I wanna make an Adventure color hack

[dreamcups]

Hi

 

Adventure has always been a personal favorite of mine, i think it's an almost perfect game. Only thing about it that i think could be better is it's set of colors. So, i 've been developing the idea of trying to creat an Adventure hack with alternate colors, leaving the rest of the game just like it is. I must notify you people that i'm a newbe in the hacking world, but i'm really willing to develop some skills, so i started this tread, basically, because i'd like to know from you:

What is the right way to start this kind of project? What are the best programs for a newbe like me? Are there good tutorials around that may help me in my task?

 

Any tips will be very welcome.

 

I'm also posting here an image showing the way i'd like this hack to look:

 

Edited November 22, 2016 by dreamcups

[neotokeo2001]

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/47441-create-your-own-adventure-final-version-released/?hl=%20hacking%20%20adventure

 

That is a great place to start on hacking Adventure.

[accousticguitar]

I never got cyoa to work, but if you look in my signature under "Missadventure" you can find development tools to help you out. Changing colors would be super easy to do.

[dreamcups]

Thank you, nice people. I'll check this tools out and, yep, all i want is to change the game's colors.

 

 

One question, though: can i open the original Adventure rom file with some of these tools, and modify the game with them, or will i have to recreate the entire game in order to get what i want?

Edited November 23, 2016 by dreamcups

[accousticguitar]

Thank you, nice people. I'll check this tools out and, yep, all i want is to change the game's colors.

 

 

One question, though: can i open the original Adventure rom file with some of these tools, and modify the game with them, or will i have to recreate the entire game in order to get what i want?

If you use the Advent8k.txt file look for the RoomDataTable to modify the room colors. You would then use Dasm to assemble the text file into a playable binary. It's been a while since I worked with the Adventure hack but the sprite colors seem to be in "data" (such as RDragonData). The assembly file is well commented to help understand what is going on.

[Nukey Shay]

You can hack the color data right within the Stella debugger itself. To get the addresses you need to look for, download the reverse-engineered Adventure source by Joel Park. You can find that at the Minidig here. Download and open adventure.asm using any text editor. The areas you will be searching for are ;Room Data for room colors, and ;Objects for sprite colors. The 3rd and 4th bytes in each room definition line hold the color and b&w values respectively for the former, and 7th and 8th bytes in each sprite definition line for those color and b&w values. Back to Stella...load the rom, and hit the ` key (just below escape) to open the debugger window when the game is running. In the lower right of the screen, Stella will reveal the program code and data tables it has encountered thus far (the longer you let the game run beforehand, the more Stella will figure out on it's own). You can scroll up and down this section at will. Adventure is just a 4k rom, so there is no messy bankswitching or other voodoo going on you need to worry about. Double-click any values you want to change to enter your own...and use the keyboard enter key to apply the change (numpad's enter does not work here). When finished making your changes, you can save the hacked binary by pressing the appropriate tab near this window.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW any odd values entered will trigger the program to substitute the frame counter for the color (as originally used for the chalise and author signature objects to make them flash). This is a generic routine, so it applies to room colors as well. Use even values only for any object or room you want to be a specific color. The background color is "hard-coded" to be a light grey color ($08) at address $F13D for all screens regardless of color/b&w switch setting. Be careful not to accidentally alter program instructions if you change that one.