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Champ Games - Mappy - 2600


johnnywc

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Hi John !

... been a long time since I played "something"... and this new porting seems really outstanding !
Maybe more than it happened with your Scramble/SuperCobra, people here won't believe it's a VCS game !!!

Unfortunately here in Italy, or at least here in my area, the game was not well known because many arcades strangely ignored him.

I remember I had seen it in an arcade when I was in a seaside resort but, frankly, I had never played it there !

"One point less" for a "first hair gamer" like me, apparently... :woozy: :_(

 

Turning to game features, I noticed the "Left Switch A"/"invincibility" mode, which I used to record the two little clips at the end of this post, the "usual" pause mode that can be activated with the Color/B&W switch and the awesome sampled music thrown inside the DPC(+) and played on the left channel just as Pitfall II did with its "situation-music" in the 80's (and also as Darrell did in his marvellous Stay Frosty 2 !!!!!!!).

Colors of the PAL version are apparently excellent and, in accordance with the huge lack of "nuances" of the TIA PAL palette, enough matched to those of the NTSC version. Above all, they're absolutely not like those represented on the emulator Stella... and here I would like to ask one thing: is it me who did wrong with Stella settings or it is true that many games (fortunately not all...) seem, wrongly, just NTSC cartridges inserted in a PAL console (and with the resulting colors from "Courage the Cowardly Dog") ?
NTSC - modded S-Video & Stereo NTSC "Heavy Sixer"
post-10922-0-53025100-1528056200_thumb.jpg
PAL60 - modded CVBS PAL "Vader"
post-10922-0-67552700-1528056217_thumb.jpg
Nice job, as always, John & all the Champ Games Team !!
... a label contest "in the air" ?
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Above all, they're absolutely not like those represented on the emulator Stella... and here I would like to ask one thing: is it me who did wrong with Stella settings...

On my PAL CRT the colors are also different to Stella's. Therefore I am using the following palette file, which matches my TV much better.

 

Can you give it a try and compare with your TV picture?

Stella272a.zip

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:-o :-o Wow :-o :-o I could play this all day! I plan on playing more this evening. I need to attach my AtariVox, so I can test the HS functionality. So far it played well for me on my 7800 via Harmony Encore. The colors look good, the sound is great (can't get that tune out of my head thank you) and the gameplay is very smooth.

 

attachicon.gifMappy.jpg

Thanks! Great score too! My best score is 89,600, making it up to level 9, you're quite the Mappy expert! :) How is the difficulty ramping up to level 16? I haven't been able to test the trap door levels much (12 - 14)... any issues?

 

 

Glad my score will spur competition. While that was not my intention, it should help further test/evaluate the game.

 

Game on gentlemen. :)

Sounds good! Yes, any feedback is helpful, good luck everyone!

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Hi Marco!

 

... been a long time since I played "something"... and this new porting seems really outstanding !

Maybe more than it happened with your Scramble/SuperCobra, people here won't believe it's a VCS game !!!

Thanks! It's pretty amazing what can be done with the new technology, but it still has the 'feel' of a 2600 game and certainly the challenge to 'push to envelope'. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

 

 

Unfortunately here in Italy, or at least here in my area, the game was not well known because many arcades strangely ignored him.

I remember I had seen it in an arcade when I was in a seaside resort but, frankly, I had never played it there !

"One point less" for a "first hair gamer" like me, apparently... :woozy: :_(

No worries, Mappy wasn't too popular here in the states either, at least not in the Northeast as I never played it 'back in the day'; my first exposure was on the Playstation with Namco Museum. It is quite fun and challenging once you get the hang of it!

 

 

Turning to game features, I noticed the "Left Switch A"/"invincibility" mode, which I used to record the two little clips at the end of this post, the "usual" pause mode that can be activated with the Color/B&W switch and the awesome sampled music thrown inside the DPC(+) and played on the left channel just as Pitfall II did with its "situation-music" in the 80's (and also as Darrell did in his marvellous Stay Frosty 2 !!!!!!!).

Yes, the left switch invincibility is for testing only, it won't be in the final build ;) The music is better than I could have hoped for, Mike (ieposta) did a phenomenal job converting the music and sound fx.

 

 

Colors of the PAL version are apparently excellent and, in accordance with the huge lack of "nuances" of the TIA PAL palette, enough matched to those of the NTSC version. Above all, they're absolutely not like those represented on the emulator Stella... and here I would like to ask one thing: is it me who did wrong with Stella settings or it is true that many games (fortunately not all...) seem, wrongly, just NTSC cartridges inserted in a PAL console (and with the resulting colors from "Courage the Cowardly Dog") ?

 

Thanks for the feedback, the PAL screenshots look pretty good to me!

 

 

Nice job, as always, John & all the Champ Games Team !!

Thanks Marco! Nathan's amazing graphics, the awesome sounds from Mike, the game play testing and recommendations from TJ and the CDF sound driver from Darrell all play an important part in making this game as good as it is :)

 

 

... a label contest "in the air" ?

Right now we have Nathan putting together a label/manual/box, so I think we're all set, but thanks for the offer! :)

 

Thanks!

John

Edited by johnnywc
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Upon further review a have a few things to report.

 

1. Reached level 24 and the game just stopped. Wasn't sure if the ROM was set to just end at this level, but it looked like a glitch. No opportunity to save my HS (and it was a beauty) :(

a. This occurred on my 7800. I was running the ROM via my Harmony Encore (Firmware v1.06)

2. Played a shorter game (purposely died to test AtariVox functionality)

a. The game recognized the Savekey upon Startup. HS functionality is working fine.

3. Reached level 19 and game just stopped again.

a. Trap door levels worked fine. First one caught me off guard, lost a life. Watched the doors open, close after that.

4. Tried one more game and this time the game stopped, but started flashing the screen over and over (see attached video). This occurred on Lv. 9.

 

Mappy Lv9.MOV

 

Note: I saved the ROM onto my older Harmony cart and played it on my Light 6-Switch. I was able to get it to just stop again around level 19. My older Harmony's firmware is v1.05.

 

-Steve

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Hi Steve,

 

1. Reached level 24 and the game just stopped. Wasn't sure if the ROM was set to just end at this level, but it looked like a glitch. No opportunity to save my HS (and it was a beauty) :(

a. This occurred on my 7800. I was running the ROM via my Harmony Encore (Firmware v1.06)

Hmmm that is strange, I've never seen that before but I honestly haven't played many full games and certainly have not gotten up to the higher levels. Can you recall what was happening when it happened? Since the game is stopping it's most likely a null pointer, possibly caused by too many objects on the screen at once (there is a limit that may be too low).

 

 

2. Played a shorter game (purposely died to test AtariVox functionality)

a. The game recognized the Savekey upon Startup. HS functionality is working fine.

Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear Savekey is working as expected. :)

 

 

3. Reached level 19 and game just stopped again.

a. Trap door levels worked fine. First one caught me off guard, lost a life. Watched the doors open, close after that.

Again, do you recall what was happening when the game stopped? Is it during a level or before it starts/ after it ends? Good to hear the trap doors are working; did you get any cats to fall thru them? Be careful - Mappy can fall thru them too!

 

 

4. Tried one more game and this time the game stopped, but started flashing the screen over and over (see attached video). This occurred on Lv. 9.

Weird it would happen at such an early stage in the game. Is it happening at the beginning of a level?

 

 

Note: I saved the ROM onto my older Harmony cart and played it on my Light 6-Switch. I was able to get it to just stop again around level 19. My older Harmony's firmware is v1.05.

Thanks, that helps. I do all my testing on Harmony with 1.06. Have you tried flashing the game directly onto the Harmony and testing that way as well? Just curious, I don't think it will make a difference.

 

The feedback is very helpful; I'll take a look at the code and see if I can find out where the issue might be occurring. I want you to be able to save your hi scores when you've had such a great game! :)

 

Thanks!

John

Edited by johnnywc
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Every time it stopped, it occurred at the beginning of the level. Other than that, I'm unable to make it happen on demand. At first I thought it was my 7800, then possibly my Harmony Encore, that's why I switched consoles and Harmony's. I keep my old one connected to my modded FB2.

 

Forgive me, but how do I flash the game directly?

 

***Just played three games in a row, and when I get to level 9, at the start of the level, if I stand still, the game stops after a couple of seconds.

Edited by sramirez2008
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On my PAL CRT the colors are also different to Stella's. Therefore I am using the following palette file, which matches my TV much better.

 

Can you give it a try and compare with your TV picture?

 

Thanks, Tom !

 

Ok, I've just tried it but all I noticed is two "bad" changes compared to both the NTSC and "previous" PAL palettes. You could see from the pic attached, which is one of the 24 I "captioned" for a few seconds from the beginning of the game (I might have just obtained the "F12 - hits per second" world record :D :-o ), colors are pretty much the same except for the light blue in some doors, which it is never appeared to me with that palette, and the level number, which is turned to purple instead of green (sometimes also the bumper near that number, the first on the low right, turns the same purple).

 

Mappy PAL60 with full PAL hardware (CVBS out) [same picture in my prev. post]

post-10922-0-35224500-1528098617_thumb.jpg

 

Mappy NTSC - screenshot from Stella emulator

post-10922-0-71093700-1528098645.png

 

Mappy PAL60 (DEFAULT PALETTE) - screenshot from Stella emulator

post-10922-0-82025400-1528098657.png

 

Mappy PAL60 (ALTERNATE PALETTE) - screenshot from Stella emulator

post-10922-0-84708300-1528098667.png

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The blue door colors result from the microwave doors flickering. So here the door color depends on when you press F12.

 

Regarding the level number being in purple, this is weird. I am using the same palette file and for me it is always green. Can you post a screenshot of the attached ROM with all colors being displayed (set switches to B/W) using my palette file?
EDIT: Nothing weird here, the color displays the difficulty level you selected.

 

I wonder if you are really my palette in the screenshots, the colors are to close. Make sure you use the user define palette (CTRL+P or Video options).

 

BTW: I was able to replicate the crashes in Stella and on hardware. So John should be able to fix those.

ColorTest (PAL50).bin

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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Hi Marco!

 

 

Hey John !

 

> Well, regarding the fact that the game actually seems to come from a much more powerful and advanced console, I participated in a "heated" discussion on my own Facebook group (translated) "the Dawn of Videogames" ... always the same topic, when a game like this appears on the wild:

"Using the DPC+ in this way is cheating or not?"

... of course I ended with my thought, which is always the same; as also Duane stated, "If you plug a cartridge into an UNMODIFIED VCS/2600 and you can play the game, then it's a VCS/2600 game, no matter if it has 20 Gigabytes of ROM and a magical half-unicorn fairy living inside of the cartridge !".
> HAHA ! Exactly he same for me, John ;-) : my "very first contact" with Mappy was on my PSX and Namco Museum vol.2, which also has one of my all-time-favs: Xevious !!!!!!!!!

 

> Yep, graphic and music are really awesome (that really low distortion we could hear, if compared to Pitfall's music, means an intensive "cleaning work" !). Very nice, Nathan and Mike :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: !

> NP... I would have bored you with my usual arcade-line artworks :woozy: :-D .
____________________
Got some "free-hours" before goin' to my job tomorrow morning so I played for some minutes...
When I reached, with test-mode-invincibility, the level 24, at the beginning of it the game crashed with black screen, 1-second diagonal white bounds and an audio "beep".

I use a NTSC Heavy6er console, which I modded with an E.S.board for CVBS + S-Video + AudioStereo outputs, and my Harmony Encore has the latest bios, updated the last year from http://atariage.com/forums/topic/156500-latest-harmony-cart-software/ .

It does almost the same thing when switching it on with my Saboteur loan cartridge inserted, while my other (PAL) consoles seem to work perfectly...
I'll do some further tests with the emulator and some other on original hw...
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The blue door colors result from the microwave doors flickering. So here the door color depends when you press F12 what the color is.

 

Regarding the level number being in purple, this is weird. I am using the same palette file and for me it is always green. Can you post a screenshot of the attached ROM with all colors being displayed (set switches to B/W) using my palette file?

 

I wonder if you are really my palette in the screenshots, the colors are to close. Make sure you use the user define palette (CTRL+P or Video options).

 

BTW: I was able to replicate the crashes in Stella and on hardware. So John should be able to fix those.

I'll sure try it again, maybe tomorrow evening when I'll be at home, Tom :thumbsup: .

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It's come out amazing so far, Johnny. Thanks for your hard work & for sharing it with us. No idea what you've got planned next but got faith it'll be amazing.

Even working with Johnny I don't know what's next, but some titles (I heard discussed in private) are all fantastic!

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Every time it stopped, it occurred at the beginning of the level. Other than that, I'm unable to make it happen on demand. At first I thought it was my 7800, then possibly my Harmony Encore, that's why I switched consoles and Harmony's. I keep my old one connected to my modded FB2.

 

Forgive me, but how do I flash the game directly?

 

***Just played three games in a row, and when I get to level 9, at the start of the level, if I stand still, the game stops after a couple of seconds.

Hi Steve,

 

Thanks for the feedback. TJ did some analysis and it looks like there is a bug when there are too many objects on a level (I underestimated the max #). I've made a couple changes that will hopefully fix the bug (it works on Stella and real hardware over here up to level 10), but you're a much better player than I :). I did *test* on Stella with some cheats on Level 24 with all the prizes, extra cats, coin, bells, etc and it ran fine so I think it's all set.

 

I'll post a build after some more testing.

 

Thanks again!

John

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The blue door colors result from the microwave doors flickering. So here the door color depends on when you press F12.

 

Regarding the level number being in purple, this is weird. I am using the same palette file and for me it is always green. Can you post a screenshot of the attached ROM with all colors being displayed (set switches to B/W) using my palette file?

EDIT: Nothing weird here, the color displays the difficulty level you selected.

 

I wonder if you are really my palette in the screenshots, the colors are to close. Make sure you use the user define palette (CTRL+P or Video options).

 

BTW: I was able to replicate the crashes in Stella and on hardware. So John should be able to fix those.

Hi again, Tom !

 

Ok, yep... level counter colors are ok... unveiled the arcane :D !

Doors are ok, too... wonder why all the times I hit F12 it didn't show a light-blue door... a special case :-o :D !

 

In this pic you could see my settings on Stella (Win7):

post-10922-0-84031600-1528146414_thumb.jpg

 

And here it is the full PAL50 palette color test:

post-10922-0-77979800-1528146494_thumb.jpg

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I should mention that I tried playing this on my NVIDIA Shield and much like Super Cobra was tried on the Android Atari 2600 emulator, it causes a loud buzz to be emitted from the speakers. Since I don't see the Android Atari 2600 emulator ever getting updated, guess it will remain unplayable via that platform.

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Latest update:

 

- fixed a bug that would cause the game to crash if there were too many objects on the screen

- fixed a bug that would cause the cats to move reaaaaaaaally slow on ADVANCED difficulty starting with level 16

- fixed a bug that would not save your default initials on STANDARD mode to Savekey (initials were saved for your score, just not your default ones that are used to populate the initials on your *next* hi score after the game is powered off)

- graphics updates to the roof patterns and colors

- added the Goro (red cat) animation to the hi score screen after a hi score is entered

- shortened the distance Mappy/cats are 'bumped' by doors

- minor updates to the difficultly ramping for later levels

 

Any feedback is welcome!

 

Thanks,

John

mappy_20180606_NTSC.bin

mappy_20180606_PAL60.bin

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- added the Goro (red cat) animation to the hi score screen after a hi score is entered

 

LOVE it ❤️

The pacing is great... come on... enter those letters! And the the fall.

 

I have some values to try for NTSC roofff.

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Plays really great, "johnnywc". Superb new homebrew!!! I really like the looking of the sprites and the whole gameplay is good.

 

The next great new game on the Atari 2600. In last year some really good new games came out on the system. WOW.

 

Bought me a Suncom TAC-2 joystick last week and it arrived today. Can test it now with "Mappy" on my Atari first. :)

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