Hack'em! / Hangly Man combined :)

[Artlover]

When I was hacking Jr. for speed, I noticed how easy it was to add it's method of easier games - by eliminating some of the monsters using the low bits of the game variation and using that as the upper limit to the monster's routines. I was already using a variable to track the variation, so that is another "why not?" option...it didn't "cost" anything to implement.

Any idea why intermissions don't work on the modes with less then 4 ghosts?

 

Difficulty switches:

Left difficulty controls how well the monsters track the player. In B difficulty, only the red monster will seek out the player, all others move randomly. In A difficulty, each of those random monsters are given a variable amount of time to seek the player as well. The arcade's method of tracking the player is not implemented in either mode, so this game is considerably "dumber" than it.

 

The right difficulty controls how fast the player moves. In B, the player can outrun all of the monsters on any level.

 

The score's color will indicate what position the switches are in, as a reminder. White = both B. Red = left A, right B. Blue = left B, right A. Green = both A.

Cool. Thanks for that info.

 

BTW the Ms. Hack version was pretty much abandoned, because I could never figure out why it doesn't work on real hardware...what's the point of a 2600 game that doesn't work on a 2600?

Quitter! I reiterate, QUITTER!

 

But seriously... Quitter!

 

You should atleast look at it again. Time away helps clear the mind, and gives you a better chance to maybe pick up on what's wrong.

 

Didn't you save earlier builds as you were making the hacks to Hack'Em? If so, do any of them work on real hardware? That would help narrow down what you need to look at right there.

 

If not, start over then, and keep builds as you go along.

 

Or just say screw real hardware; it works in emulation, that's good enough.

 

But seriously, you're a 2600 Pac-Man God, Hack'Em proves it! To leave Ms.Hack unfixed & unfinished is criminal. Criminal I tells ya! You can't let "it" win and give up (you quitter ).

 

I wish I knew something about 2600 programming so I could give you an extra set of eyes to look it over with. I know 6502 assembly and junk, did lots of programming on the C64 & 128. But the 2600 I can't wrap my head around. I was reading your assembly code for Hack'Em and was over some of it.

[Shannon]

I say this because not all emulators have the Color/BW switch (IE: z26 on Xbox doesn't, or atleast the function isn't mapped in any user selectable way), but they all have difficulty switches.

X-port added that in the last official release of Z26 upon my request.

[Nukey Shay]

I dunno...intermissions work fine in Z26 and Stella (that is the extent that I can confirm first-hand). Yours is the first post that mention a problem with easier game modes, so I gather that it may be unique to your emulator setup. I never heard about them not appearing on real hardware.

 

Ms. Hack has me completely lost. I never discovered a reason why it fails (and I did look into it a LOT of times)...and have no means of checking it line-by-line on an actual console to try to figure out why the boot sequence fails. It's based off a stable version of this game, so it's not doing anything unique when booting.

 

If anybody does discover why, Stephen Anthony is also interested so that he can update Stella (for more accurate hardware emulation). I wonder how many times he's had to try to make a game NON-playable?

[+stephena]

Post in Hack'em! / Hangly Man combined RE:RE .

/s..

oh before i forget I had problems w Stella xp and open gl too.

you must reinstall stella xp this is why i keep stella in its own directory and the roms in a totaly sepreate one.

cause if you change to the wrong open gl settings it wont let you fullscreen so if youreinstall and pick

original COLOR PALLETTE then the colors are perfect also you dont really need open gl this is what i have for settings om my stella

this is fullscreen after I hit alt enter it still comes back also sometimes when running a pal game you have to hit alt enter a couple of times to get it to stick.. this is why non open gl seems to at least on my card work better

I suggest you upgrade to the latest version of Stella (2.7.5), and start with a completely new stella.ini file (erase/backup the one in 'My Documents\Stella'). I think some of the problems you mention have been fixed in the latest release(s).

 

EDIT: I should add that if you can get OpenGL working on your system, it really is the preferred option. It gives you free scaling (ie, you can run at desktop resolution at full speed), changable aspect ratio settings, and 'sync to vblank' (which allows smooth updates if you're using a monitor/LCD running at 60Hz). And if you're having problems with OpenGL mode with the latest release, please report them with a detailed bug report.

Edited April 8, 2009 by stephena

[awace]

A little off topic but on topic of GAME '''HACK'EM(.BIN'''

 

Hello All

Guess What I got A NEW EE PROM BURNER its a new willem my old one probably works dont have a clue old one is version V3.1 anyone want to make offer on old one I will make it deal.... anyway not why i posted.. THE real reason i posted here is I ACTUALLY took a dreamcatcher Homebrew Cart and burned a actuall CART

of HACK'EM(.BIN and VIOLA it worked the new burner is version pcb3 jumper vpp jumper on vcc using 12v power pack jumper on VCC j6 on upper j7 on lower and ones next to socket on normal using 27c64 chips and since snoopy originally was 8k and so what my hacked crockrocks asteroid © 1981 hacked using hackomatic II by me was 8k i figured i would try hackem and by my surprise it actually burned and WORKED on BOTH FLASHBACK II witch sounds a little lamer than original atari 2600 A sears arcade II same 2600 guts just extra joy holes .

 

PS.

please PArdon my Grammer I was up all night futzing w WILLEM pcb35 only costed $16 plus SHipping on ebay.

I thought it was to cheap to work but i guess (Thailand) or Kittikunkarnchang(Thailand)co.,LTD makes stuff not to expensive witch works good.

PPS.

OH yeah the Cart board im using says REv 12 © Chris Wilkson but i think i got it from Dream catcher I cant remember but it works good now to check out the Atari Age ©I mean ® Store If i get a nother one working Ill send it to Nukey if you want one Since i like it so mutch.. I love HACK'EM(.BIN it says 2005 and the < moves on start screen I wonder what if 8k=2764 than what does the new version need I wonder anyway it was a success I didnt think it would boot but it did!..

PPPSS I had same problem w open gl but finnally figured out has something to do w zoom all i do is reinstall stella ontop of it self and that fixes it if you get rid of stella.ini GOOD LUCK

 

 

**************************************

UPDATE 4:53am june 3 friday 2011

**************************************

just switch to 800x600 and it seems to start..

Edited June 3, 2011 by awace

[awace]

I dunno...intermissions work fine in Z26 and Stella (that is the extent that I can confirm first-hand). Yours is the first post that mention a problem with easier game modes, so I gather that it may be unique to your emulator setup. I never heard about them not appearing on real hardware.

 

Ms. Hack has me completely lost. I never discovered a reason why it fails (and I did look into it a LOT of times)...and have no means of checking it line-by-line on an actual console to try to figure out why the boot sequence fails. It's based off a stable version of this game, so it's not doing anything unique when booting.

 

If anybody does discover why, Stephen Anthony is also interested so that he can update Stella (for more accurate hardware emulation). I wonder how many times he's had to try to make a game NON-playable?

redirect me to file and ill try it sicne i got 4 extra chips left over from HAmvention... Ill try it on Real 2600 if you want ..

[awace]

That problem was overlooked in the last version. I had forgot to include their specific horizontal box position when performing a monster reversal (so it moves out of position to a map location that has no directions...and then picks one at random). This is corrected here. I'm not sure, but the screen roll could have come from there (since the game must make 6 passes through the map routine to come up empty).

In addition, there was also the bug of "plus" variations that only feature 1 or 2 monsters...if an energizer is eaten, 1 or 2 are allowed to stay lethal. But the game doesn't "know" which ones when doing the sound effects...so that the energizer sound effect would sitll be active even if neither of the monsters change to blue. This is fixed as well.

the one i was just playing was cool the invisible ghosts were eaten up and i was like wow the walls came back on it was kind of trippy i wasnt expecting that game variation when trying on real cart burn test anyway were the invisible ghosts subposed to be lethal and the visible ones subposed to be blue? that sounds like typical dislexia now what would be super cool is if the invisible ones poped in and out for a while then music rebooted like ms pretzel does then the invisible ones poped in for a second then went back invisible color not important but pink would be default player missile color proably easyer then the other ghosts could be blue I bet that would take a whole line by line anaylys t figure that out huh. HOW THE HECK DID YOU FIT A game that you would think take up more than 8k into a 8k file/???? you must know Atari C abreviations for whole lines of code that only take 3 lines .. of code ANYWAY hats off to Nukey Shay Greatest Atari Programmer in this forum.!

[Nukey Shay]

redirect me to file and ill try it sicne i got 4 extra chips left over from HAmvention... Ill try it on Real 2600 if you want ..

No need to test Ms.Hack on real hardware, it's already known that it doesn't work (so you would just produce an unplayable cart). What isn't known is why.

 

 

the one i was just playing was cool the invisible ghosts were eaten up and i was like wow the walls came back on it was kind of trippy i wasnt expecting that game variation when trying on real cart burn test anyway were the invisible ghosts subposed to be lethal and the visible ones subposed to be blue?

Nope...invisible, blue, and blue/white (flashing) monsters are always vulnerable to the player. They only become lethal when in their normal colors. This is consistant with the arcade games. The bug mentioned above was only in regards to the bluetime siren in "plus" variations.

 

 

that sounds like typical dislexia now what would be super cool is if the invisible ones poped in and out for a while then music rebooted like ms pretzel does then the invisible ones poped in for a second then went back invisible color not important but pink would be default player missile color proably easyer then the other ghosts could be blue I bet that would take a whole line by line anaylys t figure that out huh.

I have a difficult time understanding this sentance...but I just thought that I'd mention that there is no "default" color, and the game doesn't use missile sprites.

 

 

HOW THE HECK DID YOU FIT A game that you would think take up more than 8k into a 8k file/????

Ebivision's 4k kernel was a good starting place. I was fortunate enough to be able to decypher nearly everything outside of the display code to write my own routines. IMO Debro's unreleased homebrew version completely blows this one away in half that amount of space. I was just imitating how the arcade game looks and sounds, his is imitating how it looks, sounds, and behaves.

 

 

you must know Atari C abreviations for whole lines of code that only take 3 lines .. of code ANYWAY hats off to Nukey Shay Greatest Atari Programmer in this forum.!

Not by a longshot! I'm just a hacker...and as long as actual programmers (like Thomas, Paul, Dennis, etc.) are also hacking VCS games, I'm still on the ground floor. If you really want to melt your brain, read though stuff like the killer app or division threads (I can't understand more than a fraction of either one of those).

[Pacfan97]

DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!!!!!

Edited December 1, 2009 by Pacfan97

[Wickeycolumbus]

Hack Em! And Ms. Hack Em! Are Cool, But NOW You Need To Get Working On Jr.Hack Em! Right NOW!!! :mad: :mad:

 

Hmmm... something tells me that getting mad at Nukey for not doing a Jr. Hack Em is not going to convince him to spend hundreds of hours doing so

[Pacfan97]

He Can Take Breaks Every Once In While While Making A Jr. Hack Em!

Edited November 21, 2009 by Pacfan97

[Pacfan97]

Guys, I Am So Sorry About Those Demands I Made Lateley. About Jr. Hack em! It Doesn't Have To Scroll, You Can Just Make The Maze Size Exactly The Same Size As The Ones In Hack'em!. It Doesn't Really Have To Be The Same You Know. Just Do It Any Way You Want It To Be In. I Will Also Give You BOATLOADS Of Time To Work On It. I Will Probably Give You 2 Years To Work On It. Enjoy.

 

P.S. This Was A Note To Nukey Shay.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Pacfan97

[Wickeycolumbus]

I'm Fucking Tired Of Waiting!! I Really Want Jr. Hack'em!!!

Please!!!

 

Wow Do you realize what you are asking for? First of all, its not going to happen over night, and second of all, who are you to make such demands?

[BrianC]

Pacfan97, Jr. Hack 'Em is not likely since the Atari 2600 doesn't do horizontal scrolling well, hacking Hack 'Em into a scrolling game would be a tough or near impossible task, and there is already an awesome port of Jr. Pac-Man on the 2600.

Edited November 25, 2009 by BrianC

[Bentley Bear!]

Hack Em! And Ms. Hack Em! Are Cool, But NOW You Need To Get Working On Jr.Hack Em! Right NOW!!! :mad: :mad:

 

He Can Take Breaks Every Once In While While Making A Jr. Hack Em!

 

I'm Fucking Tired Of Waiting!! I Really Want Jr. Hack'em!!!

Please!!!

 

A Person Who Hates Dicking Around With Annoying People.

 

Alright, I've read enough...

 

I'm gonna put this as nicely and succinctly as I possibly can, in the immortal words of my dear mother:

 

"You can crap in one hand and want in the other, see which one gets filled faster!"

 

If you want a Jr. Hack'em bad enough, my humble suggestion is to SHUT yer bitchin' hole, start learning how to use batari code and create your own! Otherwise, you're wasting your typing here, thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

[Pacfan97]

Dear moderators:

 

Get rid of all my posts in this thread and everyones replies of them.

[CPUWIZ]

How about, no?

[BDW]

Dear moderators:

 

Get rid of all my posts in this thread and everyones replies of them.

You've got quite a few demands dont you?

 

How about, no?

 

 

 

I love this guy. He is such a great source for lulz, spews crap at Nukey, then demands something else. Being vulger all the while. I've even seen the demands for a ban hammer, this is great stuff.

[Pacfan97]

HEY!!!! I don't hate Nukey, he kicks ass at many things!!!!! Sheesh.

[Pacfan97]

Plus, I gave up on my demands LONG AGO!!! I have decided to be nicer!!!

[Pacfan97]

I don't really want Jr. hack anymore. All I want to have is the mods getting rid of all the garbage I posted in this thread. And everyones replies of my garbage so peace will return here.

[CPUWIZ]

I don't really want Jr. hack anymore. All I want to have is the mods getting rid of all the garbage I posted in this thread. And everyones replies of my garbage so peace will return here.

 

[Nukey Shay]

I never took offense from the replies, the thread is always open for suggestion.

So IMO everybody should just relax

 

 

As far as hacking the game into a Jr. clone goes - it's not gonna happen for 3 big reasons...among others:

 

The game kernel would need to be completely different. Attempting to change this hack in that direction would be pointless. Besides the added RAM that such a game would 100% CERTAINLY require, the underlying game engines would need to be totally dissimilar anyway.

 

Atari's Jr. Pac-Man is already an excellent game even without horizontal scrolling. Improving upon it would be beyond my ability.

 

IMO horizontal scrolling using PF pixels is not fine enough on the 2600. Any game that used it would have more success if relying on PF pixels was very limited (as in Stargate), or not at all (as in Suicide Mission). Neither example suggests a maze-type game as complex as Jr. Pac-Man. Atari's decision to implement vertical scrolling instead was a very good compromise.

[awace]

Auto-start was removed a long time ago (I can't remember the last version that had it) because there were a couple of unresolved problems when using it. The B&W switch just pauses the game in later versions. Since the game waits for a trigger press at the start of each level or life anyway, it was just something extra to assign to the switch.

 

Game reset cycles though the game modes, as you noticed. When I was hacking Jr. for speed, I noticed how easy it was to add it's method of easier games - by eliminating some of the monsters using the low bits of the game variation and using that as the upper limit to the monster's routines. I was already using a variable to track the variation, so that is another "why not?" option...it didn't "cost" anything to implement. Game select allows you to start on any level up to the 9th key. However, if you hold up on both controllers when starting a game, you will begin at level 254 (just a little split-screen development thing I left in...level 255 features a simulated rollover bug).

 

 

Difficulty switches:

Left difficulty controls how well the monsters track the player. In B difficulty, only the red monster will seek out the player, all others move randomly. In A difficulty, each of those random monsters are given a variable amount of time to seek the player as well. The arcade's method of tracking the player is not implemented in either mode, so this game is considerably "dumber" than it.

 

The right difficulty controls how fast the player moves. In B, the player can outrun all of the monsters on any level.

 

The score's color will indicate what position the switches are in, as a reminder. White = both B. Red = left A, right B. Blue = left B, right A. Green = both A.

 

Changing any console switch (other than color/B&W) will restart the game on the level selected. At the end of a game, the player is given the option of continuing at the last level reached (while the X sprite is displayed). Press the trigger on the stick while this icon is displayed to continue.

 

Regardless of the mode chosen, the monster's movements are possible to replicate from game to game...so it's possible to create solid patterns so long as you keep track of your own movements.

 

 

BTW the Ms. Hack version was pretty much abandoned, because I could never figure out why it doesn't work on real hardware...what's the point of a 2600 game that doesn't work on a 2600?

I like that You used the b/w switch as I needed it to change from built in and cart mode on flashback II rev D anyway I used the ch3/4 switch for b/w since

I used composite video OUT!!! witch is cool becuase I put my flashback into a old 2600 case and it looks cool .. I like that you need to push fire on every

level to start game in case you need to take a ''rest break'' or the phone rings right when pokey is on youre tail.

[awace]

I don't really want Jr. hack anymore. All I want to have is the mods getting rid of all the garbage I posted in this thread. And everyones replies of my garbage so peace will return here.

 

edit youre posts !.. GOOD Luck.

PS just live with it life goes on..