Voch Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Hi. It's your friendly neighborhood Stella profile guy asking for a little help. I've been sent some ROMs, a few of which are very interesting and others are single-byte changes to known dumps. I'd like some help identifying these and to them to the current Stella profile. If this is inappropriate to discuss in this forum please transfer it to its proper place. I wasn't sure if this was an emulation topic or an Atari 2600 topic. A zip of these is available here. Here is a description of what I think I know so far: Acid Drop (bad dump maybe).bin Works just like Acid Drop (1992) (Salu) (PAL) in Stella 1.2 for Mac. Artillery Duel-Like Game.bin I have no idea what it is (it's not "Artillery Duel" by Xonox) but it looks really nice. Qb 1.bin Qb 2.bin Qb 3.bin Looks like early (or recent if Stella 1.2/Mac isn't running them correctly) incarnations of Qb. Life.bin Not a clue. I called it Life because it looks like that living dot program. Or maybe it's just a foobed dump. Stunt Cycle-Like Game.bin Looks like Stunt Cycle (Atari) (Prototype) with some changed graphics. Wizard (one lousy changed byte).bin This is the same as Wizard with one changed byte. Did it have any effect? Thanks. Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 The Stunt Cylce game is a proto called Dukes of Hazard. The Ob's are early versions, probably you can find them in the [stella] archive. The Artillery Duel game is called Incoming (WIP), you can find it on the development page here on AA. IIRC the Life game is from [stella] too. The normal Acid Drop has 16K. When trying to convert it to NTSC, I discoverd that the first two banks are indentical with the last two. Normally a partial 8K dump would work, but for unknown reasons the bankswitching method has been changed too. This dump is probably just a test from somebody who read my post on AA. The different Wizard byte doesn't matter at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 18, 2002 Author Share Posted December 18, 2002 Thanks. I probably should have thrown these at Thomas in the first place. I'm updating the Stella profile with these entries soon (I'm kinda busy tonight). I thought Dukes Of Hazzard had a title screen, but now I see there are two completely different prototypes available here on AtariAge. Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jggilbert Posted December 22, 2002 Share Posted December 22, 2002 Hi Vosh, Thanks for maintaining stella.pro. I'd like to submit a few changes... change the MD5sum for Skeleton (PAL) ... 8e8871ba5f3a71ae8a0ea16a4af9fc9 to 8e887d1ba5f3a71ae8a0ea16a4af9fc9 Dukes of Hazzard V2 and V3 have the same MD5 sum. The latest Skeleton (PAL) has a Cartridge.ModelNo ELB003, not ELB002, and all the Skeleton versions should be Cartridge.Note 'ed, "Stereo Sound" Also, please add the following three entries... Cartridge.MD5" "f1929bb9b5db22d98dd992aa3fe72920" "Cartridge.Name" "Hi-Res Demo by Billy Eno" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Billy Eno" "Cartridge.Note" "First working 525-Line demo, requrires z26v157 to emulate" "Cartridge.Rarity" "Prototype" "Display.Height" "525" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "fb5c8af97bd8ffe88323656f462645a7" "Cartridge.Name" "Hi-Res Demo by Glenn Saunders" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Glenn Saunders" "Cartridge.Note" "Second working 525-Line demo, requrires z26v157 to emulate" "Cartridge.Rarity" "Prototype" "Display.Height" "525" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "c033dc1d7b6fde41b9cadce9638909bb" "Cartridge.Name" "Skeleton 9/11/02 Version" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Eric Ball" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "Cartridge.Note" "Stereo Sound" "" Also, I have about 55 more unknown images. Please post instructions about how to contact you as your listed email address continues to be broken. Thanks again! John Gilbert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 22, 2002 Author Share Posted December 22, 2002 Thanks for maintaining stella.pro. I'd like to submit a few changes... I'll get to those sometime soon. Also, I have about 55 more unknown images. Please post instructions about how to contact you as your listed email address continues to be broken. Can you get all of them to work with an emulator? That's a lot of new dumps. I hope most of them are just broken gunk (I never kept track of those separately). My e-mail is in the header of the stella.pro file (I don't post it for spam reasons). Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jggilbert Posted December 22, 2002 Share Posted December 22, 2002 Here's the 55 unknowns. Some of them do work with stella and are recognizable, but I've not tried all of them. The names are just the MD5 checksums, I use a script with the stella.pro to display the full game names. The original names of these files died in a hard disk crash a few months ago. Sorry about that. Hmm. The add filename button doesn't seem to work. It errors out with "Not an allowed Mime Type: application/octet-stream. It's just a tgz file. Not sure how to fix this. I just tried your email listed in stella.pro, but it seemed to bounce. Maybe it's a hotmail vs earthlink thing. Is there a ftp upload area somewhere I can drop this. The gziped tar file is only 51k. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 22, 2002 Author Share Posted December 22, 2002 I just tried your email listed in stella.pro, but it seemed to bounce. Maybe it's a hotmail vs earthlink thing. Is there a ftp upload area somewhere I can drop this. The gziped tar file is only 51k.John. Check your private messages. Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jggilbert Posted December 22, 2002 Share Posted December 22, 2002 No bounce this time...yet. Have fun, Merry Christmas. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 22, 2002 Share Posted December 22, 2002 Getting curious... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted December 22, 2002 Share Posted December 22, 2002 Hmm, I suspect that is the whole purpose ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 23, 2002 Author Share Posted December 23, 2002 !^@%#$ messaging system. I thought our conversation wasn't posted. Oh well... jggilbert sent me a ZIP of some unknown binaries. If anybody wants to see the 55 unknown binaries they're here. Have at it. I gotta do some work for my company now. Personally, I'm considering finding someone to take over the Stella profile stuff because I've found other things I'd like to move on to (like collecting real Atari hardware and software), I have a full-time job whose software is going beta soon, I have changed ISPs at home and may drop the Earthlink page soon, and I am not particularly skilled in identifying this stuff without outside help anyway. Stay tuned. EDIT: Some of the binaries are recognizable games but how many of these things are there? Are people changing one lousy byte in, say, Miss Piggy's Wedding just to be annoying? Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 jggilbert sent me a ZIP of some unknown binaries. If anybody wants to see the 55 unknown binaries they're here. Have at it. I gotta do some work for my company now. Most of the dumps are recognized by Good2600 0.999.9 (BTW: Espial is not a bad dump!). Unrecognized are: ) [*]a circular pong game demo ([stella] too) [*]the Life demo [*]a title of AVCStec Challenge from Simon (probably from AA) [*]Fellowship of the Rings (PD) [*]a 2K Dukes of Hazards dump (100% identical with the 4K overdumped one) [*]and a quite remarkable Double Dragon version (different colors, slower music etc.), maybe a prototype Personally, I'm considering finding someone to take over the Stella profile... Sad to hear that, IMO you are doing a great job now. EDIT: Some of the binaries are recognizable games but how many of these things are there? Are people changing one lousy byte in, say, Miss Piggy's Wedding just to be annoying? I guess those small differences are just coming from the used ROM dumping hard- and software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 That's that byte in the top of the 4k area that performs a bankswitch, right? I wonder if it would be possible to have Stella ignore that value in the rom instead? Might be easier than having to profile every known dump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 23, 2002 Author Share Posted December 23, 2002 Most of the dumps are recognized by Good2600 0.999.9 (BTW: Espial is not a bad dump!). Oh, sure, if you want to figure out what they are the easy way. I forgot to run a Good2600 on 'em. I'll add 'em to the profile when I get a few minutes to spare sometime. Sad to hear that, IMO you are doing a great job now. Just a bit overwhelmed when folks throw ROMs my way. Now all we're missing is that Rubik's Cube dump, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 That's that byte in the top of the 4k area that performs a bankswitch, right? Yes, but depending on the size of the ROM and the bankswitching method used there are up to 8 bytes (at offset $FF4..$FFB). I wonder if it would be possible to have Stella ignore that value in the rom instead? Might be easier than having to profile every known dump. I think that's a good idea. And we should not forget the ROMs that include RAM which is read quite random. The only problem is, that the emulator doesn't know exactly which kind of ROM he checks before he hasn't calculated the checksum (and then it's too late). But with some additional logic, this should be solvable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted December 23, 2002 Author Share Posted December 23, 2002 I just updated the Stella profile with most of those additions. I'll work on the other guessed ones and resolve the Espial and other stuff a little later on this week. Thanks again for the help Thomas. For those of you counting the Stella profile now recognizes 1,930 dumps. I think when I started maintaining the profile file it was at around 400 or so. Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 and a quite remarkable Double Dragon version (different colors, slower music etc.), maybe a prototype That isn't a prototype, it is the standard NTSC version. I have a ROM just like that, and my 2600 cart plays the same. The colors are more natural, and the music is slower in the NTSC version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 That isn't a prototype, it is the standard NTSC version. I have a ROM just like that, and my 2600 cart plays the same. The colors are more natural, and the music is slower in the NTSC version. Ok, and where does the other NTSC version come from Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 What, this one? http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.ht...wareLabelID=152 Those are PAL screenshots. My NTSC ROM looks identical to the "unknown" dump version. Both are identical to my NTSC cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 Those are PAL screenshots. My NTSC ROM looks identical to the "unknown" dump version. Both are identical to my NTSC cart. Yup, my fault. Both Activision dumps I have are PAL (though one is not classified as PAL by Good2600). So this is the first available NTSC dump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oesii Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 yeah good call King Atari, I guess it pays to be a Double Dragon expert sometimes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted December 25, 2002 Share Posted December 25, 2002 I got my first NTSC dump from a thread somewhere on AA, I'll go look it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted December 25, 2002 Share Posted December 25, 2002 http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.p...ble+dragon+ntsc Here we go, scroll down to Albert's post, he has a link. That's where I got my first NTSC ROM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jggilbert Posted December 29, 2002 Share Posted December 29, 2002 Hi Erik, Thomas, et. al. Apologies in advance for the long post. I'm back from vacation. I just downloaded the latest stella.pro and read the messages so far on this forum. Wow! Most of my unknowns became knowns. Thanks to all that worked on this! Vosh: Please continue to be the maintainer of stella.pro, you are doing a awesome service, and let us subscribers of this service know what we can do to help make your job easier. With the three entries I gave before, and the a eight new ones I'm listing below (NTSC DD Thanks to TJ and KA), I'm up to 1940 known, and only six unknowns (down from 55!). Question: does Good2600 0.999.9 know any images that are not in stella.pro yet? With Stella 1.2 the unknowns all seem to work. Here is what they do. Thomas: just adding to your post and attaching the md5 sums. 0375f589f7da06d2d2be532e0d4d4b94 Cycle of light blue blocks moving around on dark blue background doesn't seem to be interactive. This isn't like Conway's Life as I know it . 2abc3d46b3f2140160759e2e10bc86d9 Gunfight with "hype 2001" scrolling up through center that you can shoot up. Other person moves around and shoots back. 32199271dc980eb31a2cc96e10a9e244 circular pong strangly simular to star castle. Computer's player ai is rather primitave. 537ed1e0d80e6c9f752b33ea7acbe079 "A VCS TEC CHALLANGE" with a face like in sinistar. Beeps, but no movement or interaction. c1b7aeabc3ec41556d924c8372a9ba5b Car jumping, now recoginized as Dukes of Hazard badly dumped. I remember playing a motorcycle jumping game like this in black and white in arcades, late 70s. Anyone remember the name? e4b12deaafd1dbf5ac31afe4b8e9c233 Fellowship of the Ring, Thomas Jentzsch's hack of Dark Mage Can't seem to get very far, must...put...on...the...ring... A text adventure. Thomas: your fingerprint is on this one, maybe you could tell us what this is? (and me what PD is. The latest stella.pro still needs the Skeleton PAL md5sum fix. For myself, I put all the extra stuff put in a stella.plus file... (yea, I use UNIX, why do you ask?). mv stella.pro stella.orig cat stella.orig stella.plus | sed 's/8e8871ba5f3a71ae8a0ea16a4af9fc9/8e887d1ba5f3a71ae8a0ea16a4af9fc9/' > stella.pro Here is the rest of the entries I have in stella.plus... "Cartridge.MD5" "d4aa89e96d2902692f5c45f36903d336" "Cartridge.Name" "Euchre (August 12, 2002 pre-release)" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Erik Eid" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "Cartridge.Type" "4K" "Controller.Left" "Joystick" "Display.Format" "NTSC" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "e5d5085123a98c1e61818caa2971e999" "Cartridge.Name" "Euchre (August 12, 2002 pre-release) (PAL) [!]" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Erik Eid" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "Cartridge.Type" "4K" "Controller.Left" "Joystick" "Display.Format" "PAL" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "40aa851e8d0f1c555176a5e209a5fabb" "Cartridge.Name" "Euchre (August 22, 2002 pre-release)" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Erik Eid" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "Cartridge.Type" "4K" "Controller.Left" "Joystick" "Display.Format" "NTSC" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "c9d02d3cfeef8b48fb71cb4520a4aa84" "Cartridge.Name" "Euchre (August 22, 2002 pre-release) (PAL) [!]" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Erik Eid" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "Cartridge.Type" "4K" "Controller.Left" "Joystick" "Display.Format" "PAL" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "4a2fe6f0f6317f006fd6d4b34515448b" "Cartridge.Name" "Warring Worms (6-8-02 Midwest Classic Ed.)" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Baroque Gaming (Brian Eno)" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "e171558c51bb3bac97bfa79fa2c1a19c" "Cartridge.Name" "Warring Worms (12-20-02 Tim Strauss Ed.)" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Baroque Gaming (Brian Eno)" "Cartridge.Rarity" "New Release" "" "Cartridge.MD5" "7e2fe40a788e56765fe56a3576019968" "Cartridge.Name" "Double Dragon (1989) (Activision) (NTSC)" "Cartridge.Manufacturer" "Activision" "Cartridge.Type" "F6" "Display.FrameRate" "30" "Display.Height" "190" "Display.Width" "152" "Display.XStart" "8" "Display.YStart" "68" "" That's it for me for now. Good night. Happy New Year. John Gilbert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 29, 2002 Share Posted December 29, 2002 Fellowship of the Ring, Thomas Jentzsch's hack of Dark Mage Can't seem to get very far, must...put...on...the...ring... A text adventure. Thomas: your fingerprint is on this one, maybe you could tell us what this is? (and me what PD is. Correction, this is not from me and not really a hack. I just helped improving the text display code from Dark Mage. Check these two threads for details: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7606 http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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