Atari 2600 Asteroids "Vector" Hack...

[MaximRecoil]

I know nothing about hacking games but how hard would it be to get rid of all the color in this and/or this Asteroids hack and make everything, including the score display, white in order to look more like the arcade version? Is this something that could be done in a couple of minutes with the right tools and/or knowledge or would it be a pain? If it is easy to do, could someone do it and post the .bin?

 

BTW, to Thomas Jentzsch, I especially like your version which has allowed the greater angles of movement for the asteroids like in the arcade version. However, in the arcade, the speeds at which they moved were randomized. i.e. some of them moved at fast, medium, and slow speeds. Yours all seem to move at one speed; fast (which is certainly in keeping with the name that you chose for the hack). How hard would it be to make a version where the rocks would move at either fast, medium or slow speeds randomly when you shoot them, and still have the arcade-like trajectory angles?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Is this something that could be done in a couple of minutes with the right tools and/or knowledge or would it be a pain?

Quite easy.

 

How hard would it be to make a version where the rocks would move at either fast, medium or slow speeds randomly when you shoot them, and still have the arcade-like trajectory angles?

That would mean, that faster asteroids can "overtake" slower asteroids vertically. But since the whole game only works due to vertical separation of the asteroids this is impossible. Sorry.

[Nukey Shay]

In the original game, Hack-O-Matic addresses 0e75 to 0e7c hold the asteroid colors. The player ships/shot1 are at 15d8 and 15de for player 0 and player 1 respectively, while the UFO colors/shot2 are at 15e4 and 15ec. The playfield color (the score) is at 056b and 0571. Changing all the above addresses to value $0E (00001110) will turn everything white. Thomas' hack should follow a similar pattern, but all the addresses are different.

[Nukey Shay]

Oops...

asteroids_white_.zip

[neotokeo2001]

[neotokeo2001]

Just to keep the balance. Vector Green:

asteroids_green_.zip

[Nukey Shay]

Don't you mean phosphor green?

[MaximRecoil]

Don't you mean phosphor green?

I was just going to say that. Reminds me of the old phosphor green monitors like the 8088's that were at my high school used.

 

BTW, that all white Asteroids is awesome and thanks for the information on how to do it as well. Now I have another game that I need to get onto a cartridge. I guess I'd better start looking for an EPROM burner which would probably be cheaper in the long run than having other people do one-offs for me all the time.

 

I wonder why Atari didn't make it like that in the first place. I never once looked at Asteroids in the arcade and thought to myself, "You know what this game needs is a little random Rainbow Brite™ color..."

[neotokeo2001]

I wonder why Atari didn't make it like that in the first place. I never once looked at Asteroids in the arcade and thought to myself, "You know what this game needs is a little random Rainbow Brite™ color..."

 

I have read that Atari discouraged the use of black backgrounds as well as the usage of dark colors for sprites. It seems they wanted everyone to see that the Atari was a color videogame system. This led to the great orange on yellow color combinations in some early games (Bowling, Hangman). I think they were just smoking something. Oh wait, They were.....

[neotokeo2001]

Label

[MaximRecoil]

Wow, nice label. It didn't take you long you whip that up. I don't think we have the perfect hack to go with that label yet though. My suggestion (for what it is worth) would be to use an all-white version of Thomas Jentzsch's "Sadistroids" because of the arcade-like trajectory angles of the rocks and the little ships indicating how many lives you have left instead of the big number (his version actually has a "1" to the right of the little ships that never seems to change, not sure what that is for). The speed of the rocks should be brought down to normal to give it a more arcade-like difficulty curve. I think that would be an excellent arcade port of Asteroids for the 2600.

[Nukey Shay]

his version actually has a "1" to the right of the little ships that never seems to change, not sure what that is for

It's the player up's number - 1 or 2. This would be a definate help to differentiate the players if all color is removed (the binary above has no way of indicating which player is up).

An alternate hack idea would be just to place the no-color mode selectable from the B&W switch.

[NE146]

I actually am kind of proud that my 'vector' hack was the first of it's kind

[MaximRecoil]

It's the player up's number - 1 or 2. This would be a definate help to differentiate the players if all color is removed (the binary above has no way of indicating which player is up).

I see. I didn't think of that and I didn't play it on 2 player mode. Come to think of it, I haven't played 2600 Asteroids 2 player since 1985.

An alternate hack idea would be just to place the no-color mode selectable from the B&W switch.

That would be interesting except that it wouldn't work so good on 7800's unless you have replaced the pause button with a toggle switch.

 

Another thing I thought of would be to have the UFO's always on (who wants to play Asteroids without them anyway?) and have the difficulty switch select between normal rock trajectory angles and Thomas Jentzsch's angles; if that is feasible. Or; have the UFO's and Jentzsch angles always on and have the difficulty switch select between normal speed for the rocks and Sadistroids speed.

[Nukey Shay]

An alternate hack idea would be just to place the no-color mode selectable from the B&W switch.

That would be interesting except that it wouldn't work so good on 7800's unless you have replaced the pause button with a toggle switch.

Nope...how the switch behaves is up to the software...the routine that deals with the B&W switch would be written to behave like the select and reset switches do - so that the mode is toggled regardless of the console that it's played on. What this would cost is 1 bit in ram memory to keep track of the toggle status.

 

 

Another thing I thought of would be to have the UFO's always on (who wants to play Asteroids without them anyway?) and have the difficulty switch select between normal rock trajectory angles and Thomas Jentzsch's angles; if that is feasible. Or; have the UFO's and Jentzsch angles always on and have the difficulty switch select between normal speed for the rocks and Sadistroids speed.

...or have 1 difficulty switch handle the UFO's for both players and the other switch handle "suicide" mode (similar to how the switches in SI deluxe work). I dunno what Sadistroid's changes involved, but it should be possible.

[MaximRecoil]

Nope...how the switch behaves is up to the software...the routine that deals with the B&W switch would be written to behave like the select and reset switches do - so that the mode is toggled regardless of the console that it's played on. What this would cost is 1 bit in ram memory to keep track of the toggle status.

That's interesting. Too bad Activision didn't think of that for Starmaster. As it is, it is pretty much unplayable on a 7800. Speaking of which, is the B&W switch currently assigned a function in your 4K Space Invaders Deluxe game? If not, what about making it go into B&W (real B&W that is, not black, white and shades of grey like you would get simply by playing it on a B&W TV) and losing the UFO effects like the original arcade Space Invaders for an instant 2-in-1 cartridge?

...or have 1 difficulty switch handle the UFO's for both players and the other switch handle "suicide" mode  (similar to how the switches in SI deluxe work). I dunno what Sadistroid's changes involved, but it should be possible.

The original cartridge had to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers, including little kids so I think that is why you could turn UFO's on and off. Something like this would be a specialty thing, specifically aiming to look and feel more like the arcade version. I really can't imagine anyone who likes Asteroids wanting to turn off the UFO's. If you were to go the 2 switch route having changes apply equally to both players, how about the left switch for speed of the rocks and the right switch for angle of trajectory? That would give you 4 variations right there; fast and slow normal angles and fast and slow "Jentzsch angles".

[Nukey Shay]

Nope...how the switch behaves is up to the software...the routine that deals with the B&W switch would be written to behave like the select and reset switches do - so that the mode is toggled regardless of the console that it's played on. What this would cost is 1 bit in ram memory to keep track of the toggle status.

That's interesting. Too bad Activision didn't think of that for Starmaster. As it is, it is pretty much unplayable on a 7800.

That's an interesting suggestion...I might take a look at it to see if this function can be added to good ol' Starmaster

 

Speaking of which, is the B&W switch currently assigned a function in your 4K Space Invaders Deluxe game? If not, what about making it go into B&W (real B&W that is, not black, white and shades of grey like you would get simply by playing it on a B&W TV) and losing the UFO effects like the original arcade Space Invaders for an instant 2-in-1 cartridge?

Taking your suggestion, I did NTSC/PAL palette selection instead for SIdeluxe.

[Lord Helmet]

Old thread...but I like the idea of Asteroids Arcade!

 

 

http://www.atariage.com/hack_page.html?Sys...twareHackID=160

 

This one would actually make a better vector or "arcade" version of Asteroids if the color were removed

[MaximRecoil]

Taking your suggestion, I did NTSC/PAL palette selection instead for SIdeluxe.

This is an old thread I know, but I have been gone for quite a while. So you made futher modifications to SIDeluxe? That is awesome. Do you have the ROM posted anywhere? or can you post it here?

[Lord Helmet]

Taking your suggestion, I did NTSC/PAL palette selection instead for SIdeluxe.

This is an old thread I know, but I have been gone for quite a while. So you made futher modifications to SIDeluxe? That is awesome. Do you have the ROM posted anywhere? or can you post it here?

900573[/snapback]

 

 

SI Deluxe is complete and has been posted in the AA hacks database:

 

http://www.atariage.com/hack_page.html?Sys...twareHackID=262

[keilbaca]

That's a awesome hack, especially how everything kinda ghosts, like in the arcade. Good work, its on my Krok cart

[Nukey Shay]

Taking your suggestion, I did NTSC/PAL palette selection instead for SIdeluxe.

This is an old thread I know, but I have been gone for quite a while. So you made futher modifications to SIDeluxe? That is awesome. Do you have the ROM posted anywhere? or can you post it here?

900573[/snapback]

 

There's still 2 minor bugs that remain in the last version...the "engine trouble" intermission had displayed garbled text, and I couldn't figure out why (so I disabled that one and just stuck with the "S.O.S." for all intermissions)...and the invader color shift isn't quite accurate (rather than stay at fixed heights, the "more lethal" color bands get higher as the lower lines of invaders are cleared). But I was happy with the way that the rest of the game turned out, so I released it as the final version. No plans to revisit that hack unless some other major addition could be made (like using flicker to display 12 columns of invaders)...but "SI Deluxe" will remain as-is if that turns out to be possible (with any new version using a new name).

[supercat]

That's interesting. Too bad Activision didn't think of that for Starmaster. As it is, it is pretty much unplayable on a 7800.

That's an interesting suggestion...I might take a look at it to see if this function can be added to good ol' Starmaster

795694[/snapback]

 

How about just using one of the difficulty switches to change screens in Starmaster? This doesn't require making any code changes whatsoever. Given the frequency with which this topic comes up, I sorta wonder why there isn't a FAQ about it or something...

[Nukey Shay]

The confusion comes from the fact that the manual states not to use them. But both switches function exactly the same as the Color/B&W toggle, and are valid substitute switches for the 7800. I didn't realise it myself until I partially disassembled it. That's what I get for following instructions, I guess

 

The hack at least provides Supercharger support...in addition to correcting the Color/B&W switch if you -really- want to follow directions

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=64674