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Moon Patrol


KevinMos3

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I didn't realize the original thread was in the prototypes forum, so I'm posting here where it seems more relevant.

 

I believe the animated logo at the top is meant to be just like the Dig Dug proto. I think it would be nice to have a consistent logo between Dig Dug and Moon Patrol, but that's just my opinion...

 

I played around with this a bit. I used the Moon Patrol idea from Daniel, the enemies from Jess, replaced SELMA with ATARISOFT, and changed the title font a bit.

 

This zip has 4 variations:

* A combination of Daniel's and Jess' hacks with tweaked title font

* Atarisoft with straight Moon Patrol text

* Atarisoft with tilted Moon Patrol text

* Atarisoft with tilted Moon Patrol text in Cyan - not pictured (I was wanting to change the background to black, but haven't found it yet)

 

This is the first time I've tried any hacking with a Coleco rom, so it's been interesting. I do everything with a hex editor which is a pain, but I'm sure there are easier ways. I'm not yet sure how all colors are handled. It seems pretty simple for sprites, but I've not been able to locate the gray background yet. I'd like to see the gray background changed to black and the status display changed to blue like the arcade.

 

I thought about changing the round hills to be a bit more pointed, but I don't really mind them the way they are.

 

 

post-9364-0-22172800-1374481041_thumb.png post-9364-0-54215200-1374481039_thumb.png post-9364-0-02133500-1374481042_thumb.png

 

Moon Patrol.zip

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Thanks guys.

 

It looks great! I gotta know, though... how did you manage this? The best I could do with the title screen is change it to "Maoo Patrol." I could never figure out where the pattern of the tiles was; only the graphics for the tiles themselves.

Well, I just looked at Daniel's example. Simple as that, really. At the risk of sounding too obvious, it's just repeating the second sprite instead of the third. I'm afraid I'm not a high-speed coder like a lot of you guys (yet), but I'm fairly competent with a hex editor. What I do is really much more primitive than some people think. As long as I can compare two roms, I can look for patterns until I figure out what's going on. It's a slow and tedious process with a lot of trial & error, but it works for me. This is how I got started hacking 7800 games as well. For that system, I used the Pac-Man Collection editor to make small changes to sprites until I understood how things were arranged. Now, I can hack 7800 games with little effort (relatively speaking).

 

Concerning colors, I saw that each Coleco color is numbered 1 through 16, so the gray is 14 or 0E in hex. The Moon Patrol text (black being 01) was really easy to find and change to cyan (07), but apparently the background colors are a different story. I also found the color for the graphic in front of the animated rainbow that makes the "SELMA" or "Atarisoft" text, so I can make it black. However, I've not found the background which I presume is probably also the same instance for the game selection screen and the in-game status bar (and I searched pretty thoroughly). I'd love if someone with more skill could change those so we could have a screen closer to the mockup Luc posted. If the background color is the same instance for the status bar, then we'd just need to change the black text to something else. Again, that shouldn't be much trouble.

 

I could be wrong about some things and I probably sound a little silly saying these things to guys who actually know how to program on the Coleco, but like I said -- this is my first Coleco game hack. :)

 

Is this a screen title only change, or were any other changes made?

I compared your sprite changes to the arcade and yours is pretty much arcade perfect (for being one color), so I used your sprite changes in all four rom variations.

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I'm not sure if this would help you with the hack. I programmed a program that view the image from the hex data from Moon Patrol. It's for the Colecovision, pretty much the platform I could program for at the moment :). It pulls the data from the hex data and load them to the char set and the sprite pattern. You can push up and down to scroll increase the pattern number 0-256 into a single box. Left and right to scroll the ROM data up and down. You can see multiple of copys of the Moon Patrol, level data and etc.

 

moon patrol data viewer.zip

 

As for the gray backdrop. Look for "WRITE REGISTER" call to 7

 

or insert

ld b,7
ld c,$6E; It might be this data, dark red with gray background
call WRITE_REGISTER

 

WRITE_REGISTER: equ $1fd9

 

Game loop observation, the border is being called 2 times before it reach the end of the line.

 

Hope my info helps.

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  • 3 months later...

I finally took another look at this. I've got the title screen and game select screens with a black background -- and in two flavors (Standard title and Tilt title). The game boot up color is now black as well.

 

post-9364-0-48155500-1383113687_thumb.png post-9364-0-65792900-1383113690_thumb.png post-9364-0-19741000-1383113688_thumb.png post-9364-0-95828400-1383113688_thumb.png

 

 

I started working on the colors for the in-game status bar, but I'm out of time and could use some help finishing up.

 

post-9364-0-81457200-1383113689_thumb.png

 

To do:

- Change the blank-game-start color to black (the color that flashes for a second when a game is started).

- Finish changing the status area background color to blue in order to mimic the arcade.

 

 

Here's the zip with all three rom variations:

New title Standard

New title Tilt

New title + blue status work in progress

Moon Patrol (3-Pack).zip

 

 

A big thanks goes to Kiwi for his clues about colors. Knowing that the colors 06 and 0E could be combined to 6E was a big help. Initially, I was still stumped, but just today I realized that "00" also produced gray the same as 0E. That was the answer for some of those background colors.

 

BTW, what program is best for debugging/disassembling? I've tried BlueMSX, but I can't get the debugger working. I also tried Meka, but couldn't find the debugger there, and I don't know of Colem having one at all.

Edited by KevinMos3
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Great job on the further hacks and thank you for sharing. One thing that I would consider changing in this latest round of hacks is reverting back to just "Atari" with their logo as well seeing as all their officially released CV games did not state "AtariSoft" on the title screen.

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"There is a rumor going around that someone found a prototype with the sound but not sure if that person is going to give it to the masses or not yet."

 

I'm a little confused. My versions all have sound fx and music. You mean the versions you have are soundless?

Btw, I like the title screen with the slanted MOON PATROL.

Chuck

 

edit: Oops, I see that you guys were talking about Joust. Sorry.

Edited by ChuckH
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  • 4 weeks later...

I started working on the colors for the in-game status bar, but I'm out of time and could use some help finishing up.

 

To do:

- Change the blank-game-start color to black (the color that flashes for a second when a game is started).

- Finish changing the status area background color to blue in order to mimic the arcade.

 

I have decided to pick up the mantle on this one. Would be great to have a more or less finished game that is close to the arcade in colours and graphics. I've made a lot of progress in comparing and documenting all of the prior rom hacks and have managed to further progress the colours on the game screen. I have changed the border area to black to stop the nasty flickering that occurs when it is yellow and the top are is dark blue. This is far from set in stone and I will be asking for opinions once I post a reasonably complete rom file. At the moment I just want to show my progress with the game screen colour changes. The top area is made up of loads of small items, each one of which has to be tracked down in a hex editor and adjusted. Very time consuming.....

 

BTW, I have managed to complete KevinMos3's first to-do above and so am now focussing on the status area changes.

post-5757-0-44489600-1385163216_thumb.png

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Success - the little sucker was hiding earlier in the rom file away from the area in the rom that dealt with the bulk of the status area.

 

Now, to make this game arcade "accurate" some of the colours in the status area would need to be changed:

 

1. Current player number should be yellow.

2. The dash after the "P" should be red.

3. The number of lives left should be yellow.

 

Unfortunately, there are restrictions that have prevented me from changing items 1 and 2. The colour of the current player number has to be the same as the high score, i.e. changing a single hex value affects the colour of both and so I have kept it as medium red. The "P" is dark red as set by Matt Householder. Similarly, changing the colour of the dash affects both dashes at the same time so I kept them as black.

 

I can change the colour of the number of lives remaining. Currently, it is magenta - should I change it to yellow to match the arcade game? An example is given below along with a screenshot of the arcade game for comparison.

post-5757-0-68541900-1385219251_thumb.png

post-5757-0-22112100-1385219580_thumb.png

post-5757-0-72899900-1385219602_thumb.png

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I think yellow is more readable on a blue background. :)

 

Yeah, that's what I thought but wanted to seek opinions.

 

Talking of opinions, am I the only one who thinks that the rocks you have to shoot look more like fireballs in the CV version? I was thinking of adjusting the graphic to make it look more like that in the arcade version. Thoughts?

post-5757-0-50265500-1385225745_thumb.png

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I'm willing to give this a go - but can't guarantee that I'll be able to do this. First off, I need to land on a new design and so have a couple of suggestions below. The first graphic is the existing design, the next two are my attempts at an improvement while the far right is the arcade graphic. Pixel art is not something I am experienced at (I'm sure it shows) and so looking for help from those who know better :)

 

 

post-5757-0-52168400-1385237505_thumb.png

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