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Wizard of Wor 2: The Arena


CDS Games

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So you guys...was this abandoned?

 

As iesposta said, there's some work that needs to be done on the AtariVox end. There are definitely enough speech strings written, but they all have to be set up to be called by the program. It's a lot of work and beyond my ability. I thought maybe I could figure it all out, but my free time is limited lately and what little I have for Atari hacking I'd rather play around with sprites and light stuff rather than figure out AtariVox from scratch.

 

It's been a while since I've played around with the various versions of this, but are there any previous ones that we could just call the final one, without AtariVox support? At least then we'd have something....though It would be a shame because iesposta put so much work into the speech strings.

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  • 6 months later...

Hacking in the speech code is beyond my ability also.

I really want Arcade Wizard of Wor, & I know Al has all the white/gray carts ready.

As stated, this being an existing game hack, CDS made all the mazes and improved the graphics, then Nukey game hack master added bank switching and a Titlescreen and made the score's 6th digit work and probably fixed some more sloppy programming, I made 40 of the 70 taunts for AtariVox+ that the game speaks at you, matching the arcade sound as best I could.

 

The hard part is always last where the Vox speech has to be hacked in and scripted to speak the right things in the right mazes. I never knew it was that specific and only remember a few taunts and that "ah-ah-ah-ah" that's supposed to be a laugh!

 

This is approaching its 5th year soon.

 

There's a thread about using 2 sticks in one port. It would be nice to add or detect that.

As well as someone else claiming the joystick and AtariVox+ both working in the player 2 port at the same time.

 

As I've been doing sound, music and digitized speech (Stay Frosty 2 / Draconian / Super Cobra), if a 64K cart or larger Melody is designed, which originally stated extra RAM/ROM could be specified, it's actually easier to digitize the game's sound samples, and more people that don't own the AtariVox+ could get it with speech samples built-in. However there the easy way of playback when the screen goes black, and the hard way that Draconian does speaking during gameplay. The 2nd option takes cycles away during the display drawing and that might not be possible to hack in, but would require a ground-up assembler / C code rewrite.

 

P.S. Draconian only being 32K, those speech samples are at the low point of "terrible but understandable". Comparing, that's how the Arcade Bosconian sounds. I just made the smallest data samples as placeholders, and intended for them to improve at least twice the quality they are now. The PRGE show deadline and the 32K game size meant the speech wasn't going to have the time or ROM space to improve. And I didn't get the big, booming explosion sample in that could have been used 3 ways by being played slow, medium and fast for 3 different enemy explosion sound effects. I still can't believe Draconian has everything it does have and that it's on the 2600 at only 32K in size! That's masterpiece programming, optimizing and debugging.

 

Mappy's already at the point where it's won the Award For Most Colors In A 2600 Game.

I personally never minded the need to have the 2 objects flicker because it meant more challenging, visually interesting games.

I bet Champ Games finds a way to make it flicker less as it develops due to the power the CDF bank-switching allows.

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  • 1 month later...

I couldn't test the Atarivox feature because either I put it on second controller port and I can't play the game or I put it on the first port and I can't select the rom from Harmony cart menu.

 

By the way, I remember another great hack (Berzerk) by Nukey with Atarivox feature. That one was also a great improvement over the original version.

Edited by LidLikesIntellivision
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  • 3 weeks later...

I couldn't test the Atarivox feature because either I put it on second controller port and I can't play the game or I put it on the first port and I can't select the rom from Harmony cart menu.

 

By the way, I remember another great hack (Berzerk) by Nukey with Atarivox feature. That one was also a great improvement over the original version.

AtariVox+ goes into 2nd controller port.

Press Select until only the left player is shown. That player is controlled by the 1st (left) controller port.

Enjoy! However the speech is not scripted to the mazes / levels, and just keeps talking...

 

I did the speech, not the original hack / expansion / graphics.

As far as I know, there is no PAL.

 

P.S. A claim on Facebook and a video shows both players and the AtariVox+ working with a Y-cable in the Right Player 2 port.

I have that cable, and my test did not work.

Also configuring the right port for input AND output, I can't recommend testing as I don't know if internal damage may be caused by an input connected to ground and/or an output connected to ground.

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