Alternate Reality & Flashcart

[analmux]

AR might be a nice game, but the ONE thing I always hated was swapping disks all the time. So it might be cool if there would be a flashcart version.

 

As far as I remember AR takes 3 floppys, so it should fit into an 8mbit flashcart (from Atarimax), so you won't have to swap anymore, and it's a lot faster. That would make AR a really cool game.

 

You'd only need the character save disk in the diskdrive, and everything should work.

 

I'm not saying that I'll convert AR (both the City and the Dungeon would be cool!), but I'm just playing with the idea.

 

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mux

[Mendon]

If my memory serves me (its been awhile since I've played either AR) I believe both games came on two disks with info on both sides. I can't remember if you needed a save disk or whether the game saved to one of the backups of the originals you made to play the game. If so, would a flashcart be able to hold all that?

 

Also, didn't Video 61 take a look at putting AR on cart at one time? Thought there was some problem with getting the cart to load what it had to load since where you were in the game world determined which "disk" had to be used.

 

Both AR's are fun, fun games but you are right... the disk swapping was tedious. I couldn't imagine playing the game with only one DD.

 

Mendon

[Wrathchild]

Also, didn't Video 61 take a look at putting AR on cart at one time? Thought there was some problem with getting the cart to load what it had to load since where you were in the game world determined which "disk" had to be used.

 

This isn't really a problem as you normally replace the get sector routine to take this into consideration with an offset into the cart (as with The Eidolon), the game itself should be maintaining which disk it thinks is plugged in, or it may check a sector on the disk to ensure the correct disk is inserted before loading data.

 

Didn't the original have some form of copy protection, presumably the ATR versions have this cracked? If that's documented somewhere then a cart port may not be too much trouble - plus the flash cart can write back to itself - so no need for a disk-drive (at all) for save states.

 

Maybe later this year... to be honest, I've not played this game that much, I prefered Telengard (and Bard's Tale on the ST)

 

Regards,

 

Mark

[ndary]

when you write data to the flash cart you need to write a complete 64k bank, so even if you need to write a sector (128 bytes) you need to read 64k change 128bytes and write it back

 

nir

[Wrathchild]

Hmm, didn't know that, but not really a problem.

You don't need to read all the 64K, just the area you want,

e.g. say 2048 bytes for save data.

Just repeat this when writing back X number of times to

make up the 64K - so 64/2 = 32 times

[ndary]

maybe i wasnt clear.

the atmel chip is not ram, but flash rom.

you once your program a bit to "1" logic you cannot program it back to "0". you need to erase a bank.. and in this case a complete 64k bank.

so if you just want to change one byte.. you need to read 64k into memory.. change the byte in memory.. format the bank and write it back!

 

nir

[classics]

Its unlikely you would need to save a full 64k for anything in AR, even if you included game saves, so some sort of read / modify / erase / write system could be made to save data. If its less than 64k, say only 20k then there would probably be a way to make it work without extended memory.

 

The really hard part though is that all the data on the AR disks is mangled. It is demangled in the serial isr. You would have to unmangle all the program and data disks and rewrite the disk access routines before you could modify anything other than the boot loader.

 

Its been a long time since I looked at how AR works, but I recall it uses 4-5 bytes at the beginning and end of each sector as a sort of hash that is used to decode the sector data, possibly along with the left over hash from the last sector.

[analmux]

Didn't the original have some form of copy protection, presumably the ATR versions have this cracked? If that's documented somewhere then a cart port may not be too much trouble

 

I've got the original at home, and it's not easy to copy them, but it's not at all impossible. I think they did it with a simple trick: Certain areas on the disk were not formatted, so when a Disk-duplication routine tries to read a big block of sectors, it always passes over a non-formatted cylinder (18 or 26 sectors), which gives a very long delay and will possibly lock up the Resident Disk Handler. But if you know which sectors ARE in fact formatted, you can read them without any trouble and pain.

 

AR is available on ATR. I think I've got it somewhere on my harddrive.

 

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mux

[analmux]

If its less than 64k, say only 20k then there would probably be a way to make it work without extended memory.

 

I assume the character data is kept in memory, so it wouldn't be a problem. The main task of the character save routine is just to overwrite the old data. Erasing 64k won't need any memory, and you just overwrite a small part. We'd have to reserve one bank for saving characters. Multiple characters would though be a problem again, but we don't need to save the character data on flashcart. My idea was to use the Diskdrive only for character saving, but it would off course be cool if we can save on the cart itself.

 

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mux

[Heaven/TQA]

in AR you can enter with sector editors "cracker names" in some sectors...they are prepared (ENTER YOUR NAME HERE or something like that...)

 

and as far as i can remember the protection test appears just while booting... after entering the game... (main menu) no test appears anymore? (try to freeze the RAM state...)

so you could even backup your original game discs (2-4)...

 

i played it with 130xe and 2 drives in 198x... i like the system check AR:dungeon is doing... the question will be...what will happen on having AR on flashcart?

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

AR has more than just one copy protection:

1) disc - copy protection: As said before, some sectors of the disk 1, side A are not formatted for copy protection reasons. (Besides: AR, The City has 4 disksides, only side 1 is protected this way; The dungeon has 5 disksides: 1A, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B - there is no diskside 1B; only diskside 1A is protected this way);... The copy program which is found on one diskside of the AR disks will not copy the copy-protected side 1A of course (nor any other sector copier can do that)...

 

2) floppy - loading routines: The two games include special floppy loading routines, which prevent the game from a) loading with high or ultraspeed and b) loading from harddisk or cart or any other non-floppy hardware...

(this has to do with timing issues, I guess)...

 

3) Save protection: Whenever you save the game to disk, there is a 12,5% possibility, that the program checks the copy protection (mentioned at point 1). If no copy protection is found, two FBI agents will appear informing you about an illegal copy and saving your current status as DEAD !! Of course you will not notice this "dead status" when saving, but you will notice it later, when reloading... (and this protection has nothing to do with protection number 4)...

 

4) Difficulty protection: Not really a copy protection, but whenever you save your current status, one of your characteristics will be lowered or even zeroed (even, if the program found the original copy protection). This protection was put in, to keep the game at a "high" difficulty level and to prevent the player from making hundreds of saves and thus solve the game within a few minutes... however, there are several hacker and patcher programs available, that will alter this...

 

thats all I know about copy protections of AR. Most if not all data of the game is coded and one needs to decode it properly to make any changes to it. So far, even the available pirate copies did not alter or remove all copy protections. Some pirates forgot about point 3, no-one ever changed point 2, etc. etc. greetings, Andreas magenheimer.

[geosteve]

AR is available on ATR. I think I've got it somewhere on my harddrive.

 

 

it is on ATR, I have it on my hard drive. in fact is is split into several ATRs for each disk/side that all need to be enabled to play this on win800. 5 files at 91K each

[daclmi]

Also, didn't Video 61 take a look at putting AR on cart at one time? Thought there was some problem with getting the cart to load what it had to load since where you were in the game world determined which "disk" had to be used.

 

Both AR's are fun, fun games but you are right... the disk swapping was tedious. I couldn't imagine playing the game with only one DD.

 

Mendon

 

This is my favorite game of all time really, even though I have only ever played it on one disk drive. I have two disk drives (1050s) and an Atari 800 w. 64k but it never would let me play with both diskdrives.

 

I would do anything to get AR: the City on a flashcart! However I bet it will be tough. Maybe the best place to start is an ATR of a cracked version. However you must watch out because there are a lot of AR ATRs floating around that don't work completely! Bad ATRs or ATRs of incomplete cracks!

[Xebec's Demise]

Agreed! Anyone ever get this on a cart?

 

This is my favorite game of all time really, even though I have only ever played it on one disk drive. I have two disk drives (1050s) and an Atari 800 w. 64k but it never would let me play with both diskdrives.

 

I would do anything to get AR: the City on a flashcart! However I bet it will be tough. Maybe the best place to start is an ATR of a cracked version. However you must watch out because there are a lot of AR ATRs floating around that don't work completely! Bad ATRs or ATRs of incomplete cracks!

Edited May 10, 2005 by Xebec's Demise

[ijor]

I've got the original at home, and it's not easy to copy them, but it's not at all impossible. I think they did it with a simple trick: Certain areas on the disk were not formatted,

 

AR has more than just one copy protection:

1) disc - copy protection: As said before, some sectors of the disk 1, side A are not formatted for copy protection reasons.

 

Both AR programs are heavily copy protected, specially The City. The protection is, of course, not just some sectors that are not formatted. If that were the case then you could easily copy them with the Happy and other similar devices. But you can't.

 

The Dungeon copy-protection is somewhat simpler than the City. IIRC it's just one weak sector. The City combines weak sectors with supertracks.

 

It is correct that only the first side (in both the City and the Dungeon) is copy protected.

[Goochman]

The Dungeon has alot of check besides the soft sector - There is some 'memory overlay' that if it detects its been cracked with slowly wipe itself out - hence you could play for 10 - 15 mins and then whamo - it was ahile before a good cracked Dungeon disk came out - Same for the City.

[analmux]

The City combines weak sectors with supertracks.

 

....hmmm, that sounds interesting. What are these exactly ??

[ijor]

The City combines weak sectors with supertracks.

 

....hmmm, that sounds interesting. What are these exactly ??

 

Sorry, my mistake, I mixed up programs. Just double checked and there are no supertracks in The City. It still has many weak sectors plus some other minor protections.

 

Weak sector is a sector that returns different data each time you read it.

 

Supertrack is a track with much more sectors than the theoreticall maximum (20). Typically, 24, 25 or more (I've seen up to 40, IIRC). Sometimes the same term is used for a specific variation of these tracks, such as the ones present in later ECA titles (Archon II, Super Boulder Dash, etc).

 

Note that there is no official terminology here. So many different terms are used for the same protection. For example weak sectors are sometimes called, fuzzy, phantom, wondering, etc.

[Wrathchild]

I had already started work on a cart version of "Winter Olympiad 88"

but seems like there's more call for these two games, so I can

switch to work on these if it doesn't conflict with anyone else trying

the same thing ?

 

I have an original AR-City but no Dungeon - so with regards to

the copy protection, I guess the basis for this work will be the

cracked disk images included with the XLit emulator?

 

The re-write should also permit the saving of characters to the

flash cart - so the feasibility of this will also have to be investigated.

 

City or Dungeon first? Well, let do them in order of appearence.

Hopefully after doing one the other should follow easily.

 

There may also be just enough space on an 8Mb flash cart for both games.

 

Regards,

Mark

[classics]

City or Dungeon first? Well, let do them in order of appearence.

Hopefully after doing one the other should follow easily.

 

There may also be just enough space on an 8Mb flash cart for both games.

 

Regards,

Mark

853318[/snapback]

 

Are you really going to grapple with the beast? Keep us updated!

 

Steve

[analmux]

I had already started work on a cart version of "Winter Olympiad 88"

but seems like there's more call for these two games, so I can

switch to work on these if it doesn't conflict with anyone else trying

the same thing ?

 

I have an original AR-City but no Dungeon - so with regards to

the copy protection, I guess the basis for this work will be the

cracked disk images included with the XLit emulator?

 

The re-write should also permit the saving of characters to the

flash cart - so the feasibility of this will also have to be investigated.

 

City or Dungeon first? Well, let do them in order of appearence.

Hopefully after doing one the other should follow easily.

 

There may also be just enough space on an 8Mb flash cart for both games.

 

Regards,

Mark

853318[/snapback]

 

It would be great if you'd succeed in putting them on a cart. I'd prefer the City first.

 

Maybe you don't need to put characters on the cart. Remember that there are many people with good characters on a disk which they probably would like to use, so why bother putting characters on the cart at all?

 

...but I hope you can crack the self-magling/remangling code, and find the disk access routines.

[Xebec's Demise]

I have an original AR-City but no Dungeon - so with regards to

the copy protection, I guess the basis for this work will be the

cracked disk images included with the XLit emulator?

 

Oooo! Want to sell it?!

 

Here is a list of a few dozen City disk images and cracks to get you started:

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/xlsearch/x...ity&sortby=Name

 

The re-write should also permit the saving of characters to the

flash cart - so the feasibility of this will also have to be investigated.

That would be simply awesome! A Legends of Zelda style Alternate Reality cartridge!

 

City or Dungeon first? Well, let do them in order of appearence.

Hopefully after doing one the other should follow easily.

Definately The City!

 

There may also be just enough space on an 8Mb flash cart for both games.

Imagine, no more calluses on our fingers...from swaping disks!

 

If there is one game out there that is worth the time to get on cartridge, it has to be Alternate Reality.

 

Just a note to get you started, data is written to disk 2 side 1 of The City while playing. This might be one of the first challenges to overcome, the good thing about this is it messes up characters that have been cheated on i.e. disk editor, saved states, memory editing.

 

If you can get The City on cartridge, you've got my $100 donation.

Edited May 11, 2005 by Xebec's Demise

[Xebec's Demise]

Maybe you don't need to put characters on the cart. Remember that there are many people with good characters on a disk which they probably would like to use, so why bother putting characters on the cart at all?

Well doing so would give everyone the fun opportunity to start a new character and build him up!

[Wrathchild]

Hi,

 

I've disassembled and gone through the intro and character creation code.

This looks straight forward enough to simply lift the memory post its loading

but just prior to its execution from within the emulator so that these can be

loaded directly from flash and then jump'd to, rather than re-writing the

disk-access routines for them. That will get me to the stage of then looking

at the 'Insert disk X/side Y' code so that I can then formulate how that can

be remapped to Cart.

 

From what I've seen so far - AR uses replacement Disk I/O routines in a

similar way to LucasArts 'Koronis Rift' and 'The Eidolon'. Therefore replacing

these shouldn't be too tricky, except all RAM ($480->$BFFF) seems to be in

use so it looks like the new routines will have to replace over the existing

routines, i.e. be written at/over the same memory locations.

 

Any other bits at pieces (like the copy protection) will hopefully

fall out as I come across them, and I can explain them later.

 

So the aim for next week will be to have the first cart image ready

from which the intro will run and then allow a character to be created.

 

With regards to the character disk - I think it maybe worthwhile keeping

it disk based for the early work. The logic here is that there is quite a

lot of menuing/code related to this that will be best left-alone for now.

I tend to go for a temporary character at the moment anyway

 

Regards,

Mark

 

Questions: The disk request routines appear to be able to ask for all

of the 'other' titles, 'Dungeon', 'Arena', etc. Does anyone know if the

game engines are identical/very similar and are the character disks

interchangeable between the City and Dungeon?

[densonj]

Questions: The disk request routines appear to be able to ask for all

of the 'other' titles, 'Dungeon', 'Arena', etc. Does anyone know if the

game engines are identical/very similar and are the character disks

interchangeable between the City and Dungeon?

854495[/snapback]

 

I seem to remember reading one time that Philip Price stated that his original plans for interaction between all of the AR episodes were changed at DataSoft. The Atari 8-bit version has all of the code for such interaction but the Dungeon did not include any of these "gates" and, of course, the other installments were never written.

 

I was so dissappointed back then when I learned that AR had met it's own demise. It is definitely my all-time favorite RPG.