is round up the only STAMPEDE clone

[Marius]

On my Atari 8bit I have a great game called Round Up.

 

On my Atari 2600 I had a similar game called Stampede.

 

But: I like Stampede a bit more... there is this 'bull' you have to avoid, which isn't in Round Up.

 

Those games look terrible (old, older, oldest) but the gameplay is really good for a lot of fun.

 

I could not find a real Stampede for Atari 8bit.

 

Does anyone have a more similar like the 2600 version for me?

 

Thanks

M.

[Marius]

Every night I play this game on my 2600 a few times and my max. score was around 2800. It is so much fun; i do not understand why it is not ported to a8 yet. From a few Activision threads here on AA I also can conclude that Stampede is one of the more (Activision) titles on the 2600. I really would love a 100% port of this game to our so beloved a8. Roundup is nice, but easier and lacks a few features.

 

Anyone here who knows there are plans to port this one?

[kenjennings]

I liked 2600/Stampede back in the day. Never saw Round-Up before.

Stampede doesn't appear to be terribly complicated graphically, so it should be reasonably easy to port/create a version with similar play action to the 8-bits.

But, I'm a really lousy player, so someone else would have to describe how the difficulty progresses in the game.

 

update: someone smarter than myself plays through the patterns in a "herd" up through nearly 4900 points...

 

[Marius]

That is a great movie. I already knew this pattern, but I am simply too slow... when you see this movie you'll think probably: what an easy game haha.

 

I think the strength of this game is the simplicity, and the speed. It is so much fun, and everytime when I lose, I want to play it again.

 

I was never a very huge fan of the 2600 (I'm more into atari 8bit) but... I must admit, I'm starting to appreciate the 2600 more and more.

 

In my room I have a cool atari 8bit setup, but I created space for the 2600, and I can play a 2600 game everytime I want, without the need of setting it up first.

With the games in reach, I started to appreciated certain titles a lot (like this Stampede).

 

I also ordered the Harmony cart. I hope it will arrive soon.

 

But... the atari 8bit will always be my number 1 system; so I hope Stampede, Private Eye, Barnstorming and Enduro will be ported once.

[Rybags]

One showstopper is that it uses the Player replicate ability - in that regard the 2600 can actually have more going on than the computer on a horizontal line without position/graphic reload tricks that would be needed.

 

Given the objects are somewhat close together using replicate, position/graphic change is out of the question.

 

I'm working on converting another 2600 game at the moment - a similar situation exists there, the alternative is to just get rid of the kernal and use alternative methods to generate some parts of the display.

 

For this game, that might be using a bitmap line buffer or doing some of the graphics in character - either way having finescroll/LMS assist for positioning.

 

To summarize - I'd say a conversion entirely possible but not a straightforward affair, some analysis and extra programming work required.

[+Stephen]

Yeah - I often wonder why when the TIA was upgraded to CTIA, why the replication feature was removed. It would have been great to leave in the replication, and add a mirror function. Kills quite a few direct 2600 to A8 ports, not having it.

[kenjennings]

One showstopper is that it uses the Player replicate ability - in that regard the 2600 can actually have more going on than the computer on a horizontal line without position/graphic reload tricks that would be needed.

 

Given the objects are somewhat close together using replicate, position/graphic change is out of the question....

The cows never cross each other or the fences, so everything can be done with separate, horizontally scrolled lines of text/graphics. With only 6 rows of cows there are lots of empty scan lines for DLIs to fiddle with the scrolling, change playfield colors (from one kind of cow to another), and or switch character sets.

 

There's a game option where the cows attempt to avoid the cowboy as far as they can without colliding with each other. This could work by inserting a few blank scanline instructions that change their size as needed betwen each row of cows.

 

That leaves all the players and missiles free for the horse and rider.

 

I think the biggest challenge here is what to do with all the extra cpu time. (and drawing decent cow animations).

 

(Though, having TIA player replication would have been cool.)

[José Pereira]

@Kenjennings: I was thinking in that. Yes, I am also think the same way as you.

I think I have the idea in my head.

But I am not capable of designing the man and animals.

Anyone can find or remember of a 2:1 ratio C64 or even CPC with cows, a horse with the man and a similar wood fence.

The sprites can be in any size. Better if in a good detailed 3colours 2:1ratio (the horse can be single colour).

But in 1:1 ratio also but better if the sprites are mono coloured.

[kenjennings]

It's best to use the original game as the model for designing the graphics. If things are oddly sized it changes the play action to a degree so it won't feel like the same game. And then everyone curses you for doing a lousy port.

 

It looks like cows are about 12 scan lines tall, give or take. Peeking in a ROM dump of the 2600 game it looks like there's 14 bytes of data and the images don't line up, so the x ofset of the data is changed per scan line (understandable, that's how it's done on a 2600). A cow is pretty wide on screen. It may be made of 2 sprites, or perhaps the size of the center of the body is wider. (or maybe there is multiple animation data mixed together-- didn't spend that much time looking.) In any case, it looks like a cow takes up an area at least 12 pixels (color clocks) x 12+ scan lines tall. So, in Antic mode 4 that would fit in a block 3 characters wide x 2 characters high.

 

 

Since the playfield would not be used for the horse/cowboy that leaves all four COLPF values for the cows, so they could have some character -- spots on them, sticking out a tongue, something.

 

Oh look there's a skull...

06a4 44 ..##......##....
06a3 82 ##..........##..
06a2 ba ##..######..##..
06a1 54 ..##..##..##....
06a0 3c ....########....
069f 1e ......########..
069e 0e ........######..
069d 05 ..........##..##
069c 03 ............####

And a cow. or maybe it's a deer.

069b 00 ................
069a 12           ......##....##..
0699 0c           ........####....
0698 0e           ........######..
0697 3f           ....############
0696 fa           ##########..##..
0695 f8        ##########......
0694 bf ##..############
0693 7f ..##############
0692 fe   ##############..
0691 aa   ##..##..##..##..
0690 a5   ##..##....##..##
068f a2   ##..##......##..
068e 85   ##........##..##
068d a0   ##..##..........

[phaeron]

I started reversing and converting Stampede. Got sound and input working pretty quickly with a modified version of my Seaquest sound driver, but yeah, the sprite handling is hopeless. It's the same thing I ran into with Seaquest -- between the repeating, mirroring, and HMOVE hell, there's no easy way to convert it to 5200 sprites, so it's gotta be ripped out of the kernel and converted to playfield. Don't see any reason to use a character mode for this, as it's easier just to prerender onto mode C playfields and then the lack of character name fetches won't interfere with the kernel.

 

stampede-wip.zip

[Heaven/TQA]

spiders...

[Marius]

@kenjennings: Yes ... I always interpreted as a skull... a bull's skull...

 

It's great seeing people getting interested in this. Still: roundup is a decent game, but gives not the same cool experience. Roundup is too easy, while Stampede has a few real hard elements.

[Smokeless Joe]

Ooo, I would pay real money for an excellent 8-bit Stampede port. Or at least I'd give a full dozen doughnuts.

[Marius]

I'd pay too.

[phaeron]

Very glitchy, but starting to work:

stampede-wip2.zip

 

Have the cattle converted over to horizontally scrolling playfields, but right now it's not pulling the right data for the repeat mode. The cowboy is turning out to be a lot nastier than I had expected because not only does it use HMOVE, but it also changes size and is ~27 color clocks wide. The lasso, in turn, happily goes dozens of color clocks wide over a handful of scanlines, too. In this version I'm emulating HMOVE on both P0 and M0, but it takes too many clocks to update all the hardware registers. I'm thinking that the way to go is to use all four players for the cowboy so it doesn't have to be in the kernel, and just have the kernel do the lasso position (HPOSM0), the cattle colors and positions (COLPM0/HSCROL), and reading the collision detection registers.

 

[Marius]

Phaeron: and again you amaze me. That midnight magic conversion was already fabulous, but now this is already starting to get something.

 

Thanks for all your time so far!

 

Prowizard

[phaeron]

Getting closer:

stampede-wip3.zip

 

Most glitches are fixed, redid the display list to closer match the original game display, removed the cheat code, and made it work a bit better on real hardware (force cold reset). Main issue remaining is that the missile size changes aren't replicated on the lasso -- not sure how I want to solve that yet. Using multiple missiles is easier on the kernel but harder on the collision detection code. Also, the difficulty switch isn't hooked up yet.

 

[Marius]

That is really getting something phaeron!

 

You are THE MAN!

 

Thanks for doing all this, i really love this game a lot, and I can't wait playing it on my real a8.

[+Stephen]

Excellent!

[Smokeless Joe]

I'm still pretty new here. How do I use the two files (stampede.obx and stampede.s) in Phaeron's .zip archive?

 

Thanks!

 

-Joe

[+Stephen]

OBX is an "object" file - should be loadable from DOS. Or - start an emulator, and just drag the file on top of it, it will load. The ".s" file is the source code - view it or ignore it.

[phaeron]

Alright, think I've got everything done now:

stampede.zip

 

Lasso is fixed, added 10K digit to the left of the Activision logo (which I never knew about until I found it in the code), hooked up Option to toggle the difficulty switch, and fixed PAL operation. I hate it when people play NTSC games in slow-mo on PAL machines, so I've put in PAL speed correction to nullify this unfair advantage.

 

[+Allan]

Cool. Played the prior version for a couple of hours last night. Thanks. Any chance you might be convinced to convert this for the 5200?

 

Allan

[kenjennings]

Very, very nice conversion. Two thumbs up!

[Marius]

On Pal it is absolutely far too fast now. At least on my computer. It's much faster than the NTSC version I'm afraid, and also fast than the Stampede movies I see on youtube.

 

Is there a possibility btw. you built in a switch for that anyway? I have been playing stampede for 37 years now in PAL land... and for me that is the original speed. I'm not in a contest with someone else (only with myself) and I would love to see the game as equal as possible on my PAL 2600 and PAL XL/XE

 

But thanks anyway, I'm very happy!