Lochjaw vs Shark Attack Differences

[Stan]

4 minutes ago, Tempest said:

Out of curiosity, this isn't something controlled by a difficulty or color switch?

That was my first thought but this didn't change anything. Before he sent the cart the guy I got it from showed me videos of him testing all of this. I asked that almost immediately thinking it was something like that.

[duckodb]

I went through every one of the 16 game selections and tried the difficulty switch and it’s always the same. The difficulty switch just changes the speed of the diver. I didn’t think to try the color switch. Idk who runs atarimania but they’ve already got it on the Lochjaw page about this moving cloud. Idk if they’ve just added it or it’s been there a long time and it’s just never been mentioned in these forums.

[Stan]

35 minutes ago, duckodb said:

I went through every one of the 16 game selections and tried the difficulty switch and it’s always the same. The difficulty switch just changes the speed of the diver. I didn’t think to try the color switch. Idk who runs atarimania but they’ve already got it on the Lochjaw page about this moving cloud. Idk if they’ve just added it or it’s been there a long time and it’s just never been mentioned in these forums.

Or was it JUST added!

[duckodb]

On 5/31/2020 at 12:07 AM, Omegamatrix said:

Here are screen shots of both games at power on, in an emulator. This is before touching any switches on the console. There are several differences between them.

 

 

I noticed on the moving cloud version before touching any switches like in these two pictures the diver looks like the shark attack picture not the Lochjaw one. He has that line under him.

[Stan]

3 hours ago, duckodb said:

I noticed on the moving cloud version before touching any switches like in these two pictures the diver looks like the shark attack picture not the Lochjaw one. He has that line under him.

That makes it clear this is an intermediary between the first Lochjaw and this one.

[duckodb]

The next obvious question is what’s this gonna do to the value of these moving cloud versions? I don’t know how many people here own original Lochjaws but nobody’s coming forward about which version they have , so far there’s only 2 of these known to exist that’s gotta make the rarity and value higher than the normal version I would think.

[duckodb]

This is a video where Leeza Gibbons did a story on Apollo games back when they hadn't released Lochjaw yet. She sits and interviews Steve Stringfellow and even plays Lochjaw before the shark was programmed to attack and I noticed in that version the trees were swaying and the cloud was moving. it took several rewinds and fastforwards to see what was happening but you can see both. FF up to 2:15 and they start talking about Lochjaw.

[Stan]

2 hours ago, duckodb said:

This is a video where Leeza Gibbons did a story on Apollo games back when they hadn't released Lochjaw yet. She sits and interviews Steve Stringfellow and even plays Lochjaw before the shark was programmed to attack and I noticed in that version the trees were swaying and the cloud was moving. it took several rewinds and fastforwards to see what was happening but you can see both. FF up to 2:15 and they start talking about Lochjaw.

My God the mystery...

[Omegamatrix]

The best way to figure out which version came first would be to do a rom comparision, and disassembly both roms and compare them to Shark Attack. I can disassembly the roms, but I can't really proceed without a dump of the new version. 

[Stan]

1 hour ago, Omegamatrix said:

The best way to figure out which version came first would be to do a rom comparision, and disassembly both roms and compare them to Shark Attack. I can disassembly the roms, but I can't really proceed without a dump of the new version. 

MUST SOLVE MYSTERY. Okay how can I do that for you when I get it?

[Omegamatrix]

There are a few methods to dump games. If you know someone with a dumper than they can do it for you. This is just a standard 4K game so it is should not be problematic to dump.

 

Maybe someone can arrange to send you a savekey to dump the rom. I don't have one myself.

 

Once the rom is dump then the process is to disassemble it into machine code and compare the differences. Then we can see what is similar and different inside of the program.

[Stan]

7 minutes ago, Omegamatrix said:

There are a few methods to dump games. If you know someone with a dumper than they can do it for you. This is just a standard 4K game so it is should not be problematic to dump.

 

Maybe someone can arrange to send you a savekey to dump the rom. I don't have one myself.

 

Once the rom is dump then the process is to disassemble it into machine code and compare the differences. Then we can see what is similar and different inside of the program.

Alright I'll get on it.

[Rom Hunter]

On 6/1/2020 at 3:52 AM, Stan said:

Or was it JUST added!

Yes.
 

[duckodb]

Is a rom dumper something you can buy easily? Does any of this involve taking the cartridge apart because I wouldn’t wanna mess up the labels on mine trying that? I wish I had the box for mine but I only have the game and the manual.

Edited June 2, 2020 by duckodb

[duckodb]

17 hours ago, Omegamatrix said:

There are a few methods to dump games. If you know someone with a dumper than they can do it for you. This is just a standard 4K game so it is should not be problematic to dump.

 

Maybe someone can arrange to send you a savekey to dump the rom. I don't have one myself.

 

Once the rom is dump then the process is to disassemble it into machine code and compare the differences. Then we can see what is similar and different inside of the program.

I see these save keys for sale here at Atariage for $15 , if I buy one of those would I just plug it into the second controller port while Lochjaw is on and it would store the whole game on it? I don’t know anything about it but if it’s simple I’ll buy one and put the game on it and mail it to you. If there’s some chance of messing the game up trying it and not knowing what I’m doing I don’t wanna try it.

[Omegamatrix]

12 hours ago, duckodb said:

Is a rom dumper something you can buy easily? Does any of this involve taking the cartridge apart because I wouldn’t wanna mess up the labels on mine trying that? I wish I had the box for mine but I only have the game and the manual.

No, you don't have the cartridge apart or anything like that. It's non-destructive.

 

2 hours ago, duckodb said:

I see these save keys for sale here at Atariage for $15 , if I buy one of those would I just plug it into the second controller port while Lochjaw is on and it would store the whole game on it? I don’t know anything about it but if it’s simple I’ll buy one and put the game on it and mail it to you. If there’s some chance of messing the game up trying it and not knowing what I’m doing I don’t wanna try it.

It's just a little more than that. Thomas gives some instructions here for Pink Panther.

 

Essentially you need a savekey, and a cartridge that you can load roms on like a Harmony cart, Krok Cart, etc.... The program to run on the cart Thomas could provide. I will say it is just a 4K game so that does not envolve something too special.

 

So you do steps 1-4 in Thomas's post and then mail it to someone to do the rest. Or, if you have a 2600-daptor II you can do it all.

 

 

[duckodb]

So is anything happening with this or is it gonna be forgotten about? I can’t imagine a different version of a game as rare as Lochjaw is supposed to be not having its own place in the rarity list but labels variations of r1 and 2 games have their own. Idk how many Lochjaws are known to exist but if enough of them are found out to have a moving cloud instead of trees it could make both variations become r10s if the cloud version takes away from some of the tree versions.

[Stan]

On 6/17/2020 at 7:36 PM, duckodb said:

So is anything happening with this or is it gonna be forgotten about? I can’t imagine a different version of a game as rare as Lochjaw is supposed to be not having its own place in the rarity list but labels variations of r1 and 2 games have their own. Idk how many Lochjaws are known to exist but if enough of them are found out to have a moving cloud instead of trees it could make both variations become r10s if the cloud version takes away from some of the tree versions.

I'm making a video about it for YouTube currently. Someone needs to dump it though, and hopefully soon.

[+Psionic]

On 5/31/2020 at 11:34 AM, Tempest said:

Also, how many runs of Lochjaw were there?  It's not like you can get a new ROM made and distributed within a few weeks and Lochjaw wasn't on the market long from what I understand.

As far as I know, all Lochjaw cartridges contain EPROMs, so changes could easily have been made mid-production despite the extremely limited run.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

On 6/1/2020 at 2:45 AM, Tempest said:

Out of curiosity, this isn't something controlled by a difficulty or color switch?

I checked the known Lochjaw version code. It indeed allows to move the cloud, because it positions it based on a variable ($D7). But the variable is init once and never changed, so the cloud never moves. This makes only sense if they had planned to change the cloud position. In Shark Attack the position of the cloud is fixed. 

 

I am pretty sure this is an intermediate version and the now found version is a newer one.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Stan]

3 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I checked the know Lochjaw version code. It indeed allows to move the cloud, because it positions it based on a variable ($D7). But the variable is init once and never changed, so the cloud never moves. This makes only sense if they had planned to change the cloud position. In Shark Attack the position of the cloud is fixed. 

 

I am pretty sure this is an intermediate version and the now found version is a newer one.

 

 

Yeah pretty cool to be found all these years later. Still finishing up my video about it.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

And another theory:

 

The known version is a fix of the new one. In the known version there are 3 unused bytes right after the code where most likely the cloud got moved (every 256 frames). The code for moving the cloud would have required 4 bytes. So maybe they found a late bug (e.g. a missing CLD, when I compare that section of code to Shark Attack, this might have been the case), needed just one byte to fix the code and removed the cloud moving code.

 

I guess we will find out if the new version gets dumped.

[Supergun]

Wait, so was the cloud originally “intended” to move, but the feature was disabled due to a bug, or was the cloud originally never intended to move, but a bug caused it to do so?

[Stan]

2 hours ago, Supergun said:

Wait, so was the cloud originally “intended” to move, but the feature was disabled due to a bug, or was the cloud originally never intended to move, but a bug caused it to do so?

Both the clouds and the trees were supposed to move. It's unclear why the cloud was disabled after the first version, but based on what he found above he THINKS it might be a bug it causes. I'll have to play the game more to see if I notice anything.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

In my 2nd theory the former is true.