Popeye Arcade 8-bit conversion

[TheNameOfTheGame]

I like that a lot! Good job!

[Jinroh]

Agreed, looks spectacular.

[darryl1970]

I like that a lot! Good job!

 

 

Agreed, looks spectacular.

 

Thanks!!

[+Philsan]

I like latest version too.

[FifthPlayer]

+1 on the latest version too. I think you have a winner.

[MARIO130XE]

Can't await the release. Thumbs up and a big big Thank you. Great work.

[Jetboot Jack]

I really like the new punch sprite!

 

sTeVE

[darryl1970]

Here is Popeye Arcade Version 10, with the latest (last?) punch sprite.

PopeyeArcadeV10.zip

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Winner winner chicken dinner!

 

This is the best version imho!

[MARIO130XE]

Wooooohoooooo Thank you sooooo much.

[+Philsan]

Best version. Thank you very much.

[atx4us]

V10 is the best version yet! Great job!

[FifthPlayer]

Yes, I just burned it to a cart and played it on real hardware. The improved flow from regular to double width means its much less noticeable, and even when it lingers on the double width view it still looks presentable. I like it.

[billkendrick]

Looks great! (Too bad I still suck at it)

[Jetboot Jack]

I love it - plays and looks great!

 

sTeVE

[darryl1970]

Glad Everybody likes it. It was a lot of fun. It was probably the most solid rounded version of the day. I was always jealous of Coleco's Brutus, but our Popeye was better even before the work. We had all 3 songs. Everything was give and take back in the day, but it was pretty faithful for 1982-ish (83?). I am glad Playsoft made it possible to make the graphic changes I always wanted to see. Can't wait to get my AtariMax and SIO2SD, so I can also try them on real hardware!

 

I love it - plays and looks great!

 

sTeVE

 

 

Looks great! (Too bad I still suck at it)

 

 

Yes, I just burned it to a cart and played it on real hardware. The improved flow from regular to double width means its much less noticeable, and even when it lingers on the double width view it still looks presentable. I like it.

 

 

V10 is the best version yet! Great job!

 

 

Best version. Thank you very much.

 

 

Wooooohoooooo Thank you sooooo much.

 

 

Winner winner chicken dinner!

 

This is the best version imho!

Edited November 24, 2015 by darryl1970

[Jinroh]

Downloaded it, but forgot to comment, but pretty much everyone else echos my sentiment. Perfect.

[Goochman]

Ive never been so good at dispatching bottles - did I also notice Popeye 'toking' away on his pipe as he runs around? Nice touch - great overall!

[Tezz]

Well done, it's a nice update of the the game and fixes those issues

[+therealbountybob]

OOOH 2 digit round counter

 

Looks good, will play it some more in the next but one HSC round: Season 12 Catch-up!

 

I wonder if it will now be too easy if the punching is reliable so some new logic and why not chuck in a new screen too

[+Cafeman]

I just played a 91k game of the latest Popeye Arcade and it was a treat. I love the intro Popeye and the toot-toot of his pipe , and I love how you get to see it again after completing the 3rd stage! The characters are all so attractive now. I see you continued to tweak Wimpy and Swee' Pea even more and they look comical and cute respectively. The bottle punching is so easy now that I started to fear the game was too easy. But once you get to the 2nd and then 3rd stage, you'll get the challenge because Brutus is smarter and the sea hag's bottles start coming in groups of 2's. I got trapped a couple times , trying to line myself up to avoid Brutus and his grab but also to stand still and punch incoming bottles!

 

I like the 2nd stage's animated water, too bad you couldn't do that on all three stages because its a nice effect.

 

I realize this is a hack, and adding new stages and other more aggressive changes would likely be impossible without glitches. but I was still brainstorming , wondering what else there is to work on, if you wanted to. The only thing I can think of to add would be maybe a nice animation and sound effect when you drop the bucket on Brutus' head. Right now, there is now sound effect and he just stands there stuck. If you could add even an existing sound effect to sound when you hit him w/bucket, that would be a cool addition.

 

But I'm just dreaming out loud there... this improvement of Popeye is really, really nice. And most importantly, it is FUN!

[darryl1970]

Today's High Score 115,370. My current arcade high score is 128,790.

 

I was pretty close to getting it on the A8, but had some other distractions.

[Level42]

Can I find a video of the latest version somewhere ?

Fantastic work ! Popeye was one of my A8 favorites, an excellent conversion already...must be totally awesome now

[+playsoft]

therealbountybob, on 24 Nov 2015 - 9:51 PM, said:

I wonder if it will now be too easy if the punching is reliable so some new logic and why not chuck in a new screen too

 

Because I don't understand the program well enough to do that. I just used the Altirra debugger to hack into it, rather than study a disassembly listing.

 

Cafeman, on 24 Nov 2015 - 10:31 PM, said:

I like the 2nd stage's animated water, too bad you couldn't do that on all three stages because its a nice effect.

 

I realize this is a hack, and adding new stages and other more aggressive changes would likely be impossible without glitches. but I was still brainstorming , wondering what else there is to work on, if you wanted to. The only thing I can think of to add would be maybe a nice animation and sound effect when you drop the bucket on Brutus' head. Right now, there is now sound effect and he just stands there stuck. If you could add even an existing sound effect to sound when you hit him w/bucket, that would be a cool addition.

 

There should be animated water on the 3rd level too, just not on the 1st. We ended up with a choice of (1) still water, (2) bobbing up and down water, (3) left to right water and (4) combined bobbing/left to right. We preferred (1) and (4) and went with (1) in the 1st level and (4) in the others.

 

There was a good glitch trying to modify a Sea Hag frame. Darryl noticed there was a character which should have been used in one of the Sea Hag frames but wasn't. When I modified the frame to use it, level 1 played through fine but half the screen was corrupt on level 2.

 

Another find was the original program occasionally writing beyond the first 16K of RAM (corrupting one of the title screen frames). This turned out to be a bottle character from level 2. Probably at some point during it's development it used more than 16K RAM and screen memory was located at $6000 instead of $3000. If you adjust accordingly the stray bottle then appears on the correct character row (for bottles) by Wimpy.

 

It looks like the first audio channel is not being used, so potentially a sound effect is possible without having to worry about what the program is doing. If I end up doing anything else to it I will see if I can find something to tell me that Bluto is trapped.

[Tempest]

There should be animated water on the 3rd level too, just not on the 1st. We ended up with a choice of (1) still water, (2) bobbing up and down water, (3) left to right water and (4) combined bobbing/left to right. We preferred (1) and (4) and went with (1) in the 1st level and (4) in the others.

 

There was a good glitch trying to modify a Sea Hag frame. Darryl noticed there was a character which should have been used in one of the Sea Hag frames but wasn't. When I modified the frame to use it, level 1 played through fine but half the screen was corrupt on level 2.

 

Another find was the original program occasionally writing beyond the first 16K of RAM (corrupting one of the title screen frames). This turned out to be a bottle character from level 2. Probably at some point during it's development it used more than 16K RAM and screen memory was located at $6000 instead of $3000. If you adjust accordingly the stray bottle then appears on the correct character row (for bottles) by Wimpy.

 

There is animated water on the 3rd level, I just noticed it tonight.

 

Got pictures of those other two errors? I'm really curious about those.