Battlezone Rapid Fire...

GameyMcGame

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I know people would love to at least have the option of having a faster firing rate in Battlezone...

Has anyone ever looked into the complexity of a hack that would accomplish this?
 
Building that wouldn't be hard. It's the same type of circuit that your car uses for intermittant windshield wipers, just with a different value capacitor/resistor to make it fire faster and for less time. I know a lot of games that could really use rapid fire. Maybe I could work something up this weekend and post up the plans.
 
The problem with that is that in Battlezone the next "shell" is not available until the first one is destroyed (hits something or fades into the distance). Nexxt time you play, just hold the fire button and fire into space and see how long it takes for the next shot. The go get up close to a cube and fire at it and see how fast the firing is.

Rapid fire wouldn't help, it would just fire at random when the previous shell is gone.

ken
 
You'd need to modify the game code to either allow multiple shells on the screen at once, or to increase the speed at which the shells move. Kinda like the Galaga hack that doubles the speed of your shots. You can still only have three on the screen at once, but they fly so fast that that isn't much of a hindrance.

-Ian
 
As frustrated as I get when playing this game because of the slow shot, I don't think I'd want to mod it. It's quickly becoming a family favorite and plus any of the old-school gamers who come over will consider tampering of that sort pure sacrelige... ;)
 
its as blasphamous as ms pac, galaga rapid fire and countless other hacks/mods. some licensed, some not...just because the original manufacturer didnt do it doesnt mean it SHOULDNT have been done!

i'd for sure want to be able to turn the rapid fire on/off though...
 
The only way I could see two shots in the playfield (a'la the corresponding Asteroids hack) at once is if one used the tank's bullet instead of the player's bullet. Not much challenge with tanks that can't shoot...

Never tried keeping a saucer between the enemy tank and myself, but now you've got me wondering if the enemy tank's bullet can kill the saucer.

I wish the player's tank could speed up, to go faster than a WWI vintage tank...

Now that's a mod that (unlike modifying the code to track two shots at once), in principle, should be pretty doable.

Such a mod might also lead to interesting behavior from missiles. If you hide behind a cube, the missile will occasionally jump over the cube and, in the process of doing so, miss you. With this mod in place, possibly coupled with a higher turning rate, you could actually spin around and chase the missile down while it's simultaneously trying to double-back on you.

That would be a completely different game than "Battlezone", but it might be a lot of fun. No tanks, just missiles. You move/turn at about the rate of an enemy supertank, and (optionally) have two bullets on the screen at once, and the missile could be programmed to be launched from any direction.
 
the only way i could see two shots in the playfield (a'la the corresponding asteroids hack) at once is if one used the tank's bullet instead of the player's bullet. Not much challenge with tanks that can't shoot...

Never tried keeping a saucer between the enemy tank and myself, but now you've got me wondering if the enemy tank's bullet can kill the saucer.



Now that's a mod that (unlike modifying the code to track two shots at once), in principle, should be pretty doable.

Such a mod might also lead to interesting behavior from missiles. If you hide behind a cube, the missile will occasionally jump over the cube and, in the process of doing so, miss you. With this mod in place, possibly coupled with a higher turning rate, you could actually spin around and chase the missile down while it's simultaneously trying to double-back on you.

That would be a completely different game than "battlezone", but it might be a lot of fun. No tanks, just missiles. You move/turn at about the rate of an enemy supertank, and (optionally) have two bullets on the screen at once, and the missile could be programmed to be launched from any direction.

multi-game battlezone upgrade!!! Coming soon!
 
I also disagree with the rapid fire mods that take away from the original games, but I wouldn't mind seeing one on BZ that would allow the tank to reload in a random time between 5-7 sec. This is how the tanks simulators in the Army were and it is a realistic time with a soldier manually reloading the tank. Hearing the ammo door open and shut and the loader yelling "up" like on the simulators would be cool but impossible for the BZ code and hardware to handle.
 
I don't think the cpu could handle more than 2 active missiles (player's and cpu's) at once, as has already been suggested. Therefore I think rapid fire is out, unless a) you increase the decay rate (how far the missile travels before it 'dies' and a new one can be fired), b) or make the press of the fire button 'kill' the onscreen missile and fire a new one.
 
Anyone ever load these ROMS in their Battlezone?

http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/atari/battlezone_plus_roms.zip

From the included readme file...

Subject: VECTOR: Stupid Battlezone tricks...
Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2000 13:53:53 PDT
From: "Clay Cowgill" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Hey everyone,

Since I've been monkeying around getting a Battlezone upright working (which
has finally been running for a few days now without incident, BTW) I ended
up dinking around with the code too.

(Actually, I decided that this was a perfect time to finish the BZ
high-score-saver board instead of the three-dozen other projects I'm working
on. I'm easily distr-- hey, look! this CD is really *sparkly*... Uhhhh...
Now what did you want? ;-)

The high-score-saver is also kind-of a mini-multigame platform, so I thought
it would be cool to add some little bells and whistles. I converted all the
dip-switch settings to load from backup-ram, so those are now "settable"
from an on-screen menu. (Yeah, BFD, I know...) You can also set it to boot
to either Battlezone, the menu or...

Battlezone Plus! (Or FHMC Battlezone, or some other name I haven't decided
yet...)

To make a long story short, without having to re-write *too* much code, I
made a faster/meaner version of Battlezone. Your tank turns faster (about
half again as fast while turning or almost twice as fast in "rotate" mode),
you can shoot twice as fast (initially), you can go forwards about three
times as fast (but reverse at the same "old" speed). Enemy tanks shoot at
the "normal" rate initially (you get two shots to their one though) but as
your score goes up, the shells get *faster*, so the enemy tanks can really
cook 'em off at you (and vice-versa).

Any suggestions for other stuff I should look into? I really don't want to
get too far into the game "engine" (I don't want to make it too big of a
project), but there might be something relatively easy to do that makes it
interesting. The changes I made are configurable from the backup-sram so
the menu system can actually modify the details (like speed of turns, rate
of fire, ratio of player to enemy fire rate, etc).

A couple things I might be able to do would be:

1) A limited number of "super-shells". Basically you'd have to reach down
and hold the start button, then press fire-- but, your shell would travel at
death-ray like speed. ;-) Interesting compromise from having to let go of
the steering for a bit...

or

2) Hyperspace. Maybe just get three per game? Pressing start teleports you
to a new random location. I don't know how hard it'd be to work around
playfield objects, or what some game elements (like the Missile) would do.
Could be bad.

or

3) Warp. Pressing start slows enemy shots (and maybe tanks/missiles) to
like 1/4 speed for a couple seconds?

Anyway, suggestions welcome. The hardware right now is a no-solder
install-- remove CPU, plug in daughtercard, plug in CPU to daughtercard.
You can remove the program EPROMs and program SRAMs if you want to save some
power. It'll probably fix a lot of reliability problems too as an added
bonus. If I end up adding Battlezone+ as another bank of memory it will
probably require one wire down to the main board (to pick up the 6MHz
clock). I might be able to put in BZ+ just as patches since I opened up a
lot more memory, but I want to be sure not to mess with how the "real" BZ
plays in the process.

-Clay

--------------------------------------------

NAME LOCATION SIZE CHECKSUM NOTE
---------- -------- ---- -------- ----
036408.01.bin ? 2716
036409.01.bin N1 2716
036410.01.bin L/M1 2716 original
036411.01.bin K1 2716 original
036412.01.bin J1 2716
036413.01.bin F/H1 2716 original
036414.01.bin E1 2716
036421.01.bin A3 2716 original
036422.01.bin B/C3 2716
 
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