horsie

My nostalgia vote... 1. Defender 2. Blue Max 2001 3. Bristles 4. Star Raiders 5. The Tail of Beta Lyrae 6. Necromancer 7. Boulder Dash 8. Fort Apocalypse 9. Mr Robot 10. Preppie

1,647,230 Arm hurts. BTW, after wave 99 it goes back to 95. Useful tip: You can save all 8 Men in early waves but they become a liability by being converted to Nemesites later on, because in more difficult waves you can't possibly save them all. You can protect a smaller number (2-3 is fine), so don't feel bad about deliberately shooting excess ones you don't have a hope of protecting, when the game gets harder. Also: I think thisisbountybob is right: don't save the last Man at the Drop Zone - i.e. carry it on your ship - until enemies are destroyed as the Planters won't attack the Drop Zone if you're carrying one.

1,163,630 Back at the HSC It's been a while... Having trouble with my X-Arcade stick; it activates some key when wiggling the stick, so Cloak is a bit unreliable. BTW I'm using the latest version of Altirra. Any advice would be appreciated. EDIT: Fixed the problem. Found I was accidentally hitting the side button.

First time in the HSC for many years! Gorf 8320 Atari Invaders 24540

I thought some might appreciate this fascinating anecdote from John Romero about Larry Miller. Was just googling around to find info on some of the games he wrote. Almost nothing, however, even on Youtube. KansasFest 2012 - John Romero Q&A (jump to 44:00) Check out the whole thing, plus his keynote presentation. I learned A LOT about the Apple II and gaming history in general.

Donkey Kong has been disassembled and commented comprehensively. Check out www.donkeykongforum.com for threads and the actual commented source to download (you may have to register to download attachments) You should find the discussion to your liking! The other day there was a new thread by someone who'd created a speeded-up (and slowed-down) ROM for players to mess with, to sharpen skills etc. Other discussion revolves around the cause of the famous Kill Screen, and so on. Fireball RNG is still a bit of a mystery. Heck, how about I just attach the file as I can't even find the correct thread myself. Have fun... dkong-asm.txt

Works a treat! Great work. Now can I ask your attention for one more thing? I'm not expecting you to fix this, but it's a glitch I'd always wondered about. Seems to pop up randomly, but usually only after a long time playing, which makes it particularly weird. Basically the game slows down. Also the sound becomes 'twinkly' (not indicated on video)..... I'm curious if you know just from looking at it what the programming glitch is? BTW, I recorded this video a few years ago but never got around to asking about it.

Unfortunately, the problem remains. Thanks as always for your efforts. 100+.zip

JAC, It seems I don't have any ROMs in the folder. Acccording to the help file under Default under Firmware Options: "Chooses either the OS-B ROM for 800 hardware or the XL ROM for 800XL hardware if available; otherwise, defaults to the built-in HLE kernel." [HLE=High-level emulation] Presumably if you remove any ROM files you've added then it should work!

Hardware: 600xl/800xl Firmware: default Memory size: 320k (Rambo) Video: PAL These were probably the default settings. I don't think I've changed any other settings.

Lol, sorry. I selected it but forgot to 'Add to post'. 100.zip

Thanks again! I tested it and it ticks over 99 just fine. Unfortunately when the bonus counts down it gets stuck at 100. I've attached a save state for you to test. You just need to fire once to use up the last amount of fuel, then the +5 bonus ticks it over 99. BTW, save state is from Altirra 2.50.

Interesting. Thanks so much for this "fix". Do you think it is possible to change the power point counter from a two-digit number to a three digit one? As it is it levels off at 99. I don't want to cause extra work as you've already ensured it doesn't roll-over to zero with the 5 PP bonus upon dying then counting down 5 killing off the game...

Hi JAC! Thanks for the great job you've done. I'm really impressed and it works just fine so far. There's one small "problem" in that the version I was used to play many years ago must have been a different one. In the version you're working on, at 70,000 points the snake behaviour changes in that there's no longer a pause - and accompanying sound effect - while it lays another 'Bug'.... it just keeps moving all the time. In the version I used to play this didn't happen; instead the snake grew shorter and shorter due to the pause and quicker laying of 'Bugs'. Would it possible for you to take out this conditional test on the score? As it stands it's not possible to rack up power points the same way. If you could remove this 70,000 point gameplay change I'd be super grateful. BTW, this makes me suspect this feature that makes the game harder is the way the game was originally designed and the version I played on was a hack of sorts.

Hi folks, I disassembled this game but with zero experience in this type of assembler I got nowhere. Hopefully an expert can at least give me an idea if this suggestion is feasible. The disassembled code is attached. Basically what I'd like to do is modify the Energy variable, which is limited to two digits, to allow values over 99 - say, up to 999. This is a good example of a game designed without an awareness of how good the player could get, thus limiting itself at the highest level of play. You can see how annoying this was. The Energy variable in question is the second one in the display: The purpose is that this would solve the problem of the energy rolling over past 99: Once you die, the game typically will credit you with 5 bonus energy points for hitting a 10,000 multiple in your score during that round. Unfortunately this rolls the energy over, leaving you on 4; and, after subtracting 5 Energy penalty for dying, drops you to ZERO = Game Over. The skilfull player can reach 99 when the game really gets going as shooting enemies builds your energy. Because 99 is the ceiling for energy in gameplay (not counting rollover bonus), if it went all the way up to 999 then you could really find out how good you are! Does this sound doable? Or, is it impossible to alter the binary to give an extra 'digit' in this way. Or would it just be very difficult to do so? I'm hoping it's just a matter of identifying where the variable is allocated and making a single change. If there's a keen person out there that can figure this out for me I'd really appreciate it. It's bugged us for years (this game goes way back for my family!) but I just thought I'd ask. Someone could even post the HEX sequence to search for & which changes to make I could look it up and make the alteration to my own binary. Alien Swarm info: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-alien-swarm_202.html Thanks for reading. P.S. I have a suggestion for a second hack: speed up the laborious "counting down bonus" at the end of round during which surplus energy (>20) is converted into points. This may be more difficult as it's due to timing?