doctorclu Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 So the Return of Heracles is a game that is mostly joystick driven except for one part of the game where you are stopped by the Sphinx for the "riddle of the ages" which is: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?" To which you type on the keyboard "man". Currently trying to get this game working on a system without a keyboard so typing that would be a stopping point in the game. Is there any way to hack a way past that? Return of Heracles attached below if someone would like to take a crack at it. Why? ------------------------------------------------- Been playing with prototype emulators, one if the Atari 2600 emulator for the Atari Jaguar, and using what I learned there, I am thinking of trying the same trick on the Atari 800 emulator for the Nuon. The_Return_of_Heracles.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 Find attached two blind guesses and let us know. I searched for code which accesses probably correct answers and found it at runtime in RAM: 99E8: 03 4D 41 4E 03 4D 45 4E 04 48 4F 4D 4F 05 57 4F |.MAN.MEN.HOMO.WO|99F8: 4D 41 4E 05 57 4F 4D 45 4E 05 48 55 4D 41 4E 06 |MAN.WOMEN.HUMAN.|9A08: 50 45 4F 50 4C 45 06 50 45 52 53 4F 4E 06 48 55 |PEOPLE.PERSON.HU|9A18: 4D 41 4E 53 07 4D 41 4E 4B 49 4E 44 07 50 45 52 |MANS.MANKIND.PER|9A28: 53 4F 4E 53 08 48 55 4D 41 4E 49 54 59 09 48 55 |SONS.HUMANITY.HU|9A38: 4D 41 4E 4B 49 4E 44 FF A9 30 20 1D 19 A9 04 20 |MANKIND..0 .... | A search for code that acceses this are I found this which looks like a string compare for input data located at $99A3: 99B3: A9 E8 LDA #$E899B5: 85 BA STA $BA99B7: A9 99 LDA #$9999B9: 85 BB STA $BB99BB: AD A3 99 LDA $99A399BE: A0 00 LDY #$0099C0: D1 BA CMP ($BA),Y99C2: B0 03 BCS $99C799C4: A9 00 LDA #$0099C6: 60 RTS99C7: D0 0E BNE $99D799C9: A8 TAY99CA: B9 A3 99 LDA $99A3,Y99CD: D1 BA CMP ($BA),Y99CF: D0 06 BNE $99D799D1: 88 DEY99D2: D0 F6 BNE $99CA99D4: A9 01 LDA #$0199D6: 60 RTS My guess is that the RTS with LDA #$01 is the correct one. This code is called from here: 98D7: 20 72 18 JSR $187298DA: 20 13 99 JSR $991398DD: 20 B3 99 JSR $99B398E0: D0 07 BNE $98E9 v1 patches $98DA to JMP $98E9 v2 patches $98DD to JMP $98E9 Return of Heracles (The)-v1.atr Return of Heracles (The)-v2.atr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 26, 2018 Author Share Posted March 26, 2018 Was about to say "Cool... time to pull out the Atari 800, get out my SIO2SD adaptor..." Oh wait, got Atari 800 Mac on my computer. Ok, trying this out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 26, 2018 Author Share Posted March 26, 2018 First version you can hit fire button to get past the riddle.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 27, 2018 Author Share Posted March 27, 2018 So far things are still panning out. Things have to be challenging or you don't have a good story right? nuon.cd-Herc.zip Didn't load this, might still. This was the original Return of Herc before the modifications above. nuon.cd-Herc2.zip Loaded but gargled. Maybe burned too quickly (have to made CD-Rs every time you try). Cleaned it up a bit, burned slower... nuon.cd-Herc3.zip And got a black screen after the initial warning screen you get on the fanmade stuff. So just letting you know the hack above was appreciated and playing with this currently on the Nuon. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Cool Clu - it's been a very long time since I saw "nuon.cd" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 27, 2018 Author Share Posted March 27, 2018 Cool Clu - it's been a very long time since I saw "nuon.cd" I've been hoping to get something new for the Nuon library. To me it really was the "Jaguar 2." I think turn based games make good choices for the Nuon emulator which seems to run at about... 35% true speed. So game that work well with 35% speed and no sound? Oh, and no keyboard interaction aside from start, option, and select. Would love to hear some suggestions, maybe I can try those out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 27, 2018 Author Share Posted March 27, 2018 So mostly good news. The scrambled screen was Return of Heracles with Basic engaged. So I managed to turn off basic and got things to display right. It's tricky getting that to happen. You have to hold down C (the button next to B key) and hit left on the D pad immediately after hitting A at the intro screen. My advice is to hold down that combination all throughout the load. While start, option and select are working, there is next to no feedback from the joystick. So you get to the screen to add a hero, and then no joystick controls. So here we have the game: nuon-Herc.zip And I made a version with the basic cartridge zeroed out. It crashes if it tries to use basic, but at least the load will fail without having you go through the load needlessly. nuon-Herc no-bas.zip And for now I am out of ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted March 28, 2018 Author Share Posted March 28, 2018 Ok, after sleeping on it and if some of you are up for a challenge I thought about this: In emulation, and it was an incomplete conversion of Atari 800 version 1.7.0 and as such, maybe there is a timing call hanging up the controls? In Return of Heracles there was a slight pause for messages. Also this pause could be adjusted for speed from slow to lightning fast. So this ability or pause might be something that the controller is not recovering from? The points the controller freezes have been: -The introductions. -If you hold down option during the entire load process you will get to the setup screen, which you then hit start and it says to "use Joystick 1 to select hero". It times out and gives you the option to "add Ascepius" or "add someone else" and you loose controls at this point. So if there is a message pause, maybe waiting for input from a controller, that would be interesting. Of course I realize that if you simply deleted this pause the game would fly by without input from the player and crash in new spectacular ways. :/ Hmmm... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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