KevinMos3

Here's another binary. I changed the jumping animation to more closely resemble the arcade. Now he leans slightly forward and has his arms behind him when he jumps. The running animation needs some work. Right now, it's just the stock Jungle Hunt sprite with hair instead of a hat and the belt-line filled in. Oh, by the way... the colors look fine in stella, but they look pretty bad on real hardware. You can hardly see the loincloth in the jumping and running scenes and the waves are almost invisible in the swimming scene. (At least on my TV which I have adjusted to look good with most games). Jungle King (4-21-2010).bin

Disclaimer: I'm not begging for a release and I sincerely hope I don't offend you. It is not my intention to be rude in any way. I'm not attributing any motives to you -- any jabs are not directed at you, but at others in various communities I've seen over the years. I think I understand now. While I don't agree with the premise, I understand the sentiment. You've put a lot of hard work into it and don't want people to play it without any sacrifice of their own, (meaning spending hard earned cash). This is entirely legitimate. But at the same time, you feel that any money earned from sales couldn't possibly offset the time and labor you've put into the game, (which is the reality -- standard selling price in the homebrew market to a limited number of buyers would never amount to real compensation for you. Meanwhile, you didn't do this with the intent of selling it, so there's no incentive to release it for a pittance. It's the enjoyment of making it and the pride of accomplishing something that others said couldn't be done that matter to you. All understandable points. If I'm wrong, please correct me. The part I don't agree with is that I see games as things to be played and enjoyed.* I don't understand a programmer putting all the time and effort into something that only they will enjoy. I wonder if that is in fact not enough, and the reason why we see those who do something and then show it without releasing it. They get the enjoyment of their work plus they get the compliments of others saying how good it looks and how much they'd like to have it. It seems to me that seeing the most amount of people possible enjoying your work would be more rewarding, but this is where my view conflicts with many programmers. In the current market of 360, Wii, and PS3 production, I understand the disdain and fear of piracy. But in the retro market where no one can possibly expect to make a living, let alone get rich, I say do it for the love of doing it and let as many people as possible play it. edit: But I'm not a professional programmer, so I really don't understand their way of thinking (-remembering the confusion I felt reading Rob Fulop's thread). I spent years, (about six), working on a project before and once I released it, I saw websites from Brazil selling my work. I was offended, but at the same time, what would be the point of fighting it? Should I have not released it? I didn't do the project with the intent of making money, heck I released my work for free because I wanted as many people as possible to get it. I didn't like the idea of others profiting from it, but at least those dirty brasilian sellers were getting it into the hands of people who would probably have never gotten it otherwise. While I have mixed feelings about this, I would tend to agree with that statement. I like to know something exists, but I think it's because I have hope that I might someday be able to own or play it, (most prototypes have fallen into this category). In this case, I hope that once it's finished you will one day change your mind and decide to release your work, so at this point I'm glad you let us know about it. On the other hand, if it turns out that down the road there's no hope of it ever being released, then I would prefer to have not known about it. I feel that way with a lot of the so-called "limited run" stuff. If it's done for any reason other than practicality of production numbers, I feel it serves no other purpose than to stroke the releaser's ego and it's a tease. Hey, look what you can't have! (I'm not saying that about you) *subnote from 2nd paragraph: This is why I feel deeply offended with the "collector only" mentality. Some people will buy anything and pay any price for a crap game just to have it in their collection. I couldn't care less if a game is supposed to be "rare." To me, that has NO effect on its value. I won't pay more for a crap game just because it's harder to find, which is why I'll probably never own Chase the Chuckwagon. I'd love to have the game and would actually play it if I did, but it can't possibly justify the price it goes for. But that's the way the world works. I say if one wants to collect something with no intention of using it, they should go collect stamps!

Thanks for that tip. I must have done that last time, so why didn't I think of it this time? It's embarrassing how many lives I lost trying to make the drop last night. Anyway, I just finished playing it through on a console. It wasn't too brutal. Either I'm getting better, or it's much easier with that 7800 gamepad... maybe a combination of both. I'd like to see something put in a couple of areas that look like dead ends. I don't know what... maybe an extra life... or just something cool to look at, but doesn't actually serve a purpose, like a fake brother or a kidnapper that just stands there and does nothing. I think an extra life would be nice. edit: [7-23-2010] I just played through tonight, (well techincally early morning), with a joystick. I think I've got the hang of the game now after beating it in Stella and real hardware with both a gamepad and a joystick. If you have time before CGE, I really hope you are able (or willing) to add in something to those dead ends.

After finding a few colors earlier, I couldn't seem to stop. I always liked the Jungle King hack, so I thought I'd make the colors closer to the arcade. I really prefer the original colors better, but the intent of this hack was to make it more like the arcade. Of course I had to take some license here and there. Thanks Nukey and Omegamatrix for posting about the vine color issue. Those are both good fixes. Nukey, yours makes the color of the vine the player is on share the color of the top layer of the grass for some reason. I don't have a picture to explain what I'm saying, but basically the grass is made up of 4 colors, (two for the upper portion and two for the lower portion). Anyway, the upper portion shared the color of the vine after making your change and I previously had the vine yellow-beige and the upper grass pink. Omegamatrix's fix did not do this, so I used his fix. So anyway, I went back and made the sprite and color edits a second time and here is the result: Jungle King (VineFix).bin And some screenies: Note: I combined the girlfriend with the ooga booga screen to save on screenshot real-estate here. She does not actually appear on the same screen in the actual game. A big THANK YOU to both Nukey and Omegamatrix for the vine fix. Also to Jess Ragan for the inspiration for a Jungle King hack in the first place. Now the thing that would make Jungle Hunt perfect is the addition of music, like espire8 did with Moon Patrol.

Reminds me of that Dave Chapelle episode "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories", or something to that effect. It's a re-enactment of various experiences Charlie Murphy had hanging out with Rick James, (from Charlie Murphy's point of view of course). They make Rick James look like a total nut. They piece in parts of an interview with Rick James who says, "Cocaine's a h*ll of a drug!" It's a hilarious episode.

I've been playing it on real hardware using a 7800 control pad (which probably helps). I've gotten farther this time than ever before (on a console) and was thinking I might go ahead and beat it, but I'm at a trouble spot now. I got through this on an emulator using a save-state to repeat it until I got it right, but since I'm playing on a console, I don't have that luxury and I've already died many many times at this spot. I don't think I'll play through to the end tonight because I'm about out of patience and need to go to bed soon. Here's the spot I'm talking about: I wish I could remember what I did to get past this before. Unfortunately, I don't even have the save-state for Stella anymore, so I can't practice on my PC and then go back to the console.

Oh, DUH! I didn't realize what was happening when I hit scan +1. I never hit it more than once. Now I see that it's going down the screen and telling you the colors on each scanline. Thanks for pointing that out. 0B92 is the color of the trees on the first screen in the ROM that I have. Jungle Hunt.bin The tree tops in other screens is different though. Make sure you're in the right spot. If it doesn't say C4, you may have a different ROM than me.

Just the jumping. The enemies aren't too hard to get around except in a couple of locations. The ones on route to the final screen are the most difficult which is fair since it IS the end of the game. There were a couple other locations where you get a key or an item that were difficult because of the way you have to be so precise in your timing, but I wouldn't consider it unfair. The items are a great touch and the difficulty for figuring them out is just par for the course with adventure games. I've had much more trouble figuring out what to do with items in Zelda games. Finding what the whistle (er, flute) and holy book did were pretty fun. The main point of difficulty for me is the jumping. For example, the beginning of the game when I go to get the winged boots. Getting to the hidden entrance can easily be death. It's so easy to bump your head on the ledge because you have to do it just right. Getting to the actual platform with the boots usually takes at least a couple of continues (if I have the patience to keep at it).

@ Stephana - I was referring to the post made by Curious Sofa. I didn't have a problem with anything you said. I only brought up the quoting issue because it was this very thing that I thought probably confused you about that screenshot in the first place. @ Curious Sofa - Welcome to the forums. It's no problem. There are many veterans here who do the same thing. There's no rule against it, but it can make an otherwise simple thread very very long. You see it all the time. Just look at the post directly above your last post to see what I'm talking about. I hope that NE146 was just doing that to get my goat. Unfortunately that post is common practice by many. @ Nukey - Thanks for stepping in there to clarify. I did not intend to offend Stephana and I'm glad you were willing and able to help.

I'm happy to help when I can. You know?... I've done that before -- tried to use the debugger in Stella. I'm looking at the TIA tab right now and don't see where all the colors are listed. I only see 2 of the colors that are used. If I keep bringing up the debugger I get a couple of different colors, but I still don't get all of them (I've yet to get the tree tops color for example). What am I missing? I'm thinking that maybe the way I've been doing it (with a screenshot) is easier for me.

There are much better ways to do it than what I do, but I'll share my method anyway. (I use Photoshop by the way). First I take a screenshot of the game. I open that screenshot along with an image of the color palette that I made from a screen cap of the TIA Palette editor in HOM3, (it's the same color palette that I posted here). I use the color picker in Photoshop to get the color I want to change from the screenshot. Then I match up that color with one on the color palette to find the color ID, (because Stella uses a slightly different palette, it's not an exact match, but you can tell the color ID pretty easily in most cases). Now that I have the color ID that I want to look for, I do a Find in HOM3 or a hex editor, (both will accomplish the same thing at this point). HOM3 also has a button called Reading Highlight. If you use this, it will tell you how many instances there are of the value you're searching for. A hex editor such as Hex Workshop will do the same thing. Here's where patience is sometimes required. Now just go through the binary changing the values one at a time and testing in an emu until you find the right one. Once you get used to it, you can usually get a pretty good feel for where the colors will be and you won't have to do much random picking. (I usually find the right place with only a few tries, but sometimes it takes longer). Color tables, on the other hand, are usually very easy to spot. I've read about using Stella to find the colors rather than matching them up with a color picker, (like Photoshop, Gimp, etc.), but I didn't figure out Stella good enough to do that... and since the method I use works good enough for me, I wasn't too motivated to dig too deeply into Stella. edit: In your example of Jungle Hunt, the color you want to search for is C4. Doing a find in Hex Workshop or a Reading Highlight in HOM3 shows there are 32 instances of this value. Now you just need to find which of those is the one you want to change. You're in luck with this example since there are only 32 to guess from. Some of these are obviously not what you need so it makes the picking much easier. The color you want is located at 0B92. I made the top of the trees and the vines the same color as the background. Now our hero is floating in air! I'll let you find the color of the vines.

I'd like to order some of the MHS games, but $38.99, (might as well call it $40), is just way too expensive for me. If that's the price for all the new releases, I'm afraid I won't be participating. ...and I was really wanting to try out Haunted House II 3-D. BTW, when you said "loose carts only," do you mean no manual either?

It's not really "infinite lives," but rather -- you keep your items. You still return to the start of the game when you lose all 3 lives. If it weren't for keeping the items, the game would be far too frustrating IMO. It's so insanely difficult in the first place. As much as I like it (enough to put together an entire map), I can't tolerate playing it for long on real hardware without wanting to throw a controller. I pretty much only play in an emulator so I can use save states at the difficult spots. Maybe I'll eventually get good enough to beat it on a console. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of artwork will be made for this game. I just hope it doesn't display too much of a hint at the original subtitle. I've almost gotten that subtitle out of my mind, but it really tainted the game for me for quite a while. @ Ben, the new sound effects are great. Adding a 'Game Over - Continue/Quit' screen would be a nice finishing touch.

I always love Nukey's hacks. Keep up the great work!

That snapshot is from a little over a year ago. I hate it when people just quote a whole post. It makes a mess, especially when there are pictures involved. It's even more needless when the reply doesn't require a quote in the first place. I'd like to see some discipline about that issue on these boards, but maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine that no one else shares. I don't get the "3-speed side scrolling control." I've tried it with the right difficulty switch in both positions and didn't notice a difference. What am I missing? What exactly is different in position A? I agree that this is the definitive version of Moon Patrol for the 2600. I'd love to replace the ROM on my cart with this.

Now that is just impressive.

I like that better. I should avoid any confusion.

Pete Rose Baseball is the ONLY baseball game I've ever enjoyed. I liked it from the first day I got it and was very surprised. Over the years, I've found myself returning to it every so often. I like it on both the 7800 and 2600. It's also the only baseball video game I've ever been able to win.

Yes, those are gorgeous. It doesn't get any better than that. But would he be willing to share the images in a resolution high enough to use with the emulators? I completely understand not wanting to share high-res enough for someone to make knock-offs of his work, but how about a resolution similar to what I've shared? That would be perfect.

Wow! Excellent job. Thank you for sharing. That's exactly what I was hoping to see. After uploading the Adventure II pics, I made them look better by darkening behind the title a bit. However, by the time I was ready to upload, I could no longer edit the post and didn't want to make two posts with essentially the same boxart. I've made several for the 7800. I would like to have images from Marc or Nonner42 for some of these (especially Sirius and Plutos). I did what I could by piecing together various images and sometimes redrawing portions of them to fill out the larger box area. I'm sure some people won't like the "NEW" sticker I put on the boxes, but I like them and think they fit in well with the official boxarts in my emulator. For my XBox setup, I downsize them a bit more, but I thought 500px tall should make most people happy for other emu setups as well. I really don't like my Asteroids Deluxe and I'm not happy with Jr Pac-Man either. It's the layout I don't like, the artwork itself is great. I've seen pics of Marc's layouts of Asteroids and Jr Pac-Man and I like those much better. I've done more for the 2600 which I'll upload later. @ Nabuko78, I didn't know of a contest. I looked through the contest postings and didn't see anything like that. Do you have a link to more info? edit: I don't want anyone to misunderstand me. I'm not taking credit for any of the artwork, only piecing it together into a boxart. The last thing I want to do is offend the artists who did a great job.

Ok, I have a bug to report. This is not due to the recent changes, it's been there for the past several versions and I forgot to mention it before. Sorry about that. After beating the game two or three times, (meaning you're now working on playing through your third or fourth time in a row), your health acts buggy. It will show no health and sometimes flash one unit of health. You still have some health as far as I can tell, but it's just not showing. Then, if you beat the game again it will crash without showing the end game screen, (or maybe it just crashes before I notice the end game screen), and go to the title screen. From there it's like starting the game fresh. I didn't try playing all the way through again after that. I should do that later. What I did in older versions to get this issue: I first saw this the night I was playing on real hardware and played through several times. If I remember right, it would happen about the third or fourth time playing after going to the end game screen. I don't remember if it would ever crash to the title screen though. This was before you added music, so it's been around for several versions. What I did in the current version to get this issue: I first played through and collected all items as normal. Once at the end game screen, I reset and played through purposely collecting only the Numen Sword. (I did this so I would have more items to collect after beating the game). After getting to the end game screen, I reset and continued collecting the remaining items (this again confirms that your recent changes work great). I went to the end game screen again and after hitting reset, this is where the health bug appeared. I continued playing and after beating the game with the health bug, the game crashed to the title screen.

I know there's a thread of cart label mockups, but how about one for boxarts? Since the XBox emulators and several PC emulators make great use of such images, I thought it would be nice to see what people have come up with for games that had no official boxes, (such as prototypes, homebrews, or hacks). I'll be the first to submit a few pics -- this time for Adventure II with a little back-story. I just picked up a Flashback 2 last weekend at a flea market for $1 and some change, (pretty good deal but it was just the unit -- no controllers or power supply). I got into playing a little Adventure II, so I thought it would be nice to put the ROM on my XBox emulator also. Well, it needed a boxart to look real purty, so I scanned the "Adventure Territory" page from one of my old Atari catalogs and put together a pic. Here are 3 variations. My favorite in Orange, followed by the late style Red, and last but not least, Silver. edit: The point is to help each other out by filling in our emulator setups, or just showing off boxarts for the fun of it.

I'm not sure I fully understood what you were saying... Will these be made available for the entire 7800 library, and if so, any idea for how much? I may just have to get a collection of duplicates to replace the labels with these. They look pretty awesome and may finally give the uniform look that I've wanted for years.

I would LOVE it if someone made label art for all the 2600 Activision games that had generic screenshot labels. That's another thing I've always wanted to do. Some of the later Activision labels looked great, like Private Eye, Beamrider, Pitfall II, HERO, etc. They made nice art for games on other systems like River Raid, Keystone Kapers, etc. but the 2600 just got the generic screenshot on the label. I'd love to see that nice art make its way to a 2600 label. ZylonBane, stop posting as horseboy! Again, awesome job on the labels, Underball.

This game was looking really good. What ever happened to it?