Space Duel free play hack??

[jkoolpe]

I'll give this a try, too...my cheapo Willem burner is pretty much non-functional at this point, though...but I have some friends in the area who I'll have to bug to burn this for me .

Thanks for doing this!!

Jonathan

p.s. Any other similar hacks in the works? Wizard of Wor comes to mind...or maybe the old Exidy games (Venture, Mouse Trap, Pepper II)...I know the latter aren't the most popular, but I'd still love to have a free play mode for them ...

 

[bungy]

Awesome, thanks for posting. I will give it a try.

I got tired of this and spent a little time hacking it this weekend... I posted the hack in this thread: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?p=1507561 .

Let me know if it works/doesn't work for you.

DogP

 

[jkoolpe]

Almost forgot my #1 request for a hack:

Adding an extra digit to Tempest's scoring capability so we can get scores past 999999 .

I've seen some discussion of this in the past, but nothing has ever come to light...I've heard it's not as simple as one would hope .

Still...I would LOVE to see this happen ...

Jonathan

 

[DogP]

p.s. Any other similar hacks in the works? Wizard of Wor comes to mind...or maybe the old Exidy games (Venture, Mouse Trap, Pepper II)...I know the latter aren't the most popular, but I'd still love to have a free play mode for them ...

I don't have any of those games, so I wouldn't count on it, though I could possibly look at them and make a quick hack (I do really like Mouse Trap, and used to have one). They'd certainly be untested on real hardware.

Almost forgot my #1 request for a hack:

Adding an extra digit to Tempest's scoring capability so we can get scores past 999999 .

Well... A problem for me is getting to 999999 to test out the hack . I may take a quick look at it though.

DogP

 

[Robran68]

You're the man!!!! Worked like a charm!

I can't remember but does Gravitar have a freeplay setting with attract mode??

Edit: Just installed a second burned chip in my other Space Duel and no problems. Thanx Dog!

 

[Brick Top]

You're the man!!!! Worked like a charm!

I can't remember but does Gravitar have a freeplay setting with attract mode??

It does. No worries there.

 

[DogP]

You're the man!!!! Worked like a charm!

I can't remember but does Gravitar have a freeplay setting with attract mode??

Great to hear. And yes, Gravitar has a nice free play w/ attract.

DogP

 

[DogP]

Well, I was bored in my grad school class tonight (which is why I was reading this post), so I downloaded those ROMs to do a quick check. The Exidy games and Wizard of Wor should be very easy, but I gotta do some work for tomorrow, so it'll have to wait a little bit before I get a chance to actually start hacking.

The Tempest issue would probably be difficult... the score is saved as BCD in 3 bytes. Basically each digit of score is saved in 1 nybble, so even though you could store 0-F (0-15), it only uses digits 0-9. This limits the score to 0-999999 rather than 0-FFFFFF (0-16777215).

It could probably be easily changed to score in hexadecimal, but I'm guessing most people would prefer an extra decimal digit . For the extra digit, you'll either need another byte of memory, plus logic to use the other byte, as well as drawing to the screen... or scoring in binary in those 3 bytes, then have logic convert that to 7 digits of text. You'd also need to do something about saving scores to EAROM.

Unfortunately, that's not a 20 minute hack .

DogP

 

[khabbi]

Can anyone hook a brother up with this? I don't know how to make a hack chip myself!

 

[DogP]

Can anyone hook a brother up with this? I don't know how to make a hack chip myself!

Hobbyroms should be able to burn it for you. It needs to be burned to a 2532. I didn't have any 2532s and instead burned mine do a 2732 and adapted it with a couple wires.

BTW, I spent about 20 mins doing Mouse Trap Free Play last night... it works, but I haven't gotten the checksum figured out yet to let it pass the self test (it seems to use a more complex checksum). I'll try to look at it again tonight.

DogP

 

[mattosborn]

Can anyone hook a brother up with this? I don't know how to make a hack chip myself!

I've got a bunch of 2532's....
If anyone needs this chip burned I can do it for $6 shipped. If you're ordering one of my high score save kits or freeplay chips then I'll throw it in for $3.

 

[jkoolpe]

I've got a bunch of 2532's....
If anyone needs this chip burned I can do it for $6 shipped. If you're ordering one of my high score save kits or freeplay chips then I'll throw it in for $3.

Good deal! I'll talk to a friend who just picked up a BurgerTime...maybe he'll want the score save kit so we'll team up on an order.

Also, should I wait until a possible Exidy and/or WoW hack is done (as it sounds as though they are close), and just order them all at once? FYI, my top choice for the Exidy hack would be Venture, but I have boardsets for both MT and Pepper II that are plug and play into my Venture cabinet too.

I figured the Tempest hack would be more of a chore...I've heard that from other folks who were looking into it awhile back.

But, hey, you didn't say it wasn't possible ... What do you think? Is it truly possible at some point in the future? I think a lot of Tempest owners would love to have the hack!

And I'd be happy to test it for 'ya...I'm an old Tempest champ from way back and can easily get to the 1 million mark... ...

Jonathan

 

[herbertsmart]

PM sent for a burned chip

I've got a bunch of 2532's....
If anyone needs this chip burned I can do it for $6 shipped. If you're ordering one of my high score save kits or freeplay chips then I'll throw it in for $3.

 

[Braido]

I've got a bunch of 2532's....
If anyone needs this chip burned I can do it for $6 shipped. If you're ordering one of my high score save kits or freeplay chips then I'll throw it in for $3.

Ill take 5 of them, thx

 

[DogP]

Also, should I wait until a possible Exidy and/or WoW hack is done (as it sounds as though they are close), and just order them all at once? FYI, my top choice for the Exidy hack would be Venture, but I have boardsets for both MT and Pepper II that are plug and play into my Venture cabinet too.

I figured the Tempest hack would be more of a chore...I've heard that from other folks who were looking into it awhile back.

But, hey, you didn't say it wasn't possible ... What do you think? Is it truly possible at some point in the future? I think a lot of Tempest owners would love to have the hack!

And I'd be happy to test it for 'ya...I'm an old Tempest champ from way back and can easily get to the 1 million mark... ...

I'll try to spend some time on the Exidy games and WoW tonight and let you know how they're coming along... the unknown is how complex their checksum is. If I just trace the checksum code, I should be able to figure it out, or skip it... and hopefully it's the same/similar for all Exidy games. I just need to find the time .

I'd certainly say the Tempest hack is possible, but probably a good chunk of work... I think I'll need to get much better at Tempest before I become motivated to look into it .

Ill take 5 of them, thx

Wow... 5 of them? You must want a REALLY free play .

DogP

 

[jayleone]

Just tried the Space Duel free play mod. Works great!
Thanks for doing this DogP!

 

[DogP]

Just tried the Space Duel free play mod. Works great!
Thanks for doing this DogP!

No prob... glad to hear it's working for you guys!

jkoolpe:
I got free play code changed for all the Exidy games, but still didn't get a chance to look at the checksum. I'll try to track that down tomorrow night.

I'm not sure about WoW though... when you have 2 credits per player, you start with 6 guys, but if you only have one credit, you start with 3 guys. How would you want that to work? Is it safe to assume that everyone would want 6 guys?

DogP

 

[DogP]

Oh... I forgot to ask... there's several versions of the Exidy games. I'm doing the default ones from MAME, which are Mouse Trap V5, Venture V5 set 1, and Pepper II V8 (only one in MAME). It'd probably be very easy to do another set if you need it though.

DogP

 

[jkoolpe]

No prob... glad to hear it's working for you guys!

jkoolpe:
I got free play code changed for all the Exidy games, but still didn't get a chance to look at the checksum. I'll try to track that down tomorrow night.

I'm not sure about WoW though... when you have 2 credits per player, you start with 6 guys, but if you only have one credit, you start with 3 guys. How would you want that to work? Is it safe to assume that everyone would want 6 guys?

DogP

I thought the default for WoW was 1 credit = 3 guys, and 2 credits = 7 guys...that's what my machine is set for at any rate and that's what I remember most arcades having it set at BITD. That was the "incentive" BITD, too, for folks to cough up an additional quarter to get the 7 guys (double your 3 guy option + 1 more ).

I play both ways...sometimes I feel like a 3 lives game, and other times I prefer 7 lives...I think the game actually ramps up the difficulty a bit if you chose the 7 lives option...it seems to me that the Wizard appears much sooner with the latter option.

Is there any way to add the option to chose to play in either way? I don't recall if, when the game is set to free play via the dipswitches, one can chose the 3 player or 7 player option, or if you are just shunted to the latter option automatically. Anyone know the answer to that one offhand? Maybe test it in MAME?

Jon

 

[DogP]

It may be 1=3 and 2=7... but I assumed some people prefer less or more, depending on their mood or score they're going for... so that'd be more difficult to come up with a hack for, since you need 2 credits for 7 guys 1P, but 2 credits also for 3 guys 2P... and there's only 2 start buttons. The easiest hack would be always forcing 4 credits, but then you couldn't play a 3 guy game.

BTW, when talking... saying "I've got 3 guys" sounds totally normal... but I feel uncomfortable typing that .

DogP