Space Rocks player shot hit detection

[Dave2600]

I'm in the UK playing on two PAL six switch 2600s.
When I play space rocks (spacerocks20121129_PAL.bin) on either console via a harmony cartridge (PAL BIOS 1.06 50), the hit detection for the player's shots is poor, with many shots just passing straight through the targets.
Is this an known problem with the ROM on PAL machines, or do I perhaps have a hardware problem in the consoles or harmony cartridge?

Space Rocks does sometimes crash on me too (on both consoles) leading to coloured lines on screen and needing a restart of the machine. Other times it seems stable for a session.
No other games on harmony or actual cartridges that I've tried have a problem though.

 

When playing the same ROM through Stella on my PC the shot detection is spot on, so I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't work properly on my actual hardware.
I wanted to get a Space Rocks cartridge, but this is putting me off (this and the fact that sales are unfortunately down for the UK at the moment).
Thought perhaps this might be a 50Hz timing issue affecting collision detection, but I really don't know.
The game periodically crashing is a worry too.

 

Anyone with similar hardware had a similar experience?
Your thoughts would be appreciated, thank you.
 

[+SpiceWare]

Have never heard of issues like that with Space Rocks. The only difference between the NTSC and PAL version are the color values used, both versions run at 60 Hz so all logic relating to object motion, collection detection, etc. are identical.

 

I have noticed that the contacts on my Harmony seem to get dirty quicker than my other cartridges, at which point games will act up. I posted some tips at the bottom of the first post here on how to clean both the Harmony cartridge and the Atari's cartridge port.

 

There's also an issue with the Harmony Encore, I released a released of Space Rocks with an updated DPC+ driver that addresses that. You can find it in reply 609 of the Space Rocks topic.

 

[Dave2600]

Thank you for the reply.
I searched for similar issues being reported and found nothing, so it's obviously not a common problem at all.

I've tried the spacerocks20121129_PAL_encore.bin ROM, but it is more apt to crash on my system (shortly after a game is started), than the spacerocks20121129_PAL.bin ROM.  Not sure if that is suggestive of anything. Using the latter ROM I haven't experienced crashes for a while now.

 

The shot hit detection is weird though and makes the game quite hard to play. It's not every shot, or even most shots, but quite noticeable, particularly for the large saucer and medium narrow waisted asteroids.

The saucer in particular allows shots straight through it most of the time. Likewise the shots from the saucer rarely hit the player, again passing through.
And yet on Stella these ROMS perform flawlessly.

I've given the harmony cartridge and console contacts a clean, but it's not changed anything.

 

Thank you again for your time. If other people with the same spec as me (6 switch PAL and harmony encore) aren't having similar problems, then I suppose I might have a hardware issue of some kind, that is being exposed by this scenario.
Are there any usual suspect components that might interfere with this sort of operation?  I've recently recapped, replaced the voltage regulator and cleaned up the power switch on one console and in every other respect it works great.

Dave

[+SpiceWare]

Just noticed this topic in the Harmony forum - apparently there's been a revision to the chip used in the Harmony that causes problems with some of the existing ARM enhanced games, including Space Rocks.  batari posted a fixed version of Space Rocks in reply 2 - can you give that a try?

 

Do note that it's an NTSC build so the colors will be incorrect, but if it does fix your issue I should be able to use that to create a fixed PAL version.

 

 

[Franco72]

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

Just noticed this topic in the Harmony forum - apparently there's been a revision to the chip used in the Harmony that causes problems with some of the existing ARM enhanced games, including Space Rocks.  batari posted a fixed version of Space Rocks in reply 2 - can you give that a try?

 

Do note that it's an NTSC build so the colors will be incorrect, but if it does fix your issue I should be able to use that to create a fixed PAL version.

 

 

Hi,

Space Rocks is ok.

Draconian not  work.

You can create a fix also for Draconian?

[+SpiceWare]

2 hours ago, Franco72 said:

You can create a fix also for Draconian?

 

Wish I could - the issue is with the Custom Bankswitching Driver that's part of the game. It controls how the ARM processor interacts with the Atari. The driver is written in ARM assembly, which I'm not familiar with.

 

For Space Rocks the driver is called DPC+, and is 3K in size.

 

Draconian was written using a newer, more efficient driver called CDF. It's 2K in size. The driver is not backward compatible with DPC+, so I can't fix Draconian using the driver from Space Rocks. I've added a reply to the other topic directing batari to where the ROM for Draconian is since he knows what the problem is and how to fix it.

 

If that fixed version if Space Rocks works for @Dave2600 I can created a fixed PAL version by extracting the 3K driver from the fixed version, and putting it in the PAL version.

[Dave2600]

Just now, SpiceWare said:

If that fixed version if Space Rocks works for @Dave2600 I can created a fixed PAL version by extracting the 3K driver from the fixed version, and putting it in the PAL version.

I am pleased to confirm that the spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin ROM has fixed the shot detection problem.
It now plays perfectly.
You're a good crowd around here.
Thank you so much for looking into this.

[+SpiceWare]

11 hours ago, Dave2600 said:

I am pleased to confirm that the spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin ROM has fixed the shot detection problem.

 

Awesome!  My work day is about to start, I'll create a fixed PAL version later this evening.

[+SpiceWare]

Had a little extra time at lunch, you can find the patched versions in reply 663.

 

Removed - as seen below the patched versions did not work.

[Dave2600]

Thank you again.
I'm extremely impressed with this game and it's wonderful to be able to play it on my original childhood Atari console. Asteroids get back in your box!  ?
Will be getting the physical cart once the new store is open and shipping to the UK.

[Dave2600]

Just now, SpiceWare said:

Had a little extra time at lunch, you can find the patched versions in reply 663.

Ok, I've had a chance to test the ROMS spacerocks2022519_PAL60.bin  and spacerocks2022519_NTSC.bin.
Unfortunately these both still have the problem with hit detection, whereas batari's previous spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin does work correctly in this respect and fixed the problem.

 

[+SpiceWare]

2 minutes ago, Dave2600 said:

Ok, I've had a chance to test the ROMS spacerocks2022519_PAL60.bin  and spacerocks2022519_NTSC.bin.
Unfortunately these both still have the problem with hit detection, whereas batari's previous spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin does work correctly in this respect and fixed the problem.

 

 

Hmm - just did a diff of my NTSC version with the fix batari posted, and the files are different for some reason...

diff spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin spacerocks2022519_NTSC.bin
Binary files spacerocks_Harmony_fix.bin and spacerocks2022519_NTSC.bin differ

I did hex dumps of each game and there's lots of differences after the 3K driver, any hex value in blue something that's different.

 

 

I'm not sure what's up, so will remove those other builds.

[+SpiceWare]

19 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

I'm not sure what's up, so will remove those other builds.

 

@Dave2600 - part of batari's fix was a change to the stack pointer, which requires the game to be rebuilt using the source.

 

I'll see what I can do to rebuild both the NTSC and PAL60 versions. 

 

It'll probably sometime be next week as I have plans with my folks this weekend.  Also the compiler we're using has changed since I last built Space Rocks, so I expect to have some compile time issues to figure out.

 

This time around I'll send you the ROMs (both NTSC and PAL60) to test before posting them publicly.

[Dave2600]

OK, thank you. I've been away myself. Hope you had a good weekend too.