White Water Madness

[White Water Madness]

It's great.

[White Water Madness]

Fixed a bug where the life counter reset when the level changed. I added a level 7 where the beaver comes at you and follows you. Level 7 is deeper in the Amazon jungle, and I've begun work on a Level 8 which is in the Arctic. You'd think the water would be frozen there, but apparently not since there goes the kayak. And the eskimos are angry at you for kayaking down their river. I need to think of something brown, scary, swims, and is in the Arctic.

left difficulty in A position = start at level 1.

b&w/color in b&w position = start at level 5.

left difficulty in B position = start at level 7.

 

Well, you have polar bears up there and walruses. Both are brown(polar bears are rarely actually 'white') and quite dangerous.

[how to pronounce Imagic]

Eye prefer ee-may-geese.

[FROGGIE Review is up...]

Does Froggie duplicate the 'bug' from the arcade game where you die when jumping from a submerging turtle if the turtle submerges fully(while you are in the air) before you land on another object?

[Raycasting with bus stuffing DEMO]

Should this work in Stella, or just on the real thing?

I just get a black screen in Stella, and Stellerator says "TRAP: invalid instruction."

 

-edit- Oops, I just reread the op.

[Rikki & Vikki]

I just made it to the first boss. Panic set in. Forgetting which button jumps, I pressed the wrong one, ran directly into the boss and died for game over.

[RetroN 77 Community Build Image]

I cannot get this to work for the life of me. My retron77 just does not see the paddles. I updated to the firmware to the community build that removes the Rom limitation. Does that build not work? I've turned auto sense on and off. Maybe I got a faulty adapter? What settings did you use ? How did you boot the game? Cartridge or Rom?

 

You have to use this test build currently.

[Rikki & Vikki]

Hmm, anyone else getting a controller error on startup at all? I tried both 7800 joysticks and the d-pad controllers to no avail. Hope neither my 7800 or my cartridge are defective...

 

If Ballblazer is your only other 7800 game, pick up a copy of Xevious. It's a very good port of the game, prices tend to be reasonable for a used copy, and it's an easy way to test if R&V 'should' be working with both buttons*.

 

*Xevious- left difficulty switch to the left for 2 button play.

[Donkey Kong Jr Review...]

DK Jr is a complicated subject for me.

 

The first time I saw DK Jr was in a 'bar & grill' where I was eating lunch with my family. A new Donkey Kong! I was drawn in by the complicated colorful levels and the awesome sound. Soon after, disappointment set in when I'd put in my second or third quarter and came to the realization that I didn't actually like the game.

 

Donkey Kong was one of those games that cemented my love of arcades. I wasn't very skilled at it BitD; foxfires left me dumbfounded, so whether I could complete the girder level or not was dependent on luck of the patterns. That didn't stop me from putting any quarters that I could find, beg, or earn into the thing.

 

The thing about Donkey Kong(1) though, is that while the game is fabulous, the control is just passable. With DK Jr., the control is worse than Donkey Kong, bordering on bad IMO. I'm not sure if it was intended to be 'clunky' because we're controlling a baby gorilla or not, but it doesn't add anything positive to the game for me. Whenever I come back to DK Jr. arcade after not having played in a while I have to relearn the control unlike most games, and having done so I almost feel as though I've wasted my time as the game isn't worth it to me.

 

That said, the 7800 version is a good conversion(other than the horrible sound:) I think the control is actually slightly better than the arcade game as well, IIRC. I wouldn't have purchased the 7800 DK Jr, if it hadn't been 85 cents at O'Shea's due to how I feel about the original. Oh, and the death sound *is* hilarious ear abuse. lol

[RetroN 77 Community Build Image]

You need to either plug a keyboard into the R77, or setup the game in Stella on another computer and copy over the configuration for that game.

[Baby Pac-Man]

I made a 4-way 7800 arcade stick in honor of Baby Pac-Man's brilliantly successful completion.

 

 

Note that this is a one-off, though if anyone else feels the desire to reproduce it, I'll provide tips.

[Thrust+ with foot pedal controller]

Here are my pedals on the cheap:

They work well enough, though I'll probably have to mount them on something so they don't want to 'walk' away from me as I'm playing.

 

 

They plug into this:

 

 

The driving controller will definitely take some getting used to.

 

For my first two games, I died before finishing the first level. On my third go, I made it to level 3.

[Thrust+ with foot pedal controller]

Thrust does have a difficulty curve to be sure. You just need to spend some time learning how rapidly gravity affects it, and practice giving small boosts to keep it in the 'air.'

[4 switch woody left joysick up stopped working; boardpics what should I do?]

You checked that all nine pins are still there in the port, right?

 

Up is pin 1, which is leftmost on the upper row I believe.

[Dual joystick Atari games?]

Robot Tank TC and Battlezone TC, 'tank controller' hacks by Thomas Jentzsch.

 

Also, Riddle of the Sphinx.

[RetroN 77 Community Build Image]

Try the joystick in a game that supports joystick, not the menu. If you only have one (Atari type)joystick, you don't need the D9. The R77 already supports basic joysticks well enough for most games.

 

Make sure that you read the "Auto Sense" portion of http://2600-daptor.com/2600-daptor%20D9.htm

 

It may be possible to reconfigure Stella on the R77 to allow a 2600-daptor connected joystick to navigate the menu in addition to being used in game, but I haven't tried.

 

-+-+-Edit: I just tried the above on my desktop(Linux) machine in Stella, and it didn't work. The UI ignored the inputs. The 2600-daptor D9 connected joystick continues to work in game.-+-+-

[Baby Pac-Man]

It seems to run fine in MAME.

[Announcing new 2600 controller USB adaptor]

To be perfectly honest, I don't really understand why Stella doesn't provide the option of overriding the Stelladaptor et al. autodetection and setup. It's the one thing that made the '7800 only' firmware that you whipped up for me slightly annoying, as I had no firebutton 0(? IIRC,) so I couldn't use sticks for games in Stella that require a plain old 2600 firebutton.

 

On an unrelated note, the D9 I received last week shows up as Vendor=0001, Product=f6eb. I triple-checked it to be sure. It otherwise seems to work properly. I haven't reflashed it. Is my firmware borked?

[Games hacked to work with paddles?]

Why wasn't Pole Position with Paddles? Who needs to shift anyways! Would love to see it with driving controller (hmmm, the name of that controller just sounds right! )

 

A digital throttle *and* no shifting on Pole Position? That doesn't sound good. How about a foot pedal plus driving controller?

[Thrust+ with foot pedal controller]

You have me convinced. I love Thrust Plus, and I want to see if the driving controller is what will get me past level 6. I just ordered a DC, and am looking into building a foot pedal.

[Atari 2600 Trak-Ball Games]

The game looks simple enough, so I suppose we would find the time required. But I doubt it is really worth a hack.

 

You could enhance the game by having the player 'shoot the ball' by spinning the trak-ball a certain amount for the shot distance while holding the button, instead of simply holding the button to shoot. Of course then, you'd almost *need* two trak-balls or the trak-ball player would likely have real disadvantage.

[Thrust+ with foot pedal controller]

Does ->this<- help?

[Cleaning a rusty 4-switch]

Picture(s,) please.

[RetroN 77 Community Build Image]

I tried to determine why my CX-80 trak-ball isn't detected as a joystick when in joystick(JS) mode by the Retron 77 when plugged into one of the front ports.

 

Power pin to ground on the R77 front ports was measured at 3.4 volts instead of the Atari standard 5 volts. When supplied with 5v, the CX-80 draws about 30ma. When Supplied with 3.4v, the CX-80 draws about 15ma. The CX-80 starts producing coherent output at around 3.15v, and seems to work just as well at 3.4v as it does at 5.

 

The CX-80 is virtually silent electrically on my scope when plugged, and when not in use, just as a standard 2600 stick should be.

 

So, why does the R77 ignore the CX-80 in joystick mode? Perhaps the pulses it produces are too short?

 

I didn't try testing the CX-80 while attached to the R77, perhaps the R77 doesn't allow any 'significant' current to be drawn from the joystick ports, not even 10-15ma?

 

--Oops. I meant to post this in the main Retron thread.

[RetroN 77 Community Build Image]

You need a 2600-daptor II and connect it to the USB port. That's why you need that cable above.

 

... and the latest community build intstalled.