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Satan's Hollow makeover


TIX

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25 minutes ago, MrFish said:

 

I found the red part of the flame. It's built out of two PM's side by side. So, the whole thing is cut in half down the middle. It's a repeated pattern (in the narrow section), which just gets shifted up and down.

 

The part of the flame that hits the ground is oriented in the file as seen in the game; but for some reason, the narrow part is inverted in the file. This is probably why you were having a problem finding it.

 

IDK which binary or ROM you're working from, but in this one it goes from $16A7 - $16D5. Be careful, though; some of the data within that section is code. ;)

 

Satan's Hollow.xex 16.27 kB · 1 download

 

 

Excellent work :)

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ah the lake of lava and fire.... or sewage... or water, is nasty what satan does best? just might be...

 

It is true the game darken and lightens as time progresses as you work on building the bridge to the next screen... with another couple enemies, so we've got a triple or more batch of enemies to fight.

 

This has always been a fun game, both in the arcade and on the Atari 8 bit.

Nice to see you keeping at it and it looks like the demon head fire blast possibly can be improved after all... w00t!

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Is there some "beta" available for download yet ? Yes I'm eager :D


By the way, I found a video on youtube about the history of Satan's Hollow (not _that_ interesting) but the guy says that the Atari 800 version was never released BITD. That would explain why I never knew about it or played it. 

We (some A8 friends and I) had about "everything" that was available BITD.... we built up a network of floppy shipping to and from the US and Australia.... I wonder if some of those guys actually may be here on the forum today :)

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On 11/23/2021 at 1:08 PM, TIX said:

 

image.thumb.png.1284a5044d0b13944bef8511d7ecae5e.png

 

 

It's amazing what a few tweaks do to make those PM graphics look SO much more like the arcade version. The forward pointed wings are the most obvious and it makes you wonder WHY didn't they get closer BITD ? 

Edited by Level42
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1 hour ago, TIX said:

Taking some wild guesses I managed to restore the "lake",  it looked more like a hill to me,

obviously it's the wrong color, but.. it's hell so it can be a lake of shit !

Also slightly improved flame river on the right..

 

Sloooowly working my way to the castle, currently trying to figure out those black pillars.

 

 image.thumb.png.09b17ac04e1ef8df7849107403432c7d.png     image.thumb.png.c4ea3d83681bac682df1252579c546cd.png           

 

haha… aftee all those years… it is a lake???

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27 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Nice to see you keeping at it and it looks like the demon head fire blast possibly can be improved after all... w00t!

I don't really see it. The interaction between the two (red and yellow) PM's give it it's blistering look. Also, the resolution is simply too low to make it look much better IMHO. Then again, I this is one of those cases that I like to be proven wrong :)

Also: the red pattern has been isolated by Mr. Fish, but maybe the yellow one is more random or created differently ? 

I guess a frame-by-frame analysis with an emulator would uncover a lot....

Edited by Level42
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2 hours ago, TIX said:

Taking some wild guesses I managed to restore the "lake",  it looked more like a hill to me,

obviously it's the wrong color, but.. it's hell so it can be a lake of shit !

Also slightly improved flame river on the right..

 

Sloooowly working my way to the castle, currently trying to figure out those black pillars.

 

 image.thumb.png.09b17ac04e1ef8df7849107403432c7d.png     image.thumb.png.c4ea3d83681bac682df1252579c546cd.png           

 

amazing!

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the pillars are a bridge on the right hand picture for the that wuthering heights effect or they could become waterfalls?... they're fine it's quite nice

 

but where are the level flags and such going to fit with the castle so high? the base of the castle mountain or hill needs to be less so the castle can come down a bit probably, that way the level indicator up flags can fit on top or some other arraignment where the flags can go next to it or something can be found or done.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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yes, but the word salad is to make sure we adjust the graphics to fit the mechanics of the Atari code... so it aesthetics don't require re coding stuff like the flags etc... they will all still appear where they do, only the art will be changed as the castle is constrained in how high up or down in the sky it can be placed so the flags either touch it's top or touches it's base making the flags appear as coming from a spire or the courtyard/grounds.

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19 hours ago, MrFish said:

 

I found the red part of the flame. It's built out of two PM's side by side. So, the whole thing is cut in half down the middle. It's a repeated pattern (in the narrow section), which just gets shifted up and down.

 

Thanks @MrFish found it !

 

the yellow part is there too !

 

trying to figure out how the flame breath works..

the red part is moving up and down clearly enough, but the yellow part (uses double wide mode) is a mess,

the only way is to alter bits here and there and see what it breaks.. for the moment I have a new "red part" to try ?

 

image.thumb.png.c1977156e3c0145b4a92f31fb8ad85c9.png

 

Edited by TIX
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8 hours ago, TIX said:

the yellow part is there too !

I thought it might be in there somewhere too. I figured you might find it after I got the location of the red part for you.

 

8 hours ago, TIX said:

...but the yellow part (uses double wide mode) is a mess,

Yeah, I noticed it was in double-width. They did that so a single player would span the two players combined for the red. I did some experiments though, and it's not necessary for it to be in double-width mode; because the only part of the red that extends the full 16 pixels is the bottom part (ground contact); and it can be worked around for that part.

 

So, it could be changed to single-width mode, but it's horizontal position would have to be adjusted/offset; since the 8 pixels wouldn't be centered, otherwise.

 

Another thing about the double-width pixels, is that they apply to the devil head eyes, which makes it look crappy. It's much better to have single-width available there. 

  

8 hours ago, TIX said:

the only way is to alter bits here and there and see what it breaks.. for the moment I have a new "red part" to try

I wasn't sure exactly how it was working either (looks a bit random); maybe selecting semi-randomly from a small pool of bytes. But surely the little part you've colored yellow above can't be all that's used, because (as I mentioned) the base of the flame has yellow that extends the full width of the 16 pixel (single-width) red portion.

 

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Thanks for doing this.  You reminded me that I never got around to reviewing this for my site.

 

Does anyone know if the day/night cycle is triggered by score or time?  I used to think it was the level, but it changes while playing so that can't be it.

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Yeah I can't help much with the tech side of this, but it's awesome you're doing this. This is one of the few arcade ports that I much prefer the c64 version (I know, heresy etc). Usually I prefer the 8 bit versions of the older arcade games. Be nice to see this get a face lift.

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The devil is at work  :evil:

I'm having great fun drawing devil heads, too many to choose from currently..

 

What strikes me as weird with this game (the arcade included) is you have to fight with these great looking devils all the time,

but when you manage to complete the bridge and finally face Satan.. he is just a minuscule guy, jumping around like a flea...  disappointing

 

image.thumb.png.0cf8c936cda316cd7e656df3048db9a4.png

 

Edited by TIX
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ok settled to those 3 devil heads !

luckily the black layer goes over the yellow, making it possible,

I think making them taller don't make them easier to hit, as the collision square seems fixed..!?!

 

enjoy the new "Lucifer to old Nick to Beelzebub" transformation  ?

                

 

devils14.gif.9c3ec18d211d9b5c5d1f470fcb356de7.gif

 

 

Next:

I gave up trying to find the explosion and the shield's right most piece,

so having done everything else, I'm beginning messing with the mountain and the castle !

 

 

Edited by TIX
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On 11/23/2021 at 7:08 AM, TIX said:

Still can't find the explosion and Satan's breath, also  the rightmost piece of the shield.. see below ☹️

any help locating these ??

I know how to change the rightmost shield part.  But it's code, a small 6502 loop at $9087 to $9093 in the $8000-$BFFF cart image.  I could probably hack something in, if I can find a little free space in there - which I think I already have...

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Errr...  I just used the CAR image I already had...  What's different about the Fandal one?  I could hack it into that too, I guess, assuming the same bytes are free/empty.

 

EDIT: If you are hacking that XEX file, well, that's insane.  It takes the original CAR image which runs contiguously from $8000-$BFFF and breaks it up into hundreds of tiny XEX segements, just to pointlessly save a few bytes.  I hate that crap.  For editing purposes, you really should be editing the complete, continuous ROM image.

Edited by glurk
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