Intellivision hacks?

[dr. kwack]

Couple quick questions-

 

Can Hack-O-Matic be used to hack Intellivision games and once hacked is there anyone who will put them to cart?

[Gernot]

what hack is heck-o-matic?

 

ok, i can imagine, dunno to be honest i don't know this program.

 

but i guess i have a couple of hacks in my pocket.

no big thing and i uploaded them once already in the intellivision sector.

 

but i will start a new thread here for my sport game hacks, no big thing, i only shortened the games to have less long to play, intentionally i started the whole thing especially for soccer because 2x45min are quite long, somehow it kills the fun of the simple soccer game if you have to play that long.

 

my hacks are suitable for a fast game inbetween, 20-30 min playing time, that's long enough for a quick game of soccer.

 

 

but first a few words to hack-o-matic:

 

i guess it can't be used it's ment to change graphics for atari2600 games and they differ quite a lot from Intellivision.

even if i guess such could be made possible, the graphics of course reside on a certain adress in the games rom(s) or system rom, which will vary from game to game somewhat.

you can pull the graphics of a intellivision cartridge using ECS basic, there is a special command for this implemented, ment to use for small self made basic games.

some examples have been made public, but they are very crappy, so don't expect magic can be done with this, they are more likely simple games which use glyphs to draw the environment and a pulled graphic from a cartridge (mostly the famous running man).

 

i don't know how much you are interested in but these examples i will link here, because intellivisionairies will know them all.

you need to program the examples the ECS rom image (a suitable emulator and of course exec and grom) and an image of the in the program listing mentioned cartridge.

best results i had using jzIntv, because it lets you switch quick to the ECS keyboard mapping, Nostalgia works as well easy for this.

the programs are very short in instructions, the result is equal to that crappy.

but you will have a game, and you can use a different graphic from a different cartridge as mentioned (imagic and activision releases won't work).

if you like to use a different cartridge you will have to snoop by try and error for the graphic yourself.

 

really crappy.

"alien invasion" as example (i guess that was its name) is a super simple game where colored blocks fall from the sky, your task is to touch the boxes of the same color to survive the alien attack, see such simple they are.

what you can do in this example (as example ) is to take a different cartridge as "Night Stalker" where the "man" is pulled from.

but imho it makes not much sense except that you can fiddle around with it, one "man" will be good as the other for this game, a dot will be as good as to be honest.

to perform it just start the mentioned cartridge with enabled ECS, in the starting screen you will be asked "BASIC" "CARTRIDGE" "MUSIC", enter "1" to open the basic interpreter.

for the rest follow the instructions.

(lazy ones can make use of a sleek possibility i guess it was "INTVwin" or/and "INTVdos" with which i feeded the of comments cleaned basic listing as text to the interpreter, press enter to run the tard. honestly in the same time you need to figure out how and to clean the listing you will have typed it, such short are the listings).

 

however, it shows it's possible to pull a graphic from a intellivision game and of course vice versa should be possible as well.

but i'm no coder, i'm a bloody hacker.

 

ECS basic of course doesn't allows you to alter a cartridge, that isn't possible to alter a read only memory (keep in mind that it was published when roms stayed physically on a IC).

 

even when it would have been possible to alter the content of the GRAM it wasn't wanted for sure this means unlawful hacking.

so you can pull only a graphic from a rom and feed it to the gram and this only until you pressed reset or shut down the console, after it is flushed down the drain.

except with todays possibilities, you could save the running game in some emulators, but imho they aren't worth this, it's fun to do it and to see the result, but that's already all.

 

I don't know when pulling of roms to binary images was first possible, but one of the first was the amiga which allowed to copy the OS rom to a floppy.

A1000 started in this way from a floppy image, it was ment mainly for developers, because in this way it was possible to create a own OS exclusive for your application and this opened the door to protection, a floppy which can be read only by the specific OS residing in the boot sector of the floppy, using a own storage method on the floppy as well, broken for any other OS.

the amiga floppy drive is software programmable, you can perform with the floppy "magical" things (today they make music in this way, sssrt crck, sssrt crck).

 

here are the ECS basic examples:

ECS basic examples.zip

 

 

my hacked sport games, respectively the link to the new thread:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/276684-intellivision-sportgames-all-of-the-action-in-half-of-the-time/?do=findComment&comment=3986904

 

i'm very sorry but i forgot the binaries at home, thus you will have to wait a week or two until they are really present.

[doctorclu]

I've had limited success changing opening title wording using HexFiend on the Mac. 

[+fdr4prez]

Many Intellivision hacks from @Zendocon can be found here:

http://www.midnightblueinternational.com/romhacks.php#Intellivision

[Zendocon]

I have a Disassemble script as a bonus download on my Portable Intellivision Development Environment page.  It's all the way at the bottom of the page.