Commie Questions

[SnapCraft]

Some newbe questions (some with solid answers, some with opinion):

 

1) What's the story with Bounty Bob Strikes Back? That'll never be cracked for use with real hardware? I'd really like to play this on my C64; I keep reading that the protection on this was top notch.

 

2) Why do some (many) games use port 2 as the main joystick port?

 

3) Are you able to list the contents of every Commodore disk? I was an Apple guy growing up and there were plenty of disks that you could not "CATALOG".

 

4) Why does it appear that some scrolling games (Commando) seem to jump every 2 inches (vertical and horizontal scrolling games)? Yet they don't seem to in emulation. (Yes, I've seen this on different C64's)

[unholy]

2) Why do some (many) games use port 2 as the main joystick port?

 

Funny you should ask that--I was just wondering about the same thing earlier today. According to the interwebz, it's because signals from joystick port 1 interfere with keyboard input. Which in turn makes you wonder, what's up with the 10% or so that do use that port?

[Midnight Synergy]

 

1) What's the story with Bounty Bob Strikes Back? That'll never be cracked for use with real hardware? I'd really like to play this on my C64; I keep reading that the protection on this was top notch.

 

A cracked version must exist - I remember playing this as a kid on the C64, and it was on a "ahem" backup copy.

[SnapCraft]

 

1) What's the story with Bounty Bob Strikes Back? That'll never be cracked for use with real hardware? I'd really like to play this on my C64; I keep reading that the protection on this was top notch.

 

A cracked version must exist - I remember playing this as a kid on the C64, and it was on a "ahem" backup copy.

 

Yeah, well, sadly, every one I've tried goes to blank screen before running.

[+save2600]

Games on the C64 and the TI alike are inconsistent in their use of the joystick ports. The Vic-20 never had that problem

Edited March 27, 2011 by save2600

[Mayhem]

1) I see you're in the US. Most cracks online are PAL. If you want to run them on real hardware, you'll need to find NTSC releases, or fixed NTSC/PAL cracks.

 

2) As noted, the lines on the circuit board for port one cross bits of the keyboard, so they can interfere. Plug a joystick into port one and waggle it to demonstrate...

 

3) Yes, many original disks obfuscated their directory listings in some way.

 

4) Possibly bad coding, possibly due to what I listed in answer one. Commando has two versions as well, one programmed in the UK (for Elite by Chris Butler) and one programmed in the US.

[Dauber]

3) Are you able to list the contents of every Commodore disk? I was an Apple guy growing up and there were plenty of disks that you could not "CATALOG".

 

Not always -- as one poster mentioned, some programmers obfuscate the directory (it's surprisingly easy to do do that; IIRC, it only took one line of BASIC programming), but also, IIRC, it depends on what KIND of contents are on it. I think a lot of data discs that came with some games had some weird formatting that would just throw the machine into a really nasty multicolored infinite loop if you tried the "LOAD '$',8" command...