Major Havoc: The Promised End

It is sort of interesting as you get into deep programming and especially if you have a little time, you really start to think-and-rethink what you have done... even on this project, Owen and I go back and forth of topics thinking it is great, but once you get into it, you may run into a technical hurdle or maybe it just isn't as good as you might have thought it was going to be. That sorta happened with the Attract mode for sure. Back in 1997 when I released the 'Return to VAXXX' ROM hack. I did a reverse zoom effect of the text coming in under the logo.. sorta like a rubber stamp effect. I was going to do the same thing and then I got inspired by my Robotron 2084 machine which was programmed by Eugene Jarvis (software architecture by Larry DeMar ). I always loved Robotron for many reasons, but the crazy color cycling effects were used in such a hypnotic way... they were fantastic. TANGENT: When I was a kid growing up in State College, PA. We had several great arcade...

Hey developers!!.... well, maybe you are a coder, maybe not. Either way, Im going to have some posts that go into technical details on topics that Im currently dealing with on this project. Just so you know, I will prefix those post titles with 'TECH' and also label them appropriately so you can skip them if you don't care. 😋 Im back home in PA to help with some family things and so I had high hopes of making really good progress on the Star Castle level for the two weeks Im back here. One thing I have spent about two days on so far is getting MAME 0.195 to compile properly so I can get some good mhavocpe (yeah, that will be the driver name) code written to support the expanded hardware (more on that in a future post). I actually have a MAME 0.185 driver written but it looks like the newer version has some structural tweaks and getting the source from GIT on my fathers 768K DSL line is like harsh acid. I definitely found that the MAME building instructions ar...

'KEEP GOING THE HOMEWORLD IS NEAR'.... who would have thought that 6 words could start a journey that lasted over 35 years. What is this exactly? Major Havoc: The Promised End is a rewrite of Major Havoc from Atari. It is an enhancement which basically adds new features to Major Havoc that were not in the original release. In some ways, it is sort of a 'directors cut' of Major Havoc with many of the features that Owen Rubin ( @orubin on twitter ) was not able to put into the original release due to various reasons around hardware, time, and budgets. Here are some things that are part of this release: 1. 8 new levels after the existing 16 levels. 2. A homeworld that is true to Owen's original vision. 3. Speech! 4. More Warps 5. More Points 6. More Enemies 7. Star Castle Level 8. Improved Self Test and EEPROM based settings (DIPS options) 9. Audits 10. Easter Eggs :-) With all of that, it is looking like I will be able to head out to California Extrem...

Alrighty, things are moving along, it has been a long time but looking back from here, it was always with lots of investigation and progress.... it was a challenge for me at first, then an infinitely complex puzzle and finally a creative process. With all of that, I'm starting this blog here at mhavocpe.blogspot.com  to tell a story about this adventure, and how it will hopefully come to a conclusion sometime later in 2018 with the release of Major Havoc: The Promised End which is the final wrap up and ultimate fanboy version of the Original Major Havoc game released in 1983 by Atari . Lets get into it...