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Doctor Who Berzerk w/Speech


iesposta

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I don't see any HMOVE lines, I suspect the reposition was redone to use CYCLE 73/74 HMOVE. Based on the Atari VCS/2600 TIA chips page over at 2600 Connect, which lists the known TIA variations, I bet your Junior was built in China.

 

If that's the case, the objects in Stay Frosty 2 will most likely jump around as well. You can try the SF2 demo via your Harmony cart.

Yes, it was rewritten to Cycle 73/74 HMOVE.

Thanks for the information SpiceWare!

I'm glad it's a rare TIA variation problem, and not due to one of the more common variations like the "Shows 3 or Shows 2 demo."

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your spot on Spiceware

 

tried my EPROM version on my 7800 NTSC and 2600 PAL version with wrong colours and works perfect no more teleporting but it does on the Taiwan NTSC Junior. I didn't bother with the Sears as I am pretty convinced that is the issue

 

but that said the Harmony which is a Melody cart and how they will be distributed. works perfect on the Taiwan Junior

 

 

Does anyone know what component it is in the Junior that is casing this issue as I want to change it out and make the Junior like the rest of my consoles

Edited by silverfox0786
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I don't see any HMOVE lines, I suspect the reposition was redone to use CYCLE 73/74 HMOVE. Based on the Atari VCS/2600 TIA chips page over at 2600 Connect, which lists the known TIA variations, I bet your Junior was built in China.

Yes, a cycle 73 HMOVE is being used. I suspected this was the issue so along, but was really hoping it wasn't. I remember CD-W saying his PAL Jr didn't like early HMOVE's. Until now I thought it only affected some PAL consoles.

 

 

BTW Darrell how do you like the selection bar on the titlescreen? To me it helps to widen the screen as 48 pixel routine is quite narrow on it's own.

 

Does anyone know what component it is in the Junior that is casing this issue as I want to change it out and make the Junior like the rest of my consoles

It is the TIA chip. Before you do any mods however would you be willing to do some more testS. I want to build a test rom for you to try and see if there is a work-around with cycle 74 HMOVE's or if I can at least detect bad consoles easily in code with a few 1 pixel collision test. Also I want to test as 72 cycle HMOVE just to see what it does on your console.

 

 

Thank you very much for finding these bugs and posting. It really does help!! :)

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BTW Darrell how do you like the selection bar on the titlescreen? To me it helps to widen the screen as 48 pixel routine is quite narrow on it's own.

 

I thought it was pretty slick! I'm hoping to replace my menu routines, with something that has more than 48 pixels, after I get the Bus Stuffing scheme worked out. Don't know when that'll be though, there's too much on my plate at the moment.

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Silverfox0786, here is a test rom I'm hoping you can try. The top Dalek is the correct position. What you are looking for is do one of the other Daleks stay in sync with the top one? That would make things really easy.

 

 

EarlyHmoveTestV2.zip

 

post-7074-0-89745900-1426967030_thumb.png

 

 

You can press the firebutton to change between auto and manual movement. In manual movement you use left/right on the joystick. The score at the bottom is the position (0-159).

 

 

One good thing I noticed from your video is even though the HMOVE was corrupted, the HMOVE bars were still missing. I think it might be possible to correct the positioning and still hide the HMOVE bar.

 

 

EDIT:

- added a new version of the rom that tests cycle 75 HMOVE's too.

Edited by Omegamatrix
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Thanks! After reading a little more on the problem, I think it won't be too straight forward to fix. I now realize there's a fatal flaw in my test rom because that the new position (for P1) is dependent on the previous on these late model TIA's when positioning during the display portion of the scanline. In this rom I shuffle the position along and reset it in between Daleks, so I constantly changing the previous position.

 

Please try the rom anyhow. I think we could possibly position P1 on these problem TIA's if the previous position of P0 is always kept constant. In this particular game it should be possible because we have a couple of lines of vertical separation between Daleks. So we draw a Dalek, and then strobe RESP1 (always on the same cycle) after it has been drawn, and then strobe it once again during the repositioning routine. With this constant reference it should be possible to determine how much we need to adjust the position. Still though I am not sure if P0 will get screwed up though in the meantime...

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Just to update

 

had a lot going on in my life and not had a chance to look at the test image

 

I will look at it and post back as soon as I can

Whenever you have time. I haven't done too much in the meantime, except for today when I converted the game to use cycle 74 hmoves instead of cycle 73 hmoves.

 

 

So please try this rom as well. I have a small hope it will work:

 

BezerkWho_150329.bin

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  • 1 month later...
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  • 3 months later...

 

Tom Baker is the only doctor. The Doctor's since are just emulating and those before him where just laying the ground work.

 

The late Jon Pertwee is laughing from the other side right now.

 

After all, Pertwee was most likely one of the real life inspirations for James Bond based upon him training commandos in all sorts of things including various gadgets, reporting directly to Winston Churchill, and knowing Fleming all during WW2.

 

Pertwee designed the TARDIS Cosmic Key himself and he himself had the "Whomobile" [the true name of it was "The Alien"] commissioned for the show. He was The Doctor. [and his son is currently Alfred on Fox's Gotham].

 

So Jon Pertwee directly connects Doctor Who with James Bond and Batman.

 

In comparison, Tom Baker wore a long scarf, flashed his giant teeth, and handed out Jelly Babies to strangers. He did have hotter companions [well, Romana I at least] than Pertwee when he wasn't trying to get the producers to nix them in favor of a cabbage - as his companion - to be perched over his shoulder at all times.

 

 

As for gravitas, nobody beats Paul McGann, the once and future Doctor. In less than 7 minutes allotted to him in "Night of The Doctor", he out-acted all of his successors in the role and he made it look easy. Boy, did RTD blow it by not asking him back for the show's relaunch and instead going with Cracker Chris...

 

Oh…sorry… back to Atariland!

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Nobody wanted to play find what's new and improved.

So I'll tell you. And then give a tease of what is to come.

In the posted build, the title / selection screen has new music.

The enemies have been made taller, where originally taller caused glitching.

 

In a not yet posted build there are many fun changes!

Some you can see in the screen shot below.

No black lines on the left!

You can choose to have enemies also shoot diagonally (or choose original enemy shooting, or no enemy shooting).

Garbage in score area when enemy bounces at the bottom has been fixed.

Copyright symbol added.

Fatal crashing found and fixed.

med_gallery_29575_1164_7556.jpg

 

So what else can you think of adding?

More than 4 mazes?

Intermission screen with tardis after so many mazes?

Mazes change color?

 

If the intermission scene is too much work, perhaps alternate the audio between the Daleks' dialogue and the sounds of the TARDIS dematerializing every so often.

 

I wouldn't mind the characters becoming larger - like say near the size of the Halo 2600 characters - for more detail but that probably would really require monkeying around with the code more. With more detail, you could use different incarnations of The Doctor after he gets blasted by the Daleks. This is what Lego Dimensions is doing with their Doctor Who expansion. Then there's the possibility of using multi-colored Daleks even though they weren't exactly fan favorites during Series 5 and beyond.

 

I'm sure the TIA - or the DPC+ - could be tweaked so that the blasts could sound more like the Sonic Screwdriver or the Dalek weapons. But that might also cause issues during the "rapid fire" when the characters get to close to one another...

 

Speaking of the TIA or DPC+… Doctor Who theme music at the title screen. Berzerk purists would object to any music during the actual game play though.

Edited by Lynxpro
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Thanks everyone for the interest and comments! Much appreciated.

 

Even though this will end up far from Atari Berzerk, it is still Atari Berzerk.

What I mean by that is, it is a 2-line kernel, so no single line Activision-like color changes.

The enemy height is one taller than Berzerk, it would glitch at this height, but Omegamatrix fixed things.

No multi-color enemies on the same screen, just enemy color changes in different rooms (maze color can change between mazes).

 

Normal 32K, no extra RAM, cart. The sound and music is all TIA.

So no DPC+, or in-game DPC+ music. It is just a hack of Atari Berzerk.

Plans for AtariVox+ will add high score saving and more speech.

 

The suggestion for Tardis sampled sound is aces!

The same 3 samples get too annoying too quickly. I'll probably make them play less frequently..

 

Newbies tend to run the player into the walls / enemies a lot, because the movement is speeded up.

Experts seem to like the fast running speed, and say the original Berzerk speed is way to slow.

Thoughts?

 

The Cyberman option selection is confusing to newbies.

How best to show: No Cyberman, Cyberman that can be killed, Cyberman that can be killed but returns, and Cyberman invincible (can't be killed) ??

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Any chance this will be coming soon to the Atariage store? Maybe CIB? I'd buy it day one

Yes. The plan is to have the AtariAge store sell this.

 

I still need to read and learn how to put in the AtariVox+ High Score saving.

Make AtariVox+ speech that adds to the game. Preliminary AtariVox+ speech is already in there.

Make different maze layouts / color changes.

 

Seems like the rare failure from a rare TIA version was never solved. I would prefer no HMove lines and to add a warning, or make the right difficulty switch use the routine that has the HMove lines.

 

I tend to move on to other projects (Astro Blaster 2600), while at the same time trying to make (DK Arcade 2600) even better.

(If there is a Store release of different D. Kongs, I want our DK Arcade 2600 released at the same time because it is unknown how long sales will be allowed. We may have to get creative to sell cartridges. The fact about DK is that Kong, the character, is in the public domain, the 'tendo company had outsourced the programming so it is not clear who owns what because it was so early in that company's arcade business. Please, no need to argue or comment on DK as it will just attract unwanted attention.)

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I have a feeling you are not using the latest version in post # 84, as it works fine for me in Stella. None the less please confirm. Also it looks like it is not linked to in the first post, but it should be.

 

Wow, total oversight on my part!

First post is updated.

Here I've been hacking that build because I thought it was just my changes /dunce/...

 

Here's a personal build where I've tweaked a few things, added the Tardis engine sound at start, etc. (and quite possibly made things totally out of whack).

 

BezerkWho_160708.bin

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