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Alternate Reality : Dungeon image?


WIZZARD77

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Ok, this is the first working beta. I forgot to turn the cartridge off in my previous version, hence the bug... ?

 

It's a Maxflash compatible ROM image.

 

It only works with at least 64K Ram, so the 400/800 are out of this beta. Maybe someone can make a fix on this.

 

The trick was in patching the address $24A0 from a JMP $204E to a JMP $CC00, where the cartridge loading routine is stored.

 

Theorycally, you can store your character by putting a floppy disk on D1:, D2: or D3.

 

I will appreciate any feedback you can give.

 

Enjoy the testing!

 

 

ArdungeonV2.rom

Edited by Wilheim
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2 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Perhaps you could take a whack at the city after your done with this... last I knew it was forgotten/abandoned for cartridge version...

Was the bug ever fixed so that you could move back and forth between the City and Dungeon?

At this point it is too bad we don't have a massive amount of coder hours to just jump in and finish the Arena, Wilderness, Palace and ... was the last part called Recflection or something?

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55 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

I’m not sure that was a bug, so much as the entire character file format changed.  

The bug was that you'd some how trigger the copy protection and get attacked by the FBI armed with the Long Arm of the Law.

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10 hours ago, leech said:

The bug was that you'd some how trigger the copy protection and get attacked by the FBI armed with the Long Arm of the Law.

Right that was copy protection.  You asked about being able to move back and forth between the City and Dungeon -- that was not a bug, that was impossible in the A8 version.

 

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1 hour ago, kheller2 said:

Right that was copy protection.  You asked about being able to move back and forth between the City and Dungeon -- that was not a bug, that was impossible in the A8 version.

 

I know you could go one way.  And it would trigger tge copy protection.  Friend of mine actually tracked down the original disks and it still had it.  I can't remember if you could wver go back to the city,  but you could enter the dungeon from the City.

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The long arm of the law would also appear for newly created characters I believe.  In both cases, wasn't it once you saved then rebooted and resumed?

It allowed you to sample the game but obviously not to play it as properly intended, ie you need to save and backup periodically and the act of saving meant you had to reboot.

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1 minute ago, Rybags said:

The long arm of the law would also appear for newly created characters I believe.  In both cases, wasn't it once you saved then rebooted and resumed?

It allowed you to sample the game but obviously not to play it as properly intended, ie you need to save and backup periodically and the act of saving meant you had to reboot.

Ha, yeah definitely the most hilarious copy protection I had ever seen.  We definitely had a version before he got original disks that were cracked right, as I managed to map the entire dungeon.

Such a great game / concept.  Shame the City was fixed for the 16 bit systems, yet the Dungeon never came out for them.

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17 hours ago, leech said:

Was the bug ever fixed so that you could move back and forth between the City and Dungeon?

At this point it is too bad we don't have a massive amount of coder hours to just jump in and finish the Arena, Wilderness, Palace and ... was the last part called Recflection or something?

 

Afaik, it was called Revelation and there was planned one more part - Destiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(series)

 

It would be very very very nice to have all parts of the series for the A8 someday - on a mega cartridge (or cart. image) to avoid any disk flipping and feeling like a disk jockey. Of course this will never happen, except someone wins the lottery and sets up a high prize for this series to be finished...  ;-)

 

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1 minute ago, CharlieChaplin said:

 

Afaik, it was called Revelation and there was planned one more part - Destiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(series)

 

It would be very very very nice to have all parts of the series for the A8 someday - on a mega cartridge (or cart. image) to avoid any disk flipping and feeling like a disk jockey. Of course this will never happen, except someone wins the lottery and sets up a high prize for this series to be finished...  ;-)

 

That was it!  Thanks.  And that's right, I did remember reading about Destiny.  Revelation was after you completed the Dungeon, if I recall.  To be fair, something like finishing this series would be PERFECT for Kickstarter.... But of course we'd actually need someone who would 1) want to do it and 2) could actually pull it off.

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Maybe I haven't had enough coffee today or i'm just getting agitated from being cooped up, but ....

No, you could never go back from the Dungeon to the City - as released. It was one way, and had nothing to do with protection.

Recall that the the Dungeon was completely done by a different team, after DS "lost" Phill's original Dungeon code (up to that point). I'm not that familiar with the other platforms and who coded the City and Dungeon, but the A8 ARCity is a completely different code base than anything else.  So while it would be a nice thing to have both the City and Dungeon on one mega cart/drive, the engines are completely different between the two.

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27 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

Maybe I haven't had enough coffee today or i'm just getting agitated from being cooped up, but ....

No, you could never go back from the Dungeon to the City - as released. It was one way, and had nothing to do with protection.

Recall that the the Dungeon was completely done by a different team, after DS "lost" Phill's original Dungeon code (up to that point). I'm not that familiar with the other platforms and who coded the City and Dungeon, but the A8 ARCity is a completely different code base than anything else.  So while it would be a nice thing to have both the City and Dungeon on one mega cart/drive, the engines are completely different between the two.

Huh.  Yes, I knew you could not go back (part of the bug, if I recall if you tried it would crash?)  I wasn't aware it was done by a different team.  My understanding was that Datasoft forced it to be two separate games, and that caused some breakage.  But you can definitely go from City to Dungeon, you would just get attacked by the FBI.  Also, The City was never really finished on the 8bit, as you can't get jobs or join guilds (if I recall correctly).

Has anyone asked for the source to be released?

Edited by leech
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You could go from the City to the Dungeon just fine, AFAIK.  Been a long time.  The 8bit City version had several things that were not finished being programmed as you mentioned.  There were also a few places that you could enable with a patch, I think ResureX or something allowed access to a new guild or something.  Again, it has been a while.  

 

There are a few threads on AA about AR, and Gary pops in from time to time.  

 

From the AR FAQ:

"

Yes, you are correct, there were two FBI Agents in The Dungeon. They were a part of the
copyprotection in the game, although a bug in the initial shipping version made them
pop up a bit too often (every time you tried to transfer characters from The City
actually; it apparently had something to do with floppy drives, and especially if you
only had one drive). This was, however, fixed in version 2.0."
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Well, I see that there is interest in having a City/Dungeon merged cartridge. I must say that is beyond my initial goal . My objective is to create a Maxflash cartridge with the Dungeon stored on it and use the flashing properties to save your character anytime on it. That being said, I’m studying the code in order to patch the kernel so you can save your progress on it. I have some ideas to get into it.

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