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The Tail of Beta Lyrae - Washouts


therealbountybob

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It may be looking for a "c" in the processor and preventing functioning based on that. Atari 800 doesn't have a "c" in it's processor name.

 

None of the 6502 variants have any sort of CPU id string function. You can only tell them apart by testing various undocumented instructions and the behaviors that result. You certainly wouldn't be looking for a "c".

 

Yeah, I was joking. 65c02 didn't exist when that game was written. Perhaps, some "opto-coupler" device to scan the name physically from the processor and OCR it followed by artificial intelligence to determine that the "c" is actual being used within as a processor name.

 

Ahh, I miss the days whens CPUs didn't require a heatsink. =D

 

(The WDC 65c02 and Tail of Beta Lyrae both came out in 1983)

 

Is the processor register defined the same in that processor as the 6502?

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"P" status is kinda laid out in a way that's easy to remember:

 

NV1BDIZC

 

The top 2 bits (Negative, Overflow) reflect what a BIT instruction tests, ie bits 7, 6. Also, high bit set indicates a negative binary number.

 

Carry is bit 0, which is the same bit that changes if you ADC #0 to the high order byte of a 16-bit number.

 

TBH, I generally don't really memorize the rest. It's fairly rare that you manipulate a popped "P" status anyway.

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"P" status is kinda laid out in a way that's easy to remember:

 

NV1BDIZC

 

The top 2 bits (Negative, Overflow) reflect what a BIT instruction tests, ie bits 7, 6. Also, high bit set indicates a negative binary number.

 

Carry is bit 0, which is the same bit that changes if you ADC #0 to the high order byte of a 16-bit number.

 

TBH, I generally don't really memorize the rest. It's fairly rare that you manipulate a popped "P" status anyway.

 

Thanks. The bit order is not given in any of the ASM 6502 books that I have.

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"P" status is kinda laid out in a way that's easy to remember:

 

NV1BDIZC

 

The top 2 bits (Negative, Overflow) reflect what a BIT instruction tests, ie bits 7, 6. Also, high bit set indicates a negative binary number.

 

Carry is bit 0, which is the same bit that changes if you ADC #0 to the high order byte of a 16-bit number.

 

TBH, I generally don't really memorize the rest. It's fairly rare that you manipulate a popped "P" status anyway.

 

Thanks. The bit order is not given in any of the ASM 6502 books that I have.

 

It's mentioned in the Atari Roots book but it doesn't tell you about state of bit 5 or how to set OVF. I guess BIT $FFFF or BIT $4E ought to set the OVF if you are allowing ROM OS to run in your application.

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BIT $FFFF will give varying results depending on OS revision.

 

Easier would be to just hit a hardware register that you know always reads as $FF.

 

Yeah, that would work like BIT $D400. But I think all Atari OS ROMs have pointers >= $C000 so ROM ptr MSBs should set OVF as well.

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  • 3 years later...

I remember being impressed by the game (pirate executable copy) but virtually never playing it.

 

I'm fairly sure the explosions from stuff you shot could also kill you - an instant turnoff in itself for a game in my mind.

 

I am sorry you did not like that the explosions of the enemy generally caused one's ship to explode if you went through it.

 

For game play reason I chose to do it because it made it more fun and difficult (But that was only my own opinion, many times when I played I might a)Not blow up something for fear the debris would kill me because I was too close. b)Kill it had spend a short while in fun stress getting clear of the shrapnel .

 

For simulation or reality I determined that running into mass (i.e. bits of stuff in the explosion[not the gases)) would be harmful to the state of the craft. Even a organic bird can take down an engine today. The explosion of the alien stuff left a lot of harmful materials for a few seconds [hmm perhaps the aliens designed their stuff that way as a form of defense. But from the pilot's point of view they probably wished that the ship had shields or good armor; it didn't that spaceship was the best they had to spare for Beta Lyrae.

Edited by Philip Price
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Concerning The Tail of Beta Lyrae protection. It has a few simple techniques that I forget the details of, but the primary protection was track to track timing (on the original disk). I read sectors on different tracks and used duplicate sectors spaced out on the tracks and since there was only one sole source for floppy drives at the time, I knew how fast the read head moved between tracks and how far the disk would rotate, and could see if it fell with a generous tolerance. Of course this assumed production could keep tracks aligned which they claimed they could.

 

Wrote the game while I lived in a shack (And yes as I have said before the mattress on floor was 50% covered in green mold). No running water, washed in a bathing suit in shower at the beach, repaired Atari vcs for the dealer who owned the property in exchange for food and the use of an Atari 400 with a cassette drive and even the assembler was loaded from cassette. Mostly had to reverse engineer the working of the computer (No such thing as internet and I didn't have much docs other than what the dealer got me out of magazines). Later moved into the backroom of the dealer's shop, met Gary (Who was buying a Atari computer from the dealer), I handed him my musical language/driver and he wrote the music with it (and he wrote the words of the intro).

 

The protection did stop Floppy drives with the Happy Mods at the time (Of course that meant they(Happy Computers) just got to sell updated version that could defeat it later).

It did not have as good of protection as I had in Alternate Reality.

 

The publisher did send me a little money (A few hundred dollars a month for food and rent), I provided disk boot protection for a number of their game and provided my musical language (AMP) for use in some of their games (And Gary wrote songs for those game).

 

Between Beta Lyrae and providing protection and music for a number of their games, we were advanced maybe one thousand dollars. Never saw a dime after that. But I enjoyed making the game, and I enjoy playing it, and writing protection for it (and writing a musical language).

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Currently playing this in the HSC. I have original disk. Nearly every load the game 'washes out' mid go: the background goes light grey and your ship vanishes just leaving the thrusters. Same on A800 and 130XE. Physically loads ok. Occasionally loads and plays ok. Others have had the problem so it's not just me.

 

All the ATR's and XEX versions I can find have corrupted sound effects (the gun sound is not right, music slows/goes off key at times, other random noises) plus the collision detection is delayed compared to the original (you hit something and the explosion happens a second later compared to instantly in the original).

 

Is it possible the copy protetion is failing and the game loads and thinks it's a copy and then has this washout programmed in deliberately to prevent play icon_question.gif

 

Is there no decent ATR/XEX version of this great game out there icon_question.gif

 

icon_confused.gif

 

Could be(i.e. any of the above reason), I don't remember what are all of the symptoms of copy detection. I know for one I would disable the joystick/input so that they could see the game autoplay for a second and perhaps convince them to buy it. (Of course little did I know I would never see a penny even if they did). I never expected to see the game played on anything but the floppy it came on.

 

BTW CONGRATS on the high score (okay... I am three years late, but I do want to convey my congratulation in the score ).

 

One little weird effect I noticed when I played(I had a play testing team of one [me]) the game thirty years ago was that if you play for a while and then look at a wall or curtain, the wall undulates [ some weird optical effect with the brain...actually I am just alien and the program was a mind control Trojan horse ;) ]

 

The caves were designed with the thought that the pilot had to choose a cave to enter and sometimes the cave they chose was just too hard, if not impossible (The aliens had no reason to only put their crafts in caverns that the human pilot could navigate in). The caves had constraints, so they should usually not be too narrow, but if the alien put things in those narrow spots and the caverns before do not allow for a clear shot to remove the alien obstructions in time, well that ends with a lost ship, and another ship (if one is left) starts back and little ....and takes a slightly different route.

 

Phil

 

P.S.

I loved playing Miner 2049, and Mule, and Mouseattack and so many 8 bit games in that day.

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Just a short "Thank you" for such a well done frantic shooter. It was way too hard for me to play through but always enjoyed the details you put into the game (different hit points of the objects, lots a animations, music + sfx etc.) that made the game clearly superior to Scramble. A great game.

 

I am sorry you did not like that the explosions of the enemy generally caused one's ship to explode if you went through it.

 

For game play reason I chose to do it because it made it more fun and difficult (But that was only my own opinion, many times when I played I might a)Not blow up something for fear the debris would kill me because I was too close. b)Kill it had spend a short while in fun stress getting clear of the shrapnel .

 

For simulation or reality I determined that running into mass (i.e. bits of stuff in the explosion[not the gases)) would be harmful to the state of the craft. Even a organic bird can take down an engine today. The explosion of the alien stuff left a lot of harmful materials for a few seconds [hmm perhaps the aliens designed their stuff that way as a form of defense. But from the pilot's point of view they probably wished that the ship had shields or good armor; it didn't that spaceship was the best they had to spare for Beta Lyrae.

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The game did change after you owned it, and (the writing to the one sector to mark how many times you loaded the game was optional and even if that sector was write protected the game loaded, and nothing was used on that sector but the use counter). The idea was that once you owned it for a little while even procedural terrain might get boring, but no game (at that time thirty years ago) changed basic objects after you owned it, and if they did they would tell you right? I wanted it to be a surprise, a pleasant present to the player.

 

The first object that would appear is the bubbling volcanoes (Yep if you are playing something other than the original disk and you get bubbling volcanoes then that snapshot was done after the original game owner had played the game a bit). The volcanoes are harmless, and meant to make people question themselves...As in I bought this game a few weeks ago, and I never noticed the volcanoes before, how unobservant of me.

 

Then later the backbiter missles would show up (Which fire from behind your ship), at that point they KNOW something is up, because nothing in the game until then shot at them from behind!

 

So it was added to give them some extra fun :)

 

Phil

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wow...

 

I was just playing "Passionately" on my 1200XL.

 

I often let it run for hours, over and over.

 

And, here you are. A big 'Howdy" from northern California!

 

Bob Woolley

 

Hi from Florida!

 

Northern California is beautiful (I love the ocean, the forest, and technology, and Northern California has all three). Though I like the warmth of Florida.

 

Yes I think Gary's Passionately was one of his best songs. Though I really like some of the thirty songs he wrote and played on a synthesizer that we never released back in 1997(was going to be for the online game)

 

Before I met Gary, I had written the first version of my AMP musical language (it allowed for music to be composed and the composer control probabilities of how the music is expressed, frequency effects, amplitude effects, and much more). But when I tried to use my language by myself and play a song it was horrible!(Picture someone picking up a violin and thinking a note here, a note there, it will be ok. But when I was wrapping up Beta Lyrae and met Gary, he took the AMP language and wrote his music with it, his stuff was wonderful.

 

Later he did try other tools/drivers than AMP and he said none had the abilities of what I had made for him to use. He is and was the composer for all the commercial games I made and for all the music ever done using AMP, including Passionately.

Edited by Philip Price
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Just a short "Thank you" for such a well done frantic shooter. It was way too hard for me to play through but always enjoyed the details you put into the game (different hit points of the objects, lots a animations, music + sfx etc.) that made the game clearly superior to Scramble. A great game.

 

Thank you so much for the compliment. Though I have to say I was playing Scramble in the arcades when I started writing Tail of Beta Lyrae so doing a side scrolling shooter was in my mind (When I had some quarters and could get into that part of Hilo[literally] I would go upstairs to the Arcade and play Scramble and pinball)[i moved later while developing the game to Kona and the shack with no power or running water]

 

I need a game I couldn't just learn 'the maze', but had to learn to react and think, so that is how making Beta Lyrae came about.

 

Best,

 

Phil

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wow...

 

I was just playing "Passionately" on my 1200XL.

 

I often let it run for hours, over and over.

 

And, here you are. A big 'Howdy" from northern California!

 

Bob Woolley

That was one of my first BBS downloads done at 300 baud! I still know it note for note to this day :)

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Thanks for the responses Philip, really nice to read :)

 

Beta Lyrae is still a great game and the increasing difficulty levels make it challenging for the better players.

So we still need that elusive shrink wrapped Beta Lyrae image making into an ATR... the quest goes on ;)

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Downloaded The Tail of Beta Lyrae from Fandal's Site

works fine

 

though the ship accelerates by itself randomly ? :?

 

happens on Altirra and on a real XEGS.

 

Aking,

 

I think the only time the ship is 100% uncontrollable in the original disk is when it is a pirated copy. (which in your case means I have no idea if that image running on that emulator will behave as if it is pirated, I would assume not)

 

But in the game there are floating gravity mines (Small black holes) that will draw your ship toward them These appear either at higher levels and/or when you owned the game a long time I forget which [been over thirty years since I wrote it].

 

There are a few you-tube run through which you can see normal behavior.(I noticed this youtube walkthrough [the player commenting on his play. He scored over 334,000)[not an average score].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwlwDzde4aE Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUy5oEefWP4 Part 2 Where he too encounters a black hole (But he is at a high level of difficulty)

 

Concerning the continuous forward movement, the ship is always on a forward path. I think the makers of the ship and the commanders safely in the back line, want to make sure the military pilot of the ship is always moving forward through the enemy lines and fortifications. so the center engine is always on. You do have a limited forward/reverse/up/down control, but in the end it is always onward!

 

-Phil.

Edited by Philip Price
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I took a look at this game again under the debugger, and it does indeed track the number of times you've played -- or more precisely, the number of times you have loaded it. As soon as the high score screen appears, it reads and then rewrites sector 365 on the disk with a counter at $2D00. This counter increments once each time and does something to the game once it reaches 14, 21, and 35. After that it stops counting and writing to the disk. I don't know how many of the glitches are attributable to this, but it does appear to do something. At least with the VAPI version, you can experiment with this by setting a breakpoint on sector 365 and changing $2D00 immediately after the disk read call.

 

This may also explain why some of the ATR rips self-destruct after the first play -- the disk image doesn't have the counter sector reserved.

 

(Don Lancaster used to list writing to the distribution disk in your program on his list of stupid ideas... I wish more people had followed his advice.)

 

Well in Beta Lyrae case I was not writing a game save on the production disk, rather I was writing on a sector that was used for only this purpose , and a write failure was ignored as well as a read failure[i believe]. So in this case I don't think it was stupid idea, but I am sure he (Don Lancaster) is speaking generally.[i.e. don't assume that a consumers floppy drive will always write data correctly, and don't force the production floppy to not be write protected, if he meant this I would agree], (In AR I purposely put all protection only on Disk 1 Side 1 for just this reason, I did not want a consumer floppy drive to write on the weirdness I had due to protection)

 

 

But it is a use counter and controls whether extra alien objects come in to freshen the game, to change the game.

 

Of course I didn't design it with idea that a pirated copy might not follow the same constraints in how things are stored as I did, since pirate versions were not my concern at the time.

 

I do not think I ever checked the processor, but I probably checked for memory where memory should not be (And when I wrote this, only the Atari 400 and 800 existed). This was to stop debug cartridges and omnimon.

 

I would not be surprised if my code from 1982/1983 would sense the 'strangeness' of the 800xl as a pirate modified 800.

 

When I designed the game, I designed it (on mattress in a Hawaiian jungle/forest) with the specific 400 and 800 Ataris in mind and assuming everyone would buy an Atari sooner or later (So did not design it to be ported at all). I did almost all of it on an Atari 400 with a Chiclet keyboard and a cassette drive [in the very end when I got a floppy drive, that seemed so, so fast..no more saving my assembly code on six images on the tape every time I executed in order to hope I would have one image that would read back without error.[if all six failed, I don't even remember if I had any other form of backup back then..so I would have lost all my Beta Lyrae Code]. Floppy drives and an Atari 800 was a great improvement at the very end.

 

- Phil

 

P.S.

Also in the timeframe of Beta Lyrae I don't think there were any third party floppy drives. This is important because Beta Lyrae protection was based on the specific timing between tracks on the floppy (Seek latency for specific sector to sector transitions). Have no idea if third party drives would be within the tolerance I demanded.

Edited by Philip Price
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I would not be surprised if my code from 1982/1983 would sense the 'strangeness' of the 800xl as a pirate modified 800.

 

 

I bought the disk from a KayBee Toys in the mid-eighties and it worked fine in my 800XL with an unmodified 1050 drive. As I played through the game quite a few times, I did indeed see the gravity balls and the Backbiter Missiles. I later modified the drive with an ICD Doubler (I think that is what it was called.) This mod just allowed the drive to operate much faster if formatted with a sector skew in SpartaDOS. The game continued to work fine (as far as I could tell) in that drive. I got pretty damn good at it back then so if the game getting hard was an anti-piracy measure, I wouldn't have noticed. Would that I had those reflexes today....

 

Funny thing is, the manual included with the game did talk about the balls and missiles so I wasn't surprised by them at all. I thought it was just supposed to get harder on subsequent playthroughs. The manual was quite fancy and had pencil shaded non pixelated renditions of all the game's enemies.

 

Of course, "anecdote" is not singular for "data" so YMMV.

Edited by frogstar_robot
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Wow, is that Charlie Sheen doing the narration for those Youtube videos?

MEtalGuy66,

 

Hehe, after you said that I listened and he does sound like it. But I think he is avid retro game player who plays older games to achieve high scores in them. I actually enjoyed his voiceover because I got to see how he looked at the game, and when I see the game I both remember writing it, and playing it myself.

 

Phil

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I bought the disk from a KayBee Toys in the mid-eighties and it worked fine in my 800XL with an unmodified 1050 drive. As I played through the game quite a few times, I did indeed see the gravity balls and the Backbiter Missiles. I later modified the drive with an ICD Doubler (I think that is what it was called.) This mod just allowed the drive to operate much faster if formatted with a sector skew in SpartaDOS. The game continued to work fine (as far as I could tell) in that drive. I got pretty damn good at it back then so if the game getting hard was an anti-piracy measure, I wouldn't have noticed. Would that I had those reflexes today....

 

Funny thing is, the manual included with the game did talk about the balls and missiles so I wasn't surprised by them at all. I thought it was just supposed to get harder on subsequent playthroughs. The manual was quite fancy and had pencil shaded non pixelated renditions of all the game's enemies.

 

Of course, "anecdote" is not singular for "data" so YMMV.

Frogstar_robot,

 

Ahh, I am glad the track to track sync timing/protection worked for you in those cases. I didn't write the manual and I think they did include a few things I had meant to keep hidden.[As with most publishers, you hand them the game and they make the box, duplicate the disks, market, and distribute it [which why they get all the money, hehe]

 

Phil

Edited by Philip Price
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  • 3 months later...

Hi Mr. Price. So great you commenting here in the forum ...

 



Well in Beta Lyrae case I was not writing a game save on the production disk, rather I was writing on a sector that was used for only this purpose , and a write failure was ignored as well as a read failure[i believe]. So in this case I don't think it was stupid idea, but I am sure he (Don Lancaster) is speaking generally.[i.e. don't assume that a consumers floppy drive will always write data correctly, and don't force the production floppy to not be write protected, if he meant this I would agree], (In AR I purposely put all protection only on Disk 1 Side 1 for just this reason, I did not want a consumer floppy drive to write on the weirdness I had due to protection)

 

 

The general concept is, that if you have a disk you can't backup, then you probably want to write protect it.

 

 

I do not think I ever checked the processor, but I probably checked for memory where memory should not be (And when I wrote this, only the Atari 400 and 800 existed). This was to stop debug cartridges and omnimon. I would not be surprised if my code from 1982/1983 would sense the 'strangeness' of the 800xl as a pirate modified 800.

 

 

Not sure about 800XL, but some of your code does break in the 130XE. IIRC, your code on the protection on Datamost Cohen's Tower prevents that release to run in an 130XE. As I recall, you are somehow messing with the PIA registers, in such a way that it's still harmless on the 800XL but harmfull on the 130XE. Not blaming you in anyway, just commenting in case you were curious.

 

 

Also in the timeframe of Beta Lyrae I don't think there were any third party floppy drives. This is important because Beta Lyrae protection was based on the specific timing between tracks on the floppy (Seek latency for specific sector to sector transitions). Have no idea if third party drives would be within the tolerance I demanded.

 

 

The timing on Beta Lyrae protection doesn't seem to be too strict (other protections are much less toletant in this regard). I think it works on most third party drives.

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