Flash Version of Adventure

chefmonkey writes "Of course, everyone remembers the old Atari 2600 game "Adventure." While you've been able to play it on a wide variety of emulators for a while, now playing in your web browser is just one click away. Yes, that's right, someone has gone and created a flash version of Adventure." I haven't checked it yet to see if you can get the "dot".

Comments

Finally.....

[m.lemur]

someone's found something useful to with Flash!

Re:Finally.....

[slaker]

Coulda been worse. They could've done the atari version of ET.

Re:Finally.....

[silhouette]

As someone who has played around with Flash long enough to know just about all of its limits, I can tell you that creating versions of ancient, 8-bit-or-less games (like Adventure) is probably the most useful application of Flash (in the gaming area).

This is mostly because the performance of Flash scripting is just so incredibly poor that you're pretty much constrained to make games that would have been state of the art 10+ years ago.

Atari 2600 games are great candidates for Flash games, but once you move forward in time to the 8-bit nintendo and, god forbid, the 16-bit super nintendo, you have a really difficult time trying to even muster up even enough processing power to replicate those.

For kicks I spent some time trying to write a Flash port of the original Legend of Zelda (8-bit), and ran into all kinds of performance issues. I've pretty much given that up - partially because of no time to work on it, but mostly because trying to replicate someone else's work (including the idiosyncratic bugs) got boring.

Lastly, don't take my comment to mean that great games can't be made in Flash - they certainly can, but it takes a great deal of cleverness to get around the constraints of the environment.

Re:Finally.....

[standsolid]

Now they need to make a flash intro for the website of flash adventure. I kept forgetting what website I was visiting before these web artists... or should i say gurus... put theses lovely reminders in.

Re:Finally.....

[cjpez]

Lastly, don't take my comment to mean that great games can't be made in Flash

Indeed. Check out orisinal.com. Brilliant stuff.

Re:Finally.....

[silhouette]

Yes, those are wonderful - but appear to be relatively small in scope (great graphics though). Flash programmers who use all of the environment's strengths and avoid its weaknesses have a very powerful tool. I was also thinking of:

- Andries's isometric car game

- Stuart's Polar Rescue: an excellent engine by the master of the Flash physics engine

- Roadies: Very fun lemmings-like game, though when lots of Roadies are on the screen at once you'll take a big performance hit.

I consider all of the above to be triumphs in Flash games. (I just wish I had more time to work on my own personal isometric tile-based rpg engine with a-star pathfinding - a mostly functional work-in-progress).

Re:This is a Great Game!

[LittleBigScript]

2600 game one Flash...too bad I can't play it in lynx...grrrr....stupid 386.

jerkcity

[elohim]

http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity558.html

An Age-Old Question

[mgrochmal]

Now I can relive my younger years of retina-burning enjoyment. ^_^ One question comes to mind, though:

"How do I get this freakin' duck away from me!?"

Kudos to those who get the reference. IN any case, this game's getting bookmarked. It'll be fun to tinker with.

Re:An Age-Old Question

[scrytch]

As a kid, I just sort of took it for granted that my big one-pixel adventurer could be eaten by a ravenous dragon duck, sit in the stomach of said satiated dragon duck that would get picked up by a bat that would carry the now airborne satiated dragon duck around and eventually impale the dragon duck on an arrow sword, leaving me alone, immobilized, and undigested in the belly of a grounded full dead dragon duck.

too young

[zapod4]

I'm too young for this. I have it loaded and all I see are boxes and lines. Something must be wrong...

Copyright?

[badasscat]

Er, I know we're all pro fair-use, anti-DRM and whatnot, but isn't this about the same as linking to a copyrighted MP3 file for the world to download? Seems like we're crossing a line here - Infogrames does own the copyright to this game, and I doubt they gave this guy permission to use it.

I'm all about beating down the RIAA and MPAA and such, but I'm a little uncomfortable at such a blatant disrespect for copyright law that's been around for far longer than the Internet.

Re:Copyright?

[OsoLoco]

The original author of the game, Warren Robinett (who also wrote Rocky's Boots) has it available for download on his website. He has always come across in interviews and the like to be the sort who would be honored that someone enjoyed his game enough to build a version of it in flash.

Peace.

Re:Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

Warren Robinett does not own the copyright; Infogrames does. Infogrames, being a company, is more interested in protecting its intellectual property rights than in being "honored" by unauthorized fan-made works. (If they weren't so inclined, their management could be sued and put in jail for neglecting their fiduciary responsibility. That's business.)

Re:Copyright?

[ollie22]

It's odd that he would have it available for download on his site even though he has a disclaimer about you should own the game before you have the right to play it. Below is the quote i pulled from his site:

"Play Adventure.

Adventure can be run nowadays on a PC using an Atari 2600 emulator (such as PCAE or Stella) and a ROM image file ( here or here) of the Adventure cartridge.

To have the right to play the game, you should own an Adventure cartridge. You can buy an Adventure game cartridge (and an Atari 2600 console, if you want) at a web auction site, such as eBay (Top > Computers > Games > Atari). Atari game carts go for a few dollars each, and for $20, you can get an Atari 2600 console and a dozen game carts. "

Re:Copyright?

[ces]

I don't really see the problem here. This game is coded in flash. It's not using the code from the original ROM.

On the other hand there could in theory be trademark problems with copying images from the original game.

You insensitive clod!

[Penguinoflight]

I'm not old enough to have played "adventure" you insensitive clod!

What is a clod anyway??

Emulators

[Order]

Instead of playing it in Flash, you could just get an Atari emulator like Stella, and then get the Adventure rom here.

Re:Requires IE5

[zapod4]

It works with Mozilla and the Linux flash plug-in.

Play it offline

[Drunken Coward]

Just download the shockwave file.

Flash emulator

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

How does this get to be front page news? Seriously, is this just a slashdot DDoS attack on some guy's page? Old games have been created in Flash since its genesis, and this is nothing special.

If someone actually managed to write an actual emulator with Flash -- believe me, it could be done, as one was even written in QBasic a few years back -- then that would definitely be qualified for front page news. In fact, I'd hope it would be in the running for story of the year.

It's probably nice work, but c'mon, editors -- it's not worth slashdotting some guy's homepage.

It's no wonder ATARI went out of business

[the_other_one]

They sold a game cartridge that just displayed

Click here to get the plugin

Download time

[Analysis Paralysis]

Before Slashdotting:
"Note: Allow One minute to download. Requires IE5."

After Slashdotting:
"Note: Go to bed and have a nap. Still requires IE5".

That's crazy!

[mfos.org]

What next, a text version of Quake?

Oh ... wait.

My character is a what?

[serps]

There's something nostalgic about playing a game you played as a kid, way back when there was nothing unusual that your character was a pixel the size of your fist.

Re:Requires IE5

[ChaoticLimbs]

Great! I can use my Xbox, Xbox Linux, Mozilla 1.1 and the flash plugin to play Atari 2600 games! This rocks!

Adventure?

[andfarm]

Hall of the Mountain King
You are in the hall of the mountain king, with passages off in all directions.

A huge green fierce snake bars the way!

] OPEN CAGE

(releasing the little bird)
The little bird attacks the green snake, and in an astounding flurry drives the snake away.

Oops, wrong Adventure.

Re:Adventure?

[tigertigr]

Yeah, I thought it was that Adventure as well. At least we have the 404 Error version of Zork.

No, you can't get the dot

[ChuckMaster]

You can't get the dot. Worse, there's no sprite flicker. The sprite flicker made it possible to get to the secret room. Since atari games only could display 1-2 sprites at a time, sprites would flicker if you had more than 2.

Also, the green and yellow dragon speeds are switched. The line wall don't change to the color of the object you're carrying. And you can't switch to the harder levels, such as the one with the white castle.

You can tell I spent WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY too much time playing adventure as a kid. Hey, it was 20 years before counterstrike!

Re:No, you can't get the dot

[chefmonkey]

Since atari games only could display 1-2 sprites at a time, sprites would flicker if you had more than 2.

2 shaped sprites (8 pixels across, and you needed to change the shape every scan line if you actually wanted to draw someting), two paddles (one, two, or four pixels wide), and one missile/ball (fixed width, if memory serves).

The shaped sprites could appear once, twice or three times on the screen, or once double-wide.

Even stranger, the "background" was only 20 pixels wide, and that filled half the screen. The other half was the same 20 pixels, either repeated or mirrored. And, like the sprites, you needed to change the pattern every few scan lines to actually get shapes.

In adventure, you were the missile/ball (probably the only game that did this), the side bars that kept you from going off the side of the screens (the ones that you needed to go through to get to the easter egg) were paddles, and everything else was a shaped sprite. The bridge, I think, was a double-wide sprite.

Given these constraints and 128 bytes(!) of RAM, it's amazing that you could actually write games at all, much less something as intricate as Adventure.

Two reasons why old tech is better than new tech..

[xeniten]

1. My Atari 2600 loads adventure in far less time than the flash version takes to download.

2. The Atari version won't suffer from the slashdot effect like this flash based version will two minutes from now.

Of course, the original remake...

[jvmatthe]

...is Craig Pell's Indenture. Copies can be found around the 'net, but I found one here on RetroRemakes which has similar recreations for other games. Indenture is different from Adventure in that it includes an extended game mode that involves tokens and has some secrets that I'm not sure I've ever seen explained outright, although several people have claimed to have figured it out. Interview with Pell is here.

IIRC, Indenture was written in assembly and it requires a DOS-like system to run. Not sure if it'll work correctly on newer Microsoft systems, like WinXP, but you might get lucky.

The "Dot"

[prodos]

I did a little poking around and found a map of the original Atari version, including notes on how to get into the easter egg room. It would seem that this Flash version is somewhat incomplete, both the "microdot" and easter egg (as well as half the mazes) appear to be absent.

Interestingly enough, the creator of Adventure, Warren Robinett apparently also co-created my absolute favorite Apple II game, Rocky's Boots! Ah, the memories of building the ultimate death machine to tackle that little aligator at the end...

Yes but this is **ADVENTURE**

[pcx]

It's arguably the first RPG in the universe, the first game with a bonified easter egg, and it's retro.

Slashdot is news for nerds and this is...

1] eclectic
2] stuff we did before nerds became "cool"
3] just plain fun!

This counts as news in my book -- it counts as a bookmark too ;-)

Re:Yes but this is **ADVENTURE**

[Simon Garlick]

"Bonified"? :)

Someone please conjugate the verb with the infinitive "to bonify"...

Re:Yes but this is **ADVENTURE**

[Iamthefallen]

2] stuff we did before nerds became "cool"

Yeah, I remember the days when nerds were outcasts in society, nowadays, since nerds are cool, I'm invited to party with hot co-eds and cheerleaders all the time!

All for only $19.95 a month

The scarry duck thing known as Fhqwhgads

[A non moose cow]

Now that I have discovered HomeStarRunner, I can never hear mention of the game Adventure without thinking about this

well there goes another fond videogame memory..

[Zod000]

I always fondly thought back on adventure and how much I played and enjoyed it.... Now after beating it in about 5 min I feel that I should have gotten out a little more as a kid. Damn you slashdot and your nostalgia killing links!!

For a COMPLETE remake, check out

[GusherJizmac]

the clone I did for PC, including the DOT and including two new levels (which feature extra items and an extra dragon). Source is available. Only for Windows 95, 98, and 2k tho :( (possibly XP)

Adventure Clone for PC

Turning Flash on and off

[satanami69]

Here a quick way to enable and disable flash at will. You can have it installed and not worry about it showing nothing but ads. The instructions are only for Windows2k and mostly for IE, but you should be able to adjust them for any windows version and mozilla.

First, you must install flash on your system.
Second, mark the "Downloaded Program Files" directory as read only. This can be found by clicking on Tools->Internet Options. Then click on Settings then View Objects. This will show you where the folder is. Normally it's under C:\Winnt\Downloaded program Files. So mark is as read only.
Third, you need a back of the Flash.ocx file. So find it (normally c:\winnt\system32\macromed\flash) and copy it to a file named flash.ocx.bak.
Fourth, you now setup two bat files to run simple cmds. I've called them enable.bat and disable.bat.

Here's enable.bat:
pause
c:
cd "c:\winnt\system32\macromed\flash"
copy Flash.ocx.bak Flash.ocx
You are able to run this program when IE or Mozilla is open. To see the Flash file, just hit refresh.

Here's disable.bat:
pause
c:
cd "c:\winnt\system32\macromed\flash"
del Flash.ocx
Obviously nothing special. This command can only be ran if IE is closed. It'll say "File in Use" if IE is open and on a flash site.

For Mozilla, just goto Help and About Plugins. You find the Flash plugins and create similar bat files that copies and deletes it.

Now, someone needs to create a toolbar plugin that can automate this with the ability to disable flash while IE is still open. Anyone up to the task?

Re:Turning Flash on and off

[smallstepforman]

In Opera you hit F12, de-select Enable Flash. To reenable it, hit F12, select Enable Flash.

Glory Days

[SunPin]

Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around
thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days

Seriously... things like Stella and MAME are cool. Stella is cool for about 5 minutes and MAME is cool for about 10 minutes.

The best way to honor the good old arcade games is to recreate them under modern specifications. The authors of the classics pushed their available technology to the limit as today's programmers should.

Consider Arkanoid(Breakout)... that game was unbelievably addictive. Unfortunately, playing the emulated version just isn't the same feeling that those feelings of nostalgia promised to bring.

Then Reflexive Entertainment came out with Ricochet Extreme and I can't think of a more honorable remix of the original Breakout/Arkanoid games. Grab the demo off Cnet and you'll see what I mean.

While everyone else is trying to recapture the original Arkanoid, Reflexive gave it a new life.

The old games should be remembered for how hardcore they are in terms of programming. In every other respect, they should either be updated or left in the past.

IE 5, We don't need no stinking IE 5

[tymellon]

I don't know what everybody else out there is experiencing when trying to run Adventure in flash.

Most modern browsers should run it just fine, I personally use Opera and it works just fine (I just had to enable popups for a second) I also know mozilla can handle flash as well as opera.

As a side note whenever browsing with these "alternative" browsers make sure to set it to identify as what it really is. I am sure if web sites more visiters using other browsers, statements like "IE 5 required" will start to disappear.

Zork 404

[ssafarik]

There's also "Zork" as a 404 error page: Zork

Re:My memory of that game...

[NiceGeek]

That was the lowest difficulty level. The highest "3" had an additional castle, 2 hidden mazes, the bat which had an annoying habit of taking items you needed and all the items were randomly placed throughout.

Re:Arrrrgh!

[mcfiddish]

Open the gold castle first. There's a sword inside that kills the dragons.

I played this game tonight for the first time in twenty-some years. Amazing how it all comes back!

sonic the hedgehog flash

[\\]

funny you mention trying to port the legend of zelda; someone ported a little tiny bit of sonic the hedgehog to flash. it's pretty choppy, and not many moving sprites on the screen at once, but not TOO too bad.

not sure how possible it would be to make something nice out of it, though.

Re:sonic the hedgehog flash

[silhouette]

Yes! - That's a great example of what I'm talking about. You can notice the tell-tale signs of a Flash game:

1) Not many moving sprites/creatures on the screen at once. In the sonic game, I think there was you (Sonic) and pretty much one other autonomous enemy on the screen at any given time. Flash has a lot of trouble handling many moving objects at once, because it needs to run behavior/movement code for each one. In contrast, it can draw lots of objects like there's no tomorrow.

2) The collision / tile code usually isn't quite right. Flash has some built-in collision methods, but they're not very robust and can suck up lots of the available processor very quickly. Doing a tile-based game is tricky because Flash doesn't really give much support for tiles and tile collisions. In the Sonic game you can jump up on a platform and walk on it, but the Sonic sprite is actually 1/2-1 tile below the ledge. I've seen that kind of thing a lot. It's very hard to do.

Goddamit

[Placido]

The yellow key doesn't let you get throught the yellow bar, the black upside-down U doesn't -DO- anything and I can't get in the castles!

And nobody has posted a manual yet. For those of you who are young whippersnappers like me, here's the manual: http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?Soft wareLabelID=964

Naturally only young people are allowed to follow that link.

Cheats for Adventure (Flash version)

[the grace of R'hllor]

I just figured this one out: Move against a wall, hit the 'Screen type' switch so it goes black'n'white, hit the 'Screen type' switch again and you'll be able to pass through all walls on that screen.

God I'm sad. :-)