MayDay

nice quadrun imitation...but isn't there another game with voice-synth? And while it's not really rare, I'm also quite fond of kung fu master! On another note, it appears Dolt has swung a baseball bat a few times before You guys didn't come off bad at all, and actually seemed pretty nonchalant through the whole deal. Most people I've seen are like "I hate you" and you guys were "yeah, this has us upset ... can we have our free stuff now?! " -JD

Is the show over now, or is it the one that's on? I just saw this and they were talking about a DVD collection. -JD

It strikes mine... is the source available? Since you've already posted in my Dragon Warrior thread, I'm guessing you know my intentions! (and if not, you should now). As I said, it will be quite a while before I start this, but thought I would ask while the thread is fresh. Thanks, JD PS- I've been studying the code from that demo I asked for, and I must say it's quite impressive. I have one question though, are the numbers to the right of your code that are commented during the kernel a timing count or something else? I also think your spaceship code is very well suited for this if you were interested in adding to it (and they would bless it).

If you're taking on magidrakees and skeletons it would take hours to level up at that point. If you want to level easier start taking on the wraith, wyvern, rogue scorpions, etc. and maybe even sneak around in the more dangerous areas and try to catch a metal slime. I don't think it's poorly designed or programmed, and intend to keep it as close to the original as possible if I ever get to this project. Edit: One change I might make is to stop the enemies like knights from casting stopspell all the time, since it never seems to work anyway.

Wow, those are incredible. I take back what I said about thinking Mike Tyson's Punch Out is impossible, now I think about anything *can* be done... even if it shouldn't be in some cases. My whole idea of 2600 programming has been altered by these demos. -JD

Be specific with your needs, I may be able to help and would willingly do so if I can. -JD PS- if you need any "help" going through that stuff, let me know!

I just got home and downloaded it, but won't have a chance to look at it in-depth for a while. Thanks for looking it up, I had intentions of doing so from your first post, just haven't had the time yet. -JD

I'm not saying it has to be an absolutely faithful port of the game. Rather, I was trying to show what the original has and try to figure out how much memory is needed to store that, then strip things down from there. I would like to keep the actual size and landscape of the game as well as all the enemies; but am willing to sacrifice things like music and the animation/movement of NPC characters for beginners. You're right that HP are mostly the same for enemies, however they can be as low as 75% of the max. You already need a random number sequence for making them appear, and as vdub said, it's not that hard (but that doesn't mean I can do it either). There are tutorials, and this part of the game doesn't really have me concerned. Leveling isn't that difficult either, so I would just leave experience points the way they are set up now. Has anyone played Dragonstomper? Is there source code or a ROM available? I'm assuming they are using sprites for things such as the trees and castles. I *may* try to get a working demo of this game sometime in the future (i was thinking Tantagel castle for starters) but for now I will continue working on dodgeball! -JD

Currently out of stock, sells (sold) for $99. They have a waiting list in case they make another run, it tells about it here.

I've been looking though some information about Dragonstomper and am wondering if it is possible for a Dragon Warrior port to be made. I've researched Dragon Warrior quite in-depth. Here is what I think is the vital information: 1. overworld= 15,000 squares, 12 unique landscape objects (if you change the squares of the "wiseman cave" in the southeast corner into a cave symbol). This also does not count the character sprite. Towns/dungeons also have 10 additional landscape objects. 2. 7 towns of unknown exact sizes. I would guess 60x60 for each. Dungeons: smaller visible areas, comprised of stone walls, brick floor, and stairs. 3. Erdricks Cave = B1 12x12, B2 12x12. 4. Fighters Cave = B1 16x16, B2 16x16. 5. Swamp Cave = B1 36x8. 6. Grave of Garinham = B1 22x22, B2 14x16, B3 22x22, B4 11x12. 7. "wiseman cave?" = 12x12. 8. Charlock Castle = F1 22x22, B1 22x22, B2 12x12, B3 12x12, B5 12x12, B6 7x12/3x12, B7 30x30. There are 10 spells, 30 levels, 17 items, 3 shields, 7 types of armor, 7 weapons, and 40 unique enemies. Only 1 enemy appears on the screen at any time. You have 8 different commands to choose from and 5 statistics that are dispalyed in your window on the NES version. Does anyone have an idea of how much memory would be required to hold this information? The NES display shows a 16x16 display, I thought that a 9x9 may be possible on the 2600. There are also two battle scenes (one for the overworld, one for dungeons which is just all black) and plenty of text. Each person you talk to says something different to give you clues along the way. There are 10 different animated characters who would have to face 4 different directions (at least to stay absolutely faithful). I'm pretty sure this can be done, I just don't know how large it would have to be. Carts will also not be an option because of the licensing. However if anyone is still interested in this game, I would love to help out. Having 3-4 people working on this might be ideal because of the size. You would also need to generate semi-random numbers for making enemies appear and for hit points during the battles. A lot of work and I haven't taken into account things like music or a password system to "save" your games. So, with all that said... any takers (or helpful information)? -JD

The code for Kung Fu master is AG-039, zaxxon is coleco 2452, adventure is CX2613, Double Dragon is AK-050, Ghostbusters is AZ-108, and gorf is 80010. I don't "know" what the answer is from this, but I would guess it is adventure. -JD

I have some decent video editing software. The screenshot is titled "The Legend of Zelda, The Triforce Saga". As A2600 thinks, I can say with "relative certainty" that the copyright is 1990. Actually, I can say it with complete certainty now. A google for "the triforce saga" turned up this link with a pic of the cartridge label that had been put on ebay before being pulled: http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000980064358/ An article from the next day, same website: http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000357064460 Also be sure to scroll down to number 8 of the user comments. Is there any truth to that? And finally, here's the most interesting find of all: http://www.ratedo.com/articles/z3proto.html This is something I would truly like, I don't have time to play all the new titles, Ocarina of Time made me time travel about six months to finish. Something made for the Nintendo would be fantastic to get ahold of. -JD

I checked out Punch-Out and began to try and work up "sprites" of sorts. I really don't think a good port of this game is possible. Characters are too big, and require too many colors. Even if you really did things like a shirtless little mac to lessen the number of colors, the opponents just require too much detail because a lot of the gameplay comes from the opponent's facial expressions/actions/animations. On another note, in considering if this game was possible I came up with a new atari controller concept: a super nintendo shaped controller where the left part would only have three directions, but could rotate into either two or three different positions. For example, I always dodged to the left so the right arrow now becomes expendable for this game. This could be turned into another button giving you two instead of one. That would allow you to do normal punches with one button, and star punches with the other. Though not in the poll, RC Pro Am is mentioned. Since two buttons but not all the directions are needed for this game as well, you would rotate your controller to not have either the up or down button. Has someone made something along these lines in the past (ie- three joystick directions and two buttons)? -JD

Sorry, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. And sadly it seems my "secrets" have now been discovered (ie- beating Great Tiger with him never throwing a punch & gut-punching Soda Pop Pinksi). To the more experienced programmers, how feasible is this game? I would love to help out, if even for a demo of one round of a fight. -JD *scrambles hooking up NES to do "research" for this game*

After getting off work, I went back and posted a better working example, though the flicker is awful. I saw that thread and thought it was a kernel for producing a grid instead of making extra colors. Because of that, I didn't take the time to download the binary, I usually only do that if I have a question about code itself (or want to play a certain game). I'm not trying to get all 16,000 colors, but am saying that any one of those colors *should* be available to you at a given time. Indeed. Sorry, I was about to fall asleep when posting last night and stated this absolutely wrong. I did however, come up with three utilities today while I was at work (knowing I would probably be asked ) and here they are: 1. Using two colors to make a three-colored sprite (original inspiration for idea). 2. Making a ported game more color-accurate to the original. 3. Surely SECAM users wouldn't mind a few extra colors? @djmips- Andrew Davie mentions the "interleaved chronocolor" in one of the playfield tutorials (he's the man for creating those, btw). A 3-line RGB method would not be as accurate as this method for an exact color (I wouldn't think, at least up close where perception would be less than if seen from far away). I had not come across the "interlaced spasticolor" and was blown away by the theory. It seems to combine both theories into one if I understand it correctly by alternating the RGB between lines. What it doesn't specify, or at least I don't think it did, was does one color (let's say Red) go between all 3 lines, or just alternate on 1 for each of the two frame (2 lines out of 3 total on 2 frames?). No matter the case, it seems I'm about three steps behind Andrew in my theory (but at least I can spell color). Queen's English? Good grief, Charlie Brown! I'm still amazed at how well the people around here know their stuff about Atari hardware and programming. -Jason

Hello, I was going through information about 2600 prototypes and ran across the venetian (spelling?) blind demo. That got me to thinking if colors on the 2600 could be interlaced by frame to produce a lot more colors... not in actuality, but in perception to the human eye. Please see the attachment. The idea was to make a red square, a yellow square, and a square in between that alternated between the two to make an orange (percieved) color. I'm new to programming and maybe more importantly, up past my bedtime but hopefully you can understand what I was trying to do here. I quickly threw this together without a ton of thought, and I'm sure it will show. colordemo.ZIP I know this isn't optimized or probably even practical, I just wondered if it was possible? I'm curious to see what you guys have to say, and will try to play around with it some this weekend. -JD

Best game ever... all time... any system. The game boy version was horrible, I always hoped for a version on a new machine. I remember my Mom shutting this off on me when I got to level 108 (yes, I know there are only 32 "levels") at 1 in the morning. I was so mad (and so close to getting whooped on too I'm sure). I made it back to the 90's a couple of times, but never over 100 again. If only I would have waited until the weekend to begin... *sigh* Now I'm all depressed Anybody else have a "my mom shut off the game" or "my brother unplugged the controller" story, or something along those lines? I voted for SMB- as there is already a Mario Bros. game. Mario seems more Atari to me than Metroid, which has two different games (which I know of) that are nintendo platform releases only. It would be kind of cool to emulate the lost levels hidden in the code of SMB3 into an Atari cartridge. Final Fantasy and Zelda would be cool, as would Dragon Warrior which wasn't mentioned. I'm guessing Mike Tyson's Punch Out would be very difficult to make look and feel correct but would still be fun to see. For the record, I know ALL the gameplay secrets in this game, two of which I've never seen published anywhere (though I haven't checked for a while, they may be now). Now I have something to keep me busy for a few minutes to check up on. -JD

Yes, that switch seems to clear up the glitches. Thanks again for your help. -JD

vdub, can you post the source code from the binary at the top of this thread? It's a pretty neat little demo and I would like to play around with it a little. Thanks. -JD Oh, another question for you guys, what causes the black lines at the left of the screen? Is this the same thing that sometimes causes the top scan line to not start on time, and can it be fixed?

lol... glad to be of assistance. My vision was from (or even in) Visual Basic (which isn't even really programming ). You would just define the sprite (ie- vertical size, shape, etc.) and playfield, give them colors and other stuff. You would then have to do a bunch of if...then statements such as "if player0 hits missle0 then..." and that sort of thing. You could then take that basic kernel code and begin playing with it in assembly. The reason I was hoping for this is the (very excellent) tutorials Andrew wrote have put me on the cusp of actually being able to do something. I have a dodgeball game in mind that I've been "working on" since I joined the forum. I can draw the field, and I can use alien bill's code to make a sprite (and the movement) I want. The problem is that I can't seem to combine the two and get both loaded from tables. I know it's just my lack of understanding and can't find anything that explains it. I could probably just keep asking a million questions, but this (batariB) seems like a much more plausible option. Now I just have to learn basic. Anyway, I was hoping to make a simple game with a simple tool, then move that code on and tweak it through assembly (probably with help of the pros at that point). I think this tool gives me that chance that I might otherwise not have. So while I can see it spawning a bunch of crap (pretty much what I think of the hacks section) I can also see it spawning 5-10 cart quality games a year, something that will never happen with assembly alone. The Popeye/Kangaroo hack as well as the Luigi's Lunch hack come to mind. I'm sure there are others as well. And whether these games are cartable or not, I'm guessing everyone could pay to have their game put on cart if they really wanted to. In the end it is all for fun; the newbs should realize how their games are going to be percieved and the people with assembly games should hang their hat on the fact that their games will always be superior so they won't have to meddle with us lowly basic peeps if they choose not to. If egos are put aside and nobody takes themselves too seriously, I think this will be a monster step for the homebrew community (and not just Atari) as a whole.

Thanks, that fixed the unknown mnemonic problem. Is there another switch I should be using? I am using "distella -a -p source.bin > sourcefile.s" as my command right now. Taking the code through the entire process now compiles correctly; however I think you'll find the results interesting: This is a file from the batariBasic thread that vdub_bobby created. 3 is the (renamed) version and 4 is what comes out of the process. Is this a glitch in the program, or am I still doing something wrong? bbk3.ZIP bbk4.ZIP Thanks again, JD

I've noticed that I can take a source code and compile it (then play with it in an emulator) and it seems to work fine. However, if I take that binary that is working, and try to disassemble it back into a .s file, the code will no longer compile correctly. Do I need to go back, take out the variable set at the beginning and add the include files again? I'm having trouble understanding how this is even possible if it is disassembling correctly. The error I get by the way is a long list of unknown mnemonics that should actually be commands such as STA, LDX, etc. They are indented fine in the "source" file (which at this point is actually the disassembled file). Thanks, Jason

Since it has been a year and a half since the last lesson, I'm guessing Andrew has found more important things to do other than babysit us newbs. Andrew's tutorials are without a doubt the best written and most imformative of the tutorials for a complete beginner. The amount of time and information he gave us are unmatched on the internet. He gave us the information to have working kernals and ability to play and expiriment with them. For his hard work he is to be commended and he has my thanks for his efforts. Since he taught us what to eventually expect in our games (along the lines of game elements) I thought it would be a good idea to once again take up his creative spirit and try to continue the tutorials. That is, unless Andrew has plans to come back to this at some point, and I would gladly be patient enough to wait for such time. I figure if myself or someone else posts a new topic every week or two, beginners and experienced programmers alike can give their thoughts and tips on each subject. Since Andrew covered playfields and began on sprites, I figure missles are as good of a spot to start as any. The other reason for starting with missles is that we already have a resource to reference, that being Kirk Israel's tutorials located here: http://alienbill.com/2600/101/ Simply go through his lessons and you will see code for changing the size of the missile and setting it in motion, as well as reading the collision detection with a sprite. Very useful stuff. Anyway, I hope this idea catches on and thought I would see what you all think. -Jason

sounds good...

Yeah, I believe that's the one, thanks for your help. -JD