Raiu

The first thing I ever hacked was just the other day, changing the anchor-like sword in Adventure Plus into a more.. sword-like sword. The results are posted in the Adventure Plus thread. (The author of the hack approved, I think) After that, I DL'd a the disassembly of the original Adventure, and I've been messing with it. I've changed the color of the ground to black, the orientation and color of the keys (the white key is now blue, the black key is now red, and both of them are turned the other way), the shape and color of the sword (to a light grey/silver version of the same sword I made for Adventure Plus), changed the castles to match the keys (inside and out), made the two invisible mazes visible, changed Grundle into Rhindle (and turned everything he guards - key, magnet, bridge - red, to match), changed Rhindle into Disgruntle (the blue dragon from Indenture, to match the blue key he guards) and sped him up, slowed the bat to a crawl, changed the game select numbers to Roman numerals, made the Dot flash like the Chalice, removed a wall in the Black Maze so that you can get to the Dot without the bridge, and changed the Secret Message to "Altered by DarkStorm '05" (out of sheer vanity). I also changed the item placement code for Game 3 so that the gold key never appears inside any of the castles (and so the game isn't ever unwinnable), and played with turning off collision with walls (like the Adventure34 hack on this site), mostly to make it easier to explore the whole kingdom to see if my changes took. There's no real gameplay changes (except for the changing of the speed of Rhindle/Disgruntle and the bat), and the changes I did make are extremely random, but it's a lot of fun to play around with. I think I'm going to play with making everything invisible next. All right in the text file containing the assembly language program. It does help to know binary and hexadecimal (and how to convert one into the other). -DS-

The Tick can't be the worst game ever as long as Big Rigs exists. But you get points for the avatar. Go, Dedaelus! -DS-

I'm pretty sure he meant 18 starting positions for just the gold key. The problem is that the golden key uses the set up for the other objects, and therefore sometimes starts in the Gold Castle, just like any other object can, rather than the more limited possiblities for the other two keys and the chalice. From looking at the code, and using the game's internal numbering for the rooms: Most objects (the dragons, the bat, the sword, the bridge, the bat, the magnet, and the gold key) have can appear in any room from 1 to 29, which is 29 possibilities, not 18. (I think he got confused because room 18 is the interior of the gold castle). The Chalice can appear in rooms 19 through 26, or eight possibilities. (Rooms 19 through 22 are the Black Castle's maze, rooms 23 through 26 are the White Castle maze). The white key can appear in rooms 1 through 22, so it can appear inside the Black Castle or Gold Castle but never inside the White Castle. The black key can only appear in rooms 1 through 18, so the only castle it could appear in is the Gold Castle. So there are, in fact, a lot of different item combinations overall. It's just that 1/29 of those combinations feature the gold key starting inside the Gold Castle, with more complex probability formulae for the chances of the gold and black keys starting in each other's castles and the threesome of black locked in gold, white locked in black, gold locked in one of the other two. (I hesitate to calculate those because it requires calculating the positions not just of the keys in question, but of all the other objects in the game, since no two objects can start in the same room) It's actually a really easy problem to fix (making it so the gold key will only appear in rooms 1 through 17, outside of all the castles), requiring changing only one nybble of the code. -DS- Edit: Added suggestion where the "one-in-18 chance" statement may have come from.

I almost feel like an interloper now After finally getting DASM working, I changed the sword to resemble the Warrior's Sword from Swordquest: Earthworld (except pointing to the right instead of up). The second one was me just goofing around with it, and making the sword flash like the Chalice (even when set to black and white) And, no, I don't plan on selling the Flashing Warrior Sword Adventure Plus Hack, so no worries -DS- adv_plus_sword.bin adv_plus_sword_flash.bin

Yes! That did it. (I also had problems because the filename was too long, but I figured that one out myself) Thank you -DS-

Did they even make a manual for Atlantis 2? I can't imagine they'd make a box and manual for a game that was only meant to be used in a tournament (and which didn't actually have an official name) -DS-

I mentioned this in a thread on the Atari 7800 Programming board, but it's probably more appropriate for here, since it's about the 2600 and I am a newbie I can't get DASM to run on my Macintosh. When I double-click it from the Finder, it opens up a window telling me the command line format is incorrect, and it can't run. When I try to open it from within Terminal (with the correct command-line format), Terminal tells me the program doesn't exist. (And, before you suggest the obvious, I am in the right directory) So, how does it work? What's the secret I'm missing? EDIT: I was already answered on the Atari 7800 board's thread. For some reason, it wouldn't accept "dasm" as a command, but it will accept "./dasm". -DS-

I have an ASM file, but it's still not working. When I run DASM from the finder, I just get the gibberish I already quoted. When I typed what you suggested (substituting the file name for "game.asm", of course), all I get is "-bash: dasm: command not found". The shell isn't recognizing the program, and the program isn't recognizing the ASM file. Edit: And, yeah, I'm in the right directory. The ls command shows that dasm is in the current directory, but it's not running it when I type the command. -DS-

Lately, Cinematech has been showing brief clips of Atari and other classic-era games between movies of the more modern games. Now if they'd only bring back Starcade -DS-

I bring this topic back from the dead! Okay, I have DASM for Mac OSX, but when I run it, all I get is: And that's it. I can't figure out how to *do* anything with it. -DS-

When Indy gets to the bottom of the pedastal, press the button on the RIGHT controller. You'll need two controllers for this game, incidentally. (The right one controlls Indy, the left one manages his inventory, seen at the bottom of the screen) -DS-

Ha! I never thought of it like that. All this time I thought the tip of the arrow was also the tip of the sword. Based on my own interpretation, I think I'll leave it like it is. I just edited my post from this morning and added the source code. Feel free to change the game however you'd like to. AM 903858[/snapback] Well, it bugs me because the sword now doesn't really look like a sword *or* an arrow, it looks like an anchor on its side. If I can find any sort of freeware Assembler compiler that actually runs on my Mac (and figure out what the heck where the sword image is stored), maybe I'll give it a try. Edit: Aha, there it is. Still looking for assembler. -DS-

May I make a silly suggestion? Since all the dragons are facing left, the sword should probably be pointing to the right (as it was in the original game - well, that was the intention, anyway. It wasn't supposed to be an arrow pointting left; the point of the arrow is supposed to be the hilt of the sword) Obviously, not even remotely a major problem, just something I wanted to point out. Fun game, though I'm struggling just in variation 1. I can't imagine what game 3 is like. -DS-

Wow. Interestingly enough, 2 of the 3 that have the proper name on the carts he misspelled in the description (Riddle of the Sphimx and Warlocks), but he spelled all the misspellings correctly! 903558[/snapback] I can understand "Riddle of the Sphimx" to some extent - that Imagic font does make the N look like an M, and with those other badly-misspelled carts he has no reason to assume that "Sphinx" is the word they're going for. I don't understand "Warlocks" at all. Most of the original list of games I recognize, but not these. What are the originals? -DS-

Nope. Games 1 and 3 are single-player, games 2 and 4 are two-player. -DS-

Copyrights don't expire all that easily or quickly. Copyright is life of creator + 75 years. Worse, since corporations are considered "virtual people", as long as a corporation (e.g., Inforgrames/Atari) owns the rights to something, they can never "die" for the 75-year waiting period to start. The upshot of this is that there *are* no commercially-released Atari 2600 games whose copyrights have expired. -DS-

I'm just confused - WHY can't you post a .bin file? How are you running it if you don't have a .bin file? Don't tell me you're burning every version to a test EEPROM and running it on an actual Atari 2600 rather than running the file on an emulator... I mean, if you just don't *want* to, say so. All this mysteriousness makes it sound like you're hiding something -DS-

I've been buying from eBay for quite a while, and I've never had any trouble with anyone on there. (Mostly I use Paypal instead of sending a check, but still). A few sellers took a while before sending me the merchandise, and one item arrived broken, but other than that, no problems. Mostly I've been getting handheld games (with Bandai Packri Monster for $1, including shipping, being my best score) rather than Atari carts, though I'm keeping my eye out on a good deal on a Colecovision (I had to give away my ADAM computer when I moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta, but I kept the carts, and I want to play them again) -DS-

Actually, after a little more searching, Knight Rider appears as a NR game on Craig Pell's Atari 2600 game lists, by a company called Studio Games. (There's also a NR Magnum PI game by the same company). That may be what the GameFAQs page is referring to. For example, this list (which seems to be the latest version): http://atarifun.com/atari2600gameslist.html Of course, "Studio Games" may also be just another name for Savage Vaporware, Ltd, but I doubt it, since it's been on the list since version 7.0, and he doesn't list homebrews on there. So maybe there really is a lost Knight Rider 2600 prototype out there somewhere -DS-

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/a2600/data/584835.html I think someone's been posting info about his own non-existent game to GameFAQs. -DS-

There should definitely be a "No, my first console was even older" option. Because that's what I'd pick. A Coleco Telstar Ranger (still have it, still works! Lost the gun, though) -DS-

The Atari Protos page says that Robert Vieira worked on the sound, but I can't find anything indicating that Robert Vieira ever worked for Epyx. Also, just because he programmed the sound doesn't necessarily mean he composed the music. It's a start, though. -DS-

Sort of an odd question as my first post here. Does anyone know who the music programmer for the Last Starfighter game was? More specifically, did he also work on the G.I. Joe game for the Commodore 64? I ask because the music from the intro screen of The Last Starfighter is identical to the music from the map screen of G.I. Joe, and I'm kinda curious how music from an unreleased Atari prototype wound up in an Epyx computer game. -DS-