zetastrike Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Using my SIO2PC and 130XE, I fired up the dump of XE Crystal Castles from Fandal's site and for some reason, there are no sound effects and the nutcracker tune has completely wrong notes. No other game I've tried has this problem. Rather than try to hunt down another .xex file on the web, are there any utilities out there that can take any file format and convert it to .xex? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Reminds me of a similar problem I was having with a Dig Dug executable, which turned out to be a POKEY initialization issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Extensions COM EXE and XEX are interchangeable.. Roms need there header and Init addresses added. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetastrike Posted June 1, 2016 Author Share Posted June 1, 2016 (edited) Reminds me of a similar problem I was having with a Dig Dug executable, which turned out to be a POKEY initialization issue. I looked at that thread, but I'm not clear what the solution is, or if there is one. I was really looking forward to playing Crystal Castles XE. That cart rarely turns up and goes for way more than I'm willing to spend. Please have patience with me. I'm a novice with this stuff. I jumped feet first into A8bit hardware after loving A8winplus. Edited June 1, 2016 by zetastrike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 I added a quick Pokey init routine. Let me know if this works. EDIT-- Original here: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=1662 EDIT-- Removed 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 I added a quick Pokey init routine. Let me know if this works. I just tried it Bryan and it's exhibiting the same problem as the original. It's very similar to what was happening with Dig Dug: one or more voices aren't playing correctly, or at all, at times. With the music it sounds like at least one voice is not playing, and during game play (most likely the same voice) just makes a soft fluttering type of sound (the voice used for the "gathering the gems" sound effect). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 They both work fine in emulation though. So maybe a result of the particular loading method used by the SIO2PC program. I'm using RespeQt r3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Hmm... I looked at the Pokey regs in Altirra and there's nothing special that seems to need to be set. I'll try again... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Does this one work? It initializes Pokey after all loading is done. I'm running around packing for a trip in the morning, so I think I messed up by not actually running the extra code in the previous file I uploaded. Crystal Castles XE_fix2.xex 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 I used to have a standard wrapper that I'd add to Rom dumps as a load segment, it backed up the top 1K which allows the cart copy to survive a Reset. Such a thing could be recreated easily enough. The trick with appending the Rom would be to know whether or not it has the header info for emulation which we'd need to throw out. Probably easiest to just load the entire image, if it's an exact 1K multiple for filesize then you know there's no header to deal with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Yeah, fix2 seems to be working right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Yeah, fix2 seems to be working right. Cool. Normally, the game loads at $6000. I tacked a small routine on the front starting at $5FEE that clears out the Pokey registers and then jumps to the run address from the exec segment at the end. Then, I changed the exec address to $5FEE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 (edited) As a side note, I tried the Homesoft version from the Keffington 16MB ATR collection, and it was exhibiting the same problem. I don't know if the one from Fandal's site is based on Homesoft's XEX or not, but I'm doubting there were any other copies out there that didn't have the same problem, at this point. It's probably one of those things where it doesn't get picked up because everything's fine under emulation. Edited June 1, 2016 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Yep, real hardware will always be important. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Cool. Normally, the game loads at $6000. I tacked a small routine on the front starting at $5FEE that clears out the Pokey registers and then jumps to the run address from the exec segment at the end. Then, I changed the exec address to $5FEE. Well it seems to have worked. Classics like this and Dig Dug deserve to work properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 I did some more testing and everything seems fine. I also tried loading it using MyPicoDOS and it's fine there too. Actually, I've known about this issue with CC for a while. But I'd wanted to check around for a working version first, before asking if someone was interested in fixing this one, and I just never got around to it. I played it on emulation most of the time anyway, so it wasn't a big concern. But this is one of my all-time favorite Atari 8-bit games, so I'm really glad to see it get righted for real hardware. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetastrike Posted June 2, 2016 Author Share Posted June 2, 2016 Wow, that was quick. Thanks a bunch for the help! I'll fool around with it this weekend. CC is my favorite VCS game, so I can't wait to play a proper version. Ask and ye shall receive.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetastrike Posted June 4, 2016 Author Share Posted June 4, 2016 Full sound! Thanks so much. It's a great port, pretty difficult. Wasn't able to approach my hi scores from the VCS version. We'll see if that changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockLobster Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 How can I convert the Crossbow cartridge to an XEX? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baktra Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, RockLobster said: How can I convert the Crossbow cartridge to an XEX? It would be difficult. You would have to dump the ROM, use a disassembler to get the source code, understand the source code, and then modify the source code so that it would use extended memory banks instead of the cartridge address space. And then write a loader that would feed the extended memory banks with all the data. Unless you already are an experienced developer and a bright side cracker, it is a difficult task. @Fandal (who is a great developer and a bright side cracker) has already done that: http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=search&query=crossbow&t=katalog The .xex version requires 256 KB of RAM, because the Crossbow cartridge is a bank-switching cartridge with huge ROM and you have to fit all the data from the ROM in the extended RAM. Edited May 19, 2023 by baktra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 Fandal has done a few such carts - a fair amount of work required to do that. Alternatively if you have VBXE it can partially emulate cart banking - I created a Mac-65 executable that was modified to use VBXE VRam banking in the cart address space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 1 hour ago, Rybags said: Fandal has done a few such carts - a fair amount of work required to do that. I have the following (extended RAM, cart conversions) from @Fandal Barnyard Blaster [128k] Battlezone [128k] Bug Hunt [128k] Commando [256k] Crime Buster [320k] Crossbow [256k] Deflektor [128k] Desert Falcon [128k] Mario Bros (XE) [128k] Midi Maze [256k] Tower Toppler [128k] I also have the following from @nobody (Homesoft) Airball [320k] The only one we seem to be lacking is Xenophobe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 Some of the later large carts are conversions of disk originals and in fact just run the game from Ram (e.g. the Lucasfilm games) Conversion of those would be a bit easier although probably not worthwhile since it already existed on other media types to begin with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 5 minutes ago, Rybags said: Some of the later large carts are conversions of disk originals and in fact just run the game from Ram (e.g. the Lucasfilm games) Conversion of those would be a bit easier although probably not worthwhile since it already existed on other media types to begin with. Ah, yeah, I forgot about that. So, scratch Eidolon, Gato, and Karateka (from Homesoft) [Note: I'll edit the post]. The rest should all be originally cart only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockLobster Posted May 19, 2023 Share Posted May 19, 2023 7 hours ago, baktra said: use a disassembler to get the source code, understand the source code, and then Ok I see. I had mistakenly understood that many XEX's were simply wrappers with a loading header or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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