Adventure II for 2600

[Frotz]

So I know Adventure II is for the 5200, but I've never had a 5200 and I'm not that interested in the 5200. Is it possible to port Adventure II to the 2600?

[flammingcowz]

Get a flashback 2.

[kroogur]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback

 

The Flashback2 units seem to show up at Target stores occasionally or you could try asking in the marketplace section of these forums, or th=ry the great new auction site Chasethechuckwagon.com. lastly you could try your local Craigslist.

 

As far as I know there has not been a release of Adventure 2 for the 2600 console itself. So the Flashback2 is probably your best bet. Besides the Flashback2 has many other great games on it and is an all around decent unit.

[Nukey Shay]

5200's Adventure II is not the same game as Flashback2's Adventure 2. The latter is just an 8k hack of the original Adventure.

[accousticguitar]

There are some great Adventure hacks out there including Nukey Shay's 8kxray and Yorgle's Missadventure.

[phuzzed]

Getting the 5200 version of Adventure II is a good reason to get a 5200 system, in my opinion. It's an excellent game.

[cosmosiss]

Yep. Adventure II was the reason I got a 5200. From there I got a maxicart and a CIB Robotron. Untill we get Adventure III, I'm done.

 

But I don't see why AdII couldn't be 'ported' to the 2600 with some clever hacking. The 5200 gameplay with 2600 graphics. Possible? Nukey? To this day I have't played AdII enough to know if there's major differences in gameplay.

[+Cafeman]

... and I'm not that interested in the 5200 ...

 

There's yer problem!

[Frotz]

... and I'm not that interested in the 5200 ...

 

There's yer problem!

 

Yeah, yeah... I'll get a 5200 one of these days. It's backseated to some other projects like getting an AV mod into my 2600 and finishing some Midibox gear.

[accousticguitar]

Yep. Adventure II was the reason I got a 5200. From there I got a maxicart and a CIB Robotron. Untill we get Adventure III, I'm done.

 

But I don't see why AdII couldn't be 'ported' to the 2600 with some clever hacking. The 5200 gameplay with 2600 graphics. Possible? Nukey? To this day I have't played AdII enough to know if there's major differences in gameplay.

You could probably do the kingdom map layouts okay, but I'm not sure how you would do the minotaur and the shape shifting hedges, although I bet Nukey could do it all right. It would take a fair amount of work.

[Frotz]

Yep. Adventure II was the reason I got a 5200. From there I got a maxicart and a CIB Robotron. Untill we get Adventure III, I'm done.

 

But I don't see why AdII couldn't be 'ported' to the 2600 with some clever hacking. The 5200 gameplay with 2600 graphics. Possible? Nukey? To this day I have't played AdII enough to know if there's major differences in gameplay.

You could probably do the kingdom map layouts okay, but I'm not sure how you would do the minotaur and the shape shifting hedges, although I bet Nukey could do it all right. It would take a fair amount of work.

 

Can you describe the minotaur and shifting hedges and why those would be troublesome? I wonder how it would work in a 7800...

Edited July 18, 2008 by Frotz

[accousticguitar]

There are hedge mazes that have a minotaur patrolling them. If the minotaur catches you, you are ejected from the maze and the hedge maze changes to a different configuration. I'm sure it's doable but not by me.

[Frotz]

There are hedge mazes that have a minotaur patrolling them. If the minotaur catches you, you are ejected from the maze and the hedge maze changes to a different configuration. I'm sure it's doable but not by me.

 

I'd handle that by having several different configurations of hedge mazes. Upon passing some tripwire point just before entering, a random configuration is loaded. That's how I handle a lot of randomized things in Inform games. Given the huge amounts of memory one can command nowadays on the 2600, that should be easily doable.

[supercat]

Designing a good mechanism for shifting hedges would seem difficult, but not impossible, within the memory constraints of a non-RAM cartridge. The biggest difficulty would be managing to consistently generate mazes that were always solvable, but almost never trivial. On the other hand, the 'always solvable' constraint might not be necessary if there would always be a way by which a player could randomize the maze if he found that it wasn't solvable. Provided that most mazes were solvable, and almost none were trivial, that might be a good approach.

[Frotz]

If recursion is available to the 2600 programmer (I don't know if it is), then solvable mazes can easily be generated on the fly with minimal memory usage. There's a very old X11 graphics demo that does this.

[+Cafeman]

The way I did mazes in 5200 AdvII, I had North/South/East/West tables. Screen 4 for example is the first kingdom Castle screen. It leads south to screen 7, and has null values in its N/E/W table entries ($FF literally) which means you can't go that direction from that screen.

 

I stored A and B versions of the hedge mazes in 5200 RAM (which the 2600 doesn't have nearly as much of course). When the minotaur shifts the maze by touching you, I change the pointer to point from the A maze to the B maze. Lighting fast because I am not really checking each screen change which maze I'm on. The pointer handles that. 2600 has less RAM, but there'd probably be less screens too.

[Frotz]

The way I did mazes in 5200 AdvII, I had North/South/East/West tables. Screen 4 for example is the first kingdom Castle screen. It leads south to screen 7, and has null values in its N/E/W table entries ($FF literally) which means you can't go that direction from that screen.

 

I stored A and B versions of the hedge mazes in 5200 RAM (which the 2600 doesn't have nearly as much of course). When the minotaur shifts the maze by touching you, I change the pointer to point from the A maze to the B maze. Lighting fast because I am not really checking each screen change which maze I'm on. The pointer handles that. 2600 has less RAM, but there'd probably be less screens too.

 

So there are only two possible hedge maze layouts? That simplifies things. Has anyone recently done anything with 2600 carts that carry their own RAM?

[+Cafeman]

Well, there are 4 possible Hedge Mazes but within any one game variation, only 2 of the total 4 are picked for that game variation - it mixes and matches hedges A,B,C,D.

 

However, there are other ways to have shifting mazes. You could design 1 hedge maze and replace just a a few screens' NSEW coordinates, in effect now you'd have different maze layouts from the gamer's perspective.

 

I don't think you can go the 2600-Adventure hack route though. Flashback II uses the original Atari 2600 Adventure Code, expanded to 8K, and that is how the game ended up. They couldn't do various things done in 5200 AdvII such as add a new sprite (minotaur) , without the game's sprite engine messing up. I remember Curt mentioning something like that. If you really want an "Adventure II" , start code from scratch with its concepts in mind from the get-go (shifting hedge mazes, a minotaur, be able to manipulate the sword and bridge left/right and vertical/horizontal, etc).

 

It could be a fun 8K or 16K project for somebody. *

 

*maybe...