CDS Games

Great, thanks for the review. Have you played it in Stella at all? I'm curious if the joystick fire button is harder to double-click than the keyboard. I dont have a Harmony to play on hardware.

I meant to answer this. No, there are only 80 unique levels. Level 81 is really just level 8 with a different color scheme (and actually glitchy at the moment). But the counter will keep going up to 199. If anybody plays that far, hats off to you.

Turns out the new shot speed upgrade allows you to fire right through diagonal walls if you position yourself correctly. So there's another special ability in the elf's arsenal that mimics the arcade. Accidental implementation...how about that.

Here's a new version to address the balance issue. gauntlet1007.bin The elf now has a much faster shot speed, giving him more of an advantage in the earlier rounds. He seems particularly effective at long-range fighting. You can fire away in wide open spaces without the enemies closing in and without being too concerned about errant shots. High so far: 28k. The wizard can now take out visible generators with potions, while everyone else is only able to take out monsters. This seems to work great. If he's too powerful we can tune him down a notch by starting him with less potions (maybe 8?). I tried giving him none like the arcade, but that pretty much negates his special ability. High so far: 33k.

Excellent, thanks for the detailed report! I had the same experience...the Valkyrie is the easiest to play. Absolutely agree on the double fire button to activate potions. I cannot make that thing work when I need it, and it goes off when I don't need it. Exasperating. I'm up for ideas if anyone has them. Potions used to take out generators, but I changed that because it had gotten too easy. With this new harder version I'll try putting it back and that should also give the wizard and elf more of an advantage. Here are the full arcade stats: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Gauntlet/Statistics But this engine only allows for two states: upgraded or not. I can't fine-tune very much. What I can do though is increase the speed of the fast shot potion. That'll give the elf more of an advantage.

I might not be able to fix that, but I'll give it a shot.

Yeah, that's been a headache for a while. The program checks each shot that hits a generator against a random number and decides from that whether it gets destroyed or not. It's a cheap way to implement multiple hit points without keeping track. I tried fiddling with it but the problem still remains. So basically you can play one game and have to shoot the thing a dozen times, and the next game it can be destroyed on the first shot. I don't think any are technically indestructible, so if it happens again, change positions, try another angle, etc. and it should eventually be destroyed. The easy fix is to just have them all go down on the first shot, which I may end up having to do.

Speaking of Gauntlet feel, try this new version: gauntlet1004.bin I made the enemies more aggressive as you suggested earlier in the thread. Seems like an immense improvement overall--the enemies generally beeline right to you like the arcade. The game's much tougher now, so I maxed out all the characters' starting health to compensate. After a few rounds playing various characters my high was only 16k. Also, the level counter now goes up to 199.

Good idea. I'm not sure, I'll have to see where there's room. I can look into the enemies dying near the screen limit--this is the second time it's been mentioned. The 2600 can only keep track of a limited number of moving enemies, so having some die is the quickest way to reallocate the RAM. But I notice that not all of them die off screen, so I'll look into it. There's a corruption bug that happens sometimes when you shoot Death and a generator turns into the first explosion sprite (but just stays there). I wonder if it's related to what you saw.

Basically though I have an item space free (i.e. the sprite and an assigned hex # to place it in a level), I don't have much room to add new code. It'd be real easy for me to add a second food sprite, which just accesses the existing food routine. I've wanted to do the teleporter for a while. Couple issues though, assuming I can even find the space to add. First, you need at least two per level, leaving you room for only 2 more items in that level. Second, I'm not sure how to go about it.

Hm...this is interesting. It looks like there unused data already coded in for faster movement. Like it was planned as an upgrade but then not implemented (maybe because Adam couldn't fit in a speed potion?).

Excellent, that makes things easier then. Starting health value was uniformly 18 (in decimal) but now it varies per character: Warrior (22), Valkyrie (20), Wizard (16), Elf (18). Let's see....the arcade gives you 600 points and ticks you down 1 point per second. So every 60 seconds you are down 10%. Assuming a starting health value of 18 that puts us pretty much where you predicted at -1 or -2 a minute. There's already a frame counter at C7 luckily.

There's no room left for another enemy (I already had to drop a few), let alone one that behaves as differently as the NES dragon does. I do have one item space left (teleporter? new potion? amulet?) but not much room to really do anything fun with it. Right now I'm leaning toward just doing what the arcade does...reusing room patterns infinitely. I can't flip them around or anything like Ed Logg did, but the colors can be changed for at least some variety. And then I guess the level counter would go up to 99 then reset back to 00. Good point about the decreasing HP helping speed up the pace. Hmm. The health counter only goes up to a max of 31 in this game, so while I could tick that down gradually, it would have to be pretty slowly.

Thanks! I did have the enemies more aggressive at one point, but they tend to overlap and pile up on each other. You have a point though--it's been bugging me too and it might be worth reinvestigating. I don't believe the difficulty switches do anything.

Wow Greg, appreciate the first-hand info. Can't say enough good things about what Adam pulled off on the 2600. Aside from the game itself, the underlying engine is phenomenal and has the potential to produce some pretty amazing RPGs.

Here's Nukey's original thread on Missile Command arcade where these issues were discussed. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/71805-missile-command-arcade/ Iesposta remembered right: it works with the Track & Field controller, and Atariboy2600 even created an overlay you can cut out.

How about that! Thanks for the confirmation.

So I was listening to Warren Robinette's talk on Adventure, and he mentioned that an Adam Clayton was the first person to have written into Atari about discovering the secret room. See here for more info..... Adam was apparently 15 years old and living in Salt Lake City. Could this be the same Adam Clayton of Sculptured Software (based in Salt Lake City) that programmed Dark Chambers for the 2600? Anyone know more about this? I've developed a real appreciation for his work on Dark Chambers.

That bottom left cart on the first post looks to be straight from the Clint Eastwood movie "Firefox". What game is that??

Couldn't Dark Chambers be hacked into a very respectable Gauntlet? Always easier than a homebrew project.

Oh absolutely! It's a dream come true for those of us who wished we could be working for Atari and/or designing games of our own. A great deal less lucrative granted, but at this stage of our lives probably a lot more fulfilling.

FYI, sloth-machine requested a sped-up Dark Chambers hack in the Programming forum, and I've uploaded one here. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241901-possible-to-make-a-dark-chambers-speed-hack/?p=3318510

Here you go. I haven't playtested it much but it worked ok as far as I went. darkchambersfast.bin In case anyone wants to know how to do it: The tables that control horizontal movement are at bank 2, F143ff. Changing the FFs to FE and the 01s to 02 make the characters move 2 pixels instead of 1. Do the same for the vertical tables at F2E9 ff…change the FFs to FE and the 01s to 02. Now the hero and the enemies both move twice as fast--you can fool around with the values in these tables to get various speed combinations. The up and down playfield scrolling needs to be sped up now to match. That is controlled at FAED and following (still bank 2). At FAED change the LDX #$01 to LDX #$02, and at FAF5 change LDX #$FF to LDX #$FE. Now the playfield scrolls faster, but the screen bounces when the character stands still, so we need to fix that. At FAE8 change the BEQ LFAED to BNE LFAED (change the hex from F0 03 to D0 03). Honestly, I'm not exactly sure why this works--I changed it on a lark and didn't inquire further. That's it as far as speed goes, although now we have the side exit problem. You can exit out the right but not the left. The program checks the exits at Bank 2 FF5A (is player horizontal position 01?) and FF60 (is player horizontal position 98?). Note that the left exit is set to an odd number and the right to an even. But since we are moving 2 pixels at a time now, we will be either always even or always odd. Change the CMP #$01 to CMP #$02 and you can now exit out the left side. It seems to work ok now although if the player happens to start on an odd horizontal value you won't be able to exit at all. If that happens we might have to do a less than/greater than check rather than look for a single number.

Looks great!! Great work programmers and special kudos to Barbara...it's got an Activision look to it, not at all like the typical offerings from a niche company.

Tremendous work Thomas and Omegamatrix! And huge thanks to Al too...for creating a site where collaborations like these are possible.