Bump N Jump

[1980gamer]

15 hours ago, mr_me said:

Bumpnjump has five different roadways that repeat in the same order.  Roadway eight has one particular long jump that you have to time perfectly just before hitting the water.  And if you miss it on the first try, it's practically impossible to get enough speed to make it with your remaining attempts.  If you make it then you're probably good for another five roadways.  Other than that I don't think the game gets any harder.

Yes, you need a good bump to get up to speed if you miss on the first try.  It may even be worth not accelerating right away.  Find some cars to give you a push or two.

 

This game really holds up well.  And of course having a snow level doesn't hurt. 

 

[Zendocon]

The color scheme used for the ground tiles, cycles every 8 levels.  What's interesting is that the first level is using the Level 8 palette.  It's as if the level ID is internally set to 0 for all intents and purposes before the first level begins, and then incremented to 1.

 

What that means is, when you reach Level 9, you'll have seen all the ground tile color schemes.  At Level 10, the color scheme cycles back to Level 2.

 

I'm mentioning this now, because I always wanted to see all the color schemes since I was a kid, but I thought I'd have to get to Level 32 to see it all.  Maybe I'm the only one?

[mr_me]

I never really noticed colour schemes other than the four seasons.  As a kid I documented the jumps in each roadway.  I stopped once I established a pattern of five different roadways.  The first three roadways are different, easier jumps, and not used again.  The set of five roadways starts with roadway four and cycle through the seasons.

[Zendocon]

In case anybody has a use for these, I created screenshot images for each of the rooms, same as what I did for that Auto Racing World Map.

 

Rooms that contain only non-color-changing elements I posted in the "General" subfolder, and the other rooms I posted in each of the 8 other folders, "Level[xx]".

 

The color schemes cycle through levels 2-9.  The first level is an oddball which uses the Level 8 color scheme.  That is why I named the folders as I did.

 

In case you're wondering about the naming of the rooms, "room[xx]", these are the values in the even-numbered ROM addresses at $Fxxx.  Other values poked into these addresses produce garbage, as you might expect.

 

These are the assets I'm planning to use in a GUI level editor.  They are in .png format because I'm using the same GUI toolkit I used for PIDEjL, my front-end for jzIntv, which gupports only .png and .gif formats.

Bump & Jump Rooms.zip

[Zendocon]

While conceptualizing my level editor, I decided to add the screenshots from the ends of each level.  This one includes Level 1, since there's difference between Levels 1 and 8 here; a tree to start Level 2, and a snowman to start Level 9.

End Rooms.zip

[Zendocon]

I'm going to port this to Windows, but for anybody who is using my Portable Intellivision Development Environment, I'm making it available now.  In addition, here is a screenshot and a copy of the readme file with installation instructions.

 

bnjedit.zip readme.txt

[Zendocon]

Here is the Windows port with the accompanying readme file.  I haven't fully tested it, but it seems to be working fine.  Just be sure to put "bnjhack.bin" in the images subfolder, or the program will hang if you click on the "Make .rom" button.

 

Definitely read the readme file for installation and operation instructions.

 

BTW, I came across a bug in the PIDE port that I just posted.  There's a line of code that's referring to an image file that I removed at the last minute.  I'm going to remove that line of code and create a revised archive, and then I'll replace the posted .zip file with a new one.

bnjeditw.zip readme.txt

[Zendocon]

Figures.  It's too late for me to edit the previous post and remove the file.  But here's the updated .zip file.  Refer to the readme file above for installation and operational instructions.

bnjedit.zip

[intvdave]

I put together a Super Pro version. You can get it at:

 

http://intellivision.us/roms.php

[Zendocon]

15 minutes ago, intvdave said:

I put together a Super Pro version. You can get it at:

 

http://intellivision.us/roms.php

I got it, thanks.  With additional levels, there could be something analagous to Super Chef BT.

[intvdave]

9 minutes ago, Zendocon said:

I got it, thanks.  With additional levels, there could be something analagous to Super Chef BT.

 

That would be sweet! I have not seen the output of your editor, which looks AWESOME, but if it exports the map number and characteristics, I could add it to what I have.

[Zendocon]

20 minutes ago, intvdave said:

That would be sweet! I have not seen the output of your editor, which looks AWESOME, but if it exports the map number and characteristics, I could add it to what I have.

It outputs to bnjhack.cfg by default, with ROM pokes all throughout the $Fxxx range, plus updated level pointers in $Dxxx.

 

At startup, it reads the same bnjhack.cfg file, so this is where your work is saved.  You supply your own .bin file and name it bnjhack.bin, and so you can use the "Make .rom" button to invoke jzIntv's bin2rom utility to create bnjhack.rom.

 

This bnjhack.rom file should work in any other emulator.  At least it worked when I tried it in Argon.  The "Play .rom" button lets you test it right away in jzIntv.

 

To answer your question, yes to level characteristics, not exactly a map number though.  The levels are delineated by "0" followed by "80", which ends each level.

[Rickster8]

I think the farthest I've gotten was screen 4 or 5. I didn't have this one as a kid. My highest score is 161k. 

[Zendocon]

Here is an updated version of my Bump & Jump Level Editor, PIDE port.  I'll get to the Windows port hopefully in a few hours.

 

All the changes are spelled out in the readme file.  "bnjedit.zip" is the full program, and "bnjedit-20211015.zip" is the update from the previous version.

 

Just after the original release, I did locate and decipher the room data, plus the lookup table for the rooms.  I added an option to consolidate dead space in the ROM by relocating the room and level pointer tables to another segment, modifying the code to look in the new locations, and shifting the room data.  This gives us more space to add some new rooms.

 

As for creating new rooms yourself, I would have to build a separate application, because having custom rooms falls outside the scope of this application.  What I am planning to do is hand-pick the best custom rooms, and add them to a future release.

bnjedit.zip bnjedit-20211015.zip readme.txt

[Zendocon]

Just as a heads-up: there are some bugs pertaining to the two checkboxes.  I have it all fixed now, but I won't have time to post the bugfix until late tonight.  As for the Windows port, it will probably be a couple of days before I can post that as well.  I'll have replacement download files ready later.

[Zendocon]

Here is another update with the bugfixes that I mentioned above.  Now that I have that handled, I can get back to work on the updated Windows port.

bnjedit.zip bnjedit-20211018.zip

[Zendocon]

Here is the updated version for Windows.  I also added a feature in this port to redirect the ROM-building output to /dev/null, since Windows blits terminal window text unbearably slow.

bnjeditw.zip bnjeditw-20211018.zip

[Zendocon]

I posted an update to fix a couple bugs in the Windows port.  I'm posting it here for the sake of convenience, but the latest version for both Linux and Windows will be available on my website going forward.

bnjeditw.zip

[snoe]

This is interesting I just played through the intv game with save states. It's hard to tell if levels cycle or not, there's a lot of repetition of sections for sure, however:

- After course 32 the game continues, got to 34 and came searching to see what's up with that? Is someone able to lay out the logic for level generation?

- There's one jump somewhere in the 20s that is totally unique, it's a number of bridge sections stuck together with 1 tile water gaps. I only encountered it once, so what happened there? Was it a bug too?

- one of the last courses has a 4 pool split track, that seemed very rare to me, I think I only encountered it twice.

Rom hackers:

- Why do the free credits stop at  40k (or 50k), that seems like a bug and would make this game possible even without continues.

 

[mr_me]

I've only seen through roadway 25.  I've noted a repeating pattern of five different roadways starting with roadway four.

 

You start with five cars and get a free one at 20k.  You don't want the game to go on forever with regular free cars.

[Zendocon]

On 9/10/2022 at 3:37 PM, snoe said:

This is interesting I just played through the intv game with save states. It's hard to tell if levels cycle or not, there's a lot of repetition of sections for sure, however:

- After course 32 the game continues, got to 34 and came searching to see what's up with that? Is someone able to lay out the logic for level generation?

- There's one jump somewhere in the 20s that is totally unique, it's a number of bridge sections stuck together with 1 tile water gaps. I only encountered it once, so what happened there? Was it a bug too?

- one of the last courses has a 4 pool split track, that seemed very rare to me, I think I only encountered it twice.

Rom hackers:

- Why do the free credits stop at  40k (or 50k), that seems like a bug and would make this game possible even without continues.

 

To answer your second and third questions at once, I created a level editor, which you can see up above.  You can download the latest version from my website (there are Linux and Windows ports available), and follow the instructions on the readme file.  After you extract the package, if you enter the /images subfolder and copy "bnjhack.cfg~" to "bnjhack.cfg", you will be able to see the original level data for all 32 levels.

 

I'm pretty sure the game cycles back to Level 1 after Level 32, but I can check.  One thing I encountered is a false alarm at the beginning of Level 12.

 

The original game only awards a single extra life at 20,000 points.  I know Super Pro Bump & Jump has an option for repeating extra lives.