86 replies to this topic

[Wrathchild]

As an exercise in finding out what the raving over 'jQuery' was about, I decided to put together a simple page to summarize the recent A8 to 5200 ports I've worked on. You can find details on this webpage. Here you can download the binary cart images and their labels and also see any works-in-progress.

If anyone has questions or ideas to help flesh out the descriptions I've given then please PM me or ask here.

Best wishes,
Mark

p.s. jQuery turned about to pretty neat!

[Greg2600]

Hey, I didn't know you'd worked on some of those games! I'll try them out. Bit disappointed Rampage 32K doesn't work, but the 40K won't work in the flash cart, should you finish it.

[Wrathchild]

I can still produce a 32k version that doesn't contain a title screen. Typically you'd only see it at power-on anyway, so no real loss excluding it.

Edited by Wrathchild, Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:58 AM.

[Greg2600]

That would be excellent! I also finally tried Claim Jumper and Capture the Flag on the 5200 flash cart. Both work. Claim Jumper is fine as long as I don't press the "second" fire button, then the game locks up. Capture the Flag is fine, except movement through the maze is tedious and almost impossible with the 5200 joystick. Although it's not that much better in an emulator. Pretty amazing graphics for the 5200 though.

[Wrathchild]

Could it be better then with CTF to use the keypad instead?

[Greg2600]

Not for me, for sure. The keypads, thanks to the controller design, are very soft and not very responsive.

Here's something. This is how the game looks, the colors are pretty off. However, I can't say whether this is a problem with my console, because I may have some kind of color issues.

[Wrathchild]

Yes that is a bit odd, there was code specially added in the 5200 cart initialization to provide two of the 'default' colours that were not initialized by the game itself. However the game does set the two border sprite colours and these should be green and brown so I'm a bit puzzled by that. Could it be a MaxCart thing? Can anyone else confirm this colour bug on their hardware? But if, Greg, you are not having colour issues in other games then I'll look into it further.

Also, with regards to the Claim Jumper 2nd player button locking the game, I tried in emulation and that's OK (but as we know not a sure sign), this would be odd as the adition code setting stick and fire button values is a loop done for the 2 controllers (so same code) and the game code itself was left unchanged. Again, can someone confirm the crash on their hardware?

Thanks,
Mark

[Greg2600]

Mark, my colors were slightly out of adjustment, but overall (not just this game) the picture is kind of dark. Probably a function of the old system + RF connection. The gray coloring on the walls doesn't show up I suppose as a result. Claim Jumper definitely locks up on the second fire button. In any case, you don't have to spend any more time on these if you have other games you're working on. Unfortunately, I have just one 5200 to test on. Wondering where all the other 5200ers are?

[bohoki]

if your looking for more conversion ideas may i suggest

tac scan and bruce lee

and a tetris

[Wrathchild]

I've a beat-em-up on the cards, English Software's "Chop-Suey".
For a tetris game, how about I port my "Colours" game?

[bohoki]

Wrathchild, on Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:16 PM, said:

I've a beat-em-up on the cards, English Software's "Chop-Suey".
For a tetris game, how about I port my "Colours" game?

how about hard hat mack and conan those look do-able

[Wrathchild]

Perhaps I'll do a CamStudio of me doing one of the conversions as a guide

[Allan]

Wrathchild, on Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:21 PM, said:

Perhaps I'll do a CamStudio of me doing one of the conversions as a guide

I'd love to see that.

Allan

[MIKE5200]

How about Hit and Miss. Also Zookeeper?
Thanks

[doctorclu]

Man that is awesome!!

Someday I hope they found a creative way to port Encounter and Gauntlet.

[carmel_andrews]

Neptunes daughter or the lower memory version of encounter

And also Colourspace (but as a running demo)

[Greg2600]

I'd love to have roms for...
Atlantis
Demon Attack
E.T. Phone Home!
Flip and Flop
Pastfinder
Pitstop
Silicon Warrior

Or prototypes (if the A8 rom is even available) of...
Sinistar
Superman III

Unfortunately, I don't know the 8-bit diskette games very well. The library is immense. Wish it was easier to convert the games, or I'd do several myself.

Edited by Greg2600, Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:33 PM.

[Wrathchild]

Greg2600, on Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:31 PM, said:

I'd love to have roms for...
Atlantis
Demon Attack
...

Steve has some of these done already and available at his his shop though I'm not sure there is a definitive list of A8->5200 ports around although there seems enough info spread over this forum to put one together I think?

I'd seen Tac-Scan was a 2600 game but AtariMania has this listed under the A8 section but without a dump, what's the history on that title?

Edited by Wrathchild, Wed Feb 24, 2010 8:32 AM.

[Wrathchild]

Another game I love and would make a nice quick 'arcade' game for the 5200 is 'Kid Grid' ?

[Greg2600]

Wrathchild, on Wed Feb 24, 2010 8:23 AM, said:

Steve has some of these done already and available at his his shop though I'm not sure there is a definitive list of A8->5200 ports around although there seems enough info spread over this forum to put one together I think?

I'd seen Tac-Scan was a 2600 game but AtariMania has this listed under the A8 section but without a dump, what's the history on that title?

I know, I don't want the cartridge, just the game. Don't have any more room. Tac-Scan may have been on SEGA's slate, but was never released. I wish there was a decent Pinball game to convert, but there really isn't.

[bohoki]

gee i could have swore there was another tac scan other than the 2600

maybe i'm confusing it up with the texas instruments computer


sorry about that babba booey babba booey

hard had mack

[bohoki]

bohoki, on Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:53 PM, said:

gee i could have swore there was another tac scan other than the 2600

maybe i'm confusing it up with the texas instruments computer


sorry about that babba booey babba booey

hard had mack

does anybody have a list of paddle games for the atari 400/800?

shouldnt they be extra easy to convert?

[Wrathchild]

Wrathchild, on Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:16 PM, said:

I've a beat-em-up on the cards, English Software's "Chop-Suey".

With Allan's help in getting to the bottom of the 2nd button crashes (turns out I needed to disable the BREAK-key interrupt), I'm happy to release both the fixed 'Claim Jumper' binary and the new 'Chop Suey' port on the conversions page.

Feedback on how a karate game works on real hardware could be interesting?

Enjoy,
Mark

[Allan]

Wrathchild, on Sat Mar 6, 2010 3:19 PM, said:

Wrathchild, on Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:16 PM, said:

I've a beat-em-up on the cards, English Software's "Chop-Suey".

With Allan's help in getting to the bottom of the 2nd button crashes (turns out I needed to disable the BREAK-key interrupt), I'm happy to release both the fixed 'Claim Jumper' binary and the new 'Chop Suey' port on the conversions page.

Feedback on how a karate game works on real hardware could be interesting?

Enjoy,
Mark

The start button on Claim Jumper still doesn't work. I don't know if you've looked at that yet.

Allan

[Wrathchild]

Can you check the date of the ROM in your downloaded cj_5200.zip, it should be 5th March?