Dark Chambers to Gauntlet Conversion

[TheCravenBarley]

I just ran across this game redone for the Atari Flashback Portable, and I am amazed by the game play of the game. Gauntlet was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, and I dumped a ton of quarters into the Gauntlet arcade game.

[AW127]

Gauntlet was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, and I dumped a ton of quarters into the Gauntlet arcade game.

Indeed, Gauntlet makes alot of fun. Especially the arcade-version in 4-player-simultan-mode. I remember, playing it with some of my friends back in the days. And Gauntlet also was a superb looking arcade-cabinet. It has an appealing look and you want to stick a coin in it. Same "problem" i had with the "Double Dragon" arcade-cabinets. It was like a must-play for me back in time.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Gauntlet is definitely one of my all time favourite games and it's awesome to see it on the VCS, love it CDS Games, great work! We're broadcasting an all hacks special LIVE on ZeroPage Homebrew tonight and we'll be featuring your hack of Gauntlet 2600!!

 

ZeroPage Twitch LiveStream: http://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

We'll also be playing these games:

- Bouncer (hack of Boing!) by Scott Dayton "neotokeo2001"
- Wolfenstein VCS: The Next Mission (hack of Venture) by Scott Dayton "neotokeo2001" & Robert Mundschau

- River Raid Fantasy Mode (hack of River Raid) by Nukey Shay

 

The show will be livestreaming on Twitch at 7PM PT / 10PM ET, hope to see you all there!

[CDS Games]

Gauntlet is definitely one of my all time favourite games and it's awesome to see it on the VCS, love it CDS Games, great work! We're broadcasting an all hacks special LIVE on ZeroPage Homebrew tonight and we'll be featuring your hack of Gauntlet 2600!!

 

Thanks!! I was able to watch a bit of the show...sorry about the freezes and glitches, this is the first I've ever heard of that happening. So it's a scanline issue?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Yes, use Stella and ALT+L. Then you can see the numbers changing. Also look into Developer settings, there is a Jitter option, which you should enable too.

 

Generally I suggest enabling all developer default settings for developing.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Thanks so much for watching the show! We'll definitely be giving the game another go on the stream with two players once you've got a stable picture with the line count fixed up.

 

The game looks like a lot of fun with all the changes made to Dark Chambers. Great job, keep it up, can't wait to try it again! :-)

 

 

Thanks!! I was able to watch a bit of the show...sorry about the freezes and glitches, this is the first I've ever heard of that happening. So it's a scanline issue?

[CDS Games]

Partial correction...I think!

 

I've got most everything to 262 scanlines. Hopefully it works cleanly in 2player mode, but 1-player mode is at 259 scanlines now so you may experience some jitter there.

Give it a shot, see what happens.

 

Gauntlet-ScanlineFix1.bin

[freshbrood]

"Running the gauntlet" basically was a form of punishment where a person would run through the middle of a row of soldiers slapping them with their armored fists. The word is derived from the French "Gantelet".

 

My vote is "Gantlet" for the official title. It's as close as you can get without copyright infringement.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_the_gauntlet

 

The word in English was originally spelled gantelope or gantlope,^[7] but soon its pronunciation was influenced by the unrelated word gauntlet, meaning an armored glove, derived from the French: gantelet.^[1] The spelling changed with the pronunciation. Both senses of gauntlethad the variant spelling gantlet.^[1] For the punishment, the spelling gantlet is preferred in American English usage guides by Bryan Garner and Robert Hartwell Fiske,^[8][9] and is listed as a variant spelling of gauntlet by American dictionaries.^[1][10] British dictionaries label gantlet as American.^[11][12]

 

 

Ed Logg mentioned in his talk that he thought the name worked well because "running of the Gauntlet" was pretty much what the game was all about. I'm guessing the armor also factored in though.

 

Onslaught would be a nice name. For some reason though I tend to be a purist about the names of arcade translations, so I'd rather just leave this as Gauntlet and do a separate spinoff with different branding.

Edited September 25, 2018 by freshbrood

[SS]

Very nice. Will this see a cartridge release?

Edited November 19, 2018 by SS

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Heya CDS, I've found a few scanline count jumps that are still hanging around in two player mode:

 

- Jumps from 262 to 263 to 262 to 251 to 262 after pressing the button on the title screen to start the game

- Jumps from 262 to 251 for one frame when going into an exit just before the next level screen

To check them out you can turn on scanline count with ALT-L (in Stella windows) and also check out the frame by frame line count by going into debugger mode pressing the ~ key and pressing CTRL-F to advance frames. Happy bug hunting! :-)

 

 

Partial correction...I think!

 

I've got most everything to 262 scanlines. Hopefully it works cleanly in 2player mode, but 1-player mode is at 259 scanlines now so you may experience some jitter there.

Give it a shot, see what happens.

 

Gauntlet-ScanlineFix1.bin

 

[hizzy]

Will the Golden Legends hack ever become available? I wish this came out on cart!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Anyone know if the original base code from Dark Chambers was changed to allow this to work on 7800s that have had the extra timing circuit disabled (via neutered C64)?

[DarthDuke]

This is incredible!  I've been playing and loving Dark Chambers on my Retron77. It reminds me a lot of Gauntlet, so I can see why you'd pick it to make this hack or mod.  I've got to get this game and try it. Thanks for making it. Looks like 728 is the newest build. I appreciate you labeling the versions clearly so that I can tell them apart. 

[Arenafoot]

I was hoping by now this one would have made it to the AA store!!! I covered it in Volume 2 of my books series as the upcoming Golden Legends.

 

 

On 5/29/2021 at 1:00 PM, DarthDuke said:

This is incredible!  I've been playing and loving Dark Chambers on my Retron77. It reminds me a lot of Gauntlet, so I can see why you'd pick it to make this hack or mod.  I've got to get this game and try it. Thanks for making it. Looks like 728 is the newest build. I appreciate you labeling the versions clearly so that I can tell them apart. 

 

On 9/25/2018 at 7:00 AM, CDS Games said:

Partial correction...I think!

 

I've got most everything to 262 scanlines. Hopefully it works cleanly in 2player mode, but 1-player mode is at 259 scanlines now so you may experience some jitter there.

Give it a shot, see what happens.

 

Gauntlet-ScanlineFix1.bin 32 kB · 166 downloads

 

[DarthDuke]

It works in two player mode too? I'll have to see if I can get my wife to play it with me. Very cool.  

[insertclevernamehere]

As this does not seem to have been made available on the AA store, does anyone know if the author of this and the speed hack of Dark Chambers is ok with ordering them for individual use as custom carts from the AA store?