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SwordQuest Earthworld logic


MrTrust

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3 hours ago, Asaki said:

"This is not the SwordQuest EarthWorld Playoff Contest. No. This is just a Tribute."

 

So am I just not looking hard enough, or has no one ever made a ROM hack replica of the Playoff cart? Am I the first?

 

I'm not very good at ASM, but I made some changes to Omegamatrix's disassembly of the NTSC EarthWorld, and I've played through a few times in Stella and it seems to work correctly. It's actually almost fun.

I took some inspiration from the PAL release, mostly to see how the "ending" works, but I did not copy all of the changes it made to the game.

Interestingly, the PAL's clue 5 page still shows dagger and food. Weird. But mine doesn't do that.

I just read on another page that clues 9 and 10 can be unlocked at any time...I have a feeling PAL does the same thing, so I probably won't fix it.

 

Anyway, the playoff rules/clues are included in the readme, if one does not already have them (you will need them). Like I said, my ASM is not very good, so let me know if any issues are found :)

 

sqewt_20230113.zip 8.56 kB · 1 download

 

It's highly probable, but all of the clues in Robert Ruiz's solution pamphlet are in a completely different order from the actual ROM. Of course, he could've scrambled them to throw everyone off the trail.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, what you have done is a hack that resembles this contest cart?
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-swordquest-earthworld_25679.html

The EarthWorld contest version, right?

8)

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9 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

So, correct me if I'm wrong, what you have done is a hack that resembles this contest cart?

It's a tribute B)

Yes, I changed all of the item placements to match the clues/solution given by John-Michael Battaglia, and I changed the clue screens to just show the number of the clue (1-11). I had to look at the PAL cart to figure out how the ending was supposed to work.

 

If the Playoff contest cart had any of the other changes that the PAL cart made...well...maybe someone else can do that if they want. I think this is good enough...until we get the "real deal", at least.

 

11 hours ago, Lord_of_Sipan said:

Were the comics done in the UK or by British artists in the US? I can’t remember who Atari contracted for the comics.

DC. American artist George Perez did the pencils.

 

...oh, I should've put him in the readme, too...rest in peace.

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On 1/13/2023 at 10:31 PM, Asaki said:

I just read on another page that clues 9 and 10 can be unlocked at any time...I have a feeling PAL does the same thing, so I probably won't fix it.

I just checked my hack: 9 can be unlocked at any time, but not 10. So that's good, I think unlocking 10 early might break things.

PAL version, neither 9 nor 10 would unlock early for me.

I'm not sure which part of the code causes this, but as long as 10 isn't broken, I'm not super concerned...

Edited by Asaki
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/25/2022 at 4:57 PM, MrTrust said:

 

If my calculations are correct, there are 65,535 possible combinations of the 15 available items that can be left in a given room. 

 

 

 

 

What's worse, there are 12^15 possible combinations of item placements across all rooms.  That's over 15.4 quadrillion possibilitiesThat means the odds of getting the final clue just by itself correct are 1 in 15.4 quadrillion, as it requires all 15 item placed in specific rooms.

It's really unfair that E.T. has a worse reputation.  The mere fact that E.T. is beatable automatically makes it 15 quadrillion times the game Earthworld is. 😏

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/10/2023 at 3:58 AM, Straximus said:

What's worse, there are 12^15 possible combinations of item placements across all rooms.  That's over 15.4 quadrillion possibilitiesThat means the odds of getting the final clue just by itself correct are 1 in 15.4 quadrillion, as it requires all 15 item placed in specific rooms.

It's really unfair that E.T. has a worse reputation.  The mere fact that E.T. is beatable automatically makes it 15 quadrillion times the game Earthworld is. 😏

Thanks for doing the math on this. After getting the solution off the internet in the late 90's and playing it through I always wondered what the possibilties of finishing the actual game were. As I predicted you'd have a better chance of hitting the lottery than completing Earthworld.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/13/2023 at 7:31 PM, Asaki said:

"This is not the SwordQuest EarthWorld Playoff Contest. No. This is just a Tribute."

 

So am I just not looking hard enough, or has no one ever made a ROM hack replica of the Playoff cart? Am I the first?

 

I'm not very good at ASM, but I made some changes to Omegamatrix's disassembly of the NTSC EarthWorld, and I've played through a few times in Stella and it seems to work correctly. It's actually almost fun.

I took some inspiration from the PAL release, mostly to see how the "ending" works, but I did not copy all of the changes it made to the game.

Interestingly, the PAL's clue 5 page still shows dagger and food. Weird. But mine doesn't do that.

I just read on another page that clues 9 and 10 can be unlocked at any time...I have a feeling PAL does the same thing, so I probably won't fix it.

 

Anyway, the playoff rules/clues are included in the readme, if one does not already have them (you will need them). Like I said, my ASM is not very good, so let me know if any issues are found :)

 

sqewt_20230113.zip 8.56 kB · 11 downloads

 

It's highly probable, but all of the clues in Robert Ruiz's solution pamphlet are in a completely different order from the actual ROM. Of course, he could've scrambled them to throw everyone off the trail.

I've thought about making solutions closer to the book in the past, but never took it on. Anyhow it's really good to see my old Earthworld disassembly was of some use. 😀

 

 

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On 6/2/2023 at 4:50 PM, Omegamatrix said:

I've thought about making solutions closer to the book in the past, but never took it on. Anyhow it's really good to see my old Earthworld disassembly was of some use. 😀

Yeah, thanks! I'm not sure if I could've done it without it.
I've got a little bit of time on my hands now, I might see if I can fix the issue with clue 9 and then make a dedicated thread so a couple more people can see it.

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So...my assembly is not very good, but it seems to me that the code is arranged so that at any time in the game, you can complete clue 1, clue 7, or clue 9...?
And then clue 2 cannot be completed unless clue 1 is done first, and then 3, 4, 5, 6...
Clue 8 has to be after 7...
Clue 10 has to be after 9...

It looks like 11 can be done at any time as well, but due to requiring the Warrior's Sword, it technically isn't possible.

 

Am I on the right track?

I -think- this should be a simple fix, but I'm wondering why it was done this way in the first place...

 

I think I remember one of the articles about the competition mentioning that someone else technically won first, but the judge said they did one of the clues in the wrong order and had to go back again.

Hmm....so now I'm wondering if I should just leave it alone...

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On 6/3/2023 at 6:58 PM, Asaki said:

So...my assembly is not very good, but it seems to me that the code is arranged so that at any time in the game, you can complete clue 1, clue 7, or clue 9...?
And then clue 2 cannot be completed unless clue 1 is done first, and then 3, 4, 5, 6...
Clue 8 has to be after 7...
Clue 10 has to be after 9...

Yes that is all correct, so I would say you reading of assembly is not bad. 😀 At the very least you are able to follow the logic.

 

 

  

On 6/3/2023 at 6:58 PM, Asaki said:

It looks like 11 can be done at any time as well, but due to requiring the Warrior's Sword, it technically isn't possible.

What I could figure out is that I believe Clue 11 should be possible, but it has been so long since I've looked at this that I'm not sure about the Warrior's Sword part. I can't even remember how it looks like when it appears. I'll take you as the expert now if it can be triggered or not.

 

One nuance I can see is that to get Clue 11 you must get Clue 1, as you have to go into the Aries room.

 

Edit: Looking at the code it appears that Clues 1-8 must be done before Clue 11, but Clues 9 and 10 might not be required.

 

 

  

On 6/3/2023 at 6:58 PM, Asaki said:

I -think- this should be a simple fix, but I'm wondering why it was done this way in the first place...

 

I think I remember one of the articles about the competition mentioning that someone else technically won first, but the judge said they did one of the clues in the wrong order and had to go back again.

Hmm....so now I'm wondering if I should just leave it alone...

I don't know why it is structured that way either. It may pop out with further disassembly of the code as an eurka moment, but I don't think I will ever fully disassemble it. If you choose to make the cart clues forced sequential I believe that could be done really easily. I will post an updated source later and include a switch to go between the normal game and a forced sequence.

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Here is an updated source for Earthworld. Note, I changed some of the order of clues 9, 10, 11 as I think I had it wrong in the original dissasembly (the section where it jumps into to check clue correctness).

 

SwordquestEarthworld(2023_06_05_A).zip

 

There is a lot of relabelling and further disassembly around the clue tables. Other then that I add in some compile switches to build a forced sequential clue version of Earthworld. Right now the source is defaulted to compile the original version.

 

I haven't tested this very much, but on paper it looks okay for the sequential clue version I made...

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On 6/5/2023 at 1:40 PM, Omegamatrix said:

What I could figure out is that I believe Clue 11 should be possible, but it has been so long since I've looked at this that I'm not sure about the Warrior's Sword part. I can't even remember how it looks like when it appears. I'll take you as the expert now if it can be triggered or not.

 

Spoiler

For the competition version (and the PAL), clue 10 takes you to the title screen, and then to the inventory screen, where the sword is waiting for you.
The sword is required for clue 11, so it literally can't be done until clue 10 is found.
The game is essentially over after that, but you can keep playing.

 

You know, thinking about it, I wonder if I could easily hack the PAL into a competition version without a disassembly...I think it would be feasible with just a few byte swaps?
Some of the clues in the PAL require more items than the competition, but I wonder if the game would be fine with something hacky like "Put the Ring in Leo and the Ring in Leo"...hmm...

 

On 6/5/2023 at 3:59 PM, Omegamatrix said:

Here is an updated source for Earthworld. Note, I changed some of the order of clues 9, 10, 11 as I think I had it wrong in the original dissasembly (the section where it jumps into to check clue correctness).

Ohhh, okay, I will have to check this out.
I tried doing it myself, but clearly something went wrong, because clues 1-10 worked fine, but it broke clue 11.

Edited by Asaki
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Okay, hacking the PAL ROM was pretty easy :)

I guess I never noticed that the items required are almost the same, they just added a few extra ones, and almost all of the rooms were changed.

The only tricky part was that clues 1 and 2 are not with the rest, so I just tracked down a few 0As (Scorpio) and a few 09s (Sagittarius) and changed each one until I found the right locations.
 

0x19A8 = room required for clue 1
0x19B7 = room for clue 2
0x1A5F-1A71 = items for clues 3-11
0x1A72-1A84 = rooms for clues 3-11

 

I didn't do any sort of PAL->NTSC conversion or anything like that, if it's even necessary. I did a quick playthrough in Stella and everything seems to be in order.

 

SwordQuest EarthWorld Tribute (PAL).bin

 

I took a quick peek at the updated source, but I will have to play around with it later.

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  • 8 months later...

I realize this is an old post and perhaps there is a newer one somewhere.  However, I find the conversation on the Swordquest series fascinating and hope it can continue.  I was twelve when the contest was on; however, I didn't get my hands on Earthworld till after the contest had ended.  It is disappointing to see how something which could have become so good ended up falling short.

 

When I was a kid I actually enjoyed the Swordquest games, and while I never even tried to beat the games, I used to enjoy the mini games and running from one chamber to the next, picking up strange objects in the process.  There really is something about Atari games, which people nowadays love to hate and ridicule, that sparks the imagination like no other, in my humble and perhaps flawed opinion.

 

As have all of you, I have come to realize that Swordquest Earthworld is virtually impossible to complete without some sort of cheat sheet.  From statements made by late Mr. Bataglia, an Atari employee who worked on the instruction manuals for Atari games, and information in this thread, I am convinced that sadly, there was no rhyme or reason to the placement of objects in each chamber in order to obtain all the clues and complete the game.  My thoughts are that this whole contest did become a little too much for Atari to manage.  It seems reasonable that the intent was for a logic to exist in the placement of objects to obtain the clues.  Likely, schedule was starting to slip and there was incredible pressure to release the games, including the accompanying comic books.  Therefore, they were released before they were ready.

 

According to my calculations, in Earthworld there are over 218 billion possible object placement arrangements for the final clue alone.  Assuming that it would take a person 2 minutes to rearrange each object placement in all twelve chambers, and that this person played the game 8 hours per day, seven days per week;  it would take, on average over 1.2 Million years to arrive at the right combination.  Now, the programmers at Atari were no dummies.  Clearly they were aware of these odds.  There is no way they would have programmed a game this impossible to solve.  Clearly the plan was for the placement of objects to follow some sort of logic.  I believe that unfortunately they never got around to developing a logic and ended up releasing the game as we know it. 

 

What I did, for my own amusement, and for the amusement of those who are close to me, was to write my own guide.  I wrote this guide as if it were a story.  I do not presume to be able to write anything better than the existing comics.  However, unfortunately those comics are of little use to beat the game.  My guide is basically a covert walkthrough.  Its intent is to afford you the opportunity to beat the game in a way that isn't just mindlessly placing objects in some random order, which is devoid of any logic.  I have attached it here for your amusement.  Please feel free to either ignore it or use it.  If you use it, by all means, go to town making it better.  If I were able to, I would program my own homebrew version of these games.  With my current skills this is the best I have to offer.

Earthworld Clues.pdf

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8 hours ago, ricardomir said:

Likely, schedule was starting to slip and there was incredible pressure to release the games, including the accompanying comic books.  Therefore, they were released before they were ready.

I feel like they didn't want too many competitors in the contest, and either they didn't realize how overboard they went with the difficulty, or they didn't want -anyone- to figure it out, and were shocked when people were able to just guess from the comic.
After that they probably realized that they had to reconsider the rest of the games.

  

8 hours ago, ricardomir said:

If I were able to, I would program my own homebrew version of these games.  With my current skills this is the best I have to offer.

If you have any ideas, I might be able to knock something together. For the first game at least...I'd have to learn the other two.

Edited by Asaki
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