Alternate Reality & Flashcart

[Goochman]

The idea was to be able to go into the Dungeon come back to the City and so on. Due to the major rewrite of the Dungeon that wasnt possible - In fact taking a character from the City to the Dungeon didnt always work.

 

It was a great idea - one I wish could be finished with most of the modules (plug in Quake 3 arena for the Arena module )

 

Anyhow,

No worries about any of the other episode gates - It would almost be easier to null out those areas so nothing happens

[Xebec's Demise]

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]

 

They are different engines, The City is not compatible with the Dungeon nor are Characters or Character Disks.

 

The only way you could get to the dungeon was by having your character translated and even then, not everything translated.

 

Here are some good articles about the development:

 

http://www.cc.utah.edu/~krw8466/ardocs/phil206-28-95.html

 

Subject: Re: Sequels to Alternate Reality

From: paradise@netcom.com

Date: 1995/06/28

Message-Id:

Sender: paradise@netcom7.netcom.com

References: <199506281405.KAA14499@postbox.acs.ohio-State.edu>

Organization: NETCOM On-Line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit

 

 

In article <199506281405.KAA14499@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu>,

Robert Rumpf wrote:

>Just curious...The Dungeon was the last (and only) sequel released to AR:

>The City...but there were more modules in the works, right? Like the ones

>you run smack into in the City: The Arena, The Palace, The Wilderness,

>The Casino...any chance at all that these will ever be made? I mean, is

>there a "Dungeon Creation Kit" for AR or is it all coded from scratch?

The city had a poster size map printing and an interactive editing

program I creating for development purposes. Also the atari 8 bit city

allowed bootstrapping the sequels directly from the city without rebooting.

In order for someone to trick AR into believing that they had an arena,

they would have to define a floppy the fit the expected format for arena

and then AR city will blindly load into memory sectors from that

disk(assuming again they all are properly formatted/structured) and then

jump to a location in memory that is in the loaded area.

 

Its been a long time(and I haven't booted my code disks) so I can give

a foggy picture of the required data layout of a sector for the city and

any other bootable sequel (This does not apply to the commercially

released dungeon because the

bootstrap feature was never implement on the c64 conversion of the city and

therefore the dungeon did not have it).

But the layout went as follows:

Byte 1 & 2 Two integer values used for seeds for the encryption

algorithm. The rest of the sector was encrypted including the header.

The order of the following bytes is not assuredly correct(Hey it's eleven

years since I wrote it;D

Byte ID of which game in the AR series this disk is part of

Byte ID of which disk "side" in the game/sequel this is.

Track ID no disk (Used to prevent people copying sectors around to

see what that would do)

Sector ID on disk

Two byte checksum (this is the last thing, I believe it was two, not one

byte)

120 Bytes of Data

 

Byte the way one flaw in my simple block-chain cipher I used is that if

you have both seeds be zero, then the rest is the same(I think unless I

added the last data value into the seed, ugh, been a while) as if

there was no cipher:)[it used a simple xor and addition/modulo technique

changing the working key as it went]. The encryption and decryption

algorithm is also the first thing my VBI worm would consume if it was

brought to life by someone flipping on Omnimon into memory.

 

 

--

Philip Price

paradise@netcom.com

Edited May 14, 2005 by Xebec's Demise

[Xebec's Demise]

Another interesting one from Philip Price:

 

Subject: Re: Omnimon?

From: paradise@netcom.com

Date: 1995/07/09

Message-Id:

Sender: paradise@netcom7.netcom.com

References: <141777@cup.portal.com> <9507072321.00c1@dellos.demon.co.uk>

Organization: NETCOM On-Line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit

 

 

In article <9507072321.00c1@dellos.demon.co.uk>,

Paul 'Mclane' Irvine wrote:

>Rick_Michael_Cortese@cup.portal.com wrote:

>: Sure, it's my favorite tool for the Atari, but I'd guess 90% of

>: the people who bought them just used them to crack games.

>In a word

>YES... Oh and BTW Savage pond does not like it (fills mem with 0s) And

>the Author of Sidewinder told me it was Omnimon protected But its not??

>

Oh, and Alternate Reality - The City checks for it every 60th of a

second and activates a worm that reproduces itself all over memory.

 

-Phil

--

Philip Price

paradise@netcom.com

[Xebec's Demise]

Another bit here in the City Guidebook:

 

http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/doc..._guidebook.html

 

"Note: Never play with a different Disk 2 (Side 2, on the Apple) than the one you use to create a character. If you create a character using your backup of Disk 2, always use the backup disk when playing with that character. If you use the original game Disk 2 when creating the character, always use the original game Disk 2 to play with that character."

[Xebec's Demise]

Here is another good post from an AR developer:

 

http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/files/iaq.txt

[ijor]

Another interesting one from Philip Price:

 

Subject:      Re: Omnimon?

>Rick_Michael_Cortese@cup.portal.com wrote:

>: Sure, it's my favorite tool for the Atari, but I'd guess 90% of

>: the people who bought them just used them to crack games.

...

>

Oh, and Alternate Reality - The City checks for it every 60th of a

second and activates a worm that reproduces itself all over memory.

 

                                            Philip Price

 

Please forgive me all the Philip Price fans out there. But this is, IMHO, a very unprofessional attitude.

 

You don't want the user to run the game with Omnimon, fair enough. But give him a warning (as ECA games do). Silently and slowly failing doesn't seem to be correct. Not every user running Omnimon wants to hack the program.

[Goochman]

99% of folks running the Omni want to either crack the program or somehow figure out the secrets to the game - PP had every right to keep folks from doing this. The worm is a great way of doing this since folks will soon realize there is a problem with the Omni and AR - not knowing exactly what it is they prob just stopped trying which was the case. It took a loooong time to get a good cracked set of AR disks.

[ijor]

99% of folks running the Omni want to either crack the program or somehow figure out the secrets to the game

 

I don’t think it is nearly true that the Omnimon was 99% of the times used for cracking purposes. I had (and still have) an Omnimon but very rarely used it for cracking. I used it mostly for my own development. And I don’t think I was an exception. Other people also used it for the “Fast Chip”, for a built-in translator, etc.

 

I don’t think it was designed as a cracking tool in the first place. And seems that the Atari community agreed with that and didn’t see the Omnimon mainly as a cracking tool. A proof (sort of) of this is the amount of positive reviews it received at the semi-official Atari press, like Antic or Analog. Contrast this with the Happy, which was seen as a piracy tool. The Happy was almost “banned” from those magazines. Many times they praised, for example, the U.S. Doubler as one of the most powerful add-ons. But they never had the same attitude for the Happy.

 

Of course that if you stop a commercial game with the Omnimon, then you probably want to do some hacking. This was not the point.

 

In second place, I was not denying PP any rights, of course he had. I was arguing about the attitude being professional or not. If you want to see what is the modern view of copy protections attitude, then check the web sites of the companies that provide those services. Of course that floppy copy protection is almost dead today, but there are many other forms still very popular.

 

Would you consider professional if Win-XP would install a worm when the activation period expired? It is true that it took some time until the industry matured about copy protections. But even at that time, that type of protection was rarely implemented because most companies already understood these issues long ago.

 

I agree that refusing to run under Omnimon is valid and correct. But you could add a banner when detecting it (such as, INCOMPATIBLE ROM). And if you are afraid that this will make cracking easier (it doesn’t have to be), then have dual detection routines. One that explicitly stops with the banner, plus another hidden one as the “worm”.

 

It took a loooong time to get a good cracked set of AR disks.

 

True, but this has nothing to do with this. It was/is difficult to crack because the protection is good and it was integrated with the main software. Not just an external protected loader. Also because the game is complex. It is always much more difficult to hack those types of games than a simpler arcade one that usually loads only once. Lastly, the Happy couldn’t copy the disk. So the crackers need to have an original, or crack from a non-working copy, which is also more difficult.

 

There are many copy-protected games that they explicitly stop when the protection check fails (some even say “Pirated Copy”, other use a more polite phrase). If you think this make it easy to crack them, you are wrong.

[Goochman]

WinXP does have copy protection that cripples the OS if it detects major component changes - I believe it was removed from the Home version but the Prof version still has its checks.

[Wrathchild]

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.

Objective almost complete, remaining is:

 

After the intro, the loader uses PMs to display its countdown - an neat base 6 ticker. This is using the memory $BC00->$BFFF. Because the Flash cart swaps in and out whilst transfering memory blocks, this looks corrupted. The 2 solutions to this are 1) don't display anything, which isn't too bad a substitute and 2) Remap the PMs somewhere else. This should be OK as the loader doesn't use anything between $1C00 and $1FFF and so they can go here. Therefore I'll go for 2) and if it works out to hard I'll do 1).

 

Next - after the main game code is kicked off - there are a few more sector accesses from Disk 1 - Side 1. haven't check what for yet, but they need to be reproduced. The pain in the ass is that once the game code has been loaded, the I/O routines are in a completely new place and so I must write a replacement for them.

 

Question - does anyone know if D1S1 is ever accessed again?

 

Regards,

Mark

[Xebec's Demise]

Objective almost complete, remaining is:

 

Exciting!

 

Question - does anyone know if D1S1 is ever accessed again?

 

After the login menu is loaded, it's not accessed again. The character disk is asked for and then D1S2. You never need to reinsert D1S1.

[Shawn Jefferson]

Here is another good post from an AR developer:

 

http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/files/iaq.txt

854902[/snapback]

 

From the sounds of this, Phillip Price didn't have much to do with the actual programming of AR: the Dungeon.

[Gunstar]

Here is another good post from an AR developer:

 

http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/files/iaq.txt

854902[/snapback]

 

From the sounds of this, Phillip Price didn't have much to do with the actual programming of AR: the Dungeon.

856645[/snapback]

 

I noticed in that "article" he mentioned that Philip Price actually had an Atari 8-bit prototype engine for the dungeon based on the City engine. It would be really cool if this prototype still existed and could be found (or gotten from Philip Price) and then some ingenious hackers/programmers could take the current dungeon game and convert it for use with this original dungeon engine prototype, to make the city and dungeon compatible again as they were originally intended. Then, maybe something more could be added to them using the same engine. Maybe not completing the series or anything that drastic, but if "modules" like the Palace and Arena and possibly a bit of "wilderness" could be added outside the city walls just to "fill-out" the two games. That would be SWEET! I can imagine can't I? I think the dungeon would be better with the original engine Philip intended in many ways, over and above being compatible with the city. Maybe the graphics of the corridors would be a bit dated looking compared to the engine done for the current Dungeon game, but maybe not...I'd take a dungeon that looked mor like the city with square doors and no arches, etc. over the one that exists now, if it were truely compatible with the City...in some ways it would be much better, with the use of DLI's for the floor and ceiling like were done with the ground and sky in the City.

Edited May 17, 2005 by Gunstar

[+kheller2]

Here is another good post from an AR developer:

 

http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/files/iaq.txt

854902[/snapback]

 

From the sounds of this, Phillip Price didn't have much to do with the actual programming of AR: the Dungeon.

856645[/snapback]

 

I noticed in that "article" he mentioned that Philip Price actually had an Atari 8-bit prototype engine for the dungeon based on the City engine. It would be really cool if this prototype still existed and could be found (or gotten from Philip Price) and then some ingenious hackers/programmers could take the current dungeon game and convert it for use with this original dungeon engine prototype, to make the city and dungeon compatible again as they were originally intended. Then, maybe something more could be added to them using the same engine. Maybe not completing the series or anything that drastic, but if "modules" like the Palace and Arena and possibly a bit of "wilderness" could be added outside the city walls just to "fill-out" the two games. That would be SWEET! I can imagine can't I? I think the dungeon would be better with the original engine Philip intended in many ways, over and above being compatible with the city. Maybe the graphics of the corridors would be a bit dated looking compared to the engine done for the current Dungeon game, but maybe not...I'd take a dungeon that looked mor like the city with square doors and no arches, etc. over the one that exists now, if it were truely compatible with the City...in some ways it would be much better, with the use of DLI's for the floor and ceiling like were done with the ground and sky in the City.

856813[/snapback]

 

 

If I recall correctly from some old CompuServe discussions with PP, the Dungeon code was "lost" at Datasoft during a "crash" of some sort. This was one of the reasons, at the time, why he left DataSoft... of course now there is a lot more known about the real reasons.

 

Also, PP's Dungeon was not like the released one.