Centipede hack to Bug War

[Tangentg]

Some time ago, I released my game, Bug War, which is a centipede clone based off of War of the Bugs.

 

After showing it to someone, they suggested that I "convert it to an Atari 2600 rom" so that it could be played on an actual Atari console.

However, I don't know of any way that was possible.

 

However, could something be done to Centipede, like at least a graphical and sound hack (with a few gameplay twists perhaps)?

 

I wanted to try to get into hacking myself but the Atariage page pointed me to this forum, which has no hacking tutorials pinned and when I used Google, a site said I had to understand assembly code. If I could "extract" the batari basic-type code from a rom and then edit it maybe I'd be able to change the graphics, colour and sound a bit but this is a bit all too complicated for me.

 

Could any of you make a centipede hack to make it resemble Bug War a bit? Thanks.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Tangentg

[CDS Games]

Do you have the Stella emulator? It has a built-in debugger and also shows graphics data as graphics, so it makes games very easy to hack.

 

I don't think there's any way to extract bBasic code from a game that wasn't written in it. There's no easy way around it--you will need to learn assembly code if you want to hack a game like this. The good news is, it's not all that hard. I didn't really understand Assembly at all when I started hacking, and with each new project it got easier and easier until I was able to write routines from scratch.

 

Open the game ROM, find the graphics data (Stella makes this super easy), and fiddle around with things little by little. I am sure since you already know how to program it will not be difficult to pick up.

 

People grow old on here waiting for others to do their hack/programming projects for them, so learning it yourself is your best bet.