Feralstorm
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Posts posted by Feralstorm
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Kangaroo is one of, if not the best, Donkey Kong-style games available on the 2600.
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if that were the case, it seems likely to me 'new' 2600 Pac-Man games would have to be made on the same carts they always were, as changing the design or type of media the software is housed on may require a new/different agreement.
Purely guessing on my part though.
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I guess "not thought of" was the wrong way to put it. I didn't so much mean to imply the possibilities weren't considered at all, more like that it might've been assumed that if an arcade port game did not come from Atari, it was automatically out of the running by default.
It's good to be wrong, regardless of what I really meant.
You guys just can't assume that if something isn't in there, it is because we didn't think about it. Curt is right -- literally EVERYTHING was given consideration. It is a long, drawn out, and complicated process to figure out what we can and cannot use.
People have to remember that Curt, Marty and I are the SAME as you guys when it comes to the love of the classic games. In particular, no one is more knowledgeable or passionate about this stuff than Curt. There is a lot of stuff that we wanted in there that we just could not make happen due to rights, licensing issues, cost, and other factors. I'm sure Curt will remember all of the pressure I was pouring on last spring to get Berzerk in there, but we just couldn't make it happen. FB2 gave me a real crash-course of the licensing costs and the ugly legal procedure to make things happen. Believe me, it isn't pretty.
I'd really encourage people to go and listen to the Bobby Blackwolf podcast with Curt. He takes the time to explain the whole Flashback 2 story from start to finish.
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I had wondered about that kind of possibility in the past ("Atari Invaders, Urban Defender, Munch-Man). Good to know that that's something that was considered and rejected, as opposed to not thought of at all. A collection of arcade ports would be cool, but I figured licensing or exclusivity agreements with other TV-game producers would severely limit the options.
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I did that when messing around with Adventure and ADV 2 on the FB2. Once I actually managed to get every object in the game into the yellow castle (not easy, since you need the bat's help to take a dragon anywhere.)
Now THAT flickered like a bastard!
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Great to hear improvements will be coming to the new FB2 games. I'll definitely grab a "Rev C" FB2 when they are available and findable. I've been a little reluctant to grab the Rev Bs out now, but I may yet, though I already have 2 FB2s (neither talking, one GCC Millipede, One Atari Millipede)
Maybe I need a Rev B if only for the spare Joysticks.
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Thanx for the screenshots!
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Be sure to check if commented disassembly/source code for the game you're hacking exists. Even when you're bit-hacking and not getting into the guts of assembly language, the source code is like a roadmap for finding graphics, colors, and more.
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True enough. Asteroids dosn't waste many bytes in the graphics department - 4 lines for the tiny rock, 5 lines for the ship. I had to throw out my first candidates for some graphics (like the ship) because I made assumptions that it would have 8x8 pixels available (cause it turned all the way around, and it was 8 pixels wide after all, right?
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Are you talking about FB2 "Arcade Asteroids" or "Asteroids Deluxe"? Just doing a quick once-over on my FB2, "Deluxe" appears to have new rock graphics, while "Arcade" seems the same as the original 2600 solid rocks - except hollow. I could easily be wrong though.
In any case, it's all good. I looked over the arcade graphics to try to recreate them in the hack, and oddly enough, it's easier to do a rough rock shape with 2600 graphics than the arcade "octagon with a couple cheese wedges taken out" shapes.
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All the Targets in my area had them for $29.99
(give or take a few cents)
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I don't have means to do so (but I've got a Cuttle Cart 2 so no prob there
) but I have no objections ( or reasons to have objections) to anyone wanting to make a cart out of it. Atari might say different though. -
doing a little more MAME testing...
Just trying to split up rocks quickly without eliminating them (more challenging than shooting nothing
), It seems that the first saucer may be delayed a bit before it appears, but it definitely appears all the same.I always figured the purpose of the saucers were to stir things up a bit by shooting up the rocks (and you) so one can't just float around avoiding rocks for hours on end, and if that's the case, there's not much point in having any reason for them not to show up. Not like I know the game designer's mind or anything.
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Yeah, well that's why "Arcade" is in quotes.
Since you mentioned it, I checked it out, on the 2600 and on MAME. Just starting a game and not shooting any rocks. Saucers showed up quicker in the arcade version than the 2600 version, so it seems you don't need to shoot any rocks for the saucers to start showing up.
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rearranged a bit for simplicity:
Looks very cool - I like it! Nice combinations of existing hacks and some of your own stuffFeralstorm - did you change the source assembly or did you bit hack this?
Everything I did on this was bit-hacking, using the disassembly as a roadmap
From what it looks like the programmers did with Asteroids Deluxe on the FB2, I don't think it would be too difficult to change one set of the rocks (there are two different shapes) to look like the Killer Satellite, and when broken make them aim directly for the ship... That seems to be the only difference (actually, that and the sheilds)...
I didn't expect a hack of 2600 Asteroids would work for FB2 Deluxe, but it came off better than I thought it would. If a little more effort was put in , I'd conceive Deluxe working like this:
When all asteroids that move up (or down) are shot, the snowflake appears, and the split parts would be able to track vertically as well as horizontally (keeping apart like the robots from Berzerk)
The rocks/whatever could knock the sheilded ship around, using some simplified computing to figure the deflection angle/speed.
...but I ain't a programmer.
The commentary in Thomas' disassembly suggests that if the code was optimised to take out redundancies, Asteroids (the version without the opening copyright screen) could probably fit in 4K, so I'm guessing there's a fair amout of wiggle-room in the 8K.
I'm considering a "graphic test" hack to make a conceptual Asteroids Deluxe, but I don't have the abilities to radically change the gameplay.
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probably would've caught on about as well as that robot accesory for the NES, that is to say, not at all.
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The inspiration: My Flashback 2, and its "Arcade Asteroids", which was basically a 'vectorised' hack of the original 2600 Asteroids with no other changes, which is fine, but I thought a true "arcade" hack could go a bt farther. I knew there's a lot of Asteroids hacks out there, each with their own tweaks to graphics and/or gameplay, so I tried to pull together the right collection of elements for as close an approximation to the arcade version of Asteroids as possible (graphics and gameplay) with a hack (and my skill set
). I can't say that I've been totally successful, but It's definitely different.Changes - graphics:
Copyright screen changed to a cute little title.
Graphics for ship/rocks/UFOs changed to approximate arcade vector graphics (not just hollowed out)
All colors changed to black and white (except player 2, who is light gray)
Shows reserve ship sprites instead of numbers. (from Sadistroids)
Changes - gameplay:
Rock horizontal speeds tweaked so they don't 'fly in formation' quite as much. game is somewhat tougher as a result, and a lot tougher in 'fast rocks' mode (though not as hard as Sadistroids)
Player ship has greater thrust (also from Sadistroids)
UFOs are no longer an option, and appear regardless of how the difficulty switches are set.
Special thanks go to Thomas Jentzsch, for the Asteroids disassembly and info, and for creating the Sadistroids hack, which I used as my baseline.
(been a while since I hacked anything, and this is my first hack greater than 4K)
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Does the talking FB2 have the same "jumpy screen games" issues as earlier units? (in the new games like Space Duel and Yar's Return). Curious if any software differences are in.
GCC or Atari Millipede?
Missile Command have the "bar graph" in the missile base?
As I understand it, Caverns of Mars' display kernel displays the asymmetrical playfield and the sprites on alternating frames. (programmer couldn't find enough CPU time to do both at once). On the ascending part, the only sprite is the player's ship, and the display kernel for that part CAN handle that much at once, so no flicker.
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Okee-doke.
I'm beta-testing/playtesting and tweaking, mostly so the "slow" game doesn't totally kick my ass.
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Thanks again for the aid. I managed to do what I was shooting for mostly by trial and error, since I was bit-hacking as opposed to assembly-hacking. Sorta like turning on and off lamps in your home by pounding the circuit breaker with a hammer.
No apparent side-effects so far, so I'm hopeful.I also stared over, using Sadistroids as a baseline this time (since it already had a few things I wanted already in place.) Hope you don't mind... eheh.
Getting close to done either way - watch this space.
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Thanks again for the disassembly. I'm in the middle of a hack which will get lost in the wealth of Asteroids hacks out there, along with a test or two of graphic experiments. I'm just a bit-hacker, but there's a lot one can do in bit hacking when one has a roadmap.
Which leads me to a follow-up question for anyone willing to listen. Is there a way (with bit-hacking) to disable the difficulty switch check? My goal is to set the UFOs as on regardless of the switch position.
Thanx in advance
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One of the older FB2 preview threads featured some screenshots of Space Duel and others.
Space Duel and Asteroids Deluxe don't look all that different from 'vectorized' Asteroids really, since they are based on the same engine.
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Thankyew.
I barely qualify as a hacker, but I've done a few things, and the variations of Asteroids in the FB2 started me thinking in "How I woulda dunnit" terms.
I don't have the programming skills (or the patience to learn) to do much beyond graphic hacks tho'
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I'm not aware of it being more than a graphical hack.
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Ideas for a better Donkey Kong port - ColecoVision
in Homebrew Discussion
Posted
The 7800 Donkey Kong seems to share a lot of 'quirks' with the NES version, leading me to speculate that it's really a port of NES Donkey Kong, as opposed to arcade DK.