Asteroids "Empty"

[SS]

I have been putting files onto my UNO Cart this past week. Mostly I am interested in the games that I had (pirated) on disk when I was a kid. I have this one version of Atari Asteroids that was hacked so that the rocks were vector-like to be more arcade accurate looking. I have been looking around for an .ATR, .BIN, or .XEX format file of this version but cannot seem to locate one anywhere. I'm hoping that someone here might be able to give me a hand in locating it. Thanks.

[Lord Thag]

This one?

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-asteroids-ii_353.html

 

Also, there is an actual *emulated* version of the arcade game where you are actually playing the real arcade game on the Atari:

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-asteroids-emulator_28626.html

[SS]

Thanks but that's not it. The game that I'm looking for definitely says "© 1981 Atari". I don't know if it was a fan made graphics hack or an actual Atari prototype but I have had a copy of it on a pirated multi-game floppy disk since 1984. Aside from the empty-colored Asteroids I don't think that there is really any difference between this version and the officially released one.

[ACML]

I believe this is what you are looking for.

 

Asteroids special hollow (ATARI).XEX

 

[SS]

I believe this is what you are looking for.

 

Asteroids special hollow (ATARI).XEX

 

Yes, that's the one! Thank you very, very much!

[SS]

I played around with this for a while. The file works great with Altirra configured to be a 64kb 800XL. It will not, however, run via my UNO Cart on my real 800XL. I wonder what the problem is? I wish that I had an SIO2SD to try it out on.

[ACML]

I work's fine on real hardware (400/800 or XL line). And yes it works using an SIO2SD. I never realized that Asteroids had 4 player modes (individual, meelee, coop). If I had know that, it would have been very fun in the 80's. One of those games that you need a 400 or 800 with four joystick ports.

Edited August 6, 2017 by ACML

[SS]

The problem most likely lies with the UNO cart. The file loads the game select screen (a VERY brief flash of it, that is) and then the screen goes blank. The UNO cart won't run 100% of .XEX files though. I think that it's because of the way that the cart accesses system memory. I figured that it would probably work via floppy drive or SIO2SD though. One of these days I'm going to have to break down and purchase a SIO2SD for myself.

 

Thanks for your help on this.

[SS]

I seem to have forgotten how to do just about everything that I ever used to know how to do on my XL (which admittedly wasn't an amazing amount of stuff to begin with). However what I did learn today is how to created a new .ATR on my PC, put it onto my UNO Cart, use the DOS files on the .ATR to make the UNO Cart act like D1, copy the "Asteroids Empty" .EXE from my 1050 to the new .ATR on the UNO Cart, go back to the PC and use Altirra to extract the .EXE from the .ATR file, rename the extension to an .XEX, and put it back onto the UNO Cart miniSD. Wala! It worked! Maybe not a huge accomplishment but at least enough to make me pat myself on the back.

Asteroids Empty.xex

[ACML]

I seem to have forgotten how to do just about everything that I ever used to know how to do on my XL (which admittedly wasn't an amazing amount of stuff to begin with). However what I did learn today is how to created a new .ATR on my PC, put it onto my UNO Cart, use the DOS files on the .ATR to make the UNO Cart act like D1, copy the "Asteroids Empty" .EXE from my 1050 to the new .ATR on the UNO Cart, go back to the PC and use Altirra to extract the .EXE from the .ATR file, rename the extension to an .XEX, and put it back onto the UNO Cart miniSD. Wala! It worked! Maybe not a huge accomplishment but at least enough to make me pat myself on the back.

Is there a difference between the one you uploaded and the one I did? Mine was less than 7K and yours is 9K. Are there just 2K full of zeros or is there more to it?

[SS]

There doesn't seem to be any differences in gameplay or appearances that I can tell.

[+DrVenkman]

Is there a difference between the one you uploaded and the one I did? Mine was less than 7K and yours is 9K. Are there just 2K full of zeros or is there more to it?

That’s a good question but I can confirm your .xex doesn’t run from an UNO Cart but SS’s does. A binary comparison would be interesting.

[Rybags]

Original is 8K cart and fairly sure it was one of those early games that only needed 8K Ram as well.

A quick look at the original Rom, it looks pretty full and even with best Rar compression it only shrunk to about 6.5K.

 

I suspect the "empty" version is no more than a graphics hack, and it's been around a fairly long time.

Possibly the 9K version mentioned includes some loader type code. The game has some Rom protection which you'd generally just patch out anyway. But for cart to executable it was common to have a stub of code that makes a copy of the top 1K that gets overwritten by the screen on warmstart then restores it back each time.

[Brentarian]

Here is a rom/car version of the above .exe file above in case anybody needs it.

EmptyAsteroids.zip

[SS]

Thanks Brentarian. Is this file something that you found on the internet, your own rip, or a conversion of one of the files from above? I ask because I searched and searched for this thing and came up completely empty before this thread.

[Brentarian]

With a hex editor I compared the differences in the .exe and a regular Asteroids .rom file (minus the .exe loading part), then copied over those differences to the .rom file.

[SS]

Sweet. Thanks.

[kenjennings]

I work's fine on real hardware (400/800 or XL line). And yes it works using an SIO2SD. I never realized that Asteroids had 4 player modes (individual, meelee, coop). If I had know that, it would have been very fun in the 80's. One of those games that you need a 400 or 800 with four joystick ports.

 

I kid you not, in 1985/86, Asteroids was THE party game in our dorm. I was probably the only computer geek on speaking terms with the football jocks. Pretzels, beer, and 4 player asteroids combat. The asteroids were entirely inconsequential. We played it like Space War.