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Shamus+ - New Mazes for Shamus


slx

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Thanks to a lot of help and encouragement on AtariAge I can finally present

 

Shamus +

 

which allows to play the "extra" mazes of the C64 version on the Atari, including playing five mazes in a row in a "Tournament" mode.

It also fixes a rare bug.

 

A detailed description of the maze encoding, the history of the patch and its sourcecode are included in the Zip Archive.

 

The ATR version lacks the description and automatically loads the patched XEX file which can be used "stand-alone" as well.

 

Shamus+.zip

Shamus+.atr

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Hi Siegfried,

 

Great work. I got a few questions:

 

1. What are the main differences between Atari and C64 versions?

2. Where do the names Holmes, Cluseau, Marlowe and Bond come from?

3. How many new rooms, in total, have you ported/developed for Shamus+?

 

Regards,

 

- Y -

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Hi Siegfried,

 

Great work. I got a few questions:

 

1. What are the main differences between Atari and C64 versions?

2. Where do the names Holmes, Cluseau, Marlowe and Bond come from?

3. How many new rooms, in total, have you ported/developed for Shamus+?

 

Regards,

 

- Y -

 

A number of these questions are answered in the writeup in the zip file. The names of the mazes is not answered :)

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Hi Siegfried,

 

Great work. I got a few questions:

 

1. What are the main differences between Atari and C64 versions?

2. Where do the names Holmes, Cluseau, Marlowe and Bond come from?

3. How many new rooms, in total, have you ported/developed for Shamus+?

 

Regards,

 

- Y -

 

 

1) A detailed list of the differences is indeed in the .pdf inside the .zip file. Which are "main" is probably a matter of personal preferences. Regarding gameplay, the lack of speedup (maybe caused by the slower speed of the C64?) is probably most noticeable, with the "non-floating" hat of Shamus coming second, as it doesn't allow enemy bullets to pass between hat and head. Another difference affecting gameplay is the ability of Atari shots to kill enemies touching the other side of walls (maybe caused by P/M collision detection logic) while C64 ION-SHIVs stop at walls (with a splash graphic though).

 

The C64 game ends after killing the Shamus, the Atari game continues for as long as you can stand it (at least with my bugfix), even jumping to a new maze in Tournament mode.

 

2) The names are straight from the C64 version. "Shamus" is apparently US slang for a detective, so all new mazes got names of famous investigators.

 

3) With 128 rooms per maze, that's 512 entirely new rooms plus a few that are different in the "Original" C64 maze. Given the limited number of shapes, there are far less entirely "new" rooms with layouts not used in the Atari version. I have to admit I didn't count those "unique" rooms.

 

There is one more "new" maze each in the VIC-20 and PC (DOS) versions, but the VIC mazes would require more changes to the game engine as VIC mazes are smaller and have different room layouts. (For the PC version I'd need to either learn 8080 assembly or hand-code from existing maps....)

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Sir, you should be very proud, this is what I love about the retro folk, they care and look to extend the happiness. Being also a c64 / overall retro head I just love when folks make new releases or updated creations on all systems like Savetz, Goochman etc did with the Jumpman on the Atari. This sadly isn't as prolific on the Atari as it is on other systems which makes your work even more welcome, that isn't a dig at the Atari folks, they produce some cracking new titles but the updating of titles is really big on the C64 with games like Commando being bug fixed and updated by a group called Nostalgia a while back BUT we have seen graphical updates to games on my much loved Atari which is wonderful.

 

Hopefully the trend will continue and expand but regardless of that we love what you and others do, you might think of it as a 'hack' but to us its a reopening of the game with new stuff after all this time...

 

Thank you!

 

Paul...

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Sir, you should be very proud, this is what I love about the retro folk, they care and look to extend the happiness. Being also a c64 / overall retro head I just love when folks make new releases or updated creations on all systems like Savetz, Goochman etc did with the Jumpman on the Atari. This sadly isn't as prolific on the Atari as it is on other systems which makes your work even more welcome, that isn't a dig at the Atari folks, they produce some cracking new titles but the updating of titles is really big on the C64 with games like Commando being bug fixed and updated by a group called Nostalgia a while back BUT we have seen graphical updates to games on my much loved Atari which is wonderful.

 

Hopefully the trend will continue and expand but regardless of that we love what you and others do, you might think of it as a 'hack' but to us its a reopening of the game with new stuff after all this time...

 

Thank you!

 

Paul...

 

Thanks for the kind words. I don't look across system borders that much although I have amassed some unused "foreign" hardware I found interesting. So far I had the impression that we Atari people have had very generous contributors regarding archived documentation (books, magazines, etc.) and emulation the value of both of which is immeasurable when undertaking any retro project.

 

I find the annual "harvest" of entirely new or extended games for our system amazing and wanted to contribute a tiny little bit. I do have some more ideas but as they are more ambitious than this one and this one took way more time than I expected, I'lll have to ponder when to find time for that.

 

I'll also really need to play the new mazes after all to mark my territory ;)

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  • 6 months later...

Flattered to have Shamus+ mentioned in the latest ABBUC magazine booklet and even more so as it was named among the top 10 current games. Most of the credit for that is due to Cathryn Mataga but still...wow! Really an incentive to do a little more coding. Thanks ABBUC!

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Thank you very much for making and sharing Shamus+, slx! :thumbsup:

 

Very glad Shamus+ was mentioned in latest ABBUC magazine and named among top 10 current games! :cool:

 

Shamus was one of the few games I had on tape BITD.

Still a favorite and great to have C64 gameplay and extra maps too!

 

To borrow from Spinal Tap, "this one goes to 11"! ;)

 

Not only is this an incredible combination of two excellent versions to play, but it serves to preserve the memory and effort put into the original versions of Shamus!

Thank you to Cathryn Mataga! :thumbsup:

Thank you to all who contributed to this project! :thumbsup:

 

Really interesting reading about your working through developing Shamus+ too in the .pdf.

 

Thank you again for making and sharing this: extraordinary stuff! :jango:

 

Best Regards

Fingolfin

 

edit/addition:

I almost completely forgot one of the very most important additions to Shamus+: you added a pause button! |:)

On behalf of Shamus fans everywhere who (try to) play extended single game sessions, thank you very, very much!!! :thumbsup:

BITD when friends were over, sometimes we'd take shifts at a single game of Shamus to allow for bathroom breaks! ;)

Edited by Fingolfin
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Glad you like it, Fingolfin!

 

Shamus was one of the few games I had on tape BITD.

Still a favorite and great to have C64 gameplay and extra maps too!

I still remember loading Nautilus from tape at my friend's place. :sleep: I wonder if i would have played Shamus as much as I did if I had have to load it from tape every time :?

 

The gameplay has remained pure Atari. I did opt to keep the speed increase for the C64 levels as well as it IMHO makes the game more fluid to play. The other C64 differences are way beyond my abilities and understanding of the Atari engine to change anyway. I did not manage to find out how the actual rendering of the rooms works internally, so I wasn't even able to properly transfer the C64 rooms that are not included in the Atari engine (which - plus some other adjustments - would also be necessary to use VIC and PC-DOS levels).

 

As for the pause function, I would have loved to do that with a keyboard interrupt but still don't understand why that didn't work. It also saves you from having to draw maps from memory.

 

I never had anyone proficient enough to take over during bathroom breaks, like the idea though!

Edited by slx
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  • 4 years later...
On 8/24/2022 at 11:12 AM, Boanergos said:

Hello to everyone. I discovered this gem but I'm not able to download the zip and the ATR files. I downloaded the revised pdf file and it's amazing!

 

Can you repost the other files? Thank you so much for your work!!

 

Marco

@Boanergos, thanks for the kind words. Real thanks are owed to Catherine Mataga who programmed this excellent game at a time when 128 screens were mind boggling, even more so for a cartridge, and to the guy who added 4 times as many for the C64. I was standing on the shoulders of giants and just wanted to give back what little I could to the Atari community that keeps churning out amazing stuff year after year. (As for the pdf I just wrote what I would enjoy reading about other home-brews and the description of the inner workings was inspired by Kroah's Game Reverse Engineering page which makes for a nice read if you enjoy such stuff.

 

From time to time I still think about a Shamus++ with a map mode but always stall at the display logic for non-continuous mazes.

 

Shamus+ is also available for download on Fandal's site.

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As the downloads in the first post don't work for the time, here's another go:

 

Shamus+.zip

This is the whole package including .pdf documentation and patch source code. if you'd like to read about the development of the game and details about how the mazes of Shamus are encoded, it's all in here.

 

Shamus+.atr

This is the bootable .atr (just a bootable DOS disc that autostarts the .xex file.)

 

Shamuspl.xex

This is the plain .xex file. 

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