Blue Azure Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 Dear all, Over the past few months I've been working on a pathfinder project for the proposed (& hopeful) 7800 MILLIPEDE design (& release). We've seen it and heard it over the years, "I wanna racing game, gimme gimme gimme," I wanna ZAXXON game, gimme gimme gimme, or "I wanna MILLIPEDE game, gimme gimme gimme (that was me, by the way)." But what are we saying, what does it mean to create such a game? How do we go about doing it? Is it even feasible? But before we get into this, what happened in 1984 that MILLIPEDE wasn't being worked on? Weren't there any loose engineers looking for something to do that would be working on such a project? Isn't there a GCC prototype laying around waiting to be updated and completed? Sure, Atari produced a list of games and CX-7812 was reserved for MILLIPEDE. That was the easy part. But there was no source list, no binary, no papers, nothing to suggest there was ever any progress on MILLIPEDE coding. There was a legal battle back and forth and MILLIPEDE was an Atari game, not a GCC game. So GCC settled on CENTIPEDE, and it was CENTIPEDE that was released. And I always wondered on May 24, 1984, what was the SECRET game that only VIPs of the highest order would see in the back room in the summer CES show in Chicago? It was prototype TRAK & FIELD, not MILLIPEDE. We waited and waited for the 7800 MILLIPEDE to show up, but it was not to be. I hate duplication of effort, but there is no duplication of effort if something never existed. 7800 MILLIPEDE never existed. The one game that would have and could have raised the 7800 to yet another plateau. And we still don't have it… In case it's of any use, here's the 7800 CENTIPEDE disassembly with the playfield and sprite definitions. Of course MILLIPEDE is quite a different game, but there may be something we can use. One thing is for sure, if we already had 7800 MILLIPEDE in hand, we wouldn't be here talking about how we could create a CENTIPEDE! CentipedeDisassy8.rtf First I looked at the 5200 MILLIPEDE. There's 32K of ROM used which is what I kind of expected for a game of this caliber. BUT WAIT. As Bob found that 5200 Space Invaders was duplicate code so it was really 8K and not 16K, 5200 MILLIPEDE is actually 16K duplicated twice as well. I guess the PAM coders were paid by the byte, and it was great business. Monkey business. So this is good news for the 7800, for if the basic program code and basic sprites can be done in 16K on the 5200, we can afford 120 bytes overhead for things like encryption and so on and so on and so on. Not of much value, here is the raw-uncommented 5200 MILLIPEDE disassembly: MILLIPEDE_5200_5D9C_Disassy.rtf Then we turn attention to the ARCADE MILLIPEDE. Here's a static photo of the start-up screen, which is animated in real life (see below): To get a fresh "new" look at MILLIPEDE, there are videos on the internet… Gameplay Showcase 1: Millipede Arcade (a) Gameplay Showcase 2: Millipede Arcade (b) Millipede Invincible http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZZkVruTqXQ I happen to have one of these Millipede cocktails in my living room, so that's a help. I was able to "rewire it" to be invincible by changing 2 bytes. Sweet. Here's a photo of most of the board: I scan the internet and I'm flabbergasted with the results. Here's the schematic with the memory map: Millipede Arcade Schematic.pdf I FOUND IT HAS A 6502 PROCESSOR ON IT!!! Are you kidding me, no 6809 or 68000, it's a 6502??? We're in business. Therefore, here's the raw uncommented ARCADE MILLIPEDE disassembly: MILLIPEDE_ARCADE_16K_7252_Disassy.rtf And would you believe an ARCADE MILLIPEDE Hexdump of the four 2532 EPROMs merged together? MILLIPEDE_ARCADE_16K_7252_Hexdump.rtf With that, I guess we could start building some arcade machines. BUT wait, that's NOT what we're here for... 7800 MILLIPEDE Features Wish List * 32K configuration, REAL 32K - not 2 x 16K. * All joystick support. * TIA/emulator version support. * POKEY detect support. * Trakball support - could be a separate binary version the same way 7800 CENTIPEDE TB was done. * High Score Card (HSC) support - all the other original games have it. * Animated title screen like the arcade (well, "it would be nice"). * XM support is considered to be a secondary issue. We want a game that can be played on the original 7800 system w/o XM, as it would have been originally intended. Once released, the 7800 MILLIPEDE will be designated CX-7812. WE WANT DRAGONFLY, WE WANT EARWIG, WE WANT INCHWORM, WE WANT MOSQUITO, WE WANT SPIDER… WELL, WE DON'T WANT SPIDER… MOST OF ALL, WE WANT DDT!!! EVERYONE WILL WANT THIS GAME - 7800 MILLIPEDE - the de facto standard of 1984 gaming. ///BLUEMAN/// CentipedeDisassy8.rtf 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 Blue, I must say, this is by far one of the most complete and useful game requests I have ever seen. This is the way to request/wish a game for the 7800, folks...Bravo. Excellent work, Blue! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 12, 2013 Share Posted November 12, 2013 What would the estimated file size be...48K or 64K? Just use the 2600 version's audio for TIA. And you don't have to favor the XM; people do have separate HSCs and Pokey could also be supported via CC2 or the upcoming Harmony cart. I do have to ask...I only have a CX-22 and I never found it to do well on the 7800 Centipede in Trakball mode. Does the CX-8x do a better job? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stun Runner 87 Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 Millipede is centipede on steroids. I always loved Millipede better than centipede and felt that Tremiel should of had his programmers program and release that instead of centipede. Okay, im done babbling on, just want to say, sign me up for this early. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhomaios Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 just want to say, sign me up for this early. Right there with you. I'd love to upgrade my 2600 cart. I am indeed in favor of XM, too. I imagine that a near arcade-perfect port (if not perfect!) could and should come out for the 7800! Some programmer needs to make this happen. My (albeit limited) funds are at that programmers disposal! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Azure Posted November 13, 2013 Author Share Posted November 13, 2013 Thanks for the comments guys. Use the audio from 2600? I didn't even think of that. Do we have the C/F/V data segregated and defined? And the 5200 has POKEY, do we have the audio from that? Anything and everything helps. The ultimate game file size doesn't really matter. I suggest a target of 32K as this works directly with the 32K/POKEY board that we use for FROGGIE and others. And judging by the basic game design we should be able to achieve this. BUT, we may not get the animated start-up screen. That's a lot of work and takes a lot of bytes unless a clever way to borrow the animations from the game is devised. I'm sure one of the guys from our think78tank can do it. Now back to my other game designs. This will be an interesting holiday season in 7800-land. Not sure when the first release will be yet. Some of us are working 7 days a week on a set of games. There are four games that I know of right now, one is thoroughly tested with a single game mode bug that I don't think anyone will care about, so that will go out, maybe on Monday. It would be nice to have something else by T-giving, but that's a 4-day weekend when most of the work *might* be done. Loads of fun coming to you soon at atariage.com. ///BLUEMAN/// Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 Nice work, Blue... Didn't know that Millipede used a 6502 So basically, replace the video driver with the Display list, re-locate RAM, replace the input... Didn't Millipede use Pokey's too? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmervine Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 (edited) Yes, it used both the 6502 and the Pokey! http://retrogameguy.com/2013/04/14/millipede/ Edited November 13, 2013 by mmervine 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted November 14, 2013 Share Posted November 14, 2013 Seeing the follow-up in this thread for some reason triggered this in my mind... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted November 14, 2013 Share Posted November 14, 2013 It would certainly be great. I have a cocktail version of millipede but really want this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted November 14, 2013 Share Posted November 14, 2013 Additionally, here is the centped.c source from MAME used for the Arcade driver: centiped.zip Interestingly enough, the same driver is used for Arcade... * Centipede (5 sets) * Warlords * Millipede * Maze Invaders (prototype) * Bulls Eye Darts Maybe a 7800 Warlords could be in the future as well? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 14, 2013 Share Posted November 14, 2013 (edited) Thanks for the comments guys. Use the audio from 2600? I didn't even think of that. Do we have the C/F/V data segregated and defined? And the 5200 has POKEY, do we have the audio from that? Anything and everything helps. The ultimate game file size doesn't really matter. I suggest a target of 32K as this works directly with the 32K/POKEY board that we use for FROGGIE and others. And judging by the basic game design we should be able to achieve this. BUT, we may not get the animated start-up screen. That's a lot of work and takes a lot of bytes unless a clever way to borrow the animations from the game is devised. I'm sure one of the guys from our think78tank can do it. Now back to my other game designs. This will be an interesting holiday season in 7800-land. Not sure when the first release will be yet. Some of us are working 7 days a week on a set of games. There are four games that I know of right now, one is thoroughly tested with a single game mode bug that I don't think anyone will care about, so that will go out, maybe on Monday. It would be nice to have something else by T-giving, but that's a 4-day weekend when most of the work *might* be done. Loads of fun coming to you soon at atariage.com. ///BLUEMAN/// I'm thinking it would have to be 48K at least. Trak-Ball and Joystick support, HSC support, Pokey and TIA audio [or Yamaha], title screen, etc. Sure, the 5200 version has Pokey audio, but is it the same Pokey audio track used in the arcade or was it recreated and possibly less audio for cart space requirements? [that's what I'm thinking]. I just compared the 5200, XE, and arcade versions. The audio is different. The Wikipedia page states the arcade version used 2 Pokeys. The only way you could get it to sound the same on a 7800 is if you could enable dual Pokeys, one from the cart [or CC2 or Harmony2] as well as the Pokey within the XM. However, from my understanding, the XM currently disables a second detected Pokey. Theoretically, you could emulate or replicate the Pokey audio - at least from one of the chips - with the Yamaha audio chip in the XM and punt similar sounding audio sfx to the TIA and have a threeway audio chipset lovefest going on. There's already similar Yamaha audio for the ST versions of Centipede, Millipede, and Megapede to draw from if one were so inclined to do so. Ouch, I didn't see the other postings from yesterday before posting this... Atari Games also used the Pokey on the arcade Tetris. Food for thought, Ed Logg worked on that title as well as Millipede. I wonder what his thoughts would be about such a project. Edited November 14, 2013 by Lynxpro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Azure Posted November 14, 2013 Author Share Posted November 14, 2013 Nice work, Blue... Didn't know that Millipede used a 6502 So basically, replace the video driver with the Display list, re-locate RAM, replace the input... Didn't Millipede use Pokey's too? Yuppers, a 6502, and love your "simple" conversion from arcade to 7800. Shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks and we could ship by THIS Christmas...(This is the way Atari management would work with Bob - anything is possible, until it isn't!). On page 13 of the PDF schematic above, it mentions 2 "custom audio" chips, but doesn't specify the part. The photo of the PCB (above) is hard to see, but I'm thinking there's two 40-pin pokeys with the label upsidedown and they say C012294B-01. If so, those are the pokeys. I'm thinking it would have to be 48K at least. Trak-Ball and Joystick support, HSC support, Pokey and TIA audio [or Yamaha], title screen, etc. Sure, the 5200 version has Pokey audio, but is it the same Pokey audio track used in the arcade or was it recreated and possibly less audio for cart space requirements? [that's what I'm thinking]. I just compared the 5200, XE, and arcade versions. The audio is different. The Wikipedia page states the arcade version used 2 Pokeys. The only way you could get it to sound the same on a 7800 is if you could enable dual Pokeys, one from the cart [or CC2 or Harmony2] as well as the Pokey within the XM. However, from my understanding, the XM currently disables a second detected Pokey. Theoretically, you could emulate or replicate the Pokey audio - at least from one of the chips - with the Yamaha audio chip in the XM and punt similar sounding audio sfx to the TIA and have a threeway audio chipset lovefest going on. There's already similar Yamaha audio for the ST versions of Centipede, Millipede, and Megapede to draw from if one were so inclined to do so. Ouch, I didn't see the other postings from yesterday before posting this... Atari Games also used the Pokey on the arcade Tetris. Food for thought, Ed Logg worked on that title as well as Millipede. I wonder what his thoughts would be about such a project. Sure we could cram everything into one design and probably could fit into 48K. I'm hoping we'd design in stages, and the basic tia/pokey version would be 32K and then add all the XM goodies and SELL as a XM game. Or we could make a custom cart with a muxed quad core C012294B-04 chip and wire to a 7.1 surround sound system and we're good to go! I think the critical parameter is to start off by having a full understanding of how the arcade version operates and then convert that into our 7800 version. Bob lives about 2300 miles away from me so he's probably not going to see my machine run anytime soon (although always welcome). Since I have a cocktail I will need to build a custom camera mount to video how an invincible game runs, in full detail. With that, I think we'd save a lot of time resolving the ultimate design issues up front. Or try to fully disassemble my raw arcade disassembly and then you'd know how the game runs anyways. That's a kick - over the decades, I had no idea the game had a 6502 in it. It's only 16K, how hard could it be? Regards, Blue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted November 14, 2013 Share Posted November 14, 2013 Yuppers, a 6502, and love your "simple" conversion from arcade to 7800. Shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks and we could ship by THIS Christmas...(This is the way Atari management would work with Bob - anything is possible, until it isn't!). On page 13 of the PDF schematic above, it mentions 2 "custom audio" chips, but doesn't specify the part. The photo of the PCB (above) is hard to see, but I'm thinking there's two 40-pin pokeys with the label upsidedown and they say C012294B-01. If so, those are the pokeys. Yes, I was making it more 'simple' than it would be. It just makes me wonder how much would have to be changed just to get something running. While we could keep the width, we would have to shorten the height obviously by a few rows at least, or do the 'GCC Ms. Pac-Man' way and make each zone 6 scanlines instead of 8 to fit it all. If I wasn't already working on something else... (Actually two things) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YANDMAN Posted November 15, 2013 Share Posted November 15, 2013 Once again i wake up to find genius's at work on another astounding project, I wish i knew something about programming so that i could help with this stuff but i simply dont, But i have cash and i will happily throw it at this project take my money please. Atari consoles the future! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Azure Posted November 15, 2013 Author Share Posted November 15, 2013 Ditto that, I wish I had the horsepower to do this superior game coding. I can whack and hack, but that's about all my brain can handle. Not to worry Bob, I now have 6 games in the Q for release in the next month, and a 7th if I get the guts to ask its original author if it's OK I do what I do on his game. So that one's on hold as I have plenty to do without that. I was just thinking-out-load on MILLI. She's out there, and when we build it, they will come. It will be a great project some day. ///Blueman/// Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted November 17, 2013 Share Posted November 17, 2013 Here is a little challenge for any interested... Apparently out of the original high score supported titles... Asteroids Centipede Dig Dug Food Fight Galaga Joust Ms. Pac-Man Robotron 2084 Xevious ...Centipede appears to be the only one you cannot initialize/personalize the high score cartridge with; it works with the high score cart, but you need to have it already setup. From its behavior it appears to ask for initialization after a game is over. For all other supported titles, if the high score cart was not personalized/initialized, it will prompt you for it right after the Atari BIOS screen. Why doesn't it work and can it be fixed/patched to behave like the other titles? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 Here is a little challenge for any interested... Apparently out of the original high score supported titles... Asteroids Centipede Dig Dug Food Fight Galaga Joust Ms. Pac-Man Robotron 2084 Xevious ...Centipede appears to be the only one you cannot initialize/personalize the high score cartridge with; it works with the high score cart, but you need to have it already setup. From its behavior it appears to ask for initialization after a game is over. For all other supported titles, if the high score cart was not personalized/initialized, it will prompt you for it right after the Atari BIOS screen. Why doesn't it work and can it be fixed/patched to behave like the other titles? I'm of the opinion that all 7800 games that involve scoring should be hacked to support the HSC [assuming the source code is accessible]. To this day, I can't believe the Tramiels didn't pay GCC to finish that project. Had they brought the HSC to market back then, it would've sold. And more importantly, it would've sold more 7800s too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted December 14, 2013 Share Posted December 14, 2013 I found this of interest. This was posted over at the Atari Museum Facebook Group… emails taken from Atari Games Corp. [aka "Coin" prior to 1984 re-org] going back to 1983. In the 1984 section, there's a bunch of emails concerning staff from Coin's displeasure with how their games were being done by other parties for home conversion without their input. They directly flame the Atarisoft division but what I really found of interest is that there were 2 different versions of 2600 Millipede done. One was done in-house by Atari Consumer staff and the other [inferior, according to the emails] done by GCC. GCC had made their version without permission from Atari brass and the email's assumption of GCC's motives were that if they finished their version first, brass - listed as "marketing" - would choose theirs instead of the internal version. Although there might be more cases of this having happened for both the 2600 and 5200, it wouldn't apply to the 7800 releases but I thought it best to post here regardless since we have this Millipede thread going on. There's also interesting discussion on the unit pricing for POKEY, QUAD POKEY, AMY, and Yamaha YM2151 audio chips in the emails... http://www.textfiles.com/games/ATARIMAIL/vax84.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeguychicago Posted February 3, 2014 Share Posted February 3, 2014 Is anyone actively working on a port? I would love to be able to buy this in-box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.