Is there a bug in Shanghai (Activision)?

[markmiller]

I'm new to the game. I didn't think I'd like it, but I guess I do. I was playing it in solitaire mode for an hour or two yesterday. However, now I'm stuck. According to the instructions, the game will end either when all the tiles have been removed, or when there are no more moves to make. I'm down to 44 tiles (so, I expected it to get easier), but I can't find any more moves to make. The game isn't ending. I'm wondering if the game isn't detecting that no more tiles can be removed, or if there's a move I'm missing.

 

Are there any good Mahjong players in the house?  I'm not asking for anyone to point out a move. Though, maybe a hint would be welcome.

 

Thanks.

Edited June 11, 2023 by markmiller

[bfollowell]

I'd have to look that screen over a little closer than I really have time for at the moment, but to be able to move, a tile has to have nothing on top of it and it needs to be free on either the left or the right.

 

Either way, it seems really strange that it would just sit there if there were no more available moves. Most mahjong games will notify you if there are no more possible moves, so I would suspect that there is a move there that you're just not seeing.

 

It looks like there is a show moves option under the special menu.

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by bfollowell

[+MrFish]

I've played this game quite a few times. From what I recall, it doesn't actually tell you if you have no more moves left unless you select "show moves" from the "special" menu.

 

[markmiller]

21 minutes ago, MrFish said:

I've played this game quite a few times. From what I recall, it doesn't actually tell you if you have no more moves left unless you select "show moves" from the "special" menu.

 

Okay, thanks. That was it. I just checked "Show moves," and it said there are no moves left.

[+MrFish]

2 minutes ago, markmiller said:

Okay, thanks. That was it. I just checked "Show moves," and it said there are no moves left.

Yeah, it really should show you automatically; but that's how it works in this version. Not a deal breaker though; it's still a decent version, with some pretty-nicely designed tile graphics/intro, etc.

 

[invisible kid]

Hopefully not too off-topic, but the version for Atari Lynx is/was great.

[+MrFish]

On 6/11/2023 at 7:40 PM, invisible kid said:

...but the version for Atari Lynx is/was great.

I never played it; but it looks like the tile designs are lacking, due to the low screen resolution. I see they use a "preview" on hover to give a more detailed view of individual tiles.

 

I was actually working on a color, 3D layout for the 8-bits a few months back. Haven't finished all the tiles yet; but it looks like it can actually be done pretty nicely.

A lot of repeats, etc. here; but it was just an easy way for me to focus on getting the geometry right, first.

 

 

[bfollowell]

That looks really nice for our old 8-bits.

 

[+davidcalgary29]

...especially because it was created as a passion project by an 8-bit enthusiast; Activision released it in select European markets after they realized how good it was (and the fact that they already had the rights for it). Activision had never intended to release an A8 port for this game.

 

Peter Sabath told me that:

 

Hi David,

 

Wolfgang forwarded me his mail to you containing my e-mail address so your mail did not come out of nothing…

 

About end of summer 1986 I saw “Shanghai” on the ATARI ST, and liked it from the day I saw it. Unfortunately there was no ATARI XE version announced so I thought it would be a nice,

relative easy to port game, so I started with grabbing graphics of the ST version (Tiles and the dragon) and started to program the whole game from scratch without any help from Activision.

I used the Bibo-Assembler and a special, stripped down version of Bibo-DOS (to be able to write “normal” formatted disks for save games) from Erwin Reuss which was my friend and worked at Compy-Shop.

Since I liked the mouse on the ATARI ST I had added support for the ST mouse on the XL/XE.

 

Since this was at the time where I did my military service I had not much time to work on it.

 

Erwin and the managing director of Compy-Shop (Peter Bee) as well as the guys from ABBUC which have seen the version at the yearly meeting found the port really great and told me it would be a waste not to try to sell it.

 

That was the hardest part, how to connect the “right” person at Activision. Happily Activision had opened its first German office in Hamburg (by Greg Fishbach) not so long ago. (around 1985)

I can’t remember from whom I get that contact, but it was a direct contact to the German management level.

 

I send a version to them in mid-1987 and started to wait. After some months I got the info that they forwarded the version to “Rod Cousens” which was managing director of the Southampton

based Activision owned studio “Electric Dreams”. In February 1988 they offered me a contract to buy the port which was nice money for a young man that just started at University.

 

The contract requested some missing features (the help & how to play sections) which were easy to add.

I asked them for the Activision logo animation I had seen on other XL/XE titles but they were not able to provide it (I think because they did not make ATARI 8 Bit titles) so I was allowed to rip it out of another title.

Thanks to my friends at Compy-Shop I had a Speedy drive and was able to apply a copy protection to the disk as well. But they were not able to reproduce the disk so I had to remove the copy protection.

 

I do not know how may copies they sold and where the title was released at all.

 

If I remember correctly I even did not get a copy from them, I got my copy from Wolfgang.

 

I hope that sheds some light on the creation of “Shanghai” for ATARI 8 Bit

[+MrFish]

I can get it looker nicer, once I get the seasons, dragons, etc. in there, and a proper random layout.

 

[+MrFish]

I worked on a larger tile set at first, which gives more detail; but you end up needing abbreviated layouts. I prefer the smaller tiles with full layout capabilities.

 

 

[markmiller]

2 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

...especially because it was created as a passion project by an 8-bit enthusiast; Activision released it in select European markets after they realized how good it was (and the fact that they already had the rights for it). Activision had never intended to release an A8 port for this game.

I came upon Shanghai on an OHAUG disk, which I think I got from a collection someone posted here. I saw the "Activision" logo, and thought "pirated," but I did a search for info. on here, and found some old discussions on it. The story I was seeing was the author was an ABUCC member who hacked/ported a C-64 version of the game to the Atari XL/XE, and then later shopped it to Activision. The way he tells the story makes it sound like he wrote the game almost from scratch, getting tile images from the ST version.

 

I was impressed with the look. I wondered what he used to implement it, since it looks hi-rez. Is it a redefined character set? (This would make sense for a C-64 port.) I also wondered how he got the different colored tiles for the levels. I kinda wondered if he made creative use of sprites to get the coloration, or if perhaps he was doing some precisely timed DLI stuff to get that.

Edited June 12, 2023 by markmiller

[+MrFish]

47 minutes ago, markmiller said:

I was impressed with the look. I wondered what he used to implement it, since it looks hi-rez. Is it a redefined character set? (This would make sense for a C-64 port.) I also wondered how he got the different colored tiles for the levels. I kinda wondered if he made creative use of sprites to get the coloration, or if perhaps he was doing some precisely timed DLI stuff to get that.

I'm pretty sure it's just hi-res (320 x 192, etc.) bitmapped mode. I can't see all those shapes being fit into any 128 character set (not that there aren't ways to accomplish the task in character mode...). The colors are just PM graphics.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

5 hours ago, markmiller said:

but I can't find any more moves to make.

I see one move for sure.

[Sikor]

Instead of "Shanghai" i like "Taipei XL". Own version made also (if I remember) Fandal.

 

 

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Sikor said:

Instead of "Shanghai" i like "Taipei XL".

Yeah, that's a pretty nicely done isometric-view version (in hi-res); but I never liked the tileset much. I was going to edit it, but then I found doing something new and in color to be a more interesting subject/project.

  

1 hour ago, Sikor said:

Own version made also (if I remember) Fandal.

I think you mean this game: Mahjong XE 

Nice graphics (hi-res too), but not exactly a stacked-tile Shanghai game.

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

12 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

...especially because it was created as a passion project by an 8-bit enthusiast; Activision released it in select European markets after they realized how good it was (and the fact that they already had the rights for it). Activision had never intended to release an A8 port for this game.

 

Peter Sabath told me that:

 

Hi David,

 

Wolfgang forwarded me his mail to you containing my e-mail address so your mail did not come out of nothing…

 

About end of summer 1986 I saw “Shanghai” on the ATARI ST, and liked it from the day I saw it. Unfortunately there was no ATARI XE version announced so I thought it would be a nice,

relative easy to port game, so I started with grabbing graphics of the ST version (Tiles and the dragon) and started to program the whole game from scratch without any help from Activision.

I used the Bibo-Assembler and a special, stripped down version of Bibo-DOS (to be able to write “normal” formatted disks for save games) from Erwin Reuss which was my friend and worked at Compy-Shop.

Since I liked the mouse on the ATARI ST I had added support for the ST mouse on the XL/XE.

 

Since this was at the time where I did my military service I had not much time to work on it.

 

Erwin and the managing director of Compy-Shop (Peter Bee) as well as the guys from ABBUC which have seen the version at the yearly meeting found the port really great and told me it would be a waste not to try to sell it.

 

That was the hardest part, how to connect the “right” person at Activision. Happily Activision had opened its first German office in Hamburg (by Greg Fishbach) not so long ago. (around 1985)

I can’t remember from whom I get that contact, but it was a direct contact to the German management level.

 

I send a version to them in mid-1987 and started to wait. After some months I got the info that they forwarded the version to “Rod Cousens” which was managing director of the Southampton

based Activision owned studio “Electric Dreams”. In February 1988 they offered me a contract to buy the port which was nice money for a young man that just started at University.

 

The contract requested some missing features (the help & how to play sections) which were easy to add.

I asked them for the Activision logo animation I had seen on other XL/XE titles but they were not able to provide it (I think because they did not make ATARI 8 Bit titles) so I was allowed to rip it out of another title.

Thanks to my friends at Compy-Shop I had a Speedy drive and was able to apply a copy protection to the disk as well. But they were not able to reproduce the disk so I had to remove the copy protection.

 

I do not know how may copies they sold and where the title was released at all.

 

If I remember correctly I even did not get a copy from them, I got my copy from Wolfgang.

 

I hope that sheds some light on the creation of “Shanghai” for ATARI 8 Bit

 

10 hours ago, markmiller said:

I came upon Shanghai on an OHAUG disk, which I think I got from a collection someone posted here. I saw the "Activision" logo, and thought "pirated," but I did a search for info. on here, and found some old discussions on it. The story I was seeing was the author was an ABUCC member who hacked/ported a C-64 version of the game to the Atari XL/XE, and then later shopped it to Activision. The way he tells the story makes it sound like he wrote the game almost from scratch, getting tile images from the ST version.

 

I was impressed with the look. I wondered what he used to implement it, since it looks hi-rez. Is it a redefined character set? (This would make sense for a C-64 port.) I also wondered how he got the different colored tiles for the levels. I kinda wondered if he made creative use of sprites to get the coloration, or if perhaps he was doing some precisely timed DLI stuff to get that.

 

Yeah, it is funny, because it was Wolfgang who once gave me his own Shanghai diskette and told me Peter Sabath did the conversion from the C64 game as a kind of hack and later (thanks to Abbuc) came to an agreement with Activision. So after all, it was no C64 port or conversion, instead graphics (dragon and tiles) were borrowed from the ST while the rest of the A8 game was done from scratch...

 

I like Mahjong games very much, alas, the A8 often (but not always) creates boards that are impossible (or very difficult) to solve.

Versions I solved several times: Shanghai, Mahjong XE, GEOS 130XE Mahjong (forgot its name, maybe the tile game?), My Jong (with very simple/standard gfx and colours), versions I rarely solved: Taipei XL (version 1.0 and 1.1), Gemini (from Antic), Mah Jong (Childs play) and Taifun (Foundation Two).

 

[+DjayBee]

14 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Thanks to my friends at Compy-Shop I had a Speedy drive and was able to apply a copy protection to the disk as well. But they were not able to reproduce the disk so I had to remove the copy protection.

Haha, I found this image and thought that it had been cracked by "somebody". Now I learned that it wass cracked by Peter Sabath himself. 😄

 

Based on the idea to have a reference of what would have been an original disk, I "removed the crack" and @Zarxx created a disk containig a track with 11 weak sectors to recreate a fully protected disk from the dump.

[José Pereira]

12 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

I see one move for sure.

Never played it but after saw YouTube (and here the screen yesterday also) isn't this one more possible to do:

[+MrFish]

53 minutes ago, José Pereira said:

Never played it but after saw YouTube (and here the screen yesterday also) isn't this one more possible to do:

There are no free pairs left in this layout. A tile's left or right edge must be open in order for it to be eligible.

 

[markmiller]

2 hours ago, MrFish said:

There are no free pairs left in this layout. A tile's left or right edge must be open in order for it to be eligible.

 

Yeah, this was the hardest thing for me to learn about Mahjong, understanding what "free" means. It's not enough that two tiles match. They have to be free, as well.

 

If a tile is completely uncovered, has a piece on its left or its right, but not both, or is isolated by itself, then it's free.

 

"It would be free after a move is made" doesn't count. You can have a scenario where two tiles match, are lined up together on the left end of a line of tiles, and one of them is free, because it doesn't have a tile on its left edge, but the other one is not, because it has the matching tile on its left, and a different tile on its right. You can't remove the matching tiles until both are free.

 

Flower and season tiles are like wildcards (in this game). Even if they don't match exactly with each other, they match in their own categories. However, all types of pieces need to be free before they can be removed.

 

I say "in this game," because I downloaded a version of Mahjong for my Mac, and it also allows flower tiles to match (along with seasons) as a category, but I noticed that not all flower tiles match with each other, for some reason. They do in Shanghai.

[+MrFish]

There... finished the smaller tileset -- for the most part (might tweak/change things a bit still). It should make my layout tests look a little more aesthetically pleasing/accurate. Might have some time to mess around with it tomorrow...