Adventure II XE demo and testing

[leech]

I will try to take some pics of how it looks coming out of a VBXE to and OSSC on a UHDTV. 

Been waiting for this one for a while!

[Bill Lange]

Quote

Are you using one of the Atarimax formats, or the XEGS format?   

I used AdvII_XE_Demo_020520_XEGS.bin and renamed it to .ROM and put it on a Brewing Academy Ultimate Cartridge.

[+Philsan]

Thank you very much Ron!

AdvII_XE_Demo_020520_XEGS.bin works as is with AVG Cart.

Tested on 800XL PAL with U1MB memory expansion + stereo Pokey.

I attach .CAR version. It works with AVG Cart too and, when used with Altirra, you don't have to choose cart type.

AdvII_XE_Demo_020520_XEGS.car

 

[tjlazer]

Gave it a quick go.  Found a bug.  You get stuck when you hit the bottom right of a bush.  Was able to replicate it a few times.

[+MrFish]

One thing I would suggest is that the animated versions of the player's icon animate when the player is moving only, rather than animating all the time. I think it would look better that way.

 

[+Cafeman]

On 2/6/2020 at 4:49 PM, tjlazer said:

Gave it a quick go.  Found a bug.  You get stuck when you hit the bottom right of a bush.  Was able to replicate it a few times.

Come to think of it, this happened to my son too. I think it only happens with the Knight Helmet icon. He isn't animated but has left and right facing images.  You can get your tassel stuck if you try. I'll see about fixing that. 

[+Cafeman]

1 hour ago, Philsan said:

Thank you very much Ron!

AdvII_XE_Demo_020520_XEGS.bin works as is with AVG Cart.

Tested on 800XL PAL with U1MB memory expansion + stereo Pokey.

I attach .CAR version. It works with AVG Cart too and, when used with Altirra, you don't have to choose cart type. 

 

Philsan, did you simply have to rename it from a .BIN to a .CAR , OR did you run some other convert utility? I'm just trying to understand the many formats! 

[leech]

This is with the XEGS cart on the Ultimate Cartridge out the VBXE with SCART to OSSC.

And if you look close, you can see my 5200 cart version!

[+Cafeman]

On 1/18/2018 at 7:24 PM, DracIsBack said:

Looking forward to this masterpiece.

?  oh man. Rest in Peace, DracIsBack.

[leech]

3 hours ago, Cafeman said:

?  oh man. Rest in Peace, DracIsBack.

What happened, did someone passaway while waiting for this to come out?

Sounds like Kirk Douglas just died at 103! 

This game is certainly going to be a masterpiece.   It clearly shows that our veloved 8bit was under used and could have easily had better graphics than the NES if Atari had had better relationships with third party developers.

[+Philsan]

7 hours ago, Cafeman said:

Philsan, did you simply have to rename it from a .BIN to a .CAR , OR did you run some other convert utility? I'm just trying to understand the many formats! 

ROM/BIN files are dumps of a cartridge ROM.

CAR format adds an header so emulators or some multicarts know cartridge type.

For ROM/BIN to CAR conversion I use this script: ROM-BIN To CAR.html

 

[TIX]

Hey @Cafeman big fun of Adventure here ! Excellent job on the sequel !!

I wish I was here when you hold the competition for the hero avatars

I always imagined the square to be a chubby knight   I guess it's too late now..

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by TIX

[Charlie_]

Can this be played on a 320k 130xe and sio2pc using Respeqt?

I also have a sio2sd...... 

[+Cafeman]

Charlie, I don't know. You can try it out and let us know.  I am not familiar with Respeqt.  But due to the bankswitching, using a direct Sio2pc from pc to Atari won't work. As I understand this, you need a cartridge of some sort to hold the ROM banks. 

[leech]

19 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

Charlie, I don't know. You can try it out and let us know.  I am not familiar with Respeqt.  But due to the bankswitching, using a direct Sio2pc from pc to Atari won't work. As I understand this, you need a cartridge of some sort to hold the ROM banks. 

I have the Ultimate Cart from Brewing Academy for this very thing; but otherwise the specs I'm on that this is working with is a 130XE with VBXE, U1MB, Rapidus, and Stereo Pokey.  And it worked wonderfully.  I should see how it runs in Rapidus mode...

[phonedork]

On 2/6/2020 at 7:34 PM, Cafeman said:

?  oh man. Rest in Peace, DracIsBack.

That's so sad. I know he was really looking forward to this game like me the first time you even hinted on porting it. RIP, DracIsBack

[tep392]

It’s working great on the 1200XL. 

[eegad]

Excellent job - thanks so much for this.  I just played it for the first time on my 800xl with 8mbit atarimax cart.  Got through games 1 and 2 so far.  Love it.  My only small constructive critism type of thing would be that,  at least to my old eyes,  I found it difficult to distinguish the different key colors.... If they didn't "shimmer", and just stayed a solid steady color,  it would be much easier I think. 

 

[AtariBrian]

4 minutes ago, eegad said:

  My only small constructive critism type of thing would be that,  at least to my old eyes,  I found it difficult to distinguish the different key colors.... If they didn't "shimmer", and just stayed a solid steady color,  it would be much easier I think. 

 

I always kind of thought that for the 5200 version. Was hoping that it would get changed somehow for this one.

[+Cafeman]

5 hours ago, eegad said:

Excellent job - thanks so much for this.  I just played it for the first time on my 800xl with 8mbit atarimax cart.  Got through games 1 and 2 so far.  Love it.  My only small constructive critism type of thing would be that,  at least to my old eyes,  I found it difficult to distinguish the different key colors.... If they didn't "shimmer", and just stayed a solid steady color,  it would be much easier I think. 

 

I added the color cycling to Keys because it is often difficult to distinguish key colors. I heard that complaint from the 5200 version. If I don't make the keys bright enough, they can disappear into some of  the backgrounds, as there are many different colors of backgrounds. But if I make their hues too bright, often I can't tell especially the yellow from the green. On some screens, the yellow,  green and blue key appeared the samegreenish white! The color cycling of keys does make it more evident which color it is. Too bad the hues of each color are so different and not more granular. You have 8 hues in a color.   I think I rotate thru 3 of them, for example $18, $1A, and $1C for yellow.  Not sure how else to solve the problem. I could make Key1 orange instead of Yellow or Golden.  I could change the cycling to occur less frequently and have the key "mostly" be it's main hue.   G

Throw out some more Ideas for me !

[eegad]

21 hours ago, Cafeman said:

 I think I rotate thru 3 of them, for example $18, $1A, and $1C for yellow.  I could make Key1 orange instead of Yellow or Golden.  I could change the cycling to occur less frequently and have the key "mostly" be it's main hue.  Throw out some more Ideas for me !

 

I do think it was mainly the yellow and green keys that i simply could not tell apart (on a ntsc 800xl, composite video, circa 2000 32" crt tv). Changing the yellow one to orange might help. But I also wonder what it would look like if they only changed between 2 colors rather than 3,and avoid the brightest hue. For the example above, just back and forth between $18 and $1A (or even a touch darker using $16 and $18).

 

 

[eegad]

Question about bat eggs :

 

I finally found my first one in game 1 yesterday.

 

I was reading through some old posts in the 5200 board about the game when it released for the 5200, and there it said that on easy levels, only 2 bat eggs existed.  to find all 3 bat eggs, you could only do it on higher levels (level 9 and up maybe?).

 

how about in this xe version? are there 3 bat eggs on every level, or only certain levels? if only on some levels, which are they?  i'd like to spend some time over the weekend searching for them, but what's the point of scouring level 3 if they don't all appear until level 5 or something.

 

thanks.

 

 

 

[+Cafeman]

26 minutes ago, eegad said:

Question about bat eggs :

 

 

 

On page 1 of this thread is a downloadable PDF - the AdvII XE instructions. There is a section about bat eggs.  But in a nutshell:  there are 3 in every game variation and they are spread all over the place.  Happy hunting! 

 

To explain the 5200 version's 3 bat eggs - they were always on the same 3 screens, but screen #3 was inside the ice castle on a screen that only appeared in Vast mazes. So you had to play a Vast game level to find all 3.  

[eegad]

Won both games 1 and 2 today with no deaths/resurrections, all dragons killed,  and with finding all 3 bat eggs in each game and entering the secret room.  Unfortunately I'm still a chamber pot dumper.     

 

Question.... What does the last line of text say in the secret room?  Can only see top 2 scanlines on my tv.... Rest is off the screen. 

 

Also comment.  Last week I hooked up my old 800 (I usually use one of my 3 800xl's).  The key colors are somewhat easier to figure out on the 800 than the xl's (all with same composite cable connection). 

[+Cafeman]

1 hour ago, eegad said:

Won both games 1 and 2 today with no deaths/resurrections, all dragons killed,  and with finding all 3 bat eggs in each game and entering the secret room.  Unfortunately I'm still a chamber pot dumper.     

 

Question.... What does the last line of text say in the secret room?  Can only see top 2 scanlines on my tv....

I wish you had taken a picture of your stats screen. I'd say that if you accomplished all that and still got a bad ranking, you must have taken too long to finish the game. For game 1 you are allowed 10 minutes and game 2 (medium) you are allowed 15 minutes , else you would get an x next to the time taken stat to signify a Bad Point.   Otherwise you would have got the highest good ranking. I'm pretty sure you don't have to find all 3 bat eggs or enter the secret screen to achieve the best ranking. 

 

The text in the secret room might change before publishing, but I think the final line is

all of our names.