Wrathchild Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 (edited) Included here are the initial set of sources for the game "Colony". The intention is to use this thread as a place for discussion/submission of patches to these in order to produce a working game. Initial discussions on the bugs in the game can be seen on this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245 I've included the patches mentioned in that thread within the graphics.s file. So this first build should at least gets us past the graphics corruption Recommendations for suitable names for address labels are welcome too The executable is built using the tools found in the CC65 suite, driven by a makefile. Turning this into source for a different assembler shouldn't be difficult, generally in CA65 you have a character after a label (i.e. ':') and use directives such as .BYTE, .WORD and .RES which can easily be search&replaced. Ultimately I'd like to iron out some of the address references such that the whole source can be relocated easily to anywhere in memory. That would then make a good base for anyone wish to make a 5200 port as I'm sure the working RAM used in the game is < 16K! An example of what I mean would be the tables at $3E6C for VectorsLo & VectorsHi. This could be replaced with a .WORD array of the actual routine name labels instead. Good luck! Mark / Wrathchild colony_patched_sources_release_1.zip Edited September 11, 2007 by Wrathchild Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 14, 2007 Author Share Posted September 14, 2007 (edited) Hi, I've messed around with C# today (for a change) and wrote a silly(*) application to display the graphics out of the dumped memory image. This was based on tables found in the data used to draw images in the game. As you can see the Black & White graphics are the ones corrupted and so these need to be re-made. I'm not sure that the same graphics are used in the C64 game and so could be lifted? Anyway, I think the way to find out what each image is would be to run the current game build and pick up various objects, ordering them if necessary, and checking the corrupted patterns against those in the attached picture to know where to replace the data. For example, the image at $85F6 looks to begin with the grown mushroom, so I'd expect the next image to maybe be the first decay stage of a mushroom? If anyone wants the source for the program then let me know and I'll post it up (developed using the 2005 Express Edition). Regards, Mark (*) Silly as it redraws quite slowly as I used a FillRectangle to plot very pixel, does anyone have a quicker Atari 'byte' to screen in 2 or 4colours drawing routine? [EDIT] actually speed was hampered by running in debug mode, running the resulting exe directly worked much better Edited September 14, 2007 by Wrathchild Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1370321 Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted September 14, 2007 Share Posted September 14, 2007 Hmm... maybe try to check different versions of Colony and see if all of them have corrupted graphics in the same way... Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1370511 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 Do you mean different versions of the A8 game or from different platforms? I wouldn't suspect the corruption to occur on other platforms as they would have been built from different source code. The data area corrupted contains some source code and so I'd think this an error on the programmer creating the master image. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1370780 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 isnt that a perfect job for fandal? Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1370790 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 Aside from the corrupted graphics - which is more of an annoyance, the bugs to be fixed center around the addition of random objects to the map which interferes with the game, for example I had something like bullets appearing which when walked over sapped all of your energy causing you to die. Most often it was mountain characters starting to appear in the town! Some further checks to see if this occurs as a result of: 1) the supply ship landing or 2) the activation of the support droid I suspect something to do with the later as the random appearences seem to increase whilst you're playing. It probably requires importing the labels into the A800WinPLus emulator and running a big trace to file and then trawling through that. Using the 'B' facility for a write within an address range, it could be possible to detect the writes to the map memory and then work back from there, but as much is moving (enemies, mushroom states etc) that may prove tricky unless checking the value too for something specific, e.g a mountain. Regards, Mark Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1370919 Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted September 16, 2007 Share Posted September 16, 2007 Do you mean different versions of the A8 game or from different platforms? I meant check the existing versions on a8 (e.g. that one i've found on mapy.atari8.info site (someone told me that it's different a bit - it was attached in "Colony" topic in Atari 8-bit section of AA-forum, too). Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371608 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 16, 2007 Author Share Posted September 16, 2007 Thanks Miker, certainly the Mapy game image has the Black&White graphics almost correct, only at $8706 I changed $0F, $40 to $10, $02 and at $874A the four bytes $18, $03, $10, $02 to $10, $02, $00, $00. The Mapy image does crash also soon after giving the droid the battery and so I have looked at the code and this does differ slightly and so some analysis of 'what' would need to be done. At first glimpse it looks like some code changes have been made around address $33CF causing lots of address references to differ by 7 bytes. These logic behind these extra instructions should be investigted too. Also it should be confirmed if Mastertronic put out different versions or if there has been some previous attempts at patching? Attached is the updated graphics.s source file and a rebuilt executable. Regards, Mark colony_patched_sources_release_2.zip Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371694 Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted September 16, 2007 Share Posted September 16, 2007 I really doubt there was a cassette release other than the one we all know. They didn't do it for Universal Hero so they certainly wouldn't have spent development time and money on fixing Colony (this was a budget game after all). Maybe they weren't even aware of the bug at the time. Why is the code different on that tape-to-disk crack? -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371750 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 17, 2007 Author Share Posted September 17, 2007 I can only speculate Perhaps the original coder had a pang of guilt and decided to release a better version on the sly? The disk version does have a set of three NOPs together though at $33D1 so it may have been a 'scene' patched version after all? I'll need to reverse engineer the disk based version before proper conclusions can be made though and I've some other coding I need to finish up first. Regards, Mark Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371966 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 17, 2007 Author Share Posted September 17, 2007 Maybe a G2F wiz could do a loading screen port of the C64 or Amstrad version? http://www.cpczone.net/index.php?game=215 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371968 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 17, 2007 Author Share Posted September 17, 2007 Just a quick comparison of the memory dumps of the 2 versions shows that the Cassette verison has empty memory from $53D0 to the start of the music/sound routines at $5A00. The Disk version has code here and the strings inside imply that this may have been a release specifically for disk? Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371973 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted September 17, 2007 Author Share Posted September 17, 2007 (edited) Can a scripting guru quickly knock this up for me? Loop through the attached file and replace any hex address in the range 0x33D0 to $59FF with that value plus 7, e.g. line 1547 would change from: MakeName (0x412b, "NoBeaconFound"); to MakeName (0x4132, "NoBeaconFound"); I'm interested to see how this could be done in either 'sed', 'perl' or anything else people tend to use Thanks, Mark Colony_idc.zip Edited September 17, 2007 by Wrathchild Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371983 Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 My guess is that it was made with a tape-to-disk copy utility, specifically one that will create a boot disk from a tape you just loaded. The only official release was on cassette. -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1371985 Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted November 17, 2007 Share Posted November 17, 2007 (edited) Oh, haven't looked here for ages. Any news on this? Btw. the attachment has been sent to someone who can deal with it. Edited November 17, 2007 by miker Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1407653 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted November 17, 2007 Author Share Posted November 17, 2007 (edited) Oh, haven't looked here for ages. Any news on this? Btw. the attachment has been sent to someone who can deal with it. Thanks Miker, I'd seriously considered doing it by hand, but seriously would love to see script for the transform. The altered file would be used to confirm those differences, but I think the remaining bugs in the game would remain and hence would need to be fixed. Best wishes, Mark Edited November 17, 2007 by Wrathchild Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1407885 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tickled_Pink Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 If anyone wants the source for the program then let me knowand I'll post it up (developed using the 2005 Express Edition). Regards, Mark (*) Silly as it redraws quite slowly as I used a FillRectangle to plot very pixel, does anyone have a quicker Atari 'byte' to screen in 2 or 4colours drawing routine? [EDIT] actually speed was hampered by running in debug mode, running the resulting exe directly worked much better Can you post the C# code. I'd be interested in taking a look at it. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1413751 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted November 28, 2007 Author Share Posted November 28, 2007 Here you go, just change the path on line 76 of Form1.cs to wherever you put the colony.mem file. Regards, Mark ColonyViewer.zip Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1414859 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urchlay Posted January 16, 2008 Share Posted January 16, 2008 Can a scripting guru quickly knock this up for me? Loop through the attached file and replace any hex address in the range 0x33D0 to $59FF with Replying to an old post, but... Are you still looking for a perl/whatever script to do this? I threw something together in perl, see if this works and/or makes any sense: #!/usr/bin/perl -w sub fixaddr { my $addr = hex($_[0]); return sprintf "0x%04x", $addr + 7 if $addr >= 0x33d0 && $addr <= 0x59ff; return "0x$_[0]"; } while(<>) { s/0x([0-9a-f]{4})/fixaddr($1)/ge; print; } Paste into a text file, run it as "perl scriptname.pl colony.idc > colony_fixed.idc" Also attaching the output, in case it's inconvenient for you to install/run perl on your OS... colony_idc_fixed.zip Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1446773 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted January 23, 2008 Author Share Posted January 23, 2008 wow - Can't believe I haven't caught up with this section for over a week! Thanks for the script and file - I'll check this out shortly and feed back any findings. Thanks, Mark Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1451297 Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 I understand that there's a 'debugged' or patched version of Universal Hero available (I think it was done in eastern europe) any idea where i can get it from (emulator format) Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1452251 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kr0tki Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Google? Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1452300 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted February 8, 2008 Author Share Posted February 8, 2008 (edited) Hi, I'll check this out shortly and feed back any findings. I had checked this but have only just gotten around to reporting back The differences aren't worth worrying about. In the version I first used the Init code looks like this: GameInit: SEI CLD LDX #$FF TXS JSR TitleScreen GameLoop: In the other version it looks like this: GameInit: SEI CLD LDX #$FF TXS LDA #$FE NOP NOP NOP JSR TitleScreen LDA #$58; 'X' GameLoop: And so the additional code (7 bytes) actually has no effect other to simply shift quite a chunk of the game code forward a bit in memory. As the jump/call addresses are (relatively) the same between the two, I can only conclude that there must have been separate builds produced as opposed to someone hacking one to produce the other. Strange... Mark Edited February 8, 2008 by Wrathchild Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1461285 Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 ...or maybe there was something like JSR CheckProtection. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1462567 Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted May 14, 2008 Share Posted May 14, 2008 any news? Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/113289-project-to-make-mastertronics-colony-work/#findComment-1519172 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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