Captain Cozmos Posted April 15, 2022 Share Posted April 15, 2022 (edited) Been working this out for a while, about to update the code to make it more efficient. Maybe someone will show interest. HH Test.rom Comments are always welcome. I was going for compactness. 4k is still too large. This works on CoolCV I had to pad this with 255 till I reached 8k for it to work with my ADAM ADE. Edited April 15, 2022 by CaptainCozmos20863 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 15, 2022 Share Posted April 15, 2022 Well that's most certainly an interesting development! Is it going to be more than just a port of the 2600 Haunted House? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 15, 2022 Author Share Posted April 15, 2022 (edited) Let me get it working first and then I can play with it. I am always open to suggestions. I just wanted to see if I could pull it off. Of all things I am concerned with is lighting the match and moving around with a giant flame encircling my googly eyes. It reads great on paper but actually making the Colecovision do it with 8x8 tiles is a different matter. Edited April 15, 2022 by CaptainCozmos20863 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 15, 2022 Share Posted April 15, 2022 Personally, I would think that a "Quest for the Golden Chalice" type re-make of Haunted House would be a wonderful addition to the ColecoVision library! Putting on my 22 years of game development hat, my advice would be: Keep the original game in tact, plus up the graphics for the CV, and then maybe add in one or two extra quests or something just to give it a little more appeal. Since you're making a "port" of another game, there will be expectations for it to be similar in design to the original, however adding maybe a bit more to it since the original game was a 2600 title and you're porting it to a more robust console. But overall, don't add too many features to it and end up with a game you can't complete or a game that strays too far away from the original material. Keep your goals reachable! There's always room to release a sequel or update to it later! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 17, 2022 Author Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) An updates release. I really need your opinion on this. Is the scrolling too slow to match the original or too slow. HH Improved Scrolling.rom I have discovered that no matter how much padding the ADE PRO does not like this. My Ultimate SD Wafer Cart burned out so if someone has one can you try this out to see if it works on a real system. Personally, I would think if the Colecovision follows the logic of how the VDP accesses it's memory this should work. Then again, I have no aspirations of turning this fun experiment into a cart but at least it should work in your favorite emulator. Also, I do not have the time at the moment to pull my burner off the shelf, set it up just to burn it to a ROM for testing. All I have sitting around are 32k eproms which would be crazy to use if this is less than 4k. Edited April 17, 2022 by Captain Cozmos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 17, 2022 Author Share Posted April 17, 2022 Update... I have it working on a real system using the ADE PRO. Had to initialize some things like sound, give it a stack. Also had to pad it to 4k. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 17, 2022 Author Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) Rewrote the scroll parser This is a faster scroll with added support for future sounds, effects, music and sprites. Padded to work in the ADE Pro Please try it out, works great on my ADAM. True scrolling. Good Color I think matches original Haunted House scroll speed. Next release should have the Googly Eyes If I should place this in a different thread then let me know. HH Better Timing.rom Edited April 17, 2022 by Captain Cozmos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 18, 2022 Share Posted April 18, 2022 I mean, just loading it up in CoolCV is seems fine. I loaded up Haunted House and scrolled them side by side and your version seems to scroll a **LITTLE** faster but I'm not sure it really seems to make that much of a difference. I did a little side by side video. Not sure if this is helpful or not, but here you go... haunted house screen record.mov 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 19, 2022 Author Share Posted April 19, 2022 (edited) 23 hours ago, TPR said: I mean, just loading it up in CoolCV is seems fine. I loaded up Haunted House and scrolled them side by side and your version seems to scroll a **LITTLE** faster but I'm not sure it really seems to make that much of a difference. I did a little side by side video. Not sure if this is helpful or not, but here you go... haunted house screen record.mov You really do some cool work. I partially rewrote the scroll routine so this time instead of animating all 8 pattern cells I am using 4 which sped things up a bit. I also have to consider PAL vs NTSC because I base my timing off the "America" byte in the BIOS to be 100% legit. From that I can adjust my timing with a couple of SRA's I have already tested my work on real hardware and I can say so far it's not half bad. I may make something in the future with all 8 pattern cells because the scroll is not that bad for a system that runs at 3.58 mhz. Maybe a shooter. I have added the Googly Eye's to the program and now adjusting the timing again. After that all should be good to work on the rest. What I have noticed is that until scrolling stops at the top or the bottom the Eye's stay in the middle of the play field then it moves. Scrolling resumes when it they make it back to the middle. Then I have collisions and offsets. However, I spent all last night installing Windows 11 which I have found brings nothing new or useful to the table. It is Windows 10 but now you have to work around the worst GUI in town. Microsoft has this idea that they have to add stuff instead of fixing the same bugs going all the way back to Windows XP. So, I will be working on this again tonight. CC Edited April 19, 2022 by Captain Cozmos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 19, 2022 Share Posted April 19, 2022 20 minutes ago, Captain Cozmos said: What I have noticed is that until scrolling stops at the top or the bottom the Eye's stay in the middle of the play field then it moves. Scrolling resumes when it they make it back to the middle. Yep. That's why I waited until the eyes got to the middle and it started scrolling when I did my comparison test. Honestly, I thought it looked really good! Looking forward to seeing more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 (edited) We finally have eye's Considering all the changes I did I am surprised that I did not gain that much in size. I optimized the scrolling. Added most of the sprites in pattern buffer only. Eyes move in all 8 directions Scrolling eyes move North and South when scrolling stops at the top and bottom, scrolling resumes when eyes go back to the middle. (PAIN IN THE *** TO CODE THIS) Took me several hours of just staring at the screen trying to figure this out which might look simple on paper but in assembly... It all came down to the proper placement of checks. Is top or bottom, are eyes going north or south, are eyes in the middle, when can scroll resume. arggggggggg But I done it and still under 4k with plenty of optimization using XOR, AND as well as JR instead of JP Next will be barrier checks and offsets for the eye's then moving to other floors and colors. Haunted House v20.rom I know that people would be more interested in the final product but I am having fun documenting the incremental prototypes. Then again, all you have to do load the original thing in Stella and off you go. However you feel, I am having a blast. If I can get this working just like the original then I would have achieved something cool. I can always modify it to have bricks instead of solid squares, add extra rooms and treasures or even a set of rooms horizontally instead of vertical. I can look into scrolling it or just go through the front door to an alternate level. Let me get to the end of this first and then we can toy around with it. Edited April 21, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 (edited) BTW... Just tested on real hardware and it looks sweet. I see some defects that were not present before so I will have to check some of the optimizes I put in place or the NMI. Otherwise it looks crisp and proportional. I would say from looking at some earlier Coleco games like Smurf the programmers were in a rush and sloppy. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Smurf Rescue. It was the second game I ever owned after it hit the shelves. But I think with the tools we have now that we can produce better games and certainly this type of scrolling shows off the power of a Colecovision with 1K of memory. documentation, documentation, documentation and willing to try new things. Here is the padded version which runs with the ADAM ADE. HHv20 PAD.rom Edited April 21, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 Success... I rewrote a few things which also reduced the size of the rom down to 3.41k No more tearing. It had to do with my sprite writing routine and how I handled the NMI Now it works great on real hardware. Padded version. My work environment I have included the newest version both in actual size and padded for the ADE Please let me know if you find any flaws. Who knows, I may end up porting the worst Atari game in history E.T. for the Colecovision if all goes well. Haunted House v22.rom HHV22 PADD.rom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMarcoux66 Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 Looks great! Porting ET would be awesome.... especially as next year is the 40th anniversary of video game crash :). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ikrananka Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Captain Cozmos said: My work environment... Ooh - is that a new version of GearColeco (v1.0.1)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 (edited) 21 minutes ago, Ikrananka said: Ooh - is that a new version of GearColeco (v1.0.1)? It is. I have been working with the author since it's creation. After 1.0 was released I asked him to add drag and drop so he did. You just have to compile it it yourself which I did using VS 2019. He doesn't have time to work on the emulator so I have plans to add ADAM emulation myself. BTW, I ended up optimizing my rom again and am now down to 3.39k I don't think I can squeeze out another byte. Edited April 21, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ikrananka Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Captain Cozmos said: It is. I have been working with the author since it's creation. After 1.0 was released I asked him to add drag and drop so he did. You just have to compile it it yourself which I did using VS 2019. He doesn't have time to work on the emulator so I have plans to add ADAM emulation myself. BTW, I ended up optimizing my rom again and am now down to 3.39k I don't think I can squeeze out another byte. Thanks for the info and keep up the great work. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 22, 2022 Author Share Posted April 22, 2022 (edited) Please check collisions on various emulators and provide feedback. Everything seems to be working but my sleepy eyes may have missed something. TIA CC update fixed an error Haunted House v24.rom Edited April 22, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruggers Customs Posted April 22, 2022 Share Posted April 22, 2022 2 hours ago, Captain Cozmos said: Please check collisions on various emulators and provide feedback. Everything seems to be working but my sleepy eyes may have missed something. TIA CC update fixed an error Haunted House v24.rom 4.34 kB · 2 downloads Thank you for your excellent work. I have to leave the shop for a while but plan to try this out on my Atari Max when I get back later. If you're looking for something to port that would be a major popular game, maybe consider porting the Atari 2600 version of Demon Attack over to the Colecovision (if that's even possible). That on the Colecovision with better graphics would put you at God status in my book. Sorry I really like Demon Attack... lol 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMarcoux66 Posted April 22, 2022 Share Posted April 22, 2022 5 hours ago, Ruggers Customs said: Thank you for your excellent work. I have to leave the shop for a while but plan to try this out on my Atari Max when I get back later. If you're looking for something to port that would be a major popular game, maybe consider porting the Atari 2600 version of Demon Attack over to the Colecovision (if that's even possible). That on the Colecovision with better graphics would put you at God status in my book. Sorry I really like Demon Attack... lol Demon Attack would be AWESOME! @Captain Cozmos Thank you for making Haunted House. Hopefully will have some time to play this weekend! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 24, 2022 Author Share Posted April 24, 2022 (edited) It still has an offset bug based off of a register but I am working it out. So today... Googly Eyes direction. Go through stairs for different floors. I haven't mapped them out for any particular level but they are separate floors and not just a color change. Try it out and let me know how I can improve. Haunted House v30.rom My old Monitor Red is coming up Orange. Time to recap? Works on the real deal. Padded of course HHv30PADD.rom Edited April 24, 2022 by Captain Cozmos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 24, 2022 Author Share Posted April 24, 2022 (edited) Quick update and I need a break for a couple of days. Re added all the sprites and numbers to the system and displaying sprites through a display algorithm if the object is in the room. For testing purposes they are in the room. Range check has not been implemented. The Map from level 1 has now been implemented. At least I think I have it right. So, you can follow the path. It should be accurate. Still need to work on the offset bug but I need sleep more. This is not padded and works in every emulator I tried it with. Enjoy, CC Haunted House v33.rom BTW... 2 Bat halves and 2 Spider Halves is not a bug. There is another half, like the Ghost for animation. However, there are 2 Spiders and 2 Bats on later levels if I remember correctly. If not I will correct this of course. Edited April 24, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted April 26, 2022 Author Share Posted April 26, 2022 Offsets should be fixed. No issues going through walls. While Scrolling or Stationary. Scrolling NPC has not been implemented yet but I have scattered NPC's around the house on various floors so take a look. I haven't read any feedback so I guess the colors and 1st level map is correct. Anyway, here is another update for prosperity. Haunted House v35.rom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyzzle Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 15 hours ago, Captain Cozmos said: Anyway, here is another update for prosperity. Yes, and also for posterity, at least for as long as this forum shall be extant! I am enjoying greatly seeing your progress on this. Thanks for sharing. Fabulous work so far. Haunted House is one of my favorites on the 2600. With these scrolling techniques, a version of ET should be "easy" to get ported to CV. Won't that be a hoot? 40 years on, CV would finally get its version of ET! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblenkle Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 15 hours ago, Captain Cozmos said: Offsets should be fixed. No issues going through walls. While Scrolling or Stationary. Scrolling NPC has not been implemented yet but I have scattered NPC's around the house on various floors so take a look. I haven't read any feedback so I guess the colors and 1st level map is correct. Anyway, here is another update for prosperity. Haunted House v35.rom 5.27 kB · 11 downloads Is this an actual playable game or just a demo? I barely remember the 2600 Haunted House from back in the day and even back then I didn't know how to play it or what you were supposed to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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