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Mort

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  1. Mort

    Version 1.0.3

    235 downloads

    The existing @dad and also @Multi Retro Man DX layouts are the best versions of Donkey Kong from a graphics perspective. We had been using those DXs to test a hack to the earliest Donkey Kong ROM over on the ROM hacking forum thread posted below. The purpose of the discussion was to try and hack the earliest ROM we have to patch back in the original skill nudge cheat. Massive kudos to all of @johnparker007 efforts with the hack. The video below from @Chopaholic will explain things much better than trying to understand the entire ROM hacking thread. The issue we had with both of the latest DXs is that they still have cash values for the £5 game. I doubt these DXs will be improved again but I wanted to also have a version of the DX in my playable set which does have the correct cash values. Here is a mod I have done for an older DX done by Andy T (a DX done some 21 years ago!!) I am sharing this mod here for anyone who would enjoy it as another option to play but please remember graphically the latest DXs are much better. Thanks to @dad @Multi Retro Man and Andy T for all the hard work originally. This type of mod is simple to do in comparison to a full DX. Game Information Note: The patched/hacked ROMs do not require you to hold the Cancel button down to activate Skill Nudges Donkey_Kong_(Maygay)_[Dx08_10jp].gam - This game file runs the SA7-103 (v1.1) ROM as normal, with no hacks. Donkey_Kong_(Maygay)_[Dx08_Patch1_10jp].gam - This game file runs the SA7-103 (v1.1) ROM with @johnparker007's original hack. When offering natural nudges, it will always give you the Skill Nudge type. Donkey_Kong_(Maygay)_[Dx08_Patch2_10jp].gam - This game file runs the SA7-103 (v1.1) ROM with @johnparker007's alternative hack. This offers Skill Nudges after every reel spin. Donkey_Kong_(Maygay)_[Dx08_Patch3_10jp].gam - This runs the SA7-103 (v1.1) ROM with a further revised (fine-tuned) hack based on 'Patch1'. The frequency of natural nudges is increased, which always gives the Skill Nudge type. 'Patch3' is now very close to the behaviour of the original emptiable v1.0 ROM with Cancel held down. Therefore 'Patch3' is my recommended game to play to re-create the original emptier behaviour. DX Changelog . Patch version 1 incorporates @Chopaholic RAM file, which has allowed the game to settle with around £1800 cash in. . Patch version 2 runs from a .RAM reset, so you can experience the locked IM method quickly to full empty. . Patch version 3 runs from a .RAM file which has had around £400 IN. It's about £10 to £20 away from it's 3rd Steak/IM. . Layout darkened (no longer an eye bleeder, but you may need a miners lamp now!) . Lamp masks added . Alpha converted and improved . £1 input lockout detection added (useful for AutoPlay) . 20p input added, shortcut 9 (lockout also added) . Reels from Dad's DX added . Reel gradients and masks added . Coin output effects added . Meter effects added . Percentage changed to 82% . £10 decal from Dad's DX added . Cancel button shortcut changed to ` from Z . Checkbox 27 added for £1 level HI . £1 mech off lamp added . Door switch numbers corrected . F3 background added from Johnparker007 arcade . AutoPlay profile added . Jackpot 777 now blended to correct 2 lamps (1 lamp only before) . Donkey Kong Logo now blended to correct 8 lamps (1 lamp only before, which was also the incorrect lamp) . £10 cash decal now blended to 4 lamps . Kong at top now lit and blended to 3 lamps (this was previously unlit) . Super Mario character lit and blended to 1 lamp (this was previously unlit) . Super Mario button changed to correct lamp . Super Mario Text above button changed to correct lamp . Go Bananas lamps sorted (incorrect lamp order before) . Go Bananas - title lamp lamp removed, this was not lit on the real machine . Number reel gradient improved If you want to play this layout with improved lighting, then refer to my guide below.
  2. Mort
    Always in our thoughts, each and every emulation released is always credited to Chris. Happy Birthday mate - hope you are enjoying a retro paradise up there.
  3. Mort
    Sadly, I don't think Re-Animator is with us any more. I asked around in the Dutch scene recently, as I had not heard from him for some years. Great guy, very much enjoyed working with him on CCnR development
  4. Mort
    Nice to see you back mate @johnparker007
  5. Mort
    Lovely layout mate, thanks for sharing with us.
  6. Mort

    Rainbow Islands

    Mort replied to Reg's topic in 16-bit

    I played Rainbow Island's to death on the C64. It was a happy game, great music, and the Rainbows, of course, only added to the happiness! They don't make them like this anymore! What a fantastic game it was, and, in fact, still is! I remember getting the gems in the correct order allowed you to bypass the boss at end of level.
  7. Mort
    Seems to be a lot of interest in these old 8-bit fruit machine simulations @Reg Just an idea, but how about covering some, if not all, of these in a video if you are looking for ideas at some point
  8. Mort
    Looks great that @dad ! I think that should be released now! Nice looking and great attention to detail! So we are looking at the first @dad DX here then ! A rare item indeed! Hopefully you can release it mate, be good for it to get a bit of attention!
  9. Mort
    Nice work mate, like the dancing with the mouse!
  10. Mort
    I can only tell you my experience. I don't believe MFME on it's own cured my addiction, but it did very much help me with my curiosity of how machines work. In the main it was very much down to my own circumstances and life chapters since 2001+ that have allowed me to move on from real life playing. During my time at College and Uni I played actively from around 1994-1999. Mostly Club machines, but I did spend time on AWPs such as Great Escape, Italian Job, Money Money Money, Roller Coaster to name a few. For me though there was always something fascinating about Club machines. I played them in our University Bar (and Snooker clubs) and throughout that period we had Club Bullion, CCnR, Coronation Street Club, Bank Roller and Club Take Your Pick. I very much remember playing Club Bullion and CCnR and wondering whether these could be ever emulated (Just think Chris was probably thinking and potentially working on the ideas for MFME (well, Fruit.exe) at the same time!). I had always been drawn to fruit machines in the past as a kid, especially earlier on in the 80s. I was always fascinated by the attract modes and to know more about the workings of the machine. I suppose for some, your personality itself, may draw you to playing them. I have always been curious and fascinated by details, love electronics and computers, and especially attracted by lights (The KITT car in Knight Rider was fascinating to me!) and therefore would love to play them, I also have a very addictive personality - everything I do is to excess, but, I do hide, that from people, even to this day! It seemed much more interesting to be playing these machines than listening to some of the conversations and small talk that's for sure!. During the 80s I was growing up in a rural area, and, as such, had no real access to machines, and only got the odd chance to play them. It, therefore, really kicked in for me in the mid 90s, especially going to college and then later university. That's when I really got the freedom and access to machines to really play them. When I left Uni, I went back to living in a rural location, which again, made access to machines nearly impossible, and I concentrated on getting a job, a car, and eventually, was lucky enough to meet a girl at work, whom I have been with since, and have two lovely kids with. Throughout that time, 2000 until now, I have had the occasional on-off interest with Fruit Machines. Often, this interest is born out of nostalgia, to remember times and places, especially to remember times I spent with my mate, who sadly passed away in 2016, who played machines with me all the time back in the Uni days. Other times, it just comes from interest, I might see a post from someone, and it will make me want to get involved again. But, I think, there is a big difference here, and this is how MFME, has helped me, it allows me as tool to then quickly experience the nostalgia, or quickly test a theory, or hack a ROM etc. - I get my quick fix this way, and MFME allows me to do this, with no latent formulated desire to play a real machine again. For various reasons, mainly circumstantial, I have, fortunately, not kept an interest in playing real machines again for around 20 years. For me then, as compared to you, it's probably very different. When I decide to use MFME, it doesn't do anything in my brain to make me want to play a machine in real life again (as far as I can tell!). My time with MFME, is purely ring-fenced to itself. For you, I think, because you still play machines, then playing MFME may potentially keep your interest in real machines going, maybe even just on a sub-conscious level. I would suggest that it would be best for you to abstain from MFME as well. Set yourself a time frame that's realistic, and don't go back to MFME or this scene. Try and find another hobby completely, and then assess over time. I can see you are on the fence about things, so please just take a complete break from it mate, and that includes all aspects of FME.
  11. Mort
    Generally, for SC4, you should just be able to press Refill, even with doors closed, and then use START button to get over to the volume settings. These changes will change back to NVRAM, and to be honest, I thought changing it in TEST did the same as well. I remember the earlier MFMEs before this true volume setting became a thing, it caused a bit of grief at the time if I recall. But this is properly emulated, and how the real machine behaves I understand. I guess this is what you are feeding back into the MAME driver @johnparker007
  12. Mort
    Treasure Island Dizzy (Dizzy 2) on the C64 had a bug, meaning only 1 life lol! I think they found a bug related to the snorkel just before the game was to go into production, so they just believed it better to fix it to one life instead. It was tough, but when I beat it, it was a wonderful feeling! I think Fantasy World Dizzy (Dizzy 3) was my favourite. Wonderful times Dad, and I know what you mean about the pokes
  13. Mort
    Matt Gray is an excellent musician, he still releases stuff to this day : 6581 Records It made me think this about Codemasters, who were originally just the Darling brothers (Richard and David). Then you had the Dizzy games, coded by the Oliver twins. Released through Codemasters also (iirc). Then you had the Rowland brothers doing the 3 Creatures games on the C64 (I'm classing Mayhem in Monsterland as the third!). What a time it was to be a bedroom developer, and if you have a brother (or sister!) with the same interests, and talent!, then you had a winning formula. Shame how different things are these days.
  14. Mort
    I do remember these, but I spent all my virtual 10p's on Fruitbank, on the c64, here:
  15. Mort
    Hi Rick, welcome to the journey! I think many of us here with inquisitive minds have thought about these sorts of things and have tried to find answers over the years. Completely agree with all you say about disassembly. It's a huge amount of work, more than anyone can fully realise, and even then much of it will require some elements of guess work, and we will still not receive many of the answers we are looking for at the end of it (even if there could be an end of it!) For this, we need to look at help from the ex. real coders, by releasing the original source code, but even with this, most of us will not understand it anyway and then there are surely multiple libraries related to that source code, so we would need source code for those libraries as well, and the issue goes on. In my honest opinion, if we were going to see this, then we would have seen it, or at least some of it, by now. We have had everything in FME really except this. As for your query on meters, whether those be long-term or short-term, you have to think of them as just separate counters in the RAM. They most likely have no relation to how a game plays or what it owes etc. That information, in our compensated machines, is instead stored in the various game compensators that a machine has. It's a virtual money value, then linked to different compensator levels, ultimately then controlling the % likelihood of something happening. (e.g. a 4 symbol win spinning in, holds after nudges etc.) This post may provide you with some further insight: Enjoy the journey, but just don't drive yourself mad with this stuff!
  16. Mort
    Amazing attention to detail, I'd say possibly even a better redraw than what BFM did originally! It's a layout I will now play forever, and it will take pride of place in my playable set. Thanks for 'visiting' us, and sharing your work with us all to enjoy.
  17. Mort
    Awesome work!
  18. Mort
    It was fascinating to find out some of the history around the development of LN1, and 2. Mark Cale, who is the head of System 3, and main designer, built out the concept for the games originally, and wanted them in an Isometric style (pseudo 3D), which was a big thing for the C64 back in the day! Then around 1986 employed a team of Hungarians to develop it. They came up with an awesome piece of design but coded it in Forth, which is an older 1970s stack-oriented language. Whilst the concept was very much ahead of it's time, the speed of it was terrible. Each screen would take around 30 seconds to populate. It was a method which in the back end used a database of art components, and stacked them together, allowing a work around for the tight memory space of the 64KB address space (allowing many more screens per multi-load than would be possible otherwise). Eventually System 3, employed a coder, John Twiddy, who had a background in the C64 demo scene, and who also ported Ikari Warriors to the C64 for Elite. He took the concepts, and coded to the bare metal using 6502 assembly language, improving screen redraws down to around 2 seconds. I have so much respect for the coders back in the day that could do this. Ok, we have languages such as C, C++ now, but to code to the bare metal, requires such in-depth knowledge. It's common for many C64 and Amiga games actually to have been coded by people who cut their teeth in the Demo, Hacking, Cracking scene. It's awesome how, in life, it often comes down to one person with unique talents and intelligence to create or improve upon something, which then becomes a huge thing. Not forgetting the artist of course, I think that was Hugh Riley, who was also someone with special talent. It reminds me a bit of Wizard really, how a special intelligence and talent, can create brilliant things, which millions enjoy! Now I'm not saying FME reached millions, it's niche of course, but in the case of Last Ninja, it sold millions across the globe.
  19. Mort
    The Last Ninja Collection+Bonus Games on PS5,PS4,Switch, PC by System 3 — Kickstarter This is fully funded now, and closed, but I think late pledges are still possible. I pledged as soon as I saw it, but only just thought about posting about it on here. The Last Ninja 1 and 2, 3 I didn't care much for, I spent loads of time playing on the old bread bin (c64!). I recall in 1, the annoying pixel perfect jumps you had to do over the various lakes and swamps! Amazing music as well, Ben Daglish doing 1 and Matt Gray did 2. I backed a Kickstarter from Matt Gray a few years back, he re-composed much of his SID work, including Last Ninja 2. It's now hoped due to the success of this Kickstarter that we will see a HD remake of Last Ninja 1. Great stuff, such great memories! Also how could I forget IK+ as well, that's included! Loved that game and the original International Karate!. So many nice touches. I heard the coder, Archer Maclean, passed away a while ago. Real shame, the guy was coding genius, he did Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker as well
  20. Mort
    An awesome series of DXs, which I think are definitive. Amazing game, lovely light show, and interesting gameplay. Thanks for taking the time and effort, it's really appreciated.
  21. Mort
    I recall the story about Donkey Kong and the unlimited nudges, was due to a works experience student at Maygay, who had the game for testing, with a portion of the debug code for testing things with unlimited nudges, and then the code base for that went back to the developers and got released official, with the oversight of not realising it was left in of course! I bet that was a stressful time for them!
  22. Mort
  23. Mort
    I spent a lot of time on some machines mapping the RAM, to find locations of variables such as amount of nudges, position on ladder etc. One for way off in the future but it would be good to have some sort of cheat GUI on machines which we have mapped the RAM out for, so you can say add X nudges, X gold bars, at any time. I guess it would be just like the MAME cheat system. It does rely on a lot of hard work finding the locations, but as you say, some of the older techs, have so little RAM space, that it becomes fairly easy to watch it in real time and work it out! Certainly one which would be considered as a cherry on the top, and nice to have, but far from essential! I remember the Datel Action Replay, had a few of them for my C64, used to spend hours tinkering! Great times!
  24. Mort
    " BFG/Mazooma called them "compensators", Barcrest "stablisers", Ace/JPM "reflexes", Global "buckets" and 101 other permutations of the name. They all mean the same thing; essentially an amount of virtual money held in memory that the game uses to decide how much money we can give back to the player. " @johnparker007 It's possible I could look at it from this angle, try to find where the 'virtual money' is stored in RAM, and then by raising this at any given point, it would have the impact of raising compensator and chance table(s). It also makes me wonder on whether we sometimes screw up the compensation table values, by the way in which we use AutoPlay and force play to build up such huge drifts. Depending on the coding of the 'virtual money' it's possible we even break compensation tables entirely. Depending on quality of the coding it's possible you could end up completely adrift of the table itself, almost stuck in a limbo case of being in a poor or neutral position. All just theories of course, but makes you wonder. I guess in the case of some examples we have seen, the value just get's stuck in the various compensators to a really high level. Like in the case of Super Blackjack, when you needed then to take the value out over a long period of time, across different features to return to RTP. As I have always said it would be amazing to see a proper breakdown of source code, especially for a machine we all know. Even if it was a form of pseudo code, it would be good to see it. I'm still amazed nothing like this has ever come to light, especially with most of the manufacturers out of the business now.
  25. Mort
    Hi Choppers, can you link me to the post for all this please ?
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