PFL Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Those differences in Phoenix sound intriguing. I'll have to fire up Stella and try both versions out. Phoenix is a really fun game so having two different versions is kind of cool. Just looking at the pictures above. The PAL version of Commando Raid is ugly as hell! Is that just lazy porting or are there technicalities that cause such issues? I mean the NTSC version looks really pretty so obviously had thought put into it. Us PAL folks really got short shrift here... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 It seems the difficulty with Commando Raid are the rainbow colors that are calculated and NTSC-palette specific. I'll take a look at the rom if I find the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 Solar Fox (PAL) is already speed-optimized. Nevertheless I did a PAL60 conversion, quite a challenge in hacking skills. So this conversion plays faster than the original NTSC. Have fun. Solar Fox_PAL60.bin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 (edited) This version runs great BATAAIS, thanks. The bigger screen is also great, especially in this game. I don`t have the feeling, that the normal PAL-version of "SOLAR FOX" is already speed-optimized. It plays slower than the normal NTSC-version, or am i crazy *lol*? Tried both version again some minutes ago in STELLA and for me, it feels like BATAAIS PAL60-version runs in the same speed than the NTSC-version of SOLAR FOX. Can please somebody else test both versions (NTSC/PAL) and confirm this. BATAAIS, can you please have another look at PHOENIX? Your PAL60-version was made out of the PAL-version and here in this case it`s clear to see, that it runs to fast. It`s also funny having a more difficult version of "Phoenix", so i also added it to my games-archiv. But really cool would be a PAL60-version of this game, which was made out of the NTSC-version, because of the little timing-differences and little playing-differences to the PAL-version. This was the real reason, why i wanted a PAL60-version especially from this game, which is my "number 1" favorite game on the Atari-2600. Edited January 14, 2015 by AW127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 Maybe you're right about the speed of SolarFox. I only compared the sound. As Omegamatrix said, changing all the colors in the NTSC Phoenix is a lot of work, and I also don't have the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 The original NTSC Zaxxon stutters, switches between 262 and 263 scanlines, looking very strange on PAL TVs (color and bw changes). The PAL version is steady, but so slow, it's almost unplayable. So a PAL60 version is really needed. I managed to get the PAL version from 314 to 268 scanlines, not quite 60 Hz, but close, and much more playable. Again it was a challenge, hope you'll appreciate it. Zaxxon_PAL60.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 Commando Raid has calculated rainbow colors, quite difficult to adapt to our limited PAL-palette. This is the best I could do. Two options: Commando Raid_PAL60a.bin Commando Raid_PAL60b.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 (edited) The two "COMMANDO RAID" (PAL60) versions looks good. Nice background PAL color-palette now. Only thing that looks not so good is, that the helicopters now are in bright-green. In the NTSC-version they are dark-green and this looks much better. Maybe this single-color of the helicopters could be made darker? Thanks for your ZAXXON (PAL60) version BATAAIS, i appreciate your work. But sorry that i must again disagree about the speed-things you wrote. The original PAL-version of ZAXXON is speed-optimized and already runs in the same speed like the NTSC-version. The bad thing about the original PAL-version is the smaller screen, and that was the reason for me, to ask for a PAL60-version. This game looks much better with bigger screensize. Your new (PAL60) version now has this, but it runs to fast (same like in PHOENIX). You can test the speeds easily in this game. I did the following in STELLA-Emulator - press F2 and at the same time the button on a stopwatch and wait without steering. It`s about 11 seconds, until the playersprite crashes into the first wall. In original PAL- and NTSC-version it`s the same, i stopped it different times and it was all the time 11 seconds. In your version its about 9 seconds until the playersprite crashes into the first wall. So it runs to fast, because the normal PAL-version was already speed-optimized. So here it`s the same problem like in PHOENIX. To have ZAXXON running in correct speed with bigger screen, the PAL60-version must be made out of the NTSC-Rom. Then this rom also needs to be disassembled, for doing this. Would be great if anybody could do it. Nevertheless, your faster ZAXXON-version plays good and harder. Scrolling now is about 20% faster then in the normal versions of the game and this looks not bad. I included it into my game-archiv. But having the game in original speed with bigger screen on a PAL-console, would also be cool. Before i asked here for PAL60-versions of this 7 games, i thought that this PAL60-versions would all be made out of NTSC-versions. Didn`t knew that many of them was made out of PAL-versions (but this makes speed-problems when the PAL50-versions already was speed-optimized). If i had known this before, then i would have wrote, which of this 7 games needs only "bigger screen" and which needs "speed-adaption". Edited January 15, 2015 by AW127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 I too was trying to convert Commando Raid today. Here is my version. I Managed to have smooth transitions between the shades of colors in the sky, but at the cost of making it more 'pink' than the NTSC version. Also fixed the scanline count to 262. Commando_Raid_PAL60.bin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Well done, alex_79. Looks better than mine. Fun thing, we almost did the same, changing those lines with 00/F0/E0 to 00/E0/C0 and the ADC 90/80/60/40 ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Yup, the 24 bytes table which starts at $fbd8 holds the offsets which are added to the base colors (those after the ADC instructions) to create the shades in the various sections of the display. Because of the weird arrangement the PAL palette, it's not possible to have a single table which works well for every color. To make the sky more 'blue' like the NTSC version, the code should be optimized and stuff moved around to free another 24 bytes area for a second table. With my coding skills, that would take a LONG time and a lot of efforts, and the results with this simple hack are quite acceptable, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Here's an easy one for the paddle freaks: Solar Storm_PAL60.bin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maiki Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Great! We have 3 versions of Commando Raid now! Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Here is a PAL60 conversion of Phoenix, built off of the NTSC rom. A lot of games cycle through colors for something, and Phoenix does on it's title screen. To build a conversion as authentic as possible I carved out some space and wrote a small on the fly conversion routine. I did a similar treatment to my PAL60 conversion of Tomarc the Barbarian. However, Tomarc scrolls through the colors a litttle faster then the NTSC version due to their being less colors available for PAL. Phoenix(PAL60).zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 (edited) Wow, this PAL60-version from PHOENIX has a real perfect color-palette and it`s indeed based on the NTSC-version. Tested it in STELLA some minutes ago and I see no color-difference to the NTSC-version. Very good color-adaption. Big thanks goes to OMEGAMATRIX!!! Now i can play my favourite 2600-game in both-versions on my PAL-console, this is great!!! And people really should try out both versions (PAL and NTSC) of this game. Although both versions run in similar speed, you can feel the little differences in playing. The birds in Levels 3 and 4 fly little faster in the NTSC-version and therefore are little harder to shoot. But for example the shots that the player-ship can fire and also the shots that come down from the enemys, seems to be little faster in the PAL-version. Also in the last level with the Endboss it seems, that the shots from the enemy-ship comes little faster in the PAL-version. This little differences makes both versions so interesting, especially for me, because i like this game so much since my childhood. Played it also in the arcade at that time. Arcade-version has differences in playing and is also great. This PAL60-thread here is superb for PAL-people!!! So many good adaptions. BATAAIS "Solar Fox" PAL60 version, i played one hour today on my console. Now it`s time for PHOENIX. Edited January 18, 2015 by AW127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Here the colors of the three PHOENIX versions. Can be seen that this new palette for the PAL60 Version was really close. Don`t wonder about the unsharpness of the sprites, this comes from increasing the picture-size in combination with the antialias-filter in the STELLA-Emulator. Colors of this new PAL60-version comes very close to the NTSC-version. Cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFL Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 (edited) It's great to have a variant of one of my favourite games. Especially with the slightly nicer colours. Thanks for suggesting this AW and thanks to Bataais and Omegamatrix for doing the hard bit. This is a great thread... Edited January 18, 2015 by PFL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasty Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Wow I'm amazed about Phoenix, there are definitely differences between the two, or actually efforts to make the PAL version as close to the NTSC version as possible in terms of playability. I shall be able to have both a NTSC and PAL 2600 hopefully soon so I'll try them on real hardware. But it seems from Stella that the PAL version's movements are probably adjusted to make up for the slower refresh rate of PAL50. Cool find, since Phoenix is my favourite as well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasty Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 So, to prove that the PAL version of Phoenix actually moves faster to compensate for the slower refresh rate, I've investigated a little bit and it looks like it's all real! Please check the two images below, where I compare two frames of missile movement between the NTSC and PAL versions against a purple line I've added for reference: It's pretty obsious that the missile in the PAL version (right) moves faster compared to its NTSC counterpart (left), considering the gap between the two frames. Just to be sure I've checked the RAM values, and if I'm not mistaken I've found the Y coordinate for the missile to be located at $89. So I've tracked the Y value from frame to frame and in the NTSC version it decreases of 6 pixels while in the PAL version it decreases of 8 pixels! Very interesting, very interesting... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 To compare the NTSC / PAL palettes I converted the Atari Prototype Colors (1980) to NTSC and made screenshots in composite mode: Colors_NTSC.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 I have a disassembly of Solar Fox I did years ago. I looked at it and found I'd already marked out the color locations. So it was trivial for me to make a proper conversion. Here you go. SolarFox(PAL60).zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bataais Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Another oldie: Defender (converted from the original NTSC). Defender_PAL60.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Here's Frostbite in PAL60. That's another rom I have disassembled in the past, athough it was early days. Looking at it now I can see I was guessing at what some of the code was doing with the intent of going back later and fixing it. I believe all the colors are covered though. Frostbite(PAL60).zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 (edited) This thread is getting better and better! Thanks for the next three PAL60-versions, OMEGAMATRIX and BATAAIS. Now we have a PAL60 version of SOLAR FOX, which was made from the NTSC-version and one, which was made from the PAL-version. I will check out in next days, if there are any differences in playing. But in this case, i think not, because the normal PAL50-version runs slower, so in PAL60 it runs like the NTSC-version. And now we have also the NTSC-version with a PAL-palette. Great! Differences will be that the colors look little bit different, i think. In playing it should be the same speed. Now if anybody could disassemble the NTSC-version of ZAXXON and give it a nice PAL-palette, it would be cool. Than we have the game in normal speed and with bigger screensize, that would be the perfect version for use on PAL-consoles. PAL-ZAXXON with squeezed-screensize is bad to play now for me, although the gamespeed is the same in PAL and NTSC. I have the original PAL-gamemodul here and often played it in the 80`s. PAL-version plays good and with same speed. But at that time, i had no comparison to the bigger NTSC-screensize of this game. In last years, i often played the NTSC-version of the game in STELLA and the bigger screen is really cool, especially in this 3D-game. Nevertheless, i played BATAAIS version of the game in last days and it plays good, because of the faster scrolling. It`s like the "harder mode" for this game. Four of my suggested seven games now have a PAL60-version. This is great! The games "Real Sports Tennis", "Decathlon" and "Smurf" are still missing, maybe in the future anybody could have a look at them. "Smurf" would be interesting for three things. (1) faster gamespeed in NTSC-version, (2) much nicer colors in NTSC-version and (3) bigger screensize in NTSC-version. So here a PAL60-version made out of the NTSC-version would be a big improvement to the normal PAL50-version. The PAL60-version could also be made out of the PAL50-version, then we would also have the bigger screensize and the faster gamespeed. Only the colors would then still look so outwashed like they do in the PAL50-version. "Decathlon" is the next one and it`s already speed-optimized in the PAL50-version. This would then mean, the PAL60-version of this game must be made out of the NTSC-version, to avoid, that the gamespeed is then to fast. The NTSC-version has a bigger screensize and much nicer colors. It`s the same like in "Smurf", the PAL-version of "Decathlon" has also outwashed colors when you compare it to the NTSC-version. "Real Sports Tennis" is the last one and in this game, the color-thing is vice-versa to the other two games. Which means, here the colors of the PAL-version looks much nicer than the colors of the NTSC-version. In the NTSC-version, they used such a strong green for the playfield, it hurts the eyes. In the PAL-version it`s a nice looking color. But the problem for a PAL60-version made out of the PAL50-version is, that this game is already speed-optimized in the normal PAL-version and would then run to fast in PAL60. So the perfect PAL60-version should be made out of the NTSC-version, but have the colors of the PAL50-version. That would be then the absolut master-version of this game then, better then the two normal (PAL/NTSC) versions, because it would have the nicer colors of the PAL-version, combined with the bigger screensize of the NTSC-version and it would run in normal speed. Edited January 19, 2015 by AW127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AW127 Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 With "Smurf" in my entry above, i mean the game "Smurf - Rescue in Gargamel`s Castle", because i forgot, that there are more than one Smurf Game on the Atari VCS-2600. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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