Dangerous Mouse Hunt (Gefaehrliche Maeusejagd hack)

[dwane413]

Here's a hack I made. Below are the boring details about it.

 

NTSC version:

Dangerous_Mouse_Hunt.zip

 

PAL version (336 scanlines):

Dangerous_Mouse_Hunt_PAL.zip

 

Sometimes I'll randomly try a game I've never heard of before. Yesterday I tried Gefährliche Mäusejagd (aka Hole Hunter, Mole Control, Mole Hunter & Topy). When I played it, I noticed that the controls don't work properly. If you try to go up-right, it just goes right. Even worse is when you try to go down-right, it goes up-right.

 

This happens because the code at $F20A branched over an ASL command. To my novice eyes, it looks like the only purpose of this branch is to avoid checking to see if the joystick is pressed right and left at the same time.

 

LF1F9: ASL    A       ;2 Joystick Right
      BCC    LF20c   ;2
      TAX            ;2
      LDA    $CF     ;3
      ORA    #$02    ;2 Hammer points Right (bit 00000010 on)
      STA    $CF     ;3
      TXA            ;2
      LDX    #$02    ;2
      STX    $ED     ;3
      LDX    #$80    ;2
(F20a) BNE    LF21D   ;2 The diagonal bug fix is STX    $CE     ;3
LF20c: ASL    A       ;2 Joystick Left
      BCC    LF21F   ;2
      TAX            ;2
      LDA    $CF     ;3
      AND    #$FD    ;2 Hammer points Left (bit 00000010 off)
      STA    $CF     ;3
      TXA            ;2
      LDX    #$FE    ;2
      STX    $ED     ;3
      LDX    #$00    ;2
LF21D: STX    $CE     ;3
LF21F: ASL    A       ;2 Joystick Down
      BCC    LF226   ;2
      LDX    #$02    ;2
      BNE    LF22B   ;2
LF226: ASL    A       ;2 Joystick Up
      BCC    LF22D   ;2
      LDX    #$FE    ;2
LF22B: STX    $EE     ;3

This isn't the greatest game in the world, but to me it seemed sad that someone wrote a game and didn't bother to get the diagonal controls correct. So I fixed it. Then I changed the scanlines to 262. Next I used the NTSC/PAL Color Conversion Tool to use the original colors. Except I used a lighter color main background because the one listed was too close to the color of the players face IMO.

 

If you have user42's manual scan collection, this game's manual is listed as "Mole Hunter (E).pdf".

 

About the name of my hack, I thought it was strange that a game about hunting mice was called Mole Hunter. So I looked up Gefährliche Mäusejagd at Google Tranlate and it said Dangerous Mouse Hunt. That name is also used in the Guide to german classic cart variations.

Edited May 21, 2011 by dwane413

[dwane413]

I added a PAL version. It is the same as Gefährliche Mäusejagd except for two bytes in the joystick routine.

[Lucky Man]

Very nice fix! That weird control bug always bothered me, too. Thanks!

 

If you have the time, we still need Panda Chase converted to NTSC. It's the last original PAL game that hasn't been converted yet.

[dwane413]

I tried converting Panda Chase to NTSC, but I don't know enough to do it.

 

Glad you like my Dangerous Mouse Hunt hack. Thanks for commenting on it.

[Lucky Man]

I tried converting Panda Chase to NTSC, but I don't know enough to do it.

Ahhhhhh...rats! Well, thanks for trying.

[dwane413]

I don't know the reason, but I noticed corn was mentioned a few times in different threads. So I thought I'd make a corn hack. The graphics could be better, but I'm not that great of an artist.

 

The ZIP file has NTSC, PAL & PAL60 versions plus the same instructions as below.

Dangerous_Corn.zip

 

 

This is just a silly hack of Gefaehrliche Maeusejagd (Dangerous Mouse Hunt).

 

Dangerous Corn

--------------

Your genetically altered corn crop has turned against you. Whenever an ear of corn grows, it comes alive and starts running around. You must take your hammer and kill them. While you run around the garden, don't get too close to the tops of the plants. If you do, they will grab and eat you.

 

For each ear of corn you kill, you get 100 points. If they touch you before you kill them, you lose points.

 

If you think you have problems, you should see your neighbor's corn. Every now and then an ear of corn will wander into your garden from his crop. While it may look less harmful, these smaller ears are deadly, but if you are skillful enough to kill them first, you get 500 points.

 

Sometimes you will get tired and drop your hammer. When you do, just wait. It will reappear and you can go pick it up.

Edited June 15, 2011 by dwane413

[dwane413]

Now and then I've tried making comments to the disassembly of this game. I wanted it to be more complete before uploading it, but for now I've lost interest in the project and decided to go ahead and upload it as is. I hope someone finds it useful.

 

To me the mountain in the background of this game looks wrong. If you set MOUNTAIN_FIX to 1, it looks better in my opinion.

 

I've always thought it strange that this game has a timer, but nothing happens when the timer reaches zero. You can change the value of TIMEOUT to change what the timer does. In order to get some free ROM to make these changes, I removed a couple NOPs that are near STA WSYNC. I hope this doesn't cause any problems. Despite me having a Harmony cart, I don't remember testing these changes on real hardware.

 

I did have options for a couple things that I removed from this copy. Since they came from someone else's code, I didn't want to use them without permission. With other things going on in my life, I may not be on here much/any in the near future and wanted to go ahead and post this.

 

This download is just a zipped ASM file.

Dangerous_Mouse_Hunt_(Gefaehrliche_Maeusejagd_hack)_2013y08m15d_05h09m.zip

[snstay]

Very nice fix! That weird control bug always bothered me, too. Thanks!

 

If you have the time, we still need Panda Chase converted to NTSC. It's the last original PAL game that hasn't been converted yet.

Ok heres a weird question, is there a list of all the pal original games?

 

And also these are some great hacks. good job and thanks for your work dwane!!

[dwane413]

Ok heres a weird question, is there a list of all the pal original games?

This might be what you're looking for:

http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft.awp?system=2&type=G&format=1&original=1&step=25

 

good job and thanks for your work dwane!!

You're welcome.

[Lucky Man]

Dwane, I want to thank you again for figuring out what was wrong with the diagonal control on this game. For some reason, I'm partial to the colors in the Taiwan hack, Hole Hunter, so I asked Omegamatrix to implement your fix to that one and here it is!

 

Hole Hunter (Diagonal Fix).bin