CDS Games
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Posts posted by CDS Games
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No problem, this has turned into a bit of a monomania.
Here's a sneak peek of some arcade color matching I've been doing.
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Oops..meant to fix the generator hit points before uploading. Some of them take a long time to destroy.
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Thanks roryjr! I still have graphics work to do but for now I'm concentrating on mechanics and fixing bugs.
Here's a new update, now playable to level 8. Also patched in some music between levels because it just didn't feel like Gauntlet without it.
These single-screen levels seem to be working well, so I'll continue along the same lines. That could well give us 80 quick levels instead of 26 long ones.
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Update!
The extra Dark Chambers treasures have been replaced with Gauntlet items:
* doors can now be horizontal as well as vertical
* bones (ghost generators)* cider (increases health, looks almost the same as poison)
* redid generator sprite
And there are two major changes to game play:
* The side exits are now gone. I'd like to try making every level just one screen, but we'll have to see how that works out. This build is only partially playable until the level patterns and the item positions are redone. Oy. Big job.
* You now move twice as fast, and some of the enemies are sped up as well. Finally was able to iron out the scrolling bugs, so here's your chance to see what a faster Dark Chambers is like.
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This project began as an effort to modify Dark Chambers for the Atari 2600 in the direction of the arcade game Gauntlet (Atari 1985). What started as a few graphics changes and minor modifications to game play slowly evolved into a full 32k conversion, thanks to a good disassembly and especially Adam Clayton’s phenomenal Dark Chambers engine for the VCS.
The game is now complete, with the following features:
* Play all 4 characters from the arcade, in a 1-player game or in any 2-player combination
* Each character starts with a special ability:
Warrior: extra shot power
Valkyrie: extra armor
Wizard: extra magic power
Elf: extra shot speed
* Fight 3 levels of ghosts, grunts, demons, and sorcerors; 2 levels of generators and bones; and death.
* collect food, treasure, keys, and magic potions
* increase your abilities with 4 different upgrade potions as well as invisibility amulets
* play 80 unique levels, including the first 7 modeled on the arcade intro levels
Final versions
NTSC: Gauntlet (Atari 1985).bin
PAL: Gauntlet (Atari 1985) PAL.bin
SECAM: Gauntlet (Atari 1985) SECAM.bin
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Earlier released builds:
Original post (May 12, 2015):
I recently introduced my kids to Gauntlet, and that got me thinking about hacking Dark Chambers so they could play on my VCS.
So here's a start on a conversion.
I started with the sprites naturally but quickly realized the animation tables needed reworking, as the sprites were shared in weird ways. Reducing the animation frames for players and enemies gave me enough room to shoehorn in a whole bunch of new sprite and color data. All four characters are now coded in. However, I haven't figured out a way to switch between them within the game. So I've uploaded two versions, WW for the Warrior and Wizard and EV for the Elf and Valkyrie. As it stands, you'll have to do a bit of hacking to get the exact P1/P2 combination you want--I hope to post some instructions on that later. There are no special characteristics per character, so it's just visual.
Enemies have been changed to grunts, ghosts, demons, wizards, and death. They no longer mutate form, and instead of disappearing on contact they continue to melee attack as long as they are touching you (but you can't melee back). Ghosts, however, do disappear and take a chunk of health in the process. Wizards blink in and out, and death now can only be killed by magic. Making demons and wizards shoot is not likely to make it into this hack--just way too complicated.
One thing that makes Gauntlet really different from DC is how enemies mass up behind each other and beeline straight toward you if nothing is blocking them. DC is very different: enemies can overlap and tend to amble around. But after a couple of experiments I'm hesitant to change this. Overlapping sprites all beeline to the same spot and appear as a single enemy if there isn't some kind of coarse movement grid checked against. So this part of DC has been left as is.
Dark Chambers draws levels with a pretty remarkable economy of code. There are 16 playfields actually drawn out in pixels; each DC screen allows you to scroll up and down through a stack of 4 playfields, each represented by one nybble. So the original map for Level A was set in just two bytes: $40, $19. But the flip side of that economy is that it just isn't possible to reproduce intricate mazes. Instead I just redid some of the playfields to get a bit of a Gauntlet feel in here, with obstacles, diagonals, nested boxes, vertical lines, and generally narrower spaces. Levels 1 through 7 have been completed so far, and I tried to port the corresponding Gauntlet levels over in spirit. Levels 8 to 26 haven't been finished yet--these will be mostly new creations although drawing inspiration from various Gauntlet levels.
I know there are complaints about the pacing of Dark Chambers. I wonder if a lot of that can be mitigated by not having the player double back too much, and by increasing the number of enemies. Player speed and scrolling speed can be increased without too much trouble in DC, but the problem is, that introduces a number of glitches that would have to be fixed. For the moment, I just kept everything as is.
Overall, I know we're still a ways from Ed Logg's arcade masterpiece, but if you are craving a Gauntlet experience on your VCS, or just want a new take on Dark Chambers, here's hoping this can tide you over._______________________________________
UPDATE October 7, 2015
I've been able to make a great deal of progress since the above was posted. We're now close to a finished Gauntlet for the Atari 2600. The latest version is posted below, please see the rest of the thread for earlier versions and running commentary on what was changed.
A summary of the game so far:
* Play as all 4 characters from the arcade, either as 1 player or in any 2-player combination
* Each character starts with a special ability:
Warrior: shot power
Valkyrie: shield
Wizard: extra magic power
Elf: shot speed
* Fight ghosts, grunts, wizards, and death as well as generators and bones
* collect magic and upgrade potions
* 80 different levels
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Very nice, thanks for doing this! Love the grid especially.
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Very nice!!
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Each phrase takes a while. I could just get it speaking the words the arcade game uses, but I think making it sound close to the way the arcade says words is important. So I listen to the .wav word sounds from MAME, and then make the Vox pronounce the word as strangely as the arcade does, repeat word by word.
Attention to detail like that makes a difference! That's what's nice about developing on this site: we can take our time and get something right rather than have to rush a product to market the way they did in Atari's heyday. Just watched Atari:Game Over last night with the Mrs. and was talking about how it was obvious back then that games were just getting cruddy and didn't have any of the artistry of the early releases.
On finalizing the graphics & sound for this---I think I'll go back to the original Wizard/Worluk sound (it works better than anything I've been able to come up with.) But I'm torn about the Wizard color....he's blue in the arcade, and this is nothing if not an arcade port. But a white wizard still seems like a case where the home port works better than the original. Anyone have strong opinions on it?
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Probably not. Just thinking out loud.
Incidentally, I wonder how this one worked:
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You could, but it wouldn't be very useful. When SWCHA came back as %10101111 the program would have no way to know if you pressed Left & Up at the same time, or button 6 by itself.
True enough. But let's suppose you rigged up a keyboard controller that has no practical use for combination functions. Like a QWERTY keyboard. Pressing T would be indistinguishable from (say) pressing ABD. But practically speaking, how often is ABD going to be pressed in combination when someone is typing?
Or say a fighting game where you have discrete buttons for each move, instead of joystick combinations (push fire & diagonal).
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Though... I'm still on the hunt for that magic hack. After all, my broke self already haS a Touch Pad...
There's DIY as well. Can you scrape together enough money for these? https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9340
Set five onto a board, wire them into a broken joystick or temporarily disabled one, and you are in business.
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That equals this:
Use this as your second controller or get two for both controllers.
No hack required, and a lot nicer than using a touchpad.
This is sweet!
Ok let's say you start with a controller like this. Then add new buttons that switch on various combinations.
Button 6 = Left+ up
Button 7 = right + up
etc.
Assuming you have code that can finely parse out all the combinations of SWCHA, including the normally contradictory ones, could you in effect have a 31-button controller?
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Gotcha, thanks! Actually managed to tone the shimmer down a good bit by making room at the shadow gfx draw and not jumping out. Not sure I have the energy left to work out actually fixing the shadow though.
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Agree 100% on Zaxxon. Just started really playing it recently, and once you get past the loss of the isometric, it's a nice little version. And it seems a little sour grapes to complain about it anyway considering the franchise itself moved away from isometric. Like Zaxxon Escape...it's a stretch to call that one even a sequel.
Just wish Coleco made it *look* better. Game play is solid, but there's no programming limitation on squeezing all you can out of the graphics when you know that it's not going to deliver a key component of the arcade. Like folks have said here about Asteroids, Space Invaders and Defender...make it your own.
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Aha, thanks nano! I threw in a random wsync in the routine but it didn't help. I guess it's not that easy eh.
By the way, reading all the threads on Space Raid got me back on this kick. Now that the isometric's pressure's finally off I feel like it's easier to appreciate this one on its own terms.
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Hey folks, I'm attempting to make the player sprite in Zaxxon multicolored--got it sorta working but there's a problem I can't quite figure out.
Here's what I did:
* Patched in a jump from F716 (where the GRP0 data is set up) to FFE9 where there was some (I think) unused space.
* Then at FFE9, I added two lines of code before the two original lines, namely:
LDA LFFA9, Y (read data from correct location in the color array)
STA COLUP0
LDA ($B0), Y (original code--B0 stores the GRP0 address)
TAY (original code)
JMP LF719 (jump back)
Woo hoo, it worked! But as you can see, the player ship "shimmers" slightly like the color and graphics are wobbling over slightly different scan lines. Pretty cool underwater effect, but unfortunately not for Zaxxon.
Is cycle timing my problem here? Did I use too much with the jumps and the extra lines, or is this some other issue?-Claudio
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Hmm.... harder than I thought. But here's what I got:
Worrior shooting: AUDC0 0F; AUDF1 decrement 10 -> 0 then INC 0 -> 10
Worrior dying: AUDC0 01; AUDF0 decrement 11 > 5
Worluk sound: AUDC1 0F; AUDF1 decrement 15 -> 3 then INC 3 -> 15
Wizard sound AUDC1 08; AUDF1 decrement 2-8?
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Oh and I'll see if I can get some exact AUDC and AUDF parameters to work with.
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I'm getting real close to be able to finish all the speech strings for the AtariVox+. For real this time!
Nice! That's good news.
Meanwhile I am noticing all these little things that need changing, like the Wizard in the arcade is blue.
Nukey, do you have time to crank out some new sound code?
* AUDF0 needs to DEC then INC on each shot.
* The "siren" sound on worrior death should gradually go higher as it cycles
* the Worluk and the Wizard sounds should be separate
* the Wizard has a sort of machine-gun sound
* anything else?
Here's a clip with the Wizard, he comes in just after 1:45:
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New graphics and sounds. Overhauled the up-down sprites to make the drop in resolution less noticeable, and I also gave the worrior's gun some flanges.
Also changed the shooting tone to be closer to the arcade. AUDC0 now at a swishy 0F instead of a straight tone 04, with a sweep up in pitch instead of down. Really, it should be a sweep up then back down, but that would take extra tinkering. Also changed the Worluk/Wizard sound...that one I don't like much and will probably change, so ideas welcome.WizardofWorArcade21915.bin
I seem to have broken the dungeon transition sounds in the process though.-
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I remember the price was in the 120s. Not sure when we got it but it is a 6 switcher.
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My 7 year old is on a Demon Attack kick. Also loves Jungle Hunt, Adventure, Breakout. My younger ones like Combat, Air Sea Battle, Haunted House.
I agree with sloth-machine that the controls seem to be a defining factor. They love the swinging action on Jungle Hunt with just a push of the button, as opposed to Pitfall where there's a lot going on and it's too easy to die.
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Dark Chambers to Gauntlet Conversion
in Atari 2600 Hacks
Posted
You mean in the arcade right? Makes sense. But since this is a hack and I'm no programmer, I'm stuck with the existing kernal, which uses sprites and does a very good job with them in terms of minimizing flicker, etc.
Anyone's free to try new tricks from scratch (and actually, I'd love to see that). I've wondered myself whether you could use NUSIZ to put more sprites on the screen.