced... Wizard of Wor Arcade

Hi Mike, Thanks so much for the explanation! Too bad it's bad news, but it is what it is. :/ The voice in WoW is played during gameplay and the joystick movement is frenetic so that's probably why it's susceptible to this issue like Dungeon Stalker. I have modified the logic a bit to avoid phrases interrupting each other by putting in a 6 second delay minimum between phrases (is there a programmatic way to check the state of the AVox to see if it's currently playing a phrase?) and I also disabled two phrases that seemed to trigger the reset. One of the phrases was appropriately "One touch from my babies and you will explode!" and the break happens just as the Wizard is saying "explode" lol. James @ ZPH tried the new build and said he didn't experience any crashes after a quick test so hopefully this is a workaround, at least for the demo. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. James also has been very helpful with tests so I'm sure he would help too. Thanks again! John

Hello all, I'm joining this discussion kind of late, but I am developing a game (Wizard of Wor Arcade) for the 2600 that is exhibiting the same behavior described in this thread (the Avox will reset mid-speech). Interestingly, this is only happening on one computer (ZeroPageHomebrew's 2600) and was discovered a few days ago when preparing to demo the game during a twitch stream. Are there any software/hardware suggestions for correcting this issue? I see Richard H. suggested that the AtariVox+ be reprogrammed by Al as it may be a baud rate issue. Has anyone tried this and had success? I have modified my code to ensure that multiple phrases don't overlap (that Wizard is a chatty fellow) and we've seen more resets based on certain phrases vs. others, but there is no conclusive evidence yet. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks, John

Yes!

UPDATE: After 11 plus years, Champ Games is finally finishing Wizard of Wor Arcade! For more info, please visit the Wizard of Wor Arcade - reboot thread in the Homebrew forums!

** The latest demo ROMs can be found in this post. Have fun! ** Hello all, Now that Mappy is almost complete and awaiting it's release at the Portland Gaming Expo in a few weeks, Champ Games would like to announce our next game... Wizard of Wor Arcade! For those who may not know, Champ Games started a Wizard of Wor rewrite back in 2007 that was never completed. That code has been resurrected and the current version takes full advantage of the latest technology, including CDF bank-switching for enhanced graphics (created by Nathan Strum) and all the arcade mazes, arcade-like sound effects and speech (created by Mike Haas) using the AtariVox+ (over 50+ phrases!). Additionally, it will support Nathan Tolbert's re-vamped multi-joystick adapter which will allow 2 joysticks to be plugged into one port while leaving the second one free for in-game speech with the AtariVox and high score saving! Special thanks to CDS Games and Nukey Shay for their blessing and amazing work on the Wizard of Wor 2: The Arena hack which provided the inspiration for some of the cut scenes and mazes, and it was also the game that Mike's AtariVox speech were originally developed for. The game is about 95% complete and and will available to play (with Nathan T's multi-joystick adapter and AtariVox+ speech) at this years Portland Gaming Expo. My brother Paul and I will be on hand if you're up for a challenge! Here is a screenshot of the title screen. I will be posting more info as the PRGE approaches, with a playable ROM to be posted sometime after the expo.

My brother and I will help any way we can, just let us know what we can do!