Venture Reloaded

[Nukey Shay]

Part of the portable's problem is that Sara Ram memory is not filled with $FF in the binary, so autodetecting it will fail.  There must be some other issue present which keeps the correct banking scheme from being implemented (because filling the Ram portion with $FF still did not make it playable).

[Omegamatrix]

Another video review:

 

 

FYI, I can see in the video that phosphor was not enabled in Stella, so there is a lot of flicker in the video.

 

Overall I was happy to see Brian's review. I felt all his points were fair and I welcome the critique.

[+stephena]

2 hours ago, Omegamatrix said:

FYI, I can see in the video that phosphor was not enabled in Stella, so there is a lot of flicker in the video.

He's using an older version of Stella, where flicker is much more noticeable.  On newer versions, oftentimes leaving phosphor mode off is sufficient.  I've responded in a few of his videos that he really should upgrade.

 

BTW, I know it's an older version since the scrollbar has 3 horizontal lines in it.  That was discontinued a few versions ago

[Omegamatrix]

On 10/24/2019 at 2:07 PM, Raiu said:

First, I think I found a bug: It's possible to walk through top walls by pressing up against it (and firing?).  If the wall is against the top of the screen, then you get stuck in the wall and slide to the right (slamming into any enemies in the way), otherwise, you just pass right through and get stuck outside the level.

 

Possible bug: the timer bonus at the end of each stage is wrong (instead of multiplying the points you got in the round by the number on the timer, it just adds 100 points per bonus left).

 

The game doesn't award you any points if you shoot a monster before you pick up the treasure in the room.  I know that's how it worked in the original Atari 2600 version, but that's not how it works in the Colecovision or arcade versions, where you always get points for shooting monsters.

 

Scoring is very low in general.  I played an entire game, clearing 13 rooms (i.e., the first three levels and then the Goblin Room the second time around), and only got 5900 points total.  Meanwhile, I got over 11000 points in the arcade version from just the first four chambers normally, and 7500 from turning on cheats and just picking up the four treasures and shooting nothing.

 

One final criticism: I really, really, don't like the map screen music.  I know the 2600 doesn't have great sound hardware and can't play certain notes, but it's much more off-key than the rest of the game's music, especially the final note.  Is that still being worked on?  (Suggestion: the arcade game has different map screen music, maybe that would work better?)

 

Overall, though, this is amazing.  Absolutely amazing.

Hello Raiu,

 

Thank you for your feedback.

 

1) The wall bug has been fixed for Release Candidate 2 (RC2). I'm glad you found it because I could not replicate it on my keyboard, and I would not have known otherwise.

 

2) Yeah, I took a deviation with bonus points adding up instead of multiplying. I was worried about people wrapping the score too easily. However, seeing that the overall scores have been pretty low I have since changed it for RC2 to be a true multiplier. Points might not exactly match the arcade version, but it will be more rewarding and increase the score overall.

 

3) The original Atari version didn't allow points for killing monsters until the treasure was collected. This prevents cherry picking to get a high score by continually entering/exiting the room to kill a close monster without getting hit. To get more points you have to dodge the monsters and get to the treasure first. However, when I saw videos of people playing the game it showed me that most people found it fun to blast away. They also might have been upset about the lack of points except I don't think they noticed because of the rotation of texts at the top of the screen.

 

With that in mind I believe I figured out a way to get the best of both worlds. Simply put you will get points for killing monsters right away. However, if you exit the room without the treasure you will no longer get points for more monster kills in that room until after you pick the treasure up. This seems fair. Also, if you die before getting the treasure everything resets, so you will be allowed points for monsters kills again. This is already in place for RC2.

 

4) Yes, the big room music is not good. Iesposta also said noted it sounded off key, and I agree. I will work on it for RC2.

 

 

 

I hope to get RC2 done reasonably soon, within a couple of weeks. If anyone has more feedback please post.

[Omegamatrix]

On 10/24/2019 at 1:12 PM, David Alexander said:

I definitely will want this on a Cart. Anybody know when it will be released on a cart? Thanks.

Realistically, I hope it is within 6 months. Releases on AA go in batches, and Al has to build a billion carts for the post PRGE show, and then handle Christmas.

 

- Right now the rom is close to final. There might be a few more release candidates, with one more scheduled for sure.

- I am going to see about hold a label contest soon

- No work on a manual or box has been done.

 

So there is still lots to do. Mostly this becomes the work of other people from this point on.

[Omegamatrix]

On 10/25/2019 at 9:37 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

One note, I tried this now on my Atari Flashback Portable and it doesn't work. Just get the "Venture Reloaded" title screen for a moment, which seems to be stuck in a boot loop (the title disappears, then it shows up again. Just keeps doing that no matter what you press, apart from going back to the start menu). 

I'm not surprised it doesn't work. I did not intentionally make it not work, but until they start using a current version of Stella in these portables there will always be incompatibilities.

[eegad]

Awesome. Thanks for this. Venture was always one of my favorite arcade games back in the day. The original Coleco cart was "ok", but this finally does the game justice on the 2600.

 

 

[atarifan88]

Thanks for this much needed upgrade of Venture.  Has anyone tried it on the FB9 yet?

[Shannon]

Wow.  Just played this today and it's fantastic!  This game was a favorite of mine back in the day.  I used to ride my bike 5 miles to the local Safeway just to play the thing.  I remember thinking that the stick was broke due to the poor response times.  Turned out the game is programmed that way!  

 

Anywho.. same comment as others the map screen music is really bad.  The music in some of the rooms seems a little off but still decent.  When in the rooms the monster seems to appear a little too soon?  I may be wrong about that.  And in the one room with 3 spiders after you grab the treasure the 3 spiders are supposed to disappear and be replaced by two spiders.

 

That is all I noticed so far.  Great work BTW!

 

[VectorGamer]

Got to play this the other night. Any chance the collision detection can be fixed? Multiple times I shot the bad guys but they didn't die.

[Omegamatrix]

17 hours ago, Shannon said:

Wow.  Just played this today and it's fantastic!  This game was a favorite of mine back in the day.  I used to ride my bike 5 miles to the local Safeway just to play the thing.  I remember thinking that the stick was broke due to the poor response times.  Turned out the game is programmed that way!  

 

Anywho.. same comment as others the map screen music is really bad.  The music in some of the rooms seems a little off but still decent.  When in the rooms the monster seems to appear a little too soon?  I may be wrong about that.  And in the one room with 3 spiders after you grab the treasure the 3 spiders are supposed to disappear and be replaced by two spiders.

 

That is all I noticed so far.  Great work BTW!

 

The Hallway music is being worked on. Yeah, I do know about the Spider Room special events. I moved it to out of scope due to several factors. If I ever do make an ARM arcade homebrew version this would be handled as well as the special events for the Wall Room, Troll Room, Two-Headed room, Demon room, and Cyclops room.

 

I'm not sure if anyone noticed but I did restore the treasure in the Spider Room to be the Doll. The original 2600 version had a Key for the treasure, but the Doll is the correct treasure for that room.

13 hours ago, VectorGamer said:

Got to play this the other night. Any chance the collision detection can be fixed? Multiple times I shot the bad guys but they didn't die.

Thank you for playing. The collision system is actually inherited and unchanged from the original 2600 game. It is quite the convoluted code using hardware collisions for half the sprites and doing software collisions for the rest. It won't get any better unless the game is rebuilt from scratch. So I shelved it for a future ARM version, which I may or may not ever do. I have other projects to complete first, Circus AtariAge being one of them.

 

I have pushed both enhanced collisions and intelligent flicker management to out of scope for this project, but I will look at few previous versions to see if a bug has been introduced. Right now I am wondering if you see the arrow fly through the enemy? Are you playing in emulation or an Atari? Please let me know.

[chewy]

thats crazy you changed part of the code but then kept original parts too n stuff

[BIGHMW]

On 10/30/2019 at 4:14 AM, atarifan88 said:

Thanks for this much needed upgrade of Venture.  Has anyone tried it on the FB9 yet?

I will, I'll then give a report on whether she works or not.

[atarifan88]

7 hours ago, chewy said:

thats crazy you changed part of the code but then kept original parts too n stuff

That is the definition of a game hack, which is what this is from version 1.

[Omegamatrix]

I've taken a look and there is a bug in the collisions for the monster and arrow. This will be fixed for RC2.

[themushroom]

Did some playtesting on RC1...

 

Atari Flashback handheld (2017 model): Doesn't get past the title screen. Just flashes the title every couple seconds.

 

A-320 under the Dingux-2600 emulator: Plays like a champ! Photo attached.

Have not tried a A-320 native OS emulator because I don't have one.

Have not tried the Dingux Stella 2600 emulator because it doesn't work for me.

Edited November 9, 2019 by themushroom
Formatting is a great thing.

[Nukey Shay]

FBP's emulator is not detecting expanded Ram.  I tried filling it with $FF's which often helps it identify the banking scheme, but no dice for this one.

[Zoyx]

Harmony encore cart compatible! Really well done.

 

 

 

[Chris2600]

Hi,

 

I tried the game (the Pal rom file) with my Pal 7800 and  my Secam 2600 (which requires pal carts) using the Harmony cartridge.

 

First comment: Thanks a lot for this nice job, the gameplay is awesome!

 

On the 2600: The display is rendered in b&w as shown below... usually this kind of things occurs when running a NTSC file or files with odd  number of scanlines. But as I said, the problem occurs here when I'am using the pal file.

 

 

 

On the 7800: The screen was rolling vertically and I had to adjust the TV vertical alignment but finally I got the game running in colors

Such roll can occurs too when using NTSC roms or when the number of scanlines is odd.

So I made a comparison using the NTSC version of the file: the picture rolls the same way (which is normal here for a NTSC file) but the colors were different (of course).

 

I hope these informations will be useful.

 

I can't wait to see the final version.

Thanks & Congratulations!

 

 

Chris

 

 

[SS]

The Hall Monsters seem to come into the rooms very quickly.  I cannot recall if the original works like this or not but it's almost like you have to do a speed run to get out in time.  I wonder if there is any way to slow this down just a bit?

[Zoyx]

58 minutes ago, SS said:

The Hall Monsters seem to come into the rooms very quickly.  I cannot recall if the original works like this or not but it's almost like you have to do a speed run to get out in time.  I wonder if there is any way to slow this down just a bit?

Seems fine to me. I keep moving.

[Omegamatrix]

5 hours ago, Chris2600 said:

Hi,

 

I tried the game (the Pal rom file) with my Pal 7800 and  my Secam 2600 (which requires pal carts) using the Harmony cartridge.

 

First comment: Thanks a lot for this nice job, the gameplay is awesome!

 

On the 2600: The display is rendered in b&w as shown below... usually this kind of things occurs when running a NTSC file or files with odd  number of scanlines. But as I said, the problem occurs here when I'am using the pal file.

 

 

On the 7800: The screen was rolling vertically and I had to adjust the TV vertical alignment but finally I got the game running in colors

Such roll can occurs too when using NTSC roms or when the number of scanlines is odd.

So I made a comparison using the NTSC version of the file: the picture rolls the same way (which is normal here for a NTSC file) but the colors were different (of course).

 

I hope these informations will be useful.

 

I can't wait to see the final version.

Thanks & Congratulations!

 

 

Chris

Hello Chris,

 

Thank you for your feedback. The file I made was what we call a "PAL60" version. It is meant to play on an international TV. There are several hacks made for PAL60, more can be found on PAL60 roms here:

 

 

[Omegamatrix]

3 hours ago, SS said:

The Hall Monsters seem to come into the rooms very quickly.  I cannot recall if the original works like this or not but it's almost like you have to do a speed run to get out in time.  I wonder if there is any way to slow this down just a bit?

 

2 hours ago, Zoyx said:

Seems fine to me. I keep moving.

 

 

Thank you all for the feedback. The Hall Monster does appear sooner than the original version. This change was made because:

 

- Winky's speed has greatly increased from the original, allowing the room to be finished much quicker. 

- I do want people to see the hall monster on occasion, to add some suspense.

 

There is a little strategy for choosing room doors. Some room doors do have a trade off between more initial safety, but at a cost of being further in distance from the treasure.

 

Myself, I rarely see the Hall Monster unless I stop and wait. As you get into the higher levels (7+) the monster speed really increases and you'll have to bolt to survive anyhow. Learning to go quick in the initial stages will help prep you for that! ?

 

 

I will still think about this though. In the meantime I have some news. I have changed my mind, and increased the scope for the project once again to add a couple of the special events into RC2. I hope people will be pleased with them.

 

 

[Omegamatrix]

On 10/30/2019 at 4:14 AM, atarifan88 said:

Thanks for this much needed upgrade of Venture.  Has anyone tried it on the FB9 yet?

 

Here's another video review. This one is by Tim's Tiny Arcade. He is playing it on a FB9, and it seems fine in the video.

 

 

 

[Jinks]

So what he is saying is the dragon got em.