CDS Games

Hmm....possibly. Though it seems a little more complicated than a diagonal fall, as Harry has to be able to go up or down depending on which way he is headed and which direction the floor is oriented. Some versions of Donkey Kong flatten the ramps for this reason. Mine carts would be another issue. Probably wouldn't be too hard to draw a sprite of Harry in a mine cart and swap it in, but then you need a whole new routine for mine cart movement. One idea to try would be doubling the cart size and then handle all the mine cart movement in the second set of banks. You'd just need enough room to switch banks as soon as he jumps into the cart, and then in that second set of banks you can replace all the regular movement routines (walking, climbing ladders) with new ones (mine rolling forward, Harry jumping in cart, grabbing ring). Then when he exits the cart again, you bankswitch back and he's back to normal movement. It'd definitely be a deep hack...good term.

Good work with the math and mockup. Looks like you'd need new code to handle Harry walking up or down ramps though. Maybe you could make room for it by deleting some other movement routine that is unneeded? Otherwise it might be tough.

Thanks for the compliment Kevin! Your hack is awesome by the way....I played it exclusively for so long I actually forgot how weird the colors were in the original.

Got my order yesterday. Thanks!!

Never mind! It was a permissions issue and I just had to reset it. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2181549?tstart=0 Working now.

I got a new (to me) MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and used Migration Assistant to bring over my old files. Everything seems to have worked perfectly, except now when I'm in Stella and try to save a ROM, I get "failed to save ROM" every single time. Anyone know what the problem could be? I tried different versions of Stella and reinstalling, nothing. Could it be some sort of permissions or directory issue? I'm at a loss. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Yeah, the perennial problem with these sorts of things. But if a worthy hack/homebrew can't be sold for whatever reason then you can always contact the coder and see if they need or want anything from the Atari store or elsewhere. Like this thread has me drooling over a trak-ball....anyone need any hacks done?

Great hack!! The quick and dirty way to get the other characters in here: Quadruple the 2 banks into an 8-bank game. At the end of every round you switch to the next pair of banks. Then you change the sprites in each bank as follows: Banks 0-1: no change Banks 2-3: change Sam sprite to Slick Banks 4-5: change red ball to Wrong Way Banks 6-7: change red ball to Ugg, change Sam to Slick The red ball, Ugg, and Wrong Way don't appear on all the screens of the arcade game so it wouldn't be all that incorrect. Not sure though if it'll be possible to have them start low and travel up instead of down....depends on how separate the enemy behaviors are. An elegant method it ain't, I realize.

Looks like the upper (yellow buildings) part starts at FEBE...but the bottom (green) part is probably calculated, not called from data.

Gauntlet can't be made commercially available through the store because of the active trademark. But I will update the cart label with a higher-res version for those who want to assemble one-off carts.

He may well have found someone interested.

Yep. Same engine and gameplay. It's basically a graphics hack.

Exactly...lack of precedent is an excellent way to describe it. At least if it were an established thing on here, people would know what the expectations would be on both sides. I'd like to know Al's thoughts on this issue. Personally, I'd find it nice to trade goods and services that flow right back into the community. Like making repro labels that everyone can use for, say, a cart or a trak-ball or something. A fellow hacker once offered me an AtariVox...I didn't need one but that was a very nice gesture and is the kind of thing I love about this forum. Hobbyists sharing with each other and appreciating each others' work. And people like Nukey who have been so selfless with their time and energy without taking near enough credit. I'm not sure what he needs if anything, but I'd sure like to hear it and contribute.

Ed Logg mentioned in his talk that he thought the name worked well because "running of the Gauntlet" was pretty much what the game was all about. I'm guessing the armor also factored in though. Onslaught would be a nice name. For some reason though I tend to be a purist about the names of arcade translations, so I'd rather just leave this as Gauntlet and do a separate spinoff with different branding.

Oh nice! I had no idea we made it to Youtube! Glad you enjoy it.

Without having looked at the code, that might well be a way to go. I read somewhere that the elbow was made less effective anyway in DDII.

I'm a little puzzled by this offer being taken as some attempt at a programmer's salary. To me it's like asking a contractor friend to come help you with a home renovation project and you'll slip him some money for his trouble. This is not on a professional level at all...it's a friendly hobby community and one hobbyist with a wish list offering to compensate another hobbyist with the potential to make it happen. "Donationware", I think, comes closest, and sn8k can correct me on that if I'm wrong. I may well be interested in taking up Double Dragon 2 mainly because of personal interest in the game. But I admit to being a little nervous about the money aspect....it introduces an accountability that I'm not sure I can live up to, this being very much a side project. I would be absolutely mortified if I took anything and then left people feeling cheated because I hit an unsolvable snag or the end result wasn't up to someone's standards. This community means a great deal to me. Just thinking out loud here, but instead of money, how about Atari stuff? I've been really wanting some of Al's homebrews and hacks for a while but have nothing extra to spend on them. I badly need a Harmony cart to test hacks out on real hardware. Games and controllers, even, if folks have extras and would like to donate those. (Just broke my only set of paddles, dangit!!) Would that bring this back down to a hobbyist level? None of us would be here if it weren't for Al, so it seems fitting for the compensation to ultimately go to him.

Actually, this thread hasn't been a failure. People are just understandably skeptical about the money aspect. I've long been wondering whether a Donationware model could work, particularly with games that can't be sold because of trademark or other issues. But normally the way things go around here is that you catch a developer's interest, and then things are off and running. So what are we looking at here? The main problems with Activision's DD are that a) it's too hard, and b) the sprites look clunky. Always easiest to start with graphics, so here's a new Billy and some potential sprites for the sequel: Graphics modification can actually get you most of the way to Double Dragon II. Assuming there's no impediment to doubling the ROM size, with careful level arrangement you can add extra sprites and bosses. You will likely have to share some though--you basically have 4 sprite sets to work from: Billy/Jimmy/Williams/Roper, etc. (all shared!); Linda, Abobo, and Boss Willy. We can get that up to 7 with bankswitching (Billy/Jimmy/etc. will have to carry over to the second bank). The game play would be the big sticking point, as I don't know that this game has ever had a commented disassembly, so it'll be a challenge figuring everything out. And then coming up with ways to make the modifications within the existing code. But before we open up the hood and see what's feasible, tell me what specifically you want to see from DDII and how it can fit into the 2600 context. Like the new "cyclone kick" move in DDII....how can that be added, if it can? Do you get rid of one of the other moves? How would it be activated? Do you keep the DDI control scheme, or do you go with the DDII version?

Are you taking this project on, Save2600?

Agreed....it might grease the skids of a project a person is interested in doing anyway, who just needs some extra incentive. Megaman has zero appeal for me personally, but the quickest and easiest way to Double Dragon 2 would be a hack. KevinMos3 did some fantastic work improving the sprites of the original Activision release, and Nukey fixed some of the game play: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/154984-hack-project-thread-galaxian-arcade-double-dragon-xenophobe-etc/ My impression from watching Youtube clips of the arcade DDII is that Kevin's/Nukey's "Double Dragon Arcade (Weak)" hack would be a good base to start from. Assuming they don't mind, that can then be modified in the direction of the sequel.

No, but I haven't really tried either.

Yep; that's the plan anyway.

Ah, that make sense. Thanks for clarifying that Dutchman.

Glad that worked out Arenafoot! I hacked it completely in Stella so that would have been baffling. I've only had time to work on this sporadically, but I've gotten a bit farther. The chunky playfield looked awful so I went ahead with straight line levels. The first with the V shape level is the latest working version...the second is an older version with a cylindrical playfield. tempest1022.bin tempestcirc501.bin The idea would be to finish the V-level, then design 3 additional levels, combine them, and then bankswitch through them in game. The good news is that this is very finishable, and it's a fun game, even more so at higher levels when things speed up. The display is glitchy and the switchover from blue to red levels has to be fixed--there's a bug there that makes the colors go screwy. Also, adding driving controller support would be fantastic. Player lives are at BE if you want to top yourself up to see higher levels.

Bit of background: I had immense problems learning Assembly back in the 80s...my younger brother was writing programs with ease and I couldn't even figure out a single instruction. It was very intimidating for me. I eventually learned it from hacking. I wanted to customize games so I would open them up in Stella and start by tweaking graphics code. Then I would study some disassemblies and eventually learn how the program was calling that code. Started with Combat, Air Sea Battle, moved to Superman and other games, and started to see patterns. I'd come on this forum and ask question--how do you bankswitch, is my problem here too many cycles, etc? The hacking projects got progressively more complicated until I got to the point where I could blank out code I didn't need and write whole new routines from scratch. If you're having trouble with abstract code instruction, try messing around in some games that have a good disassembly. Combat's great to start.