Tempest won't decrement lives

EagleTG

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Working on a Tempest and need some ideas. Basically, the machine is never ending a game (and never indicating that the player has lost a ship, always shows three available). It is detecting collisions, as it plays the smash/static sound and then just continues the game with a new ship.

I have not yet run the test mode, I will in a few days. I have also followed the excellent troubleshooting guide at:
http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/games/tempest.html

But I end with the "other game problems" where it says I should contact the author of the document/post in his forums (which are down).

Any ideas on a place to start with this one? I'm stumped.
Thanks.
 
Well there was a hack that would allow for up to 255 lives, but it would should 6 lives remaining not 3.

My best guess is that you have a rom issue, and if it's hacked it could report the proper checksums to self test. But it wouldn't if you pulled it and checked it with a programmer.
 
Working on a Tempest and need some ideas. Basically, the machine is never ending a game (and never indicating that the player has lost a ship, always shows three available). It is detecting collisions, as it plays the smash/static sound and then just continues the game with a new ship.

I have not yet run the test mode, I will in a few days. I have also followed the excellent troubleshooting guide at:
http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/games/tempest.html

But I end with the "other game problems" where it says I should contact the author of the document/post in his forums (which are down).

Any ideas on a place to start with this one? I'm stumped.
Thanks.


It's probably in demonstration mode. Can you also select any level you want?
 
This is a game that was fully working until recently. I'm pretty sure it's not a ROM issue (at least relating to hacks), as nobody has worked on the game. It could be something that went wrong with a ROM. I was leaning more towards a RAM issue of some sort, like Orion3311 was indicating.

RobCarroll, I will also check the demonstration mode. I wasn't aware of this mode.

I'll get back to everyone once I've had a problem to go over these ideas. Thanks again!
 
Definitely pop it over to test mode. That should at least point out a Ram problem. Doesn't seem like it's a random problem which is good that should make finding it slightly less than a major pain.

As for the Demo mode, you still die like normal, you can just start on any level.
 
Nope, no High scores, but it's nice to see what you are missing, well for those of us that haven't made it to the higher levels yet.
 
Yep. Believe it or not, when we turned it on to work on it again, it was fine. Ran test mode, etc... It's been up and running for a little over a week now with no problem. Go figure. I'm sure whatever it was will come back, but until then we'll enjoy it working.

Ugh... Life with 20+ year old equipment.
 
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