193 replies to this topic

[Shannon]

Just curious. Is the one on one code you have pretty complete? It might be interesting to see if it provides any insight on the "timing" issues 7800 emulators have with that game.

[krewat]

Shannon, on Sat Dec 13, 2008 2:15 AM, said:

Just curious. Is the one on one code you have pretty complete? It might be interesting to see if it provides any insight on the "timing" issues 7800 emulators have with that game.

I'm not sure yet, I haven't restored it.

The stuff that I DID restore looks to be the original APPLE code. Believe it or not.

I do, however, remember working on it, or at least, giving it to another developer to work on and he returned the finished product to me. Gotta get on that right after I get finished trying to restore Summer Games, and then on to Winter Games. One on One will be right after that.

[supercat]

krewat, on Wed Dec 10, 2008 6:24 PM, said:

Just remember something about "Man development" - I had nicely put MY NAME on the "Converted to the 7800 by..." for IM, and was told "change that to MAN DEVELOPMENT". Didn't know why, didn't LIKE it, but did it anyway.

My favorite pet theory (no evidence to support it, and most likely wrong, but amusing nonetheless) is that IM had a problem similar to TEMPEST in the Arcade--the game was designed so that unauthorized changes to part of the binary would cause slight malfunction, but the game was released with such 'unauthorized changes' in place that hadn't been adjusted to work properly; in this case, my pet theory would suggest that 'converted by' string was used in a random generator.

[Propane13]

I just wanted to say "welcome aboard".

I hope you don't mind, but a few years ago, I took the PAL version of Impossible Mission, and converted the scanlines/colors so that it would work on NTSC consoles.
It was one of my favorite games on the 7800, so I wanted to see the ending. It took a little time, but it was worth it.

I did a diff of Impossible Mission vs. the PAL working version a long time back-- I'm not sure if I have it around, but I could look.
That might help you isolate the issue.

But anyway, welcome aboard, and thank you for a very fun game.

Oh, and do you know what would really make my day? The manual had no indication of how to put together those puzzle pieces. I had to learn how to do it when solving the game. To assist with this, I once tried to take screenshots via video capture card of every puzzle piece, so I could have a walkthrough of how to solve the puzzle.
Seemed like there was a huge set of pieces though! I think I ended up with 100 unique pieces after multiple games (noting that the puzzles are only 32-piece puzzles). That's when I said "what? Oh, the hell with this; I can't possibly map this out".

So, I'm wondering:
- could you comment as to how many puzzle pieces there are? Are they randomized?
My guess was that each puzzle segment had 4 pieces, and those were made up of 2 pieces that were "fixed", and those pieces were potentially "randomly scrambled/divided between 2 pieces". But, I could be full of crap. So, can you comment?

A Big fan,
-John

P.S. I am very much looking forward to your investigations (and excited to hear about Cali Games).

-John

[Mayhem]

Propane13, on Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:50 PM, said:

So, I'm wondering:
- could you comment as to how many puzzle pieces there are? Are they randomized?
My guess was that each puzzle segment had 4 pieces, and those were made up of 2 pieces that were "fixed", and those pieces were potentially "randomly scrambled/divided between 2 pieces". But, I could be full of crap. So, can you comment?

That's how the original C64 version was... 18 pieces were fixed, the other 18 were randomly paired from a pool to fit the gaps.

[krewat]

I don't even have a clue

I was just looking at the sources, nothing pops out right away. I'll look into it more later.

But I do see where a "solution" is broken into 4 random pieces.

As for California Games... I can only find the BMX sources that I converted, and no idea if it was finished. Doesn't look like I went very far with it.

I also can't find the C64 sources. Any leads on that? Anyone got a binary for the C64 version?

[Mayhem]

You can grab the C64 game from here: http://www.gamebase6...ame.php?id=1227

[Allan]

krewat, on Fri Dec 5, 2008 9:34 PM, said:

Thanks for the welcome guys!
I have 7800 code for California Games, and One on One (no idea what that is) but I don't know WHY.

It would be great to ad the High-score-cart code to these.

Allan

Edited by Allan, Wed Feb 18, 2009 8:43 AM.

[Propane13]

krewat, on Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:14 PM, said:

As for California Games... I can only find the BMX sources that I converted, and no idea if it was finished. Doesn't look like I went very far with it.

I also can't find the C64 sources. Any leads on that? Anyone got a binary for the C64 version?

Here's what I found online:
http://www.mobygames...alifornia-games
There's a few names in the credits on the right hand side.
Maybe one of those guys has the source code. I can ask some resident experts here if they're in contact with any of those guys.

I could potentially find the binary-- would it help?

-John

[Shawn Sr.]

krewat, on Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:14 PM, said:

I don't even have a clue

I was just looking at the sources, nothing pops out right away. I'll look into it more later.

But I do see where a "solution" is broken into 4 random pieces.

As for California Games... I can only find the BMX sources that I converted, and no idea if it was finished. Doesn't look like I went very far with it.

I also can't find the C64 sources. Any leads on that? Anyone got a binary for the C64 version?

I know I can speak for everyone here saying even if it's just the BMX portion of the game we would all love to get a copy of it, be it on cartridge or binary format. You can count me in to buy a copy for sure.

[Tempest]

Shawn Sr., on Tue Apr 7, 2009 9:32 PM, said:

I know I can speak for everyone here saying even if it's just the BMX portion of the game we would all love to get a copy of it, be it on cartridge or binary format. You can count me in to buy a copy for sure.

But if it was just the BMX part, would it be a playable prototype? If not, maybe it could be hacked into one? Still, I'd love to see some screenshots.

Tempest

[krewat]

Anything would help. I have a real C64, and even a C128 available.

[Shawn Sr.]

Tempest, on Tue Apr 7, 2009 11:41 PM, said:

Shawn Sr., on Tue Apr 7, 2009 9:32 PM, said:

I know I can speak for everyone here saying even if it's just the BMX portion of the game we would all love to get a copy of it, be it on cartridge or binary format. You can count me in to buy a copy for sure.

But if it was just the BMX part, would it be a playable prototype? If not, maybe it could be hacked into one? Still, I'd love to see some screenshots.

Tempest

Thats what I'm thinking is hack it together so it is playable. Having just the BMX stage is way better than nothing. Call it "Claifornia Games: The BMX Classic" or something. A start up screen, press a button and right to the event would be enough for a sale to me. Even yet just have the events screen only have BMX to choose from, it's still gonna be sweet IMO. Heck if you wanted to go over the top you could even take a couple Summer or Winter games events and sprite hack them into Cali like events for more depth to the game cause if they are along side BMX I don't think anyone is gonna bitch.

[krewat]

Shawn Sr., on Tue Apr 7, 2009 10:00 PM, said:

Thats what I'm thinking is hack it together so it is playable. Having just the BMX stage is way better than nothing. Call it "Claifornia Games: The BMX Classic" or something. A start up screen, press a button and right to the event would be enough for a sale to me. Even yet just have the events screen only have BMX to choose from, it's still gonna be sweet IMO. Heck if you wanted to go over the top you could even take a couple Summer or Winter games events and sprite hack them into Cali like events for more depth to the game cause if they are along side BMX I don't think anyone is gonna bitch.

Well, Shawn, this all sounds doable them. I will endeavor to work on what sources I have.

Still looking for a 6502 cross-assembler for DOS or UNIX (preferably Solaris)

[Wickeycolumbus]

krewat, on Tue Apr 7, 2009 10:14 PM, said:

Shawn Sr., on Tue Apr 7, 2009 10:00 PM, said:

Thats what I'm thinking is hack it together so it is playable. Having just the BMX stage is way better than nothing. Call it "Claifornia Games: The BMX Classic" or something. A start up screen, press a button and right to the event would be enough for a sale to me. Even yet just have the events screen only have BMX to choose from, it's still gonna be sweet IMO. Heck if you wanted to go over the top you could even take a couple Summer or Winter games events and sprite hack them into Cali like events for more depth to the game cause if they are along side BMX I don't think anyone is gonna bitch.

Well, Shawn, this all sounds doable them. I will endeavor to work on what sources I have.

Still looking for a 6502 cross-assembler for DOS or UNIX (preferably Solaris)

Have you tried DASM?

[mellis]

krewat, on Tue Apr 7, 2009 10:14 PM, said:

Shawn Sr., on Tue Apr 7, 2009 10:00 PM, said:

Thats what I'm thinking is hack it together so it is playable. Having just the BMX stage is way better than nothing. Call it "Claifornia Games: The BMX Classic" or something. A start up screen, press a button and right to the event would be enough for a sale to me. Even yet just have the events screen only have BMX to choose from, it's still gonna be sweet IMO. Heck if you wanted to go over the top you could even take a couple Summer or Winter games events and sprite hack them into Cali like events for more depth to the game cause if they are along side BMX I don't think anyone is gonna bitch.

Well, Shawn, this all sounds doable them. I will endeavor to work on what sources I have.

Still looking for a 6502 cross-assembler for DOS or UNIX (preferably Solaris)

cc65 includes a cross assembler called "ca65". I built it successfully on Mac OS X, and I would expect you'd have a similar experience with Solaris.

Check it out at: http://www.cc65.org/

[krewat]

I'll check them both out - thanks!

[Propane13]

To give you a little help for starting, your code may need to include this header for compilation:
http://pages.cs.wisc...ey/7800/Maria.h

It maps 7800 equates to addresses.

I really like DASM.
Others here can give more info, but here is a small place you can go to run an exercise:
http://pages.cs.wisc...0/distella.html
Basically, the info here should allow you to disassemble Ballblazer, and then reassemble it.
And yes, the email address on that page is out of date, but I have no way to change it.

-John

[krewat]

As a quick reply, neither DASM nor ca65 handle the source code I have without major changes.

I found a demo of Avocet's 6502 assembler, ADC-6502

It successfully compiled something just now from IM's source code. So... looks like I have an assembler after all...

The compiler I used originally, x6502, was from a company that was later acquired by Avocet. So, x6502.exe from the above demo software works.

It's a hacked demo, so there is no expiration date, so it's a viable solution for now, but I'd hate to be releasing code generated with a pirated copy of an assembler.

I will definitely have to see what I can come up with as an assembler, even if I have to hack one to work with my sources, or hack the sources to work with the assembler

[Propane13]

Awesome news. Keep us posted, and if you need anything, I am sure that you will get a lot of support from this community.

-John

[CRV]

krewat, on Tue Dec 9, 2008 9:20 PM, said:

I'm starting to remember (maybe) that Jim Mahoney said "Put this in there" about Man Development Corp. It might have been "Mahoney and Nxxxx" as in him and this other guy who was his partner. I totally forget his name at this point. It might come to me sometime laying awake at 3AM.

Sorry to bump this up, but I was just looking at New York State's records and saw both a "Man Development Corp." and a "Man Development Group" in Suffolk County.

Edited by CRV, Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:56 AM.

[krewat]

CRV, on Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:55 AM, said:

Sorry to bump this up, but I was just looking at New York State's records and saw both a "Man Development Corp." and a "Man Development Group" in Suffolk County.

It never even occurred to me to look, but you're right, there are both those names, registered as corporations.

[Crazy Climber]

I forgot about this topic, anything ever happen with the California games/etc..?

[krewat]

CG, no. I haven't had the time to fool around with the sources that I DO have of it, and I am still trying to find a good 360K floppy drive to try to read the crappy floppies I have of it - the things start to delaminate as I read them, so I need to get a really good floppy drive that I can clean easily.

IM, actually I found the original compiler I used with it, so I am somewhere in the middle of going back to the original code and compiling and checking it against the binaries to make sure it compiles 100% perfect. From there, I already know what the bug is caused by, so I am going to TRY to get it fixed and compiled. Maybe this coming Spring I'll have binaries ready.

[Propane13]

Maybe some of us could help you by loaning you a decent floppy drive.
Getting that thing read sooner as opposed to later sounds like a necessity in my mind, even if you don't look at the source for a good long while.

What area of the map are you nearby? There are lots of us sprinkled throughout the world.

-John