Popeye 7800

[+Allan]

If Parker Brothers were still making video games when the 7800 came out and did this port, I doubt it would have come out half as good as this.

[SalemFrost7800]

This looks Brilliant. I can't wait to own this Cart!

[+darryl1970]

22 hours ago, Rick Dangerous said:

Played a ton of this on 5200. This and Kangaroo are at the top of my 7800 want list.

I got a LOT of enjoyment out of the 5200 version. I was always jealous of the ColecoVision Brutus, but we had the multi-colored Popeye. We also had all of the tunes. Brutus was pretty dumb, but David Johnson and Susan did an incredible job squeezing ALL of that out of 16k. They weren't working on an i7 with the amazing tools @RevEng and @mksmith have created!

22 hours ago, Rick Dangerous said:

 

Will give it a whirl when I get a Concerto, or day one cart/box/manual purchase from me!

Sounds good. It's on the JS7800 emulator, online. I need to send Chris the latest version though.

[+darryl1970]

20 hours ago, Allan said:

If Parker Brothers were still making video games when the 7800 came out and did this port, I doubt it would have come out half as good as this.

Thank you! I imagine development was much tougher back in the day. As I replied in my previous response, I had the best modern-day tools, without a cartridge size restriction. I am really glad people like it!

[SalemFrost7800]

On 12/28/2020 at 7:06 PM, darryl1970 said:

Thank you! I imagine development was much tougher back in the day. As I replied in my previous response, I had the best modern-day tools, without a cartridge size restriction. I am really glad people like it!

Any estimates on when this will be available to purchase or even pre-order?

[+darryl1970]

1 hour ago, SalemFrost7800 said:

Any estimates on when this will be available to purchase or even pre-order?

I do not. I have made a few enhancements during my time off this week. They probably need tested to be sure. @Synthpopalooza is working on a few sound tweaks. At that point. I am waiting on EPROMs, which got delayed in the mail. Once I receive them, I am hoping to be able to test the latest version on actual hardware, thanks to @tep392. @Atariboy2600 has the front box art finished, but I am not sure what is needed for the back and the manual.

 

I would hope to have a release candidate by the end of January, but there are a lot of variables involved.

 

Maybe one of the veteran programmers can chime in on how long it takes to get a finished product to the AA store.

 

--Darryl

[SlidellMan]

Don't worry about rushing it out the door, Darryl. Just focus on making it the best version.

[+Muddyfunster]

7 hours ago, darryl1970 said:

Maybe one of the veteran programmers can chime in on how long it takes to get a finished product to the AA store

It varies, Al usually has a batches of releases a couple of times per year. I'd ping him and see what he thinks. A batch of new releases hit the store a few weeks ago, not sure when the next batch would be.

[+darryl1970]

Version 2.9 is updated in the first thread

[Trebor]

On 11/9/2020 at 12:34 PM, darryl1970 said:

1. Olive screams "HELP!" on the ship level.
2. "Popeye Catch!" call out is present on the Notes level now. (Yes, the gray does show through the letters on the arcade too!)
3. If the punch button is pressed during an intro or pause before a level starts, Popeye will punch when the level begins. This is a personal detail I wanted to include from the arcade...

While all the latest updates are appreciated, I especially enjoy the three listed above.  Those kind of touches and attention to detail are excellent.

Beta v2.9 looks, sounds and plays wonderfully so far!

[sn8k]

This looks dope. Need this on cart.

[Atariboy2600]

I have some idea to add more illustrations of characters like Wimpy, Sweet Pea and Sea Hag for the back and manual.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Atariboy2600

[+darryl1970]

There is a special version on of Popeye at the JS7800 Emulator site!

 

It's still a limited demo, which ends after the ship is cleared. This version has Novice and Expert available for play.

 

@raz0red & I got into a little high score competition. Somebody with the initials MAZ joined in on the Novice level.

 

The cool thing about this version is that you need to point-press to get onto leader board.

You only have 3 screens to do so, so every point counts.

You get 2 lives, and an extra is earned at 40k (20k on Novice).

 

Let's see what you got!!

 

Try it here!

 

[Atariboy2600]

BTW how soon do you need the box and manual art?

[+wavemotion]

Great game! I tried the new RC1 demo on my DS emulator (just for curiosity sake to make sure it will run) and did notice something strange with the high scores. Perhaps this is only designed to work properly with the JS7800 and, if so, my apologies for reporting something that isn't an issue.

 

On the Arcade Top 5, I was adjusting some internal settings on my emulator for screen scaling and I died with exactly zero points... but it asked me for my high score initials (?!) even though all scores were zero. I entered them. When I played my first real game (yeah, I suck), that zero score which was at the top of the leaderboard shuffled down to position 5 and had some garbled score characters (you can see in the screenshot).  Lastly, in the Expert Mode, all high score initials were the colon ':' character.

 

If I had to guess, this is because I had run Beta 2.9 just before this and maybe there is some new use of the HSC memory. 

 

I did try the trick of press-and-hold PAUSE then Select to get into the high score maintenance to wipe the scores but it didn't work for Popeye (but does work for me on stock HSC games like Centipede, Asteroids, etc). 

I realize you intended this only for the JS7800 online emulator so I've removed the rom from my personal system. 

[raz0red]

42 minutes ago, llabnip said:

Great game! I tried the new RC1 demo on my DS emulator (just for curiosity sake to make sure it will run) and did notice something strange with the high scores. Perhaps this is only designed to work properly with the JS7800 and, if so, my apologies for reporting something that isn't an issue.

 

On the Arcade Top 5, I was adjusting some internal settings on my emulator for screen scaling and I died with exactly zero points... but it asked me for my high score initials (?!) even though all scores were zero. I entered them. When I played my first real game (yeah, I suck), that zero score which was at the top of the leaderboard shuffled down to position 5 and had some garbled score characters (you can see in the screenshot).  Lastly, in the Expert Mode, all high score initials were the colon ':' character.

 

If I had to guess, this is because I had run Beta 2.9 just before this and maybe there is some new use of the HSC memory. 

 

I did try the trick of press-and-hold PAUSE then Select to get into the high score maintenance to wipe the scores but it didn't work for Popeye (but does work for me on stock HSC games like Centipede, Asteroids, etc). 

I realize you intended this only for the JS7800 online emulator so I've removed the rom from my personal system. 

 

There is nothing in the implementation that is specific to JS7800 (it is just standard HSC support). 

 

I would guess that there may be some issues with your current HSC implementation. I know there were a number of issues that I discovered and resolved when adding HSC support to JS7800 (coming from the existing ProSystem implementation). Also, in cases like this, I would highly recommend running against A7800 for comparison, as it is very accurate and has been thoroughly tested.

 

Thanks,

Chris

[+wavemotion]

20 minutes ago, raz0red said:

I would guess that there may be some issues with your current HSC implementation.

That's very possible! There were some issues early on when I first implemented it... but those seem to have been worked out for several months now. I've not had any HSC problems of any kind with any of the games that support HSC except early WiP of Arkanoid which would wipe scores and DK-XM which takes over the high-score-cart title as "TEPs DEMO" or similar. I've guarded against both of those issues these days. All other games deal with high scores quite well - including Popeye Beta 2.9. 

[+darryl1970]

2 hours ago, raz0red said:

There is nothing in the implementation that is specific to JS7800 (it is just standard HSC support). 

 

I would guess that there may be some issues with your current HSC implementation. I know there were a number of issues that I discovered and resolved when adding HSC support to JS7800 (coming from the existing ProSystem implementation). Also, in cases like this, I would highly recommend running against A7800 for comparison, as it is very accurate and has been thoroughly tested.

 

Thanks,

Chris

I would imagine it's more of an emulation issue, since it's a standard HS code.

1 hour ago, llabnip said:

That's very possible! There were some issues early on when I first implemented it... but those seem to have been worked out for several months now. I've not had any HSC problems of any kind with any of the games that support HSC except early WiP of Arkanoid which would wipe scores and DK-XM which takes over the high-score-cart title as "TEPs DEMO" or similar. I've guarded against both of those issues these days. All other games deal with high scores quite well - including Popeye Beta 2.9. 

I don't know of any reason the game would cause that behavior, but thanks for bringing it my attention. 

[+wavemotion]

1 hour ago, darryl1970 said:

I don't know of any reason the game would cause that behavior, but thanks for bringing it my attention. 

No worries - and it's probably on my end so don't fret over it. At a minimum, it's still saving new high scores just fine - it was just odd the first time using it after playing the earlier betas (which is why I guessed that maybe something in the use of the HS memory changed). 

 

Since I've already interrupted you    one small favor:  on future builds can you fill in the cart title on the .A78?  Bob is really great about doing it but other homebrew authors are hit-and-miss.  I use the .A78 to sort out some stuff (cart type, high score, XM, various RAM banks, etc)... but because the DSi/XL has 256x192 resolution, I have to make some tradeoffs on scaling and do so on a title-by-title basis (and Popeye uses a LOT of screen real-estate... whereas some homebrews have lots of "sky" or "ground" that I can eat a few pixels into to get a few more playable pixel rows on the screen). Anyway, I normally do so by MD5SUM of the (header-stripped) binary but as a backup I can use the cart title which is very useful for WiP games. Right now, your game lists the cart title as "My Game" - and so do about 30 other WiP games.

 

[+darryl1970]

6 minutes ago, llabnip said:

No worries - and it's probably on my end so don't fret over it. At a minimum, it's still saving new high scores just fine - it was just odd the first time using it after playing the earlier betas (which is why I guessed that maybe something in the use of the HS memory changed). 

 

Since I've already interrupted you    one small favor:  on future builds can you fill in the cart title on the .A78?  Bob is really great about doing it but other homebrew authors are hit-and-miss.  I use the .A78 to sort out some stuff (cart type, high score, XM, various RAM banks, etc)... but because the DSi/XL has 256x192 resolution, I have to make some tradeoffs on scaling and do so on a title-by-title basis (and Popeye uses a LOT of screen real-estate... whereas some homebrews have lots of "sky" or "ground" that I can eat a few pixels into to get a few more playable pixel rows on the screen). Anyway, I normally do so by MD5SUM of the (header-stripped) binary but as a backup I can use the cart title which is very useful for WiP games. Right now, your game lists the cart title as "My Game" - and so do about 30 other WiP games.

 

I am kind of a lightweight here. I wrote Popeye in 7800Basic. I am not sure what that is. I can edit an a.78 file, but I do not know what I would be looking to complete. I could see if I know.

 

Is this your emulator? Is there a link to it?

[+wavemotion]

9 minutes ago, darryl1970 said:

I am kind of a lightweight here. I wrote Popeye in 7800Basic. I am not sure what that is. I can edit an a.78 file, but I do not know what I would be looking to complete. I could see if I know.

 

Is this your emulator? Is there a link to it?

Ah! That explains it - 7800basic appears to put the default title of "My Game" into the .A78 (which is a 128 byte header that pre-pends the actual binary... it has all kinds of useful stuff in it about Pokey locations, HSC support, etc. that an emulator can use to make things as good as possible). 

Don't worry about it.

My emulators are based on work done 9 years ago Alekmaul - and I took over all 3 of the Atari console emulators for the DS last year:  StellaDS, A5200DS and A7800DS.  They run on the DSi using just a standard SD card but you need a launcher... I use Twilight Menu++ which is fantastic (and doesn't require you to use custom firmware if you don't feel comfortable doing that). The Author of TWL++ has now included all 3 of my new emulators in the most recent build so they will just launch .A26/.BIN, .A52 and .A78 files appropriately. 

You can find my emulators here:  https://github.com/wavemotion-dave 

And you can find Twilight++ here: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/TWiLightMenu/releases 

[+darryl1970]

19 hours ago, llabnip said:

Ah! That explains it - 7800basic appears to put the default title of "My Game" into the .A78 (which is a 128 byte header that pre-pends the actual binary... it has all kinds of useful stuff in it about Pokey locations, HSC support, etc. that an emulator can use to make things as good as possible). 

Don't worry about it.

My emulators are based on work done 9 years ago Alekmaul - and I took over all 3 of the Atari console emulators for the DS last year:  StellaDS, A5200DS and A7800DS.  They run on the DSi using just a standard SD card but you need a launcher... I use Twilight Menu++ which is fantastic (and doesn't require you to use custom firmware if you don't feel comfortable doing that). The Author of TWL++ has now included all 3 of my new emulators in the most recent build so they will just launch .A26/.BIN, .A52 and .A78 files appropriately. 

You can find my emulators here:  https://github.com/wavemotion-dave 

And you can find Twilight++ here: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/TWiLightMenu/releases 

So, will they not run on a stock DS? I didn't jump on the next generation, but I still have my old DS and SD card around.

[+wavemotion]

57 minutes ago, darryl1970 said:

So, will they not run on a stock DS? I didn't jump on the next generation, but I still have my old DS and SD card around.

All 3 of my emulators will run on the original DS (if you have a flashcart... those units didn't have an SD card slot) but will not run most games full speed. The A7800DS emulator is the most demanding of the lot - with faster processing, Maria chip, Sally chip, the TIA and Pokey sound handling and it really doesn't do well with a stock DS. Simple games without Pokey (Asteroids, Joust, Centipede, etc) will run fairly close to full speed but Popeye only runs at 45FPS and the sound is terrible due to the demands of the Pokey processing which the DS can't keep up with.

 

The DSi (which is the first of the DS units to have an SD card slot) and the DSi-XL, 3DS, etc. will run virtually everything full speed as they have 2x speed processors. 

[NostAlgae37]

On ‎12‎/‎11‎/‎2020 at 8:37 PM, Atariboy2600 said:

Also here's the final art on the box art tell me what you think?

Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I don't care for the composition at all.  Popeye is the principal character in the game and he is too small/not featured prominently in the layout.  I also don't care for the "surrealistic" quality of the depicted stage terrain or the way that the wrinkles on Brutus' shirt look (particularly where his swollen belly is stressing it at the buttons).  Ultimately, I don't think that it has the look/feel/style of vintage box art from the period.  Also, it would have been nice to incorporate the Sea Hag somehow.  Again, I'm not posting this to be mean or negative, but to give you ideas for improvement.  As it stands now, if I had to grade it, I'd only give it a B-/C+.  Just my 2 cents.

[John Stamos Mullet]

I think the artwork is fantastic, as is!

 

however, just for nostalgia sake, I'd love to An optional 7800 version with the origina Parker Bros. artwork, just because it would fill a nostalgia gap the 7800 console was always missing. 
 

either way, take my money. Just take it!