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Synapse's Electrician crash


procyon

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I'm writing to ask if anyone has played any version of this game where they could enter the eighth house without causing the game to crash. I have five versions of this game from a TOSEC collection, and I've tried all of them using Atari800Win Plus in both OS-B and XL/XE modes (always NTSC). Every single one of them crashes as I enter my eighth building (that is, not building 08, but the eighth building that I've been assigned to after completing the seventh building.) I even found the .ATX version of the file on Atarimania.com and used the hacked version of A8W+ with the VAPI dll to see if that would work and it did not.

 

Does anyone have a clue about this one? Was it actually possible to finish Electrician (despite the difficult that the game approaches by the sixth and seventh buildings. I had to use a lot of savestates to actually make it to the eighth building)? The Famicom Disk System version of the game has the briefest ending after completing the eighth building before sending you back to the beginning of the game.

 

Any light that anyone could shed on this would be much appreciated. Here is my save file. I'm tucked away on the ladder below the door that I need to enter. Just push up, and crash.

atarisav.zip

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It has occurred to me that switching ATR files and loading my sav file was doing absolutely nothing. I thought that I was loading a different version of the game into memory and then applying the state of my game on top of that, but I realize now that I was swapping out the entire contents of what I had loaded for the complete state of the game that I was in.

 

Never the less, my question still remains; Can the eighth building be entered without crashing? Thanks

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Hi!

 

Yeah, I know this problem. The game crashed for me as well when I tried to beat it in emulator. I always wanted to finished this game as a kid on real HW but it's pretty tough game in higher levels. So I tried it in emulator with heavy saving and I was very surprised it crashed when I entered the eighth house. I thought I had a bad version but it seems all versions have the same problem. I analyzed your state file and there's a bug in the code causing overwriting the stack! See the attachment for fast fix. You can enter the eight house now but I'm almost sure the game will crash sooner or later again because the stack is growing every time you enter a new house. But may be there is some end of the game?

 

F.

atarisav_fix.zip

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Thank you so much Fandal for your help with the save state, I'm really impressed by your ability to correct it for me.

 

Well, file this one under "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." That house is IMPOSSIBLE! I mean, it's just ridiculous how once you're down to a single floor left or so, the spiders have nowhere else to go but your level and they cut all the lines constantly. No matter how hard I try, I can never get across the entire floor connecting all of the bottom lines before something comes along and completely ruins it for me. So as far as I'm concerned, that's the end, cuz I simply don't see how someone could manage to complete that floor without ripping all of their hair out.

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Well, I took another crack at it, and with some clever luck manipulation through save states, I was able to complete the eight house. I don't know if the text in the ending changes much based on score, but behold, the ending:

 

 

Cool! So the game has some ending. It seems I should release fixed binary and I have to try to beat the game as well! I always dreamed about it...

 

F.

Edited by _Fandal_
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Well, I took another crack at it, and with some clever luck manipulation through save states, I was able to complete the eight house. I don't know if the text in the ending changes much based on score, but behold, the ending:

 

 

Uff. I tried to finish the game three times with different versions but the game crashed when I tried to pick up the key in the eighth house. Could you please share your version of Electrician here?

 

F.

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There was similar problem in some version of Bomb Jack (and earlier with Sexy Six).

 

The best solution is to locate "main loop" of program and then insert there something like this:

 

ldx #$ff
txs

 

Should work! :)

 

(just tell me if i try to discover America once again! :D )

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Uff. I tried to finish the game three times with different versions but the game crashed when I tried to pick up the key in the eighth house. Could you please share your version of Electrician here?

 

F.

 

You're going to hate me, but I don't remember which one of these four the original save state came from :( I never diffed these ATRs, I only know that the checksums are different. Anyway, here are all four of the possibilities. Let me know if I can be of any other help. (I have a feeling it was either [a] or [a3])

Electricians.zip

Edited by procyon
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OK. Mystery has been solved. There are TWO serious bugs in Electrician game. One can't enter the last house and one can't finish the game if the last key is located in houses 7 or 8. Tested on original VAPI image downloaded from Atarimania. Fixed file version can be found here. See the attachment for fixed ATX image. May be guys from Atarimania will be insterested in my work though Atari Frog is not responding my email for last couple of weeks... ;)

electrician_fixed_atx.zip

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OK. Mystery has been solved. There are TWO serious bugs in Electrician game. One can't enter the last house and one can't finish the game if the last key is located in houses 7 or 8. Tested on original VAPI image downloaded from Atarimania. Fixed file version can be found here. See the attachment for fixed ATX image. May be guys from Atarimania will be insterested in my work though Atari Frog is not responding my email for last couple of weeks... ;)

What would we do without you?

Thanks a lot!

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Thanks to Fandal's efforts, I was able to complete the project which originally led me to ask my question concerning this crash. I have completed a guide to Electrician for StrategyWiki, which you can find here. It is split across three pages, and should be interesting for anyone who has never played the game before and would like to know how, or for those of you who are very familiar with the Atari version and would like to know about the differences found in the Famicom version. If you see anything wrong and would like to make a correction, or add something that is missing, it's a wiki, so please feel free to contribute to it any time that you like. Thanks again Fandal.

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OK. Mystery has been solved. There are TWO serious bugs in Electrician game. One can't enter the last house and one can't finish the game if the last key is located in houses 7 or 8. Tested on original VAPI image downloaded from Atarimania. Fixed file version can be found here. See the attachment for fixed ATX image.

 

As always, fantastic work and thanks a million.

 

Allan

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  • 6 years later...

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