65 replies to this topic

[ijor]

I'd need to check my notes to confirm. But IIRC, all the originals I've seen are identical (except, of course, the writable side on disk 2).

[www.atarimania.com]

Basing such a theory on cracked programs is a bad idea. Anyway, the US Gold version just has different packaging, the disks have Datasoft labels. Pretty sure there are different versions for The Dungeon, though...

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[Xebec's Demise]

www.atarimania.com, on Tue Jul 31, 2007 3:12 AM, said:

Basing such a theory on cracked programs is a bad idea. Anyway, the US Gold version just has different packaging, the disks have Datasoft labels. Pretty sure there are different versions for The Dungeon, though...

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

You're right, but still it's strange that there would be at least five sets of AR City disks where all four disks were different. We know that Disk 2 Side 1 is very likely to be different in any set of disk files because the game stores data there. And disk 1 side 1 is likely to be different because of different edits in the cracks and to the title screen. But what about the other two disks?

Also, why does the US Gold Version not have a title screen? Was that edited out? Anyone have originals? I've got a few, guess I may need to dig them out to find the answer.

Or maybe just do a google for a better file comparison utility that shows the actual differences.

Edited by Xebec's Demise, Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:46 PM.

[www.atarimania.com]

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Also, why does the US Gold Version not have a title screen? Was that edited out?

What do you mean exactly? As I wrote, both the US Gold and Datasoft releases look EXACTLY the same.

Quote

Anyone have originals? I've got a few, guess I may need to dig them out to find the answer.

Maybe there really are different versions for The City (I believe The Dungeon has 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2) but if you want to go for comparisons, please use virgin originals and not dodgy cracks

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[Xebec's Demise]

The US Gold version does not have a black title screen with credits and copyright info right after booting, while the others do. In the above download I included a screenshot of the title screen with each set of disk files, except for the US gold version because it did not have one. None of the title screens list version numbers, but it might be on the disks somewhere.

I'll take a look at the originals I have. Do you have any?

[www.atarimania.com]

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The US Gold version does not have a black title screen with credits and copyright info right after booting, while the others do. In the above download I included a screenshot of the title screen with each set of disk files, except for the US gold version because it did not have one.

Er... Did you actually read what I wrote?

The Datasoft and US Gold releases are the same, down to the protection, disk labels and sleeves. Only the packaging differs, meaning the European version does have the title screen (and I just loaded my copy to make sure again).

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Edited by www.atarimania.com, Wed Aug 1, 2007 9:31 AM.

[Xebec's Demise]

Er... Did you actually read what I wrote?

The US Gold files I posted for download DO NOT show a title screen. If there are different versions of The City, then it is also likely that different versions were sold under the US Gold label.

[www.atarimania.com]

This is getting silly...

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The US Gold files I posted for download DO NOT show a title screen. If there are different versions of The City, then it is also likely that different versions were sold under the US Gold label.

Basically, you never saw an original distributed by US Gold yet you claim the dodgy cracked images you posted are by that company? Your source?

Wait a minute... I don't want to embarrass you but... that [side 1-1] looks familiar. Yep, this is how I used to name games with multiple disks when we started Atarimania. What you have is our old unverified crack before we uploaded a clean version in VAPI format. Both the Datasoft and US Gold downloads we had were the same. Sorry but that makes your point moot, especially since we now have verified ATX disks for both entries. Again, the Datasoft and US Gold releases were double-checked to make sure they were 100% identical.

I'm not saying there aren't multiple versions around but please stop spreading crap about a specific US Gold release based on nothing, I doubt it's helping anybody.

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[deathtrappomegranate]

Xebec's Demise, on Wed Aug 1, 2007 10:16 PM, said:

The US Gold files I posted for download DO NOT show a title screen.

I think that what Atari Frog was getting at is that those files, as you said, were downloaded from the internet. There is no way of knowing whether they represent what was originally on the disks.

It's important to use the original media. Even then, it's still possible that they were altered, but for downloaded files there's just no provenance at all (unless they come from a very reliable source). This is why we (at Atarimania) are keen on the VAPI file format.

<edit> Oops, M. Frog himself beat me to it!

Edited by deathtrappomegranate, Wed Aug 1, 2007 4:12 PM.

[Xebec's Demise]

www.atarimania.com, on Wed Aug 1, 2007 4:05 PM, said:

Basically, you never saw an original distributed by US Gold yet you claim the dodgy cracked images you posted are by that company? Your source?

Wait a minute... I don't want to embarrass you but... that [side 1-1] looks familiar. Yep, this is how I used to name games with multiple disks when we started Atarimania. What you have is our old unverified crack before we uploaded a clean version in VAPI format. Both the Datasoft and US Gold downloads we had were the same. Sorry but that makes your point moot, especially since we now have verified ATX disks for both entries. Again, the Datasoft and US Gold releases were double-checked to make sure they were 100% identical.

I'm not saying there aren't multiple versions around but please stop spreading crap about a specific US Gold release based on nothing, I doubt it's helping anybody.

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Wow, what a spaz.

And don't assume I've never seen an original US Gold version - I own one.

You don't embarrass me, but you sure are embarrassing, calm down for a minute. I never claimed anything other than I had found multiple sets of AR City disk files and that all four disk files in each set were unique. I wrote that I thought there may be different versions and posted the files in case anyone wanted to check. I also stated that the US Gold files I did check did not have a title screen, which is accurate. Of course there is no way of knowing for sure what the files are until they are checked and that's why they were posted. I never made any claims other than the facts. So, if anything, why don't you check them rather than denying things sight unseen.

Just because you compared two original versions that you had in your possession and they were the same does not mean there are not more versions.

How lame of you to try to turn the discussion into an argument by insulting me as if I had not read what you wrote.

Edited by Xebec's Demise, Thu Aug 2, 2007 2:13 AM.

[CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,
afaik the black (?) title screen with white text on the datasoft disks said something like "... Alternate Reality... Copyright Datasoft 1985... Copyright P.Price... Paradise Programming... Datasoft is a trademark of IntelliCreations..." or something similar. Right after this (what I would call a bootscreen), the AR intro appeared (you see a city, a spaceship appears... think we all know the AR intro)...

Afaik, all Datasoft versions of AR had this black bootscreen (with white text), but afaik some US Gold releases did not have this bootscreen. I had AR various times (but always sold it or gave it away for good money) and yes, besides the difference in packaging (the US Gold versions always had cheap packaging!) there was also this very small difference when booting AR... but in my eyes this difference is very small, too small to keep it as a different AR version...

Besides, I often bought original disks and erased them with pirate copies - as long as you did not see any hacker / cracker intro. This was done since I own a Speedy 1050 upgrade and due to copy-protection many originals did not work with the Speedy (or the Speedy had to be slowed down, which I did not like). Stupid me, many Atarians will say, but since I paid money for the original disks, I could (and still can) do whatever I wanted with them - even use them as empty disks if I wanted to. Maybe other Atarians did the same and thus there are quite some original disks - but with pirate copies on them flying around... just a thought... -Andreas Koch.

P.S.: Many Datasoft games had this kind of bootscreen, sometimes with a blue screen and white text (Conan, Bruce Lee, etc.) sometimes with a black screen and white text (AR and maybe others)...

[www.atarimania.com]

I may have been direct but I never insulted you, I just stated you were spreading crap basing your argument on what you saw on cracked disks.

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I also stated that the US Gold files I did check did not have a title screen, which is accurate.

You're not reading... You say they are files as in "disk images", right? So, for the last time, the disks come from our site and were copied from images we had or that we found. We just list all the distributors in our database, Datasoft and US Gold in this case, but the cracked disks we had under both companies were the same. Granted, we may have replaced the stuff listed under US Gold after we uploaded the VAPI disks for the Datasoft entry (as we had to check that the US Gold and Datasoft disks were 100% identical) but that doesn't make it a specific US Gold release necessarily. Yet, for some completely obscure reason, you're choosing to list them under that company, which is wrong.

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Just because you compared two original versions that you had in your possession and they were the same does not mean there are not more versions.

Never wrote that, read the last sentence in my last post...

So, just answer these questions to clear things up... Did you check your US Gold original disks? Did you notice they were missing the title screen? What do the disk labels look like? Can you post proof so we can update our database? Again, I'm not saying different versions don't exist but if all you have is dodgy cracks, that won't help...

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Edited by www.atarimania.com, Thu Aug 2, 2007 3:01 AM.

[Xebec's Demise]

Wrathchild, on Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:53 AM, said:

Thought you'd all like to know that, after further investigations, I'm now poised to start re-coding the part of the game that swaps out data to the disk when you go into buildings etc, in order for it to write to flash memory instead for later restoring. With any luck, this will mean that the temporary character will behave properly and the map won't corrupt.

I'll release a version when that's done and then the following phase would then be to look at the 'save/load character' routines to get those to work from Flash too...

Disclaimer - I've recently got EA's "Tiger Woods 2005" for the PC which distracts me on occasion

Any progress?

[carmel_andrews]

Any chance that an ex datasoft exec or the company who programmed AR will spill the beans on why the third installment of A R wasn't released (at least for the A8), as I do remember hearing that there was or were going to be a third installment

[Xebec's Demise]

Looks like this has been abandoned.

[skr]

Wrathchild, on Tue Sep 5, 2006 1:21 AM, said:

Sadly I did buy a 48K expansion for a 400 from Ebay a while back only
to discover the box (which said 48K) only had a 16K board in it!
I don't have an 800 yet, but do keep an eye out on Ebay for them

Just realised, that you are only 600km away from me (Wolfsburg, Germany). With a little bit of luck I´ll have some business in Brno in the future. Could borrow you my 48k for your 400 for testing purposes. I´ll send you a PM when I go to Brno again.

Ooops. Should look for the dates more exactly... OK, so I guess there will be no FlashCart Version of AR. :-(

Edited by skr, Thu Sep 1, 2011 9:00 AM.