Jump to content
IGNORED

Infocom Adventures without disk swapping


Wrathchild

Recommended Posts

Following on from some work in the List of Games Not Working with Incognito SIDE Loader thread I happy to now post up a full set of 24 titles spread across 3 large disks (~920K each). Originally I'd designed these to run from FlashCart but never got around to converting the save routines to write to Flash memory and so as owners of devices that can mount large ATR files seem to prefer this format now, here you are.

InfocomCollections.zip

  • Like 13
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maxflash Cartridge Studio

[image Database Manager] Initialized, 1485 image signatures loaded.

[uSB Manager] Initialized and running.

[user Interface] Error loading file "1_fantasy.atr" for slot #1, ATR size of 943888 bytes exceeds maximum supported import size of 737296 bytes.

[image Converter] Valid Atari ATR image, imported 273920 bytes from ZORK123_TEST.ATR

This bigger atr's don't fit into a Maxflash cart, but the previous Zork test atr did.

 

;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:)

 

By 'originally designed' I had produced a dedicated cart image where the interpreter had code that replaced the 'get sector' routine with a 'copy memory from cart-bank' instead. So it didn't use the Maxflash Cartridge Studio. This wouldn't make technical sense as the Maxflash would be installing its own routines to intercept the get-sector calls and read from cart-bank instead but from the end-user perspective then I guess there's no difference. So I could produce a suite of Maxflash compatible ATRs (i.e. <720K) too but would you have to do some select-option type key pressing to be able to save to an actual disk (e.g. drive 2)?

Edited by Wrathchild
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Awesome! All Infocom games on only three images! Wonderful.

 

Does it support to save games on the same media? Or do I have to provide a blank "SAVE DISK" for each game?

 

Saving to the actual disk seem to work out fine, but when I restore a game it simply says "failed" .. not sure if I'm doing something wrong here..

 

greetings,

twh

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Following on from some work in the List of Games Not Working with Incognito SIDE Loader thread I happy to now post up a full set of 24 titles spread across 3 large disks (~920K each). Originally I'd designed these to run from FlashCart but never got around to converting the save routines to write to Flash memory and so as owners of devices that can mount large ATR files seem to prefer this format now, here you are.

 

thanks!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, how are you using the ATRs? I'm not sure but possibly if the ATRs are mounted as read-only (or their header denotes this?) then could SIO2PC or AspeQt ignore/fail the writes?

 

You should be able to swap out the game disk and insert a save disk into drive 1, then save. On saving and loading like this you MUST remember to replace the game disk into drive 1 (after the 'Ok.') as the next command you type will most likely cause a disk request for extra game data.

 

Saving to the game disk wouldn't be a good idea though, currently, as it would overwrite things. I could leave a 'hole' toward the beginning of the disk to be used for save spaces. If I were to do this then should I also remove the question asking 'Drive #' and just default it to '1'?

 

BTW: If anyone is willing and gets enjoyment out of these... small donations can go to flashjazzcat on his Donations pages to help further his community contributions. Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are 5 possible slots (each $4000 in length) on a save disk and of course you can manage those how you like, so saving a different game title's state to a separate slot should be fine. Sadly there's no preview to show what is in each slot... maybe this could be a future 'enhancement' (e.g. if a clock is available then a timestamp could be added too!). But the next set of 6 disks I'll issue will have 4 titles on each and so you could dedicate a slot for each game.

Edited by Wrathchild
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is the six-pack :D

 

In testing that the ATRs can be embedded into a MaxFlash 8Mbit image as a self booting title, I found that I'd left within the menu code some lines that enabled the cartridge, so I had to fix this but also tidied up the switch to the menu as this occasionally resulted in the two DLIs firing in the wrong order messing up the colours. Hopefully that's all OK now.

 

The disks now also include save-state space in the lower part. You are still OK to save and load to a separate disk or drive. Those separate disks will not however be compatible with other Infocom save games (including those saved in the 3*8 game images above) as the base sector had to be shifted so that the boot-sector doesn't get overwritten.

Infocom_AtrQuads.zip

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

I developed a program called ATRLoad - in it's early stages but it's able to put some disk games into an XEX form and run on machines with large memory.

 

130XE doesn't give a huge advantage - on a stock machine the only way to intercept disk reads for most games is by copying the OS to RAM which means that 14K which otherwise might have been usable as cache is lost.

 

64K doesn't quite match a SD floppy but many games use only a fraction of the floppy, so in theory on a 130XE a 2 disk game might be reducable such that you could preload one floppy and just leave the other in the drive.

 

Atarimax 8 mbit flash is another possibility - on a 64K machine, copy the OS and the flashcart could be used to hold multiple virtual disk images.

The other thing is initiating disk swaps, a keypress system is the best way to go there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...

Thank you :)

Deadline from Holmes is corrupted.

So maybe someone have different version 801005 like the one used by Wrathchild for his compilation?

I take it that one of the Planetfall versions from the Holmes CD was good then? I don't know if the files are any good but the Deadline ATRs are also available from the nir_dary cd archive on the pigwa ftp site..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is the six-pack :D

 

In testing that the ATRs can be embedded into a MaxFlash 8Mbit image as a self booting title, I found that I'd left within the menu code some lines that enabled the cartridge, so I had to fix this but also tidied up the switch to the menu as this occasionally resulted in the two DLIs firing in the wrong order messing up the colours. Hopefully that's all OK now.

 

The disks now also include save-state space in the lower part. You are still OK to save and load to a separate disk or drive. Those separate disks will not however be compatible with other Infocom save games (including those saved in the 3*8 game images above) as the base sector had to be shifted so that the boot-sector doesn't get overwritten.

Splendid work! Can I included this pack to the next version of game pack? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Wrathchild

 

You have unique version of Deadline serial number 801005, the one from Atarimania, and internet is 821108. Please, can you find your 90kb atr files for Infocom games?

 

@The Usotsuki

 

820809? Interesting, can you try to write $verify to check if your version is correct? And possibly publish here (zip file)?

 

@BillC Yes, thank you Planetfall from Holmes CD was fine :)

I will try now games from nir_dary cd :)

Edited by firestorm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, it's not an Atari version, though it may be possible to graft it on an Atari disk if there's tools (the stuff on ifarchive only goes the other way, disk image to .z3, but there's tools for going .z3 to disk image on an Apple for example). I prolly got it off Asimov.

 

wi3l6EG.png

 

I did say the data file was 820809.

 

ETA: Actually - I wonder how hard it would be to make such a tool? The Apple ][ z3-to-dsk tool out there is mine, I wrote it over a decade ago, it's called InterL (for "interleave" and "InterLogic").

Edited by The Usotsuki
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the time I worked on the cartridge version (which could be as far back as Aug/Sep 2003) it appears that I was patching some ATRs using C64 images as reference but was not able to find a verifiable Deadline set of images and so based on some of the bugs in the earlier releases chose to use the last release. By that time I'd purchased the two Lost Treasures 3.5" floppy set for the PC which may have been the source or possibly the ST.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...