Telengard-BASIC debugging challenge

[Gunstar]

I recently bought a MIB version of the classic Avalon Hill RPG, Telengard. It's a BASIC program. It seems to have a bug. It happens when you go to load your saved game back up again. I downloaded a version from Atarimania, hoping it was something that was fixed somewhere along the line all these years (1982). And although the Atarimania version has been hacked for auto-load instead of having to type: Run "D:TELEN.BAS," but alas, the loading bug is in it too. But maybe it's a BASIC A rev. thing? Or is there a known working version out there?

 

But if it isn't a BASIC revision thing and know one has debugged it in all these years, then I challenge any and all Atari BASIC programmers to solve the problem.

 

The first thing you will notice is that the character name comes back with a corrupted character name, and the program immediately halts with the following error message: ERROR- 8 at line 1275

 

 

It's been 30 years since I even typed in a BASIC program, with my one semester of BASIC programming knowledge, long since lost for lack of use. But I do realize that the bug may be deeper than the one line of code, but it looks like there is corruption in that one line itself, with the weird looking...well see for yourself in the picture or program listing on your own.

You'll have to play the game long enough to choose a character and return to the inn and save progress. There is a staircase you start at the bottom of when the game first starts. Push "U" to go up it into the inn and save the game.

Telengard.atr

Edited August 22, 2017 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

Well, I just tried with BASIC A and OS-B and it's exactly the same. I just can't imagine this game going for 35 years without this important bug being fixed! It blows my mind...

[devwebcl]

Do you have the ATR with the name Baker saved ?

I couldn't replicate the issue.

[AtariGeezer]

Telengard.atr

 

Fixed a sector link in DUP.SYS and updated the VTOC as ALAN.PLR wasn't saved there.

Ran the game, loaded ALAN.PLR and didn't get any errors. Tested in Altirra using 130XE Hardware and XE OS 3...

 

Also started a new game, saved the character, loaded the character and no crash

Edited August 22, 2017 by AtariGeezer

[Gunstar]

thanks I will try it out!

[Goochman]

I played Telengard on my friends C64 back in the day and we really enjoyed it. Fast forward a few years and I got ahold of the 8bit version - to say I was disappointed was an understatement. The only good thing was I played it under emulation so I could easily up my character stats and restore if I got burnt (Telengard has a nasty habit of dropping an unbeatable monster on you).

 

I wish someone could replace the monster graphics with sprites, but alas that wont happen.

[Gunstar]

Telengard.atr

 

Fixed a sector link in DUP.SYS and updated the VTOC as ALAN.PLR wasn't saved there.

Ran the game, loaded ALAN.PLR and didn't get any errors. Tested in Altirra using 130XE Hardware and XE OS 3...

 

Also started a new game, saved the character, loaded the character and no crash

I tried this ATR and it is the same error. I decided to try something else; this game is normally played in real time, but in the manual it says you can pick the character name of DEMO, and it will become turn-based instead of real time, so one can learn the game controls (about 5 seconds are allowed to make a choice in a normal game). So I started a game with the name DEMO, played through an encounter and saved the game. Under the name DEMO the game then loaded up and worked properly. I'm going to try some other names, as I think the name BAKER (especially the "K" which apparently is changed to a custom character graphic may have something to do with it, as it shows in the picture with the corrupted "K" in the name where it says it was found. I did try Gunstar also as a character name (before BAKER), and it came back with a corrupted character in it at load time too. So I'm thinking the name of the character must not include any of the changed character graphics. So I'll try some other names.

 

In any case, I prefer not having the real-time clock and having it turned based anyway, I think it will be more fun to play this way, and I don't care even if I have to save my character as "DEMO." Any other name will turn on the real-time clock for the game again anyway.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Gunstar

[+slx]

BASIC is like cycling, you never lose it once you've learned it, you just get a bit wobbly when starting again after a long time...

[+slx]

BASIC is like cycling, you never lose it once you've learned it, you just get a bit wobbly when starting again after a long time...

[Xuel]

Basic error 8 happens when an INPUT statement is trying to read a number but finds a string instead. So, I suspect that the save character file on your disk is not getting read in correctly, possibly due to disk corruption or hardware malfunction. This would also explain the bogus character in your name "BAKER" at the letter K since the program reads the name from disk and prints it out right before the line where it's failing for you.

[toddtmw]

I compared the read and write sections of the code. They appear identical to me, I do not see anything wrong with the code.

[Gunstar]

Basic error 8 happens when an INPUT statement is trying to read a number but finds a string instead. So, I suspect that the save character file on your disk is not getting read in correctly, possibly due to disk corruption or hardware malfunction. This would also explain the bogus character in your name "BAKER" at the letter K since the program reads the name from disk and prints it out right before the line where it's failing for you.

It's not disk corruption, I have both the original disk, and an image I wrote to a new disk off Atarimania. Both do the same thing on my system. Like I said, if I use the name DEMO, it works fine. It's a strange one for sure, and I do have a lot of modified equipment, so who knows, maybe it is a hardware malfunction somewhere, but I don't have trouble with anything else. I can live with playing the game with the save character name of demo.

Edited August 24, 2017 by Gunstar

[R.Cade]

I tried exactly what you said with the image in the original post, with the name BAKER. In 800 OS-B and 800XL modes, it works fine. I can save as that name, and reload. No corruption.

[Gunstar]

It's a conundrum for me, but apparently it has been settled that there is nothing wrong with the game. If it's a problem with my system, it could be any number of things as I have such a modded set-up, but not important enough for me to go trouble shooting hardware and what-not when everything else, so far, works properly...just one old BASIC game with suspicious behavior ain't enough for me to panic.

 

Thank you to everyone that looked into it for me, one and all.

Edited August 24, 2017 by Gunstar

[+nanochess]

Probably a bug in your RAM chips exactly in the position to fail with file name.