BadPricey Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 During the high score competition I played this game to death and not once did I think I could achieve greater than a quadruple 360 without falling off. That doesn't necessarily mean a quintuple 360 can't be done though. If I get time I will have a go at it, but capturing it with photographic/video evidence might not be possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 15, 2020 Author Share Posted March 15, 2020 I don’t have my Lynx in front of me, but I believe it goes 360 -> Double 360 -> Triple 360 -> Quadruple 360 -> Unreal 360. Can anyone confirm? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 15, 2020 Author Share Posted March 15, 2020 2:39 in this YT vid shows an Unreal 360: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 Since in Italy we all have to stay closed at home, I'm really bored, so made some cripto analysis to search the strings in the code. Used the simplest method to search text patterns, i.e. searched for values that matches the difference in letters position in the alphabet (haveing letters in order is a good way to organize an array of sprites in a font). To search a patterrn I needed word that I know should be present: "double". Decided to search only the first 3 letters "dou" With a perl script searched three value where second - first == 11 (o - d) and third - second == 6 (u - o). Found 4 matches and the one at 0x11BF6 is the good one. The strings are null terminated, so easy to identify. I found in the code: 0F 1A 20 0D 17 10 00 double 1F 1D 14 1B 17 10 00 triple 1C 20 0C 0F 1D 20 1B 17 10 00 quadruple 20 19 1D 10 0C 17 26 26 26 00 unreal unreal has three trailing 0x26 values, that I suppose are blank spaces, maybe it was "quintuple" originally, than was changed in "unreal" during beta testing modifying the rom (???) instead of rebuilding everything (to not encode again the rom???). With a little more analysis you can find other strings there, letters a-z are in the range 0x0c - 0x025, 0x26 should be the space, numbers are befor the 'a' and the font should have some signs at beginning. That's all folk. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 15, 2020 Author Share Posted March 15, 2020 This is awesome! No strings after unreal? and are the other games encoded with the same offset? For example, does BMX’s “As good as James” use the same ASCII offset? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 36 minutes ago, SavagePencil said: This is awesome! No strings after unreal? and are the other games encoded with the same offset? For example, does BMX’s “As good as James” use the same ASCII offset? If I remember correctly the Atari assembler (like lyxass) allows to set the offset according the font used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 15, 2020 Author Share Posted March 15, 2020 Yeah, it’s common for games to do that. I was more curious how consistent it was within California Games itself. Each game was written by a different programmer; I was curious how much (if anything) was shared between them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, SavagePencil said: No strings after unreal? All the strings I can find at that memory location are: 0F 20 20 20 0F 10 26 00 duuude 22 14 1B 10 01 1A 20 1F 00 wipe out 12 10 1F 01 1D 10 0C 0F 24 00 get ready 0C 1D 10 01 22 10 00 are we 13 01 0C 01 21 01 14 01 19 01 12 00 h a v i n g 11 20 19 01 24 10 1F 01 30 00fun yet 0F 1A 20 0D 17 10 double 1F 1D 14 1B 17 10 triple 1C 20 0C 0F 1D 20 1B 17 10 00 quadruple 20 19 1D 10 0C 17 26 26 26 unreal 1F 14 18 10 28 1E 01 20 1B 26 00 time's up 1 hour ago, SavagePencil said: and are the other games encoded with the same offset? i's possibe, coders often reuse their code structure. Knowing what to search it's easy to find at a glance with an exeditor other parts in the code that could be strings usig the same encoding. Made a fast try and found at 0x3DF6: 1B 10 1F 10 01 22 14 10 1D 25 0D 14 0E 16 14 pete wierzbicki That is the name of the coder. I leave to other people further researches. Edited March 15, 2020 by Nop90 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 (edited) double post Edited March 15, 2020 by Nop90 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 Waiting for my pizza to be delivered at home decode some other strings. at 0x3D1B there are the strings for the comlynx connection: 1B 1D 10 1E 1E 01 0D 20 1F 1F 1A 19 01 0C 01 1F 1A 01 00 press button a to 1E 1F 0C 1D 1F 01 23 01 1B 17 0C 24 10 1D 01 12 0C 18 10 00 start x player game 23 01 1B 17 0C 24 10 1D 1E 01 0E 1A 19 19 10 0E 1F 10 0F 00 x players connected 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 the x is replaced at run tim with the number of lynx connected, and there is a blanked line, someone should put there a custom message and test if it is showed when conlynx game is actived. At 0x3DDA there are the credits showed in the title screen under the rotating plate: 11 1A 1A 1F 0D 0C 12 00 0D footbag 24 00 by 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 1B 10 1F 10 01 22 14 10 1D 25 0D 14 0E 16 14 00 pete wierzbicki 13 0C 17 11 1B 14 1B 10 00 halfpipe 1E 1F 10 1B 13 10 19 01 15 20 19 12 10 17 1E 00 00 stephen jungels 0D 01 18 01 23 00 b m x 15 0C 18 10 1E 01 0F 1A 19 0C 17 0F 00 james donald 1E 20 1D 11 14 19 12 00 surfing 17 0C 1D 1D 24 01 0C 0D 10 17 00 larry abel 0C 1D 1F 01 0D 24 00 art by 18 0C 1F 1F 01 0E 1D 24 1E 0F 0C 17 10 00 matt crysdale 1E 20 25 14 10 01 12 1D 10 10 19 10 00 suzie greene 15 10 19 19 24 01 18 0C 1D 1F 14 19 00 jenny martin 0C 1D 1F 01 0D 24 00 art by 0C 1D 1F 01 16 1A 0E 13 00 art koch 1B 0C 20 17 01 21 10 1D 19 1A 19 00 paul vernon 1E 13 10 1D 24 17 01 16 19 1A 22 17 10 1E 00 sheryl knowles 18 20 1E 14 0E 01 0D 24 00 music by 0D 1A 0D 01 21 14 10 14 1D 0C 00 bob vieira 17 23 01 1D 20 0F 14 1E 00 lx rudis 0E 0C 18 10 01 14 19 00 came in 1D 10 0C 17 01 13 0C 19 0F 24 00 real handy 1D 15 01 18 14 0E 0C 17 00 rj mical 0F 0C 21 10 01 19 10 10 0F 17 10 00 dave needle If someone wants to customize the rom with a message instead of the credits, now he knows where to edit the rom ? But the interesting thing is that there is a blanked credit after the Footbag string. Putting a text in that place, it is showed (twice) under the rotating plate with a gray font. Probably a watermark for the beta test rom. Look here: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted March 15, 2020 Share Posted March 15, 2020 I guess after the Corona crisis there are a more Lynx games and a lot of findings like these ? Too all of you: Stay healthy and protect yourself and your beloved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 15, 2020 Author Share Posted March 15, 2020 BMX strings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
power Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 i seem to remember doing more than 5 and it still only saying Unreal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 10 hours ago, SavagePencil said: BMX strings? can't find bmx strings. Searched for "AS GOOS AS JAMES" that I saw in a YT video at the end of a BMX run, but nothing. The only other strings I could find are the highscores labels at 0x61D6 13 14 12 13 01 1E 0E 1A 1D 10 1E 00 high scores 0D 18 23 01 01 01 01 1E 20 1D 11 14 19 12 00 bmx surfing 13 0C 17 11 1B 14 1B 10 01 01 11 1A 1A 1F 0D 0C 12 00 halfpipe footbag Other texts could be stored as images or could have a different encoding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zendocon Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 19 hours ago, Nop90 said: 20 19 1D 10 0C 17 26 26 26 00 unreal unreal has three trailing 0x26 values, that I suppose are blank spaces, maybe it was "quintuple" originally, than was changed in "unreal" during beta testing modifying the rom (???) instead of rebuilding everything (to not encode again the rom???). Interesting. I seem to remember the quintuple 360 being "s u p e r" which would have been 9 characters. We have the original cart shape which is flat with the Atari logo embossed. Maybe it changed after the first production run? I also have a cart shape which is also flat but has a little ridge at the end. Are there multiple ROM dumps from the original carts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Just a little correction: 0x26 value is a "!" char, not a space. So my idea of a modifed rom is wrong. If it had differents strings in a previous version, try to find the other rom and I'll check the differences. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavagePencil Posted March 16, 2020 Author Share Posted March 16, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Zendocon said: Interesting. I seem to remember the quintuple 360 being "s u p e r" which would have been 9 characters. We have the original cart shape which is flat with the Atari logo embossed. Maybe it changed after the first production run? I also have a cart shape which is also flat but has a little ridge at the end. Are there multiple ROM dumps from the original carts? I dumped curve lipped and ridged variants, both with the same MD5 checksums. I don’t think I have the fully flat cartridge of the game to dump. Edited March 16, 2020 by SavagePencil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Now I got too interested in dumping this. The memory allocation is really weird: BOOTLDR 000000 0001FF 000200 00001 DIRECTORY 000000 000037 000038 00001 EXEHDR 000000 00003F 000040 00001 FILLER_RODATA 000000 000FC4 000FC5 00001 FILE002_RODATA 004CDD 006F96 0022BA 00001 FILE003_RODATA 006F97 00A0EC 003156 00001 FILE004_RODATA 006F97 00C036 0050A0 00001 FILE005_RODATA 006F97 00D674 0066DE 00001 FILE006_RODATA 006F97 00D6B3 00671D 00001 FILE007_RODATA 006F97 00DF24 006F8E 00001 FILE001_RODATA 00E400 00EFC9 000BCA 00001 Obviously the screen buffers are at the start of the memory space up to 4CDC. The main code starts at E400. My guess is that the different sports are at 6F97..DF24. There seems to be plenty of unused space in RAM at DF25..E3FF So far I have only checked the init routines. There was no graphics in that segment. init.s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChildOfCv Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 The PC version has the strings as ASCII (at least it does in the BMX section). It may be worth looking at the abandonware sites and trawling through that. I remember hacking some of the superlatives to say different silly things such as "Holy awesome!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirlynxalot Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 If I remember correctly, I think As Good as James is the highest aware level in BMX. I think I've gotten it when scoring 500+, and I watched a youtube video once where a guy scored 3000 (really, 3000 points!) in BMX and it said As Good as James when he finished. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
power Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 31 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said: If I remember correctly, I think As Good as James is the highest aware level in BMX. I think I've gotten it when scoring 500+, and I watched a youtube video once where a guy scored 3000 (really, 3000 points!) in BMX and it said As Good as James when he finished. I'm very good at BMX (used to be better) and As Good as James is a pretty disappointing one as yeah you can score well over and still only get that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirlynxalot Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 59 minutes ago, power said: I'm very good at BMX (used to be better) and As Good as James is a pretty disappointing one as yeah you can score well over and still only get that. I guess the developer anticipated people would only score in the 100-500 range Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
power Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 2 hours ago, sirlynxalot said: I guess the developer anticipated people would only score in the 100-500 range once you learn a few tricks 500+ is very easy to attain regularly, you need to fluke some stuff too like clipping the front or back wheels and setting off forward and back spins. You play this one long enough and some of the stuff it does is just awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 5 hours ago, power said: I'm very good at BMX (used to be better) and As Good as James is a pretty disappointing one as yeah you can score well over and still only get that. That seems to be a single sprite: the numbers on the top of the screen has a shadow with an offset of 1 px on the right, while this phrase has letters with a shadow of one pixel right and one pixel down. Since it's the only text in the game it makes sense that it's made with an image, using a font would use more memory. The same for halfpipe, they use a different font for the messages and for the numbers, and the messages seem to be limted, so in this case too sprites are very likely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbo Laser Lynx Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 (edited) Who is James (that we're as good as) anyway? Edited March 17, 2020 by Turbo Laser Lynx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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