Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!

[Beeblebrox]

@w1kThe pixel perfect timing and well known difficulty factor present for all versions of Prince of Persia is just part of the experience. 

 

There are things you need to be able to get the best out of this fantastic Atari port of PoP:

 

1) Get a decent joystick - I use either my zipstick comp or a gamepad. I've tried some other joysticks and the control suffers badly. Cx24 joysticks are awful with this game. Joysticks with decent microswitches makes a hugh difference.

2) in the game settings set the frame delimiter to 3. Animation is faster and I find the game infinitely more playable.

 

This Atari 8bit port of PoP is regarded by some as one the best versions of PoP (both 8bit and 16bit) released. 

 

PoP as a game isn't for everyone as the general frustration levels are right up there heh heh. Personally I love it and it's an amazing achievement to bring it to the A8.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 1 by Beeblebrox

[w1k]

yes, its time to buy new joystick thanks for reply

[Peruchi]

I'm experiencing some troubles trying to run this game on my stock NTSC XEGS from the Atarimax 8mbit cartridge...

 

I've sucessfully flashed some banked games that could run my 64k machine, such as Space Harrier, AtariBlast!, among others, with the Maxflash Studio and the Atarimax 8 mbit cart. I've always used the images provided here on AA to do this.

 

Then I tried to flash the image PoP_Atarimax_20211206_final.car, which was extracted from this archive: PoP_CAR_20211206_final.rar with the Maxflash Cart Studio but that didn't work, as the Maxflash Cart Studio does not understand .car files. As I know that .car files are simply rom files with a 16 byte header, I then edited the file with HxD and removed the first line of the file.

 

I was able to write the resulting image,  PoP_Atarimax_20211206_final.bin to the Atarimax 8mbit cart without any issues, with the USB programmer. But when I ran the game on my XEGS, it just couldn't boot, first exhibiting a green screen, then a red one, and then an orange one. And then it kept on blinking the red and orange screens indefinitely...

 

Not willing to call it quits, I then tried the Wrathchild file, PoP_Atarimax_20211206_final_flashable.atr, and flashed the cart directly from the XEGS, booted with the flashable atr file. The flashing concluded without any errors, but when I ran the cartridge the same behavior appeared again, with the blinking red and orange screens.

 

I'm guessing the red/orange pattern is some kind of self test, maybe because I'm trying to run a 128k game on a 64k machine without a proper banking scheme, perhaps...

 

In any case I'm resorting to this thread in the hopes that someone could explain what's happening and if it would be possible to make an 8mbit cartridge that hopefully would run on my stock XEGS.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Igor

 

Edited March 11 by Peruchi
writing errors

[+MrFish]

13 minutes ago, Peruchi said:

I'm experiencing some troubles trying to run this game on my stock NTSC XEGS from the Atarimax 8mbit cartridge...

It's simple. This game requires a machine with a minimum of 128K of RAM in order to run.

 

[Peruchi]

52 minutes ago, MrFish said:

It's simple. This game requires a machine with a minimum of 128K of RAM in order to run.

 

I know that, but, since I'm able to run games that require even greater amounts of memory - AtariBlast!, for example, requires 1MB and it still runs from the Atarimax cart - I was hoping that I could do the same with Prince of Persia 😔

Edited March 11 by Peruchi
writing errors

[_The Doctor__]

Some game might take 1 MB of storage medium but do not require that much ram to run, other require lots of RAM but not much storage medium.

I think you are confusing what the requirements are based on units rather than type of memory and said units.

Not all software executes from ROM, all need some RAM for this or that.

Some just copy themselves from cart to RAM, and many are hybrids of the two.

So you must be sure of all of the requirements.

Many software titles provide different media type to run from. Each has it's own needs.

Without a cartridge you might need 1 MB ram for a game, but a version that works from ROM (CART) might only need 64K or even 16K.

In this case, I believe POP needs the RAM. reading the manual-128KB of RAM minimum

Find all the versions here.

Edited March 11 by _The Doctor__

[+x=usr(1536)]

30 minutes ago, Peruchi said:

I know that, but, since I'm able to run games that require even greater amounts of memory - AtariBlast!, for example, requires 1MB and it still runs from the Atarimax cart - I was hoping that I could do the same with Prince of Persia 😔

AtariBlast requires 1MB if the entire game is loaded into memory.  If 1MB isn't available, it loads different portions from storage.

 

PoP is different in that the entire 128K is used by the game.  This is why it won't work on anything with less RAM.

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Peruchi said:

I know that, but, since I'm able to run games that require even greater amounts of memory - AtariBlast!, for example, requires 1MB and it still runs from the Atarimax cart - I was hoping that I could do the same with Prince of Persia 😔

Like Doc said, storage medium requirements and RAM requirements are two different things; and AtariBlast is not Prince of Persia is not Space Harrier. "Hope" isn't enough: the author of the software determines how much RAM will be required for the game to run on a given type of medium. It's been stated from the beginning that the game requires a minimum of 128K to run the cart version (I think the disk version is the same).

 

[Edit]

Moving a game from disk to cart doesn't automatically make it require less RAM; it's entirely dependent on the particular needs and structure of the code and data. In this case, moving from disk to cart gets you way faster loading of each level. That's the point of running it from cart for this particular game.

 

Edited March 11 by MrFish
Edited for clarity, and the addition at the bottom.

[Peruchi]

5 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Like Doc said, storage medium requirements and RAM requirements are two different things; and AtariBlast is not Prince of Persia is not Space Harrier. "Hope" isn't enough: the author of the software determines how the game will work based on a certain type of medium and the amount of RAM that makes it possible for the game run. It's been stated from the beginning that the game requires a minimum of 128K to run the cart version (I think the disk version is the same).

 

First thing: I used the verb "hope" for the lack of a better term, I'm not a native english speaker.

I was just expecting (or whatever term that fits here) that, as in AtariBlast, the game Prince of Persia would behave as @x=usr(1536) mentioned, that it would "load different portions from storage".

But, as Doc said, every game has its own peculiarities, then, it is not possible.

I know the differences between Random Access Memory and Read-Only Memory, what I do not know is how the coder make use of these devices during the development of his or her work, and how they are expected to interact one with another. That's why I searched for clarification with you guys.

Anyway, I thank you all for the insights.

 

 

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Peruchi said:

First thing: I used the verb "hope" for the lack of a better term, I'm not a native english speaker.

I was just expecting (or whatever term that fits here) that, as in AtariBlast, the game Prince of Persia would behave as @x=usr(1536) mentioned, that it would "load different portions from storage".

But, as Doc said, every game has its own peculiarities, then, it is not possible.

I know the differences between Random Access Memory and Read-Only Memory, what I do not know is how the coder make use of these devices during the development of his or her work, and how they are expected to interact one with another. That's why I searched for clarification with you guys.

Anyway, I thank you all for the insights.

I understand (understood) your thinking, by comparing how other games behave when playing from different mediums; and so it seems possible that it might be the case for Prince of Persia too; but when the author states how much RAM is required, you can only expect that to be true.

 

Anyway, time to upgrade.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

Good game. Gotta get use to the 'jump' part of it haha. Works great on my 256K RAMBO 1200XL, thanks !

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Peruchi said:

I'm not a native english speaker.

Your English is fine. I was partly just poking some fun at you. I'm accustomed to communicating with non-native English speakers from almost 20 years on these forums and 16 years of living in California. California has a lot of Spanish-speaking (mainly Mexican), Filipinos (coming from a variety of different native dialects, of which they have many), Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani, etc., all of which I've had regular dialogue with while living and working there. I still speak regularly with some Filipinos, even though I'm not in California anymore. If you call any customer service center, you're inevitably going to enter dialogue with a Filipino or Indian too.

 

Occasionally some nuances of meaning get lost in translation (in both directions) -- especially when it comes to common language and/or locality expressions; but that's to be expected.

 

[yorxs]

In case anyone is interested, I successfully got Prince of Persia running on the 400 mini. I just completed a play-through of the game and I did not experience any comparability issues. 

[+skr]

I didn´t have any difficulties getting it running on the 400 mini, too.

 

Didn´t do a play through for a long time (many, many years), but with Jordan Mechners book on the way to my mailbox, I´ll give it a shot on the Apple II and then 800 XL. Just because that´s a nice time to do it.