Alternate Reality: The City by Philip Price for Atari 800

[AB Positive]

I'm having a hell of a time lately getting AR-City running with my SIO2PC setup. I can run it, create chars, setup and everything and supposedly save, but every time I try to boot the save ATR it says it's corrupted. It's an ATR that came with the rest of the disks... am I missing something?

[Xebec's Demise]

I'm having a hell of a time lately getting AR-City running with my SIO2PC setup. I can run it, create chars, setup and everything and supposedly save, but every time I try to boot the save ATR it says it's corrupted. It's an ATR that came with the rest of the disks... am I missing something?

 

Are you saving to one of the game disks, rather than a dedicated character disk? Are you using a different disk 2, side 2 - data is stored there too?

Edited March 30, 2010 by Xebec's Demise

[AB Positive]

I'm having a hell of a time lately getting AR-City running with my SIO2PC setup. I can run it, create chars, setup and everything and supposedly save, but every time I try to boot the save ATR it says it's corrupted. It's an ATR that came with the rest of the disks... am I missing something?

 

Are you saving to one of the game disks, rather than a dedicated character disk? Are you using a different disk 2, side 2 - data is stored there too?

 

completely different ATR. Here's what I have in APE for the five drives (swapping in the char disk when asked, as AR can only see the first two disk drives...)

 

1) AR: The City Disk 1 Side 1

2) AR: The City Disk 1 Side 2

3) AR: The City Disk 2 Side 1

4) AR: The City Disk 2 Side 2

5) AR: The City - Character Disk

 

 

every time, it says my character disk is unsavable to - even though I formatted the ATR clean with MyDos. Should I just go find a new Char Disk image? Perhaps mine is just a mucked up file.

[Xebec's Demise]

I'm having a hell of a time lately getting AR-City running with my SIO2PC setup. I can run it, create chars, setup and everything and supposedly save, but every time I try to boot the save ATR it says it's corrupted. It's an ATR that came with the rest of the disks... am I missing something?

 

Are you saving to one of the game disks, rather than a dedicated character disk? Are you using a different disk 2, side 2 - data is stored there too?

 

completely different ATR. Here's what I have in APE for the five drives (swapping in the char disk when asked, as AR can only see the first two disk drives...)

 

1) AR: The City Disk 1 Side 1

2) AR: The City Disk 1 Side 2

3) AR: The City Disk 2 Side 1

4) AR: The City Disk 2 Side 2

5) AR: The City - Character Disk

 

 

every time, it says my character disk is unsavable to - even though I formatted the ATR clean with MyDos. Should I just go find a new Char Disk image? Perhaps mine is just a mucked up file.

 

Did you try creating a brand new character disk from the AR menu using a blank drive?

 

Which downloads are you using?

[Xebec's Demise]

AR City Amiga .99 start

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 230459249607

[AB Positive]

I did use a blank via APE and had AR reformat it to no avail. I'm thinking the AR disks themselves might be borked, I should get new copies and give it another try...

[Shamus]

Like I said in an earlier post, my brother and I played the "Hacker Cracker" cracked version of The City (he as an evil char, me as good) and never had any problems with it. So it occurred to me that that version probably didn't get wide distribution, so here's disk 1 for anyone interested in trying it.

 

Couldn't find my copy of disk 2, but any should work with it (I played it last night in Atari800 using a disk 2 downloaded from the internet, and saving and reloading a character worked as I remember it from back in the day ).

d0167a - Alternate Reality The City 1A.atr

d0167b - Alternate Reality The City 1B.atr

[AB Positive]

Thank you! I'll be giving these a shot tonight!

[Shamus]

Did it work for you?

[Xebec's Demise]

Alternate Reality the Dungeon - looks complete, but $40

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 140425729118

[freemale221g]

I am having trouble saving my character in alternate reality the city. I use the Atari800WinPlus emulator I place disk 1 into drive 1 and boot the game normally then I choose to start a new character and follow the prompts till I get into the city. Then when I save my character and put the character disk into drive 1 and the drive activates and then after a few minutes of activity I get a message on the screen saying I have saved my Character and the game freezes, but when I restart the game and choose to resume an existing character and put the charcter disk into the drive I get message saying that the character disk is empty.

 

This happens no matter what version of alternate reality the city I use for the atari 8 bit or ST.

 

Thanks for any help to can provide.

Edited May 30, 2011 by freemale221g

[Goochman]

I think it might be easier/better to just do a 'save state' in the emu

[Rybags]

Save State probably won't be any good in the case of the AR games.

 

Pretty sure the game also periodically writes to the actual game disk, so you'd also need to do copies of the non-boot images.

[slyde]

very cool to see this thread on one of my favorite games of all time. I spent DAYS with these games back in high school.

 

Was there JUST the city and dungeon ever produced? I need to go thru my collection, but i had thought that i had the city, dungeon, and 1 other (palace, perhaps?). Thats probably incorrect, but thought i'd ask.

 

and heres another question.. since i have gotten my old 800 up and running, and now that i have an Sdrive, how would i go about playing AR and saving a character when playing it on my Sdrive? is there a way?

[freemale221g]

Save State probably won't be any good in the case of the AR games.

 

Pretty sure the game also periodically writes to the actual game disk, so you'd also need to do copies of the non-boot images.

 

I think you are probably right, but would like to know whether the game does write to the actual game disk for sure.

 

 

It acts like it writing to the disk as the virtual disk light (flashing #1 in the lower right corner of emulator screen)flashes and yet the character disk shows up as empty. I have the 2 drives that I use when playing the game in the emulator set to read/write but still I get the message that the character disk is empty. I wish I knew how the city saves your character and whether the game is supposed to freeze when after getting the message your character has been saved.

 

The funny thing is I have tried differnt emulators as well as different copies of the game both for the 8bit and the ST and I always get the message that my character disk is empty after what I believe to be a succesfull save.

 

I don't have any problem palying AR the dungeon.

Edited June 1, 2011 by freemale221g

[Rybags]

Mount it as Read-Only and you'll find out soon enough.

[freemale221g]

Mount it as Read-Only and you'll find out soon enough.

What???????

 

 

I finally manged to get a copy of AR the city that will allow me to save. Disk 1 is an apx disk instead of an ATR but at least I can save my character now. I have to use Altirra though as it is the only one that reads atx disks. I wish there was a way of converting ATX disk images to ATR or XFD disk images.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

I wish there was a way of converting ATX disk images to ATR or XFD disk images.

 

ATX is for those disks that can't be put into ATR/XFD images.

 

ATR/XFD only supports standard sector layouts. ATX supports non-standard layouts (as used in copy protection schemes). Converting an ATR to ATX results in an ATR with the copy protection scheme removed, probably making the image unusable otherwise they would've make it an ATR in the first place.

[Kylev]

freemale221g,

 

I have used the cracked versions of AR - City for some time now and have no problems writing out to the player disk in either A800WIN or Altirra. I have not created a new player disk in quite some time, but I believe you might need to format your player disk using the single density dos of your choice before attempting to use it.

 

As I recall, the first time you try to use a disk as a player disk you are told that your new disk is not formatted and you are asked if you want to format it. Answering yes will cause the program to lay out a player disk data structure on the new disk and create space for 4 characters. Subsequent uses of this disk write the necessary data for loading your saved character back into the program.

 

The program was written to stop whenever you saved your progress, so "freezing" after a save is normal. Also, please be aware that whichever character you load into the City is marked as "DEAD" when it is loaded in and is only available for use in a later session if you save before exiting the program. This led my friends and me to use a backup strategy of creating a copy, via sector copying software, of the player disk after each successful session. This process works just as well with emulation (it actually is easier today, just make a copy of the atr file using windows explorer), but some helpful soul created a program called Resurex that changes the state of a "DEAD" character to "LIVE" and bypasses this extra step of making copies.

 

Hope this helps. I think AR is one of the finest games ever written for the Atari 8bit and I expect you will have many years of enjoyment from its use.

 

Russ

[ijor]

I didn't check this for quite some time, so I am not 100% certain, but this is how I remember ...

 

There is only one (of the four) side of the original AR-The City that is copy protected. Of course, it is the first side of the first disk, the boot side/disk. The other sides are non copy protected.

 

AFAIR the games saves and writes to the other sides, the non-copy protected sides. It doesn't ever write to the boot disk, and as a matter of fact it can't, because it is factory write protected.

 

So the writtable sides/disks doesn't need to be in ATX format. Note that sometimes you might, for whatever reasons, find non protected disks in ATX format. It is possible to convert such, non-protected, ATX images to ATR. Just sector copy the image, either under emulation or using something like APE to mount the ATX image.

[freemale221g]

freemale221g,

 

I have used the cracked versions of AR - City for some time now and have no problems writing out to the player disk in either A800WIN or Altirra. I have not created a new player disk in quite some time, but I believe you might need to format your player disk using the single density dos of your choice before attempting to use it.

 

As I recall, the first time you try to use a disk as a player disk you are told that your new disk is not formatted and you are asked if you want to format it. Answering yes will cause the program to lay out a player disk data structure on the new disk and create space for 4 characters. Subsequent uses of this disk write the necessary data for loading your saved character back into the program.

 

The program was written to stop whenever you saved your progress, so "freezing" after a save is normal. Also, please be aware that whichever character you load into the City is marked as "DEAD" when it is loaded in and is only available for use in a later session if you save before exiting the program. This led my friends and me to use a backup strategy of creating a copy, via sector copying software, of the player disk after each successful session. This process works just as well with emulation (it actually is easier today, just make a copy of the atr file using windows explorer), but some helpful soul created a program called Resurex that changes the state of a "DEAD" character to "LIVE" and bypasses this extra step of making copies.

 

Hope this helps. I think AR is one of the finest games ever written for the Atari 8bit and I expect you will have many years of enjoyment from its use.

 

Russ

 

I tried all the cracked ones I could find and none of them worked which is still a mystery to me. The ATX disk works just fine with Altirra and Altirra is a very good emulator. I do hope someday to figure out how to use the debugger that comes with Altirra. I used to play AR the city all the time until I got AR the dungeon which is great. I have already enjoyed it off and on for many years although it has been a few years since I played either one. If there is a specific cracked version that you can recomend that might actually work for me that would be great. Thanks.

 

 

 

I didn't check this for quite some time, so I am not 100% certain, but this is how I remember ...

 

There is only one (of the four) side of the original AR-The City that is copy protected. Of course, it is the first side of the first disk, the boot side/disk. The other sides are non copy protected.

 

AFAIR the games saves and writes to the other sides, the non-copy protected sides. It doesn't ever write to the boot disk, and as a matter of fact it can't, because it is factory write protected.

 

So the writtable sides/disks doesn't need to be in ATX format. Note that sometimes you might, for whatever reasons, find non protected disks in ATX format. It is possible to convert such, non-protected, ATX images to ATR. Just sector copy the image, either under emulation or using something like APE to mount the ATX image.

 

I suspect your are right as only the boot disk is in ATX format in the version of AR the city that I got from Atarimania.

Edited June 2, 2011 by freemale221g

[Kylev]

freemale221g,

 

Here is an archive of my working setup. It includes all four disk sides as well the Resurex disk I mentioned earlier. It can be used to resurect your character if it dies or you need to try your available potions a second time. It does not include a blank character disk. I did verify the process for creating a workable player disk. It is to start the game with Disk 1 Side 1. When prompted for a character disk, insert a freshly formatted single density disk and hit enter. The game will prompt you that this is not a character disk and ask if you want to format it. Respond in the affirmative and a blank character disk will be created. Now select New on the character disk menu and create your new character. Once you have gone through the rest of the loading process (reading from Disk 1 Side 2 and Disk 2 Side 1), save your new character to your newly created character disk.

 

Hopefully, this will get you a working setup. If not, please let me know and maybe we can work out what is different between your environment and mine.

 

Russ

Alternate Reality- City.zip

[Xebec's Demise]

Hello everyone!

 

Wow, amazing to see this topic still going, with over 118,000 views.

 

Apparently I need to makes some updates...

 

In the competition thread, I had a thought; online AR: City possible?

Edited August 31, 2011 by Xebec's Demise

[Thesoundof Thesuburbs]

Help!

 

I was lucky enough to get into AR at the tender age of nine as my neighbour was a computer geek and him and his army of nerds had access to a lot of software.

 

He did me a copy which i played for years before getting an original copy of 'The Dungeon' and continuing to feed my addiction.

 

Years later, i returned to my City disks only to find that when playing, i would enter an establishment and be forced out immediately - no graphics loaded, just 'entering' then 'leaving'. I figured the disk had corrupted and boxed it all away.

 

Realising now just how influential and popular this game is even now among people, i d/d the emu and the images and it all goes well for a while, but then exactly the same bug occurs even in the emu. i can't see any reference to it online and i'm starting to think it may just be me....

 

can anyone help?!

 

thanks

Jase

[bfollett]

I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details of this, but it's definately covered in one or more threads on atariage. The info might even be somewhere in this thread. I believe the problem is that the character disk is written to each time you load your game. If the character disk image doesn't match what the program is expecting you get this instant exiting of establishments. I can't remember if it has anything to do with copy protection or not. Someone with a better memory may chime in with more information.

 

Bob