7 replies to this topic

[tkarner]

I'd like to do a quick hackomatic job on Donkey Kong, if possible, to make the first level girders red like the arcade instead of the current purple/pink. Anyone know which byte defines the level one girder color? Or is it more complicated than that? Thanks.

[raindog]

tkarner, on Thu Nov 4, 2010 10:45 PM, said:

Or is it more complicated than that? Thanks.

Haven't looked at the Donkey Kong code, but since Coleco's own system had purple/pinkish girders, I assume they did it intentionally. Maybe when they bought their DK cabinet from Nintendo for reference, the monitor was messed up...

[KevinMos3]

I did a hack of Donkey Kong to make it look a tad better last Christmas break. The girder colors was one of the changes I made (among others). I just never shared it because there were already so many similar Donkey Kong hacks out there. I'd tell you where the byte is for the color, but I don't remember off the top of my head and I don't have anything in front of me to look at it right now. If I think of it, I'll post when I get home.

I was thinking the other day that it would be nice to hack the sounds in the game. I know a lot of people don't like the sound of the 7800 Donkey Kong, but I prefer those sounds over the 2600 version.

[Bakasama]

Hacking the 7800 sounds to the 2600? That's a rather interesting idea.

[KevinMos3]

Ok, so here are a few color locations for you to play with:

Donkey Kong: 06D8
Girders: 0A08
Mario's Girl: 09E5 - 09F4)
Mario Standing/Running: 0B3F - 0B4F
Mario Climbing: 0B6D - 0B7B
Barrels & Flames: 09E4
Opening/Title/Inactive Score: 0673
Player Active Score: 067C

Keep in mind that if you want it to look like the arcade, the girder colors are a pink/purple/red rather than red. The closest color in the TIA palette in my opinion is somewhere around 56.


Here's the hack I did almost a year ago with my "interpretations" of arcade colors:

 Donkey Kong Arcade.bin   4K   82 downloads




This game could really use some hacking to separate colors from the ladders, fire barrel, etc. Here's a mockup pic of what I'm talking about:

Even if a couple rungs of the ladders between those slanted girders needed to stay the same color as the girders it would still look better than all being a single color in my opinion.

Edited by KevinMos3, Sat Nov 13, 2010 7:41 PM.

[KevinMos3]

Here's another... Mario is a bit more like the 7800 version and the girders are red. I don't like the red girders as much, but I like this Mario better.


 Donkey Kong Arcade 2.bin   4K   76 downloads

Here's girders with the color 54, (slightly darker than 56 from my earlier post), and the newer mario edit. I think it's slightly closer to the arcade color.


 Donkey Kong Arcade new.bin   4K   89 downloads

Edited by KevinMos3, Sun Nov 14, 2010 12:14 AM.

[raindog]

The arcade version actually has two-toned girders; there's a highlight, which does have a magenta tint to it, and a shadow, which is close to pure red at about half brightness. Put together on a fairly low-resolution CRT, I think the effect is much more red than the various Coleco implementations, but still not completely red like your second-to-last screenshot. Most of the screenshots I've found on the net are also not quite as magenta as the one you posted.

Combining the two colors gives a color somewhere around hex CB102A, and I think that's where I'd start when trying to find a single-tone facsimile of the girder color. I'm not that familiar with the 2600's palette anymore, but the A51818 of your "Donkey Kong Arcade red" screenshot could use more red, a touch more blue and a little less green.

[macdlsa]

http://www.atariage....ost__p__2303371