AR: City - FlashCart / Stage 2

[Wrathchild]

A day earlier than expected

 

Here is Stage 2. Remember the goal for this release was

to permit a temporary character to roam around the city

and do the sort of things any respectful (or disrespectful

for that matter) AR character would want to do...

 

Well you can now!

 

The solution to avoiding the DLIs was to defer the data

transfer from ROM to the disk I/O buffer to between certain

scan lines. Just to be annoying I've added some code to set

the background colour to the read byte value during copying.

This will be taken out in the full release, though may remain

as a single flashing line in the lower part of the screen, just

to indicate that the system is busy.

 

I anticipate some bug reports (use this thread), e.g. I have

still had 'leaving' issues when entering some buildings

(An Inn, maybe this happens if they're closed?).

 

Still, enjoy this release and be patient whilst I try to now

support either disk or flash loading and saving. Its early days,

but the 'image' for the full version won't be released.

As I've already freely put out the cart conversions of:

The Eidolon, Koronis Rift and Gauntlet - I feel its time for

some payback on the effort put in. So I'll most likely be

working with Steve@AtariMax in having AR produced.

 

As some people may already have 8Mb FlashCarts and may

not want to part with hard-earned cash for another one.

In that case it could be possible to setup something else,

e.g. pay by PayPal and receive the image by email.

 

Perhaps it could be free and people simply make volentary

payments to me in recognition of my efforts?

 

Undoubtedly, pirating will out itself and the image will be

passed around for all to use, lessening my resolve to make

more images in the future.

 

Please post your thoughts on what to do with the final release.

 

Best wishes,

Mark

Ar_cart_v2.zip

Edited May 25, 2005 by Wrathchild

[Velcro_SP]

So I'll most likely be

working with Steve@AtariMax in having AR produced.

 

Wrathchild,

 

It may take some doing but my suggestion is to work with Phillip Price as well. Track him down, get his blessing, and a statement that the heavily-tweaked and modified code on the ROM still represents his gameplay vision 100%.

 

Put out a value-added package with a box and nice manual, maybe get a bit creative rather than recreating the cover art and documents from the original AR. Use a better box. Remember how easily AR boxes ended up crushed and sloppy? Use a box like Avalon Hill used to use, or something like that.

 

There was original cover art devised for AR that never got used IIRC, it'd be worth a look for inspiration if nothing else.

 

Get advice from Bryan Edawaard who did Castle Crisis so well. Release an Atari 5200 version.

 

Don't know how many you will sell, but you will have achieved something great and historic in the 8bit world if you pull this off the right way.

[Wrathchild]

Hi,

 

I was going to put up a disclaimer along the lines of 'as long as the copyright owners do not object', but I agree that would be a good idea to track them down and get a blessing. Can anyone from the AR Mailing list PM me an email address if its known (or just point Philip - is it one or two Ls? - to these threads).

 

Remember too that credit also goes to 'Glenn the 5200 man' for originally cracking the game.

 

I recently read the Byan's 5200 thread regarding the his new board and did think about this, but doesn't the 5200 have just 16K RAM which would not be enough to run the game without completely re-writing it (though not beyond doing)?

 

Mark

[Chrodegang]

Put out a value-added package with a box and nice manual, maybe get a bit creative rather than recreating the cover art and documents from the original AR.

 

That would be great! Cartridge along with nice manual(s) and newly designed box

[densonj]

...Undoubtedly, pirating will out itself and the image will be

passed around for all to use, lessening my resolve to make

more images in the future.

 

Please post your thoughts on what to do with the final release.

 

Best wishes,

Mark

861488[/snapback]

 

Undoubtedly, but I hope that there are enough "good" Atarians out there who realize how much work this is for you and support your efforts appropriately. I will be at the front of the line. And I really hope you will receive enough compensation to do some more. (Phantasie I & II maybe?) I'll buy them from you! I have a collection of 1M and 8M flashcarts (and I enjoy the freedom of making what I want) so I would really like the idea of just the images being offered as well.

 

I think it's a great idea to contact PP. I'll bet he'd get a real kick out of seeing this and so would Gary Gilbertson!

[danwinslow]

Well, I for one certainly will support your effort with a few purchases.

[The Eidolon]

Well, if you do choose to put out a cart version for sale, I will certainly

be one of the buyers. Sounds like a very interesting project...

 

--The Eidolon

[densonj]

Well, I tested out the Phase 2 cart rom and have some not-so-good news as a result of the play. It looks like something has "gone south" in the code due, no doubt to Philip Price's many protections and paranoia checks.

 

When first starting the game:

1.) The timing on the "intro" movie has been affected somehow and is running "slow" and somewhat "jumpy". (Maybe this is behavior seen only in the emulator? I would like to try this image on a "real" flashcart on a "real" Atari.)

 

When playing the game:

1.) The "characters view" portion of the display is "mirroring" the background (mountains, for instance) for some reason. The original game redrew the "street" portion of the screen so that this "Anomaly" wasn't seen by the player. (Maybe this is also just an "emulator" thing? Once again, I would like to test on a "real" machine.)

 

2.) Many establishments throughout the city have mysteriously "closed their doors" when they should be open. Yes, some do have particular hours, but they normally inform the player when to come back. I think the code has caught on to something and is "shutting down" things. This is definitely not just an emulator problem.

[classics]

The 5200 only has 16k of ram.

 

I have bank switched ROM boards for the 5200 that can handle up to 4 megabytes of banked rom (in 32k banks), but the real killer is that 16k of ram.

 

Steve

[Xebec's Demise]

I will support you with a donation for the cart. As I said earlier, I would be willing to donate $100 for a fully functioning AR cart with char saves, and I am happy to see you making so much progress!

 

Anyway, the documentation for the city specifically warns that you must not use a different disk 2 side 1 with any character that you create. This is because the game saves information about your character to disk 2 side 1 while while booting. The information saved about the character includes which guilds the character has visited and likely also includes information about the smithys, shops and taverns that the character has dealt with.

 

If you try to use a different disk 2 side 1 than the one that a character was originally booted up with several things happen. By switching disks with a character that has not visited guilds, a char may continue to visit guilds getting increases in skills each time, this is a cheat or bug, also, you end up corrupting the character so that he may not enter establishments. This also happens when you try to do a Save State in Atari800win and then play it later. Because some of the character information was temporarily saved on disk 2 side 1 while playing, this info does not get recorded in a Save State and thus when you continue playing a Save State the char is corrupted and cannot enter establishments.

[Wrathchild]

...  This is because the game saves information about your character to disk 2 side 1 while while booting.

Indeed, I had to disable the loading, re-encoding and writing back to disk done during game start up. Looking a the sector counter on A800Win this was being done at the end of the disk. Therfore you've given me ideas to hunt down the related to accessing these sector and provide some substitute routines to use flash-mem instead. Might be tricky.

 

I think I need to ignore developing and play the original for a while to become a bit more familiar with its workings.

 

@densonj : Hopefully the timings are down to chosing PAL/NTSC.

As far as I'm aware the emulators are pretty close on these days.

 

I've run AR using the disk images and walk and turned a bit and took a screen shot, then repeated this with the cart image. As you mention, the mountains weren't the same, but also some doors were missing. This may explain the 'entering/leaving' problem - as although you can enter the door, triggering a load, the co-ordinates don't tie-up with anything? I'm assuming here that the map doesn't change between games, so I could be wrong?

 

Thanks all for the encouragement so far!

 

Regards,

Mark

[Xebec's Demise]

No, the map does not change.

 

But, your char can be kicked out of establishments if he hides out in them past closing or offends the smithy or shopkeeper by making paltry offers or offers he cannot afford. The latter will result in loading an est. and then immediately kiciking the char back out with a quick message like "Get out Worm!" So it may be related. Without this type of est. specific info saved to disk 2 side 1 about a char, maybe the game does not know what the char's rep. is at the est. and kicks the player out by default.

[densonj]

Xebec's is right. The maps never change in AR.

 

The timings are behaving the same in both NTSC & PAL configs. Actually, I tested the "Phase 1" rom in the emulator and it did the same thing. I had not tested the rom last week, only the "real" cartridge and Atari. It could still just be an "emulator" thing for some reason. I would still like to see "Phase 2" on my "real" Atari just to be certain.

[Goochman]

Very cool - I would be interested in buying one - I would have 1 expectation though and that would be the ability to unload and load my char off the flashcart. Having the flashcart means I can run other stuff so Id hate to build a great AR character and not have the ability to save it off. I hope Im not asking too much here.

 

Id also be willing to prepay for the Dungeon with my purchase of the City to entice you to work on that next

 

Even better would be a flashcart with AR The City, DUngeon, Ultima III and Gaunlet from a bootable menu

 

Great work - please keep up the effort!

[carmel_andrews]

nto wishing to be rude or to discourage Wrathman from his good work BUT, I remember reading one of the first UK reviews for one of the AR series, and i remember that they had a quote from Philip price saying that he used non standard or customised SIO routines (not the standard atari ones) as he wanted to prevent people from using his software on modd'd 1050/810 disk drives and that they could'nt be copied

 

So i'd be interested in finding out how wrathman hacked his way round the non standard/customised sio routines to get the required data

 

ANother game he could try hacking to cartridge is BBSB, which was strangely enough supposed to have being released on cartridge, i've only ever seen it on tape and disk... the only problem is though is that the game only worked on an xl/xe (as it was one of the first games to use xl/e 'bank switching' and also going by memory only, the data on the disk/tape will not correspond where it loads into memory

[deathtrappomegranate]

ANother game he could try hacking to cartridge is BBSB, which was strangely enough supposed to have being released on cartridge, i've only ever seen it on tape and disk... the only problem is though is that the game only worked on an xl/xe (as it was one of the first games to use xl/e 'bank switching' and also going by memory only, the data on the disk/tape will not correspond where it loads into memory

862064[/snapback]

 

BBSB was certainly released on cartridge, and IIRC it works on 400/800 machines too.

[Wrathchild]

nto wishing to be rude or to discourage Wrathman from his good work BUT, I remember reading one of the first UK reviews for one of the AR series, and i remember that they had a quote from Philip price saying that he used non standard or customised SIO routines (not the standard atari ones) as he wanted to prevent people from using his software on modd'd 1050/810 disk drives and that they could'nt be copied

Indeed, but we're well past that point (see the Release 1 thread etc)

 

So i'd be interested in finding out how wrathman hacked his way round the non standard/customised sio routines to get the required data

I was already familiar with such routines after the LucasArt games.

Those were pretty much lifted out of the OS, so understanding them

wasn't too hard. Basically they're a state machine based on sending

out and receiving single bytes on the SIO port. Once you've identified

the code getting 1 sector of data all you need to do is replace this with

your own code to copy the equivalent data from the ROM.

 

Another game he could try hacking to cartridge is BBSB, which was strangely enough supposed to have being released on cartridge, i've only ever seen it on tape and disk... the only problem is though is that the game only worked on an xl/xe (as it was one of the first games to use xl/e 'bank switching' and also going by memory only, the data on the disk/tape will not correspond where it loads into memory

The 'exe' versions floating around are for 128K machines as it uses the additional banks to simulate the bank switching in the original ROM - a good checkpoint for releases is www.atarimania.com

BBSB has its own bank switching model, see http://www2.asw.cz/~kubecj/acarts.htm, it could be possible to make an XEGS/Megacart or Flash version of the cart - presumably the exe version of the game shows that memory can be copied in to position when required, no fast bank switching is actually required. Maybe one to do later.

 

Aside - please don't use Wrathman

"But now I spend my time looking all around,

For a man thats nowhere to be found.

Until I find him I'm never gonna stop searching,

I'm gonna find my man, gonna travel around."

Ironic really as this is currently referring to Philip Price.

 

Regards,

Mark

[deathtrappomegranate]

http://www.bigfivesoftware.com/atari/BBSB/...l/technical.htm

 

http://www.bigfivesoftware.com/atari/BBSB/...es/packages.htm

 

From the horse's mouth, as it were.

[carmel_andrews]

Sorry about that 'wrathchild' couldnt' quite remember the name

 

re: bbsb, firstly, and i'm going from memory here, bbsb loads very little into hi mem. i can't remember where exactly it loads but it was in the pg cxxx region, i remember this when looking at the bbsb loader code thru omnimon on a pucker 130xe, i remember that it was less then 10 sectors and strangely enough it gave a dodgy run address again somewhere in the pg cxxx region, the proper run address is in pg 6xxx region

 

Also do taker into account that what loads into memory will not correspond with the data what's on the tape/disk, various other atari games do this type of loading as well

 

Also the various hacked versions of bbsb i've seen will load happily in standard 64k xl mode (atari800windows+), the only 1 i use is the multiboot split file version (it doesn't crash like the other ones do)

 

These 128k versions of BBSB must be newer versions or heavily modified

 

How about trying some of the Polish proggies or A collection of mastertronic/byteback/atlantis/activision games on a cart with a nice rob c/howfen type menu loader

 

The game that i'd like to see on cart is Mercenary 1/2 and mediator (once you'd got round the non standard loader, even transdisk had a problem with this one)

[axewater]

I would also be willing to pay for this ...

 

a sidenote : the mountain mirror thing I also experience with the cracked version running on my emulator ... i guess its an emulator thing.... also, the top of the doors are transparant on the emulator, i dont think this is supposed ot be that way

[www.atarimania.com]

ANother game he could try hacking to cartridge is BBSB, which was strangely enough supposed to have being released on cartridge, i've only ever seen it on tape and disk...

Never released on disk, it was cartridge in the US and tape in Europe

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Gunstar]

If you are going to want money for this project, then it is DEFINATELY necessary to get permission from Philip price, otherwise how can you possibly rationalize complaining and whining about possible "piracy" of your "work" when as of this point YOU ARE THE PIRATE?!? One can hardly complaing about piracy of a piracy! I'd love to see this released just as much as the next guy (eventually I'll own a flashcart), but if your not doing it for free to the community out of the goodness of your heart and for the love of Atari only, and want money, I certainly wouldn't respect any non-existant "rights" to make money for the work you've done on program that's not your to begin with; that you do not own the rights too. Just my 2 cents. I'll not pay a single cent for this if you don't get permission, if you are planning on selling it. The only other ethical and legal way to do it otherwise would be to make sure the people you sell it to have the original, so the flash version could be considered a legit "back-up." And then you could only charge a nominal amount for backup "services."

Edited May 27, 2005 by Gunstar

[ijor]

I'll not pay a single cent for this if you don't get permission, if you are planning on selling it.

 

PP might give permission for the conversion (assuming he has the rights). But of course that he will never give permission for any kind of selling.

 

The only other ethical and legal way to do it otherwise would be to make sure the people you sell it to have the original, so the flash version could be considered a legit "back-up." And then you could only charge a nominal amount for backup "services."

 

It doesn't necessarily have to be a nominal amount. But to make it 100% legal is quite complicated. "Making sure the buyer have an original" is not enough, that doesn't make it legal at all.

 

The only possible way would be to sell a program (and/or hardware) that converts the original disks to the converted form. And this still could be controversial and not fully legal depending on the country.

[carmel_andrews]

I pretty sure that i am correct in what i said that BBSB was also released on disk, as I am sure thst I did see one when I bought by tape original, also on the scrolling advert that's displayed during the loading of the tape version of many USG games it is started that BBSB was released (is available) on tape and disk

 

Even the old sillica shop catalog had it listed on tape, disk and rom (the text only version) although, i accept that the rom version was an import (I also remember seeing the cartridge box for the 5200 version, when i used to go to sillica shop when they first opened in TCR (tottenham court road)

[www.atarimania.com]

I pretty sure that i am correct in what i said that BBSB was also released on disk, as I am sure thst I did see one when I bought by tape original, also on the scrolling advert that's displayed during the loading of the tape version of many USG games it is started that BBSB was released (is available) on tape and disk

 

Even the old sillica shop catalog had it listed on tape, disk and rom (the text only version) although, i accept that the rom version was an import (I also remember seeing the cartridge box for the 5200 version, when i used to go to sillica shop when they first opened in TCR (tottenham court road)

Although US Gold announced the game on disk as well, it only made it to tape on the Atari. What you saw is probably the C64 version.

 

The US Gold scrolling adverts also stated Summer Games II was available so draw your conclusions... Never trust printed matter either, many games in the Silica Shop catalog were never released in the end.

 

BTW, does anybody have the rare Dutch release of Bounty Bob Strikes Back! by Aackosoft?

 

Edit... Sorry for hijacking the thread...

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com