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River Raid Turbo (w/Random Start, and other River Raid hacks)


Atarius Maximus

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Here's a collection of River Raid hacks that I created using Thomas Jentzsch's commented disassembly (which I also attached). My original idea was to make 'River Raid Turbo' with a much faster jet, but I created a few more while I was at it just for fun.

  • River Raid Turbo - Push up for 'Turbo mode' and you'll see your jet flies much faster. Left/Right movement speed was also increased.
  • River Raid Turbo (with Fast Shots) - Same as the prior version but with faster shots from your jet.
  • River Raid (Fuel Tank is always Full) - No need to fill your fuel tank, it's stuck on Full all the time.
  • River Raid (Fast Shot) - Your missile fires much faster than normal.
  • River Raid (Fly over land) - Collision detection is turned off for hitting the river banks, you can fly over land. Flying over houses recharges your fuel, not sure why. :)
  • River Raid Trainer - Unlimited Lives & Fuel and collision detection is turned off.
  • River Raid Random (original hack by batari, not me) - You will start at a random location in the river every time you hit reset
  • River Raid Random (Turbo/Fast Shots) - Batari's binary hacked to have turbo speed and fast shots.
  • River Raid Plus (Turbo/Fast Shots) - I hacked Thomas Jentzsch's River Raid Plus hack to include turbo speed and fast shots.
  • River Raid Turbo (Fast Spread Shots) - Based on Nukey Shay's hack, this is the fast shot turbo version with the 3 shot spread firing.
  • River Raid 3 - This is the original Spread-Shot hack created by Nukey Shay.

Batari added four rivers to the random hack, you will start off at a random place in those four rivers on one player games only (Game #1 ,3, 5 and 7).

 

In River Raid Plus, Thomas added balloons as another obstacle to get in your path while you navigate your plane down the river. He also changed the start of the game as if you had just passed bridge 2002, and the starting and maximum difficulty was increased. I will not be able to merge batari's random river start into Thomas's Plus hack, there are so many differences in the disassemblies that WinMerge makes it look like two completely different files.

.

Random river hack info:

Game     River    #Players
1          1         1
2          1         2
3          2         1
4          2         2
5          3         1
6          3         2
7          4         1
8          4         2

.

Enjoy!

 

Steve

RiverRaid.asm

riverraid_always-full-tank.bin

riverraid_fast-shot.bin

riverraid_fly-over-land.bin

riverraid_trainer.bin

riverraid_turbo.bin

riverraid_turbo_fast-shot.bin

RiverRaid_Random(batari).bin

riverraid_random_turbo_fast-shot.bin

RiverRaidPlus_turbo_fast-shot.bin

RiverRaid_Turbo_Fast-Spread-Shot.bin

RiverRaid3.bin

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I like to go fast too, RT. :) Because of the detailed comments in TJ's disassembly it'd be easy to make a new hack with any combination of the changes I made to the already posted hacks. If anyone would really like to see a different combination that I didn't already make I'd be happy to do it.

 

EDIT: I added batari's hack to the first post. I may see if I can disassemble batari's hack and add the turbo feature to it by comparing it to the disassembly. And to AtariLeaf - I never heard that about Carol Shaw's plans to make it a space game.

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It's pretty obvious in the disassembly where to change the seed for the river when you start the game. I don't know how batari made it random every time, though. It looks like changing the seed to a different value would change the starting river from the original game but it'd still be the same every time you reset the hacked version.

 

 

; initial values for the random number generator:
SEED_LO          = $14                ; change "to go, where no one has gone before" 
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I like to go fast too, RT. :) Because of the detailed comments in TJ's disassembly it'd be easy to make a new hack with any combination of the changes I made to the already posted hacks. If anyone would really like to see a different combination that I didn't already make I'd be happy to do it.

 

EDIT: I added batari's hack to the first post. I may see if I can disassemble batari's hack and add the turbo feature to it by comparing it to the disassembly. And to AtariLeaf - I never heard that about Carol Shaw's plans to make it a space game.

 

If you could add random turbo versions, that would be nice.

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Fantastic idea, SoundGammon, but definitely beyond my skill level. That would be a major change even for an expert assembly programmer, which I'm not. :) I can easily make changes to collision detection, speed, colors, sprites, fuel, the missile firing rate and number of lives/unlimited lives. That's just about it as far as what's quick and easy to modify.

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And to AtariLeaf - I never heard that about Carol Shaw's plans to make it a space game.

 

I can't verify whether this is true but i found the article that I originally read"

 

http://www.riverraid.org/riverraid_history/index.php

 

Carol mentions that her original intent was to make a space game when moving to Activision, but when management told her there were too many space games on the shelves, she decided to spend her efforts making a river game.
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Hacking Thomas' disassembly is easy, finding the differences between two uncommented disassembled ROMs is not quite as easy. :) I attempted to hack in the changes I made in the 'turbo' river raid into batari's random hack and I ended up with a corrupted binary. I may try again later, but I'm putting it off for now. Maybe Fred or Thomas could make the change if they happen to see this.

 

This is what I changed in the commented disaassembly to make the Turbo, fast shot version:

To increase the speed of the missile shots:
MISSILE_SPEED   = 14           ; y-speed of the jet missile  (Changed from 6 to 14)
 
This was changed so that when the game scrolls in at the beginning the jet is positioned correctly:
INTRO_SCROLL    = 88           ; counter for scrolling into new game (Changed from 48 to 88)
 
This modifies how fast the jet moves from left to right:
.leftRight:

       LDA    dXSpeed          ; 3      increase the x speed change

       CLC                     ; 2

       ADC    #99              ; 2      (Changed from 8 to 99) 
 
This increases the speed of the jet:
.setBlockVars:

       LDA    #5-1             ; 2      add speedY*3 to blockOffset -> max. speed = 3 lines/frame

                                        (I changed LDA #3-1 to LDA #5-1 to increase the game speed)
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WinMerge helped, thanks for the suggestion RT. It was still a bit of a PITA but I was able to get batari's random start binary hacked with the turbo speed and fast shots. I added it to the first post.

 

Here's the disassemblies too, in case any one would like them.

River_Raid_turbo_fastshot.asm

RiverRaid_original.asm

RiverRaid_original_commented.asm

RiverRaid_random_batari.asm

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River Raid isn't the first time I've tried to make a game faster or harder. :) For those that like hacks that make games faster you'll probably like these too, there's some from myself and some from others:

 

Sadoom(NTSC&PAL).zip

Dragonfire_Sadistic.zip

SpaceRaceFast.zip

BerzerkSadistic.zip

SadisticYar.zip

sadistroids__v1.1_.zip

Jr. Pac Man Throttle.zip

Amidar Double speed.zip

Miner2049er (faster).zip

MsPacThrottle.zip

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WinMerge helped, thanks for the suggestion RT. It was still a bit of a PITA but I was able to get batari's random start binary hacked with the turbo speed and fast shots. I added it to the first post.

 

Thanks. I changed the Random River Raid link on the right side of the Harmony Cartridge page to point to this thread now:

 

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-harmony-cartridge.html#hacks

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I can't verify whether this is true but i found the article that I originally read"

 

http://www.riverraid.org/riverraid_history/index.php

 

 

That was an interesting read but I question the validity of the article based on this comment:

 

"With the levels in River Raid being randomly generated, it is unlike other Atari games of the generation. As most Atari gamers know, you need to get used to seeing the same background or level design over and over again as you play these games. River Raid is unique in that you never seem to see the same set up twice in one sitting. This adds a lot to replay value as the gamer of today might have trouble with monotony."

 

Unless the author was playing batari's random version the river is generated exactly the same every time you play. I wouldn't doubt that Carol was told to change it from a Space game, though, that was a very popular theme back then.

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  • 3 years later...

Yes...very easily if you removed the screensaver code.

 

This hack only required a couple dozen bytes, so I tracked down some optimizations so I could keep everything intact (including the screen saver). The missile skew and 3-frame counter use the previously-"always zero" ram locations, so the code that used those in the original was rewritten slightly. A few things were moved from their original locations for byte-sharing.

 

Apologies for using my own disassembly...files with *everything* tagged are confusing to me!

RiverRaid(FantasyMode).asm

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You made it a little more difficult for me by not using TJ's disassembly, Nukey. ;)


This version has been modified to include the turbo speed and fast shots along with the Spread Shot firing. I commented my changes in Nukey's disassembly in case anyone would like to modify them.


Edit: I included this hack and Nukey's original hack in the first post of the thread.

RiverRaid_Turbo_Fast-Spread-Shot.asm

RiverRaid_Turbo_Fast-Spread-Shot.bin

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You made it a little more difficult for me by not using TJ's disassembly, Nukey. ;)

Sorry...can't do it any other way (it's what I grew up doing). If I see labels everywhere instead of values and addresses, I start to go cross-eyed...everything remains unfamiliar. Interesting that nothing was gained using cycle-exact timing instead of good 'ol WSYNC, no?

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