doctorclu

Been playing it with UP turned off. The game is still quite hard, but at least the controls are not as frustrating and the game is more fun to play. The big part that is less frustrating in the Swan Lake levels are the hanging corn cobs or whatever they are. Those use to be TERRIBLE with up direction because you are trying to climb up, which you do, and then you would fly up. Well ok, that still happens because the jump button is being used for climbing and jumping but at least now you don't have two things that can set it off. Ideally if there was a way UP could solely be for climbing, and the jump button for jumping, would be the best world scenario here. But not hopping around at other times till jump button is pressed... much nicer!

Glad to say thanks to collaboration, you can now play Zool 2 with no crazy jumps from up on the D-Pad. Can find that here: Up on D-Pad is entirely off on this version, however for climbing you can hit the jump button to shimmy up a wall. Overall, less chaotic.

Very nice, you showed how the rom was different after the game was unpacked, changed and repacked. Zool2B-NoUp.rom The game itself on testing, UP is completely turned off. However this does not leave the character without means. Now there is no pesky jumping by hitting anything that is close to up (diagonally up and what not too) which always happened at the wrong time. And if you need to CLIMB up, you can now shimmy up using the jump button. Very cool! Thank you! And I'm sure these people will be thankful too (from another thread about rom hacks...) Now for that item collection part. --------------------------------- Took a moment to check out how this was done. As it was said, the actual program file was not adjusted, much... RNC file 127 is the "PAUSED" graphic, and there was nothing there. And RNC files 128 to 131 I can't get ProPack to unpack. So effectly loaded all game in as it was, and then patch written beyond the program code. Cool.

That is about what I suspected so there we go. LOL! Got more to play with later knowing that. Ah yes, I do understand where you're coming from. After having played Zool I can see why there was a Zool2. After having played Zool2 I can see why there was not a Zool3. The layouts are something. From my perspective, I've mastered Bubsy, and I enjoy a good 30 minute zip through that game about once a month. I enjoyed Zool RedimeNsioned on the PS4, and got to thinking without that twitchy jump on the d-pad up position, and not needing to collect junk, would make a fun speedrunning game. Layouts are still ... blah, but can they be mastered for a speedrun? What I want to find out. And wow, all these years with Amiga players and you'd think there would be recorded Zool 2 speedruns, but no! Dannng... https://www.speedrun.com/zool2?h=Any-Jaguar&x=02qpo8jd-jlz5w15l.81wdn4oq

This has been fun. Been working to put in the NOP changes. When recompresed though the file was bit for bit the same size the compressed file was about 8 bits bigger than the original compressed file I was pasting back into the rom. Really wonder why propack sometimes does that, sometimes, not always, create a larger file through the source is the same size So all that to say, will try this startup hack soon. Good to know it cancelled the UP on the D-Pad. Was that for the jump ability, or for climbing too?

Roger that. Oh that's more than fine as you have the 68k know how. And I still want to try killing the up command... been itching to do that all day. In this game the character's jumping ability is triggered by the A button OR pushing up on the controller. This causes the player to jump around at the worst possible moment at times, and quite irratically. So there have been quite a few Zool players over the years that wished the up direction was NOT another option for jumping. But being able to climb up on walls would of course be nice. Will try out the example code when I get home... geez long day. LOL Probalby more than 100 items more than likely. The player is required to collect 99% of the "tokens" or items before the player can advance to the next level. Would be nice if that were considerably less. Quite a few thought the earlier Zool games were better because they didn't have the item collecting requirement, and I agree.

Ah so deleting the move.w line to free up eight bits of space? Not bad.

Thanks for confirming 126 is the program file. I was searching through these three to change the 99% items found to something much less (say 15%) for speedrunning. Funny part was, this file only mentions 99 as in "copyright 1994". Another file had four occurances of 99 in it, and the other file had like 30 occurances of "99". Tinkered with changing those values, no noticable difference. But the changed and recompressed files in those cases were bit for bit of the original at least when re-added to the rom image, so far say that experience. Appreciate the code patch idea because it's true what you say... Just have to see how pro-pack handles a recompressed file with one bit change. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not. As for this... Very cool, and not visible in the compacted rom but in the uncompacted file RNC126 file we get this... So it's right there, the real question is, will this kill up on the D-Pad for just jumping, or would it also kill the up motion for climbing too? Either way, could be fun to try in a few hours after work.

So I got about as far as I could tonight. Wine (on my Mac) is not loading dasm68.exe, and won't run in dosbox which I use for dos utilities like ProPack. I have a older PC I will probably plug up for this very soon and run the disassembler. In the meantime, using the hex 33fc to find the "move.w" command since move was said to be a common command, I did a search for that on unpacked (from propack) files that I established were not graphics, music, map, or whatever files. Found three so far. RNC00024.RNC RNC00097.RNC RNC00126.RNC

Ok this is going to be fun to check out after work. You mentioned the team tap, does that require special coding, or do you code ports 1 and 2 standard and then had special coding from Atari for 3 and 4? As I've dove into Bubsy, Raiden a little bit, and now Zool been fun to see how Imagitec put these together. May have to peek at Dinodudes sometime just for fun. More hex values... mohahaha!! Really cool. Again, can't wait to check this out more in a few hours.

Oh this is good. I was still enjoying the information shown about the table of start addresses hadn't had a chance to try this. Will play with this more tonight. And see if I can rustle up an example of Jaguar controller code to get an idea of what that looks like.

Throwing my hat into the ring... Skyhammer = 160 Joust = 133,300

Hey Andrew, great to see you as usual! Yeh, no orderly file directory at the beginning of the rom like in Bubsy. Matter of fact, where that one had a lot of the program files towards the beginning, the map files and other such in the middle, and music and voice samples toward the end, this one is quite different: Graphics files at the beginning (at least that is the way the ripper found the RNC files) with an interesting cluster of files by world (mod file, followed by the map files, and other objects, and then another mod file and other related files to that next world and so on.) I would imagine the program files are somewhere in a cluster for each world? Still trying to narrow down to the program files. The disassemly is really exciting to look over, if nothing to see the comparison of the hex values and the commands on the right hand side. Seeing that "33fc" is hex for "move.w" for example, it is always cool when you can find a command in hex. Or know what command to look for and search in hex. Still new to 68K assembly and the wonderful disassembly above. Anything you can say on how to pull up that information would be awesome.

Oh, play with the number buttons during play. Well, even at the intro screen, teaser sounds were created there too. For some of them, I believe the arcade, ST (also used in 8-bit), Lynx, and 7800. But these sound sets can be hit at any time during play. 4- ST 5-8 bit 6-Arcade 7-2600 8-Lynx 9-7800 3-Plays electric guitar of greensleeves Also just got 93,700 as a score. Shouldn't be my last try.

You don't say? I had fun helping CJ create the various sound files for this. My favs are Atari 8-bit (what I played in high school) and Lynx (best sound on the Atari systems).

Much like how the mods in Bubsy were swapped for other mods recently, I changed the mods in Zool 2 with varying results.

Introduction: After playing Zool RedimeNsioned on PS4, I wondered, could Zool on the Jaguar be tweaked a bit to make it (even) more fun? Here's what I came up with that could done for "quick" changes: 1) Swap out mod files, give it more of a Zool 1 feel that way. 2) Negate the jump by pushing up on the D-Pad. 3) Eliminate the need for 100% item collection. Great for speed running. Used the RNC uncompression utility, and currently pouring through all the files, finding the picture files, map, character, and other files using JagView. At some point I hope to narrow down the program files. If I can't get it to pull up in some program editor, at least I'll know where it resides in the rom image and can try a few other tricks. Mods at this point were found, and I changed them out for the Zool 1 mods I found in the mod archive. The results, unlike my tinkering with Bubsy which all worked, these mods varied in performance, which I thought was interesting. Went something like this... Uncompressed Compressed Intro 191 k 164 k Replace with: Acid 32 k 23 k Result: Good! Nice simple intro, had the "Get Ready" which I really enjoy. Loved tht this worked. Swan 90 k 57 k Rock N’ Zool. 60 k 44 k Result: Good! Rocking tune, better than the mellow Swan Lake tune, made it more palatable. bulb 60 k 37 k Sonic Basher 40 k 33 k Result: Plays slow. Egypt 88 k 61 k Sunset Mix 85 k 58 k Result: Plays slow. snake 84 k 66 k Sweetie Funk 60 k 37 k Result: Plays slow. ice 88 k 61 k Zool Rave 59 k 41 k Result: Plays regular speed. So if you want to try a version that had the better results (only intro and swan lake changed out) with the other music still in tact here are these images: Zool2B.rom Zool2B2.rom And if you'd like to sample a curiousity, here is the one with all the tracks switched. Zool2B5.rom I'll keep tinkering and see if we can make the no jump and no item collection changes happen. UPDATE June 10, 2023 - Version where UP is disabled on the D-Pad thanks mostly in part to Seedy1812: DOWNLOAD HERE: No odd jumps from the D-Pad anymore. If you need to climb just hold down the jump button. Climbs just as quick as D-Pad up. Option menu used up and down on D-pad, but luckily if you hit down on D-pad it will cycle back to the top if you need. Enjoy!

Apparently. Welcome back!

Pirates Gold for Jaguar? Nice. Make sure to have a sword fight segment.

Reminds me of the awesome stickers from the 80s. Now trying to think of what I have that needs this kind of glam?

Something valuable and never to leave home without? How nice of you to say!

Happy Towel Day! Celebrating Douglas Adams who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (HHGTTG) I dare say, if you like the lunacy of Bubsy, you'd like the off the wall turn tropes on their head comedy like this book series. I have a shot of the Infocom game that originally introduced me to the HHGTTG series.... This is the same company that Bubsy creator, Michael Berlyn, also wrote Cutthroats and Infidel for. And I believe I have this same game package for those games too. These games came with the "feelies", in this case the "Don't Panic" badge, the bag of pocket fluff, a bag of a microscropic Space fleet, and the glasses that turned black whenever something dangerous was around, keeping you from panicing. Awesome series. And this HHGTTG logo/mascot of a sorts was the inspiration for the Bubsy Fan Blog icon. Saw that on the Bubsy pilot and thought... hey... we could have some fun with that. So Bubsy fans, enjoy out there, and don't it's a tough galaxy out there so don't forget your towel ! ------ Don't see pictures, try this link: https://forums.atariage.com/blogs/entry/18548-cruizin-the-galaxy-happy-towel-day-may-2023/

Hey, when you calculate the score from this round, I have played previous rounds for the participation points. Played for the two points of round 1. And played for the two points of round 2. Four points, but every point helps.

Quite a resume of games! Star Wars Arcade was amazing, played a lot of Video Pinball, the rest not as much. Learned on a Sol Terminal eh? That was our first family computer, a Sol Terminal 20. Wonder if he coded any games for that? Rest in peace Bob Smith.