Team Pixelboy News Bulletin - July 11th 2021

[Pixelboy]

Hello ColecoVision fans.   

 

It's been quite a while since my last News Bulletin, and even though there's actually not a whole lot to say, I'd say it's high time I gave people a quick update.

REACHING A MILESTONE WITH THE TRADING CARDS PROJECT

 

I'm happy to report that of the 165 card templates of the first series of ColecoVision trading cards I'm working on, I'm down to just four card front sides left to do. Three of them should be done by the end of this week, but the fourth card is posing a problem for me: I recently noticed that my box scan of the Canadian edition of B.C. II - Grog's Revenge has a blurry spot in the lower left corner which I'm not comfortable with. I sold off this game (with its box) a long time ago, so I cannot redo the scan myself. Does anyone here have this game complete-in-box, and would be willing to scan the box for me? I attached a picture of the box below, for reference. If you can help me out, please send me a PM.

 

Beyond that, I've estimated that I'll need another month or so to prepare the back side templates of all 165 cards. So I'm definitely getting there, and I'll send all the card templates to the trading card printer as soon as they're ready. But just before I do that, I'll contact all my Team Pixelboy customers and offer them a set of this first series of trading cards, just to try to determine how many sets of cards I should order from the printer. Feel free to send me a PM or an e-mail if you're interested in these trading cards and want to be put on the pre-order list.

WHAT ABOUT ASTEROIDS?

 

Well, I've got good news and somewhat bad news. The good news is that software-wise, Asteroids is done, the instruction manual is done, and everything looks good as far as the game itself is concerned. The Asteroids Controller is another story however. Our friend doubledown's real life job has been keeping him outrageously busy since the beginning of the year, so I'm afraid little progress has been made with the controllers. I'm hoping doubledown will be able to get the ball rolling with this soon, but for now, all I can say is that the project is temporarily stalled. Not what you want to hear, I know, but things will move forward again in the near future, that much is certain.

 

In case you're wondering, Mystery Man made a little progress with Star Castle a while ago, but he too has been kept busy with his job, so he hasn't been able to work on the game much lately. Star Castle's projected release date of Christmas Day 2021 remains unchanged for now.

 

After the trading cards templates will have been sent to the printer, I will get back to beta-testing and finishing up the manuals for Space Shuttle. This and Star Castle (and Asteroids) will be my priorities towards the end of the year, so Utopia will probably be pushed back to 2022, to be released alongside Arabian.

 

This concludes this Team Pixelboy News Bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities.   
 

Edited July 12, 2021 by Pixelboy

[TPR]

Always enjoy getting an update from you! ?

[Swami]

5 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

Hello ColecoVision fans.   

 

It's been quite a while since my last News Bulletin, and even though there's actually not a whole lot to say, I'd say it's high time I gave people a quick update.

REACHING A MILESTONE WITH THE TRADING CARDS PROJECT

 

I'm happy to report that of the 165 card templates of the first series of ColecoVision trading cards I'm working on, I'm down to just four card front sides left to do. Three of them should be done by the end of this week, but the fourth card is posing a problem for me: I recently noticed that my box scan of the Canadian edition of B.C. II - Grog's Revenge has a blurry spot in the lower left corner which I'm not comfortable with. I sold off this game (with its box) a long time ago, so I cannot redo the scan myself. Does anyone here have this game complete-in-box, and would be willing to scan the box for me? I attached a picture of the box below, for reference. If you can help me out, please send me a PM.

 

Beyond that, I've estimated that I'll need another month or so to prepare the back side templates of all 165 cards. So I'm definitely getting there, and I'll send all the card templates to the trading card printer as soon as they're ready. But just before I do that, I'll contact all my Team Pixelboy customers and offer them a set of this first series of trading cards, just to try to determine how many sets of cards I should order from the printer. Feel free to send me a PM or an e-mail if you're interested in these trading cards and want to be put on the pre-order list.

WHAT ABOUT ASTEROIDS?

 

Well, I've got good news and somewhat bad news. The good news is that software-wise, Asteroids is done, the instruction manual is done, and everything looks good as far as the game itself is concerned. The Asteroids Controller is another story however. Our friend doubledown's real life job has been keeping him outrageously busy since the beginning of the year, so I'm afraid little progress has been made with the controllers. I'm hoping doubledown will be able to get the ball rolling with this soon, but for now, all I can say is that the project is temporarily stalled. Not what you want to hear, I know, but things will move forward again in the near future, that much is certain.

 

In case you're wondering, Mystery Man made a little progress with Star Castle a while ago, but he too has been kept busy with his job, so he hasn't been able to work on the game much lately. Star Castle's projected release date of Christmas Day 2021 remains unchanged for now.

 

After the trading cards templates will have been sent to the printer, I will get back to beta-testing and finishing up the manuals for Space Shuttle. This and Star Castle (and Asteroids) will be my priorities towards the end of the year, so Utopia will probably be pushed back to 2022, to be released alongside Arabian.

 

This concludes this Team Pixelboy News Bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities.   
 

Can we see a video of the Asteroids play?

[Pixelboy]

3 hours ago, Swami said:

Can we see a video of the Asteroids play?

Not at the moment, sadly.

 

[Pixelboy]

Quick update, just to let people know: Someone supplied me with a good scan of the Grog's Revenge box.

 

Thanks Ivan! 

 

[insertclevernamehere]

Glad to see Arabian is still on the cards.  Looking forward to that one.

[Pixelboy]

Quick update: Last night, I finished the last front side of the 165 trading cards. Not only that, but in the last few days, I added the game names, box types, card ID numbers and info icons to all 165 back sides. All I have left to add are the short descriptions, screenshots, and copyright texts. So still a couple of weeks of work ahead, but the project is progressing. 

 

[UANITO]

thanks Luc? Ivan

[Pixelboy]

Quick question for those in the know: Has anyone tested the Fall Guy prototype with the Expansion Module #2 (steering wheel)? If not, I guess I'll have to test this myself...

 

[retroillucid]

2 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

Quick question for those in the know: Has anyone tested the Fall Guy prototype with the Expansion Module #2 (steering wheel)? If not, I guess I'll have to test this myself...

 

No, it does not work with Exp#2 
Only with a controller 

[Pixelboy]

5 minutes ago, retroillucid said:

No, it does not work with Exp#2 
Only with a controller 

Ah, very good, thanks. This saves me the trouble of trying the prototype on real hardware with my AtariMax SD card and my steering wheel.

 

It kinda makes sense too, since there's a spot in the game where you get out of your car and enter a building in a platforming sequence. Not really compatible with the steering wheel! 

 

[Ikrananka]

8 minutes ago, retroillucid said:

No, it does not work with Exp#2 
Only with a controller 

Looks like I need to update the CV collectors list accordingly.  It currently shows it as being compatible with the driving controller.

[Pixelboy]

Something else I noticed about the Fall Guy prototype is that the ROM that I have doesn't seem to feature a title screen, but I've seen footage on YouTube with a title screen included. Are there two versions of this prototype floating out there?

 

[Ikrananka]

36 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:

Something else I noticed about the Fall Guy prototype is that the ROM that I have doesn't seem to feature a title screen, but I've seen footage on YouTube with a title screen included. Are there two versions of this prototype floating out there?

 

I have quite a few copies of the rom from quite a few different places with many different naming conventions.  Every one of them has the title screen and is likely the same rom at heart (some exceed 16KB which I believe is the correct size).  If you post your rom here then I can do some comparisons against the roms I have.

[Pixelboy]

Okie dokie, here it is. It's 28K, but it's an overdump by at least 4K, so 24K in reality, unless there's some additional overdumping I'm not aware of.

 

 

FALLGUY.ROM

[Ikrananka]

1 hour ago, Pixelboy said:

Okie dokie, here it is. It's 28K, but it's an overdump by at least 4K, so 24K in reality, unless there's some additional overdumping I'm not aware of.

Okay, this is the same as a few of the dumps I have and it does indeed include a title screen.  However, it's only displayed for literally just a few seconds.  Is it perhaps that your monitor/setup isn't locking onto the signal or switching resolution quickly enough and only displays the game a few seconds after starting up - too late to catch the brief title screen?  The title screen has a green background with black text.  So, there is only one version of the rom, but there are quite a few different overdumps out there.

 

You're right about the last 4K of the 28K rom as this is simply filled with 0xE5 and is clearly an overdump in that region.

 

The 8K region below that (16 to 24K) is an odd one.  I've found that the vast majority of this last 8K matches an 8K region found in the middle of BC's Quest for Tire II.  Yeah, I know - WTF!!!!  But I did find other similar strangeness with some roms while doing the rom update project.  However, while it's not an exact match the structure is intact - there are mostly just lots of scattered single or double byte differences, a total of 340 differences, or just 6% of the 8K.  So, 94% of this 8K region in the 16K+ Fall Guy rom is exactly identical to that in BC's Quest for Tires II.  There are a few large contiguous areas of this 8K region that match exactly.  Because of this I find it hard to believe that the Fall Guy 16K to 24K region is nothing more than an overdump beyond 16K with the 16K to 24K region being a corrupted region from BC's Quest for Tires II.  I have had no issues running and playing the Fall Guy, although not extensively, after deleting everything over 16K.

 

Below are some screenshots of the comparison with the bytes shown in a yellow colour being differences between the Fall Guy 16K to 24K region and the 8K region in BC's Quest for Tires II (US).  Note that the 8K region in BC's Quest for Tires II starts at an unusual location, i.e. 0x3FCB in the US release and at 0x3F3E in the Canadian release.

[Ikrananka]

Luc, you may be interested in this.

 

 

[mumbai]

49 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

It does indeed include a title screen.  However, it's only displayed for literally just a few seconds.  Is it perhaps that your monitor/setup isn't locking onto the signal or switching resolution quickly enough and only displays the game a few seconds after starting up - too late to catch the brief title screen?  The title screen has a green background with black text.  So, there is only one version of the rom, but there are quite a few different overdumps out there.

1000x this. It is the behavior I see in the pre-production boards for Fall Guy that have come my way. FWIW, CoolCV displays the pre-game screen in the ROM you posted, @Pixelboy.

Edited August 3, 2021 by mumbai
apparently a quoted lead [I] italicizes everything...

[Pixelboy]

51 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

Okay, this is the same as a few of the dumps I have and it does indeed include a title screen.  However, it's only displayed for literally just a few seconds.  Is it perhaps that your monitor/setup isn't locking onto the signal or switching resolution quickly enough and only displays the game a few seconds after starting up - too late to catch the brief title screen?

Actually, I'm playing this on blueMSX.    I just tried setting the machine emulation to regular ColecoVision (no SGM) and I see the title screen normally. I only see it for a small fraction of a second when I use the other machine (with SGM support). Weird...

 

Anyway, thanks for the link to the instructions! 

 

[Pixelboy]

By the way, about those weird ROM dumps, it may have something to do with the software used with the dumping hardware. If the user didn't clear the buffer in the PC's RAM between dumps, he may have kept "garbage" from a previous dump (in this case Grog's Revenge). Running the software didn't show those extra bytes to be a problem, so they just posted the ROMs as-is. That's my theory anyway.

 

[Ikrananka]

7 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:

By the way, about those weird ROM dumps, it may have something to do with the software used with the dumping hardware. If the user didn't clear the buffer in the PC's RAM between dumps, he may have kept "garbage" from a previous dump (in this case Grog's Revenge). Running the software didn't show those extra bytes to be a problem, so they just posted the ROMs as-is. That's my theory anyway.

Sounds very plausible and had crossed my mind.  Let's go with that as an explanation for now ?

 

Thanks to you I've been playing a bit of the Fall Guy today.  Good grief, those platforming sections are tough.  Not a bad game at all though and the road sections are quite impressive, particularly with the ramps and other obstacles.  I also like the way the police chase you if you speed.

[NIAD]

1 hour ago, Pixelboy said:

By the way, about those weird ROM dumps, it may have something to do with the software used with the dumping hardware. If the user didn't clear the buffer in the PC's RAM between dumps, he may have kept "garbage" from a previous dump (in this case Grog's Revenge). Running the software didn't show those extra bytes to be a problem, so they just posted the ROMs as-is. That's my theory anyway.

 

A lot of the CV prototypes were dumped with an ADAM CP/M cartridge copier, converted to EOS and then configured on a self-booting data pack or disk. I would venture a guess that the 16K Fall Guy rom code was just copied onto an existing self-booting data pack or disk that contained the 24K Grog's Revenge rom code and hence the merger. Eventually someone decided to copy the game code off the data pack or disk to return it to a rom image file, didn't know any better or didn't bother to check and just copied the 24K of code.

 

[Pixelboy]

5 hours ago, Ikrananka said:

Sounds very plausible and had crossed my mind.  Let's go with that as an explanation for now ?

 

Thanks to you I've been playing a bit of the Fall Guy today.  Good grief, those platforming sections are tough.  Not a bad game at all though and the road sections are quite impressive, particularly with the ramps and other obstacles.  I also like the way the police chase you if you speed.

I can't even reach the warehouse. Is the warehouse the only building where you can stop and exit your pick-up truck (to go into the platforming section)?

 

[Ikrananka]

9 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

I can't even reach the warehouse. Is the warehouse the only building where you can stop and exit your pick-up truck (to go into the platforming section)?

 

It's any one of the buildings at the side of the road, but it must have a "little purple truck" outside of it which signifies one of the criminals is inside for you to capture.  Slow down your car and stop next to that building and the "warehouse" platform scene will automatically start.  If not the move your car a bit more until you're right next to the building.

[Pixelboy]

Alright, so final question: Are there multiple buildings with a bad guy inside within the same game session?