Adventure: Yellow key locked in yellow castle?

[moycon]

Oh well.

I was thinking you could emulate the situation by bringing the sword into the yellow castle. Getting one of the other dragons to follow you in. Lock the door and then flick the difficulty switch so that the dragon would run away from the sword.

[Nukey Shay]

Nope...that won't work for a different reason - the dragon just won't stay in the open castle if something feared is inside (try it...it will just "bounce" on the gate - entering and then immediately exiting...it hits the gate, and tries entering again...etc.). And once an object exits the castle (when the gate is closing), the gate will automatically pop back open - so there would be no way to have enough time to even close the gate.

[moycon]

My thought was if you could close the gate while inside the castle,

And waited till the gate was closed. And then hit the difficulty switch so the dragon would fear the sword it would work?? Wouldn't it? The castle wouldn't be open then.

[Curt Vendel]

The White castle has 4 rooms in it, the yellow dragon (who is afraid of the yellow key and the sword depending on the difficulty setting) could move to one of the other rooms, the only way you could test this would be to get him locked into the Yellow Castle somehow.

 

 

Curt

[Nukey Shay]

My thought was if you could close the gate while inside the castle,

And waited till the gate was closed. And then hit the difficulty switch so the dragon would fear the sword it would work?? Wouldn't it? The castle wouldn't be open then.

 

The castle gate cannot be made to open or close if it's not on-screen. The collision register is used to determine if a key is currently touching the gate while the gate is on-screen. If so, the gate's "state" is increased by 1 on every 4th frame until it reaches a value of $1C (closed) or $34 (which is wrapped around to $00 - open). That way, the gate's motion will not be halted if you move to a different screen while it is in motion. But just to begin that motion, the gate needs to be on-screen. On subsequent 4th frames, if the gate's state does not contain a zero and does not contain $1C...it is increased again until it reaches one of those 2 values. This can be verified pretty easily with the magnet. Drop the magnet inside the wall directly south of the yellow castle...then drop the yellow key there. The key will begin floating upward to meet the magnet. If you are on the screen when it reaches the gate, the key will be placed inside the yellow castle and the motion will begin (trapping the key inside if the gate was open). If you are not on the screen, the key will simply continue to rise up to the magnet's position.

[Nukey Shay]

The White castle has 4 rooms in it, the yellow dragon (who is afraid of the yellow key and the sword depending on the difficulty setting) could move to one of the other rooms, the only way you could test this would be to get him locked into the Yellow Castle somehow.

 

Easy. Just hack the game to have the key, dragon, and you all begin inside the locked yellow castle

 

 

Or if you are after something more elaborate, hack all the dragon matrices to include all objects as "feared" (including you)

 

Original:

;Red Dragon Object Matrix

F7A7  B6,A4 ;Sword,Red Dragon

F7A9  A4,8A ;Red Dragon,Ball

F7AB  A4,B9 ;Red Dragon,Chalise

F7AD  A4,C2 ;Red Dragon,White Key

F7AF  00    ;(end of table)

 

 

 

Edited:

;Red Dragon Object Matrix

F7A7  8A,A4 ;Ball,Red Dragon

F7A9  A9,A4 ;Yellow Dragon,Red Dragon

F7AB  AE,A4 ;Green Dragon,Red Dragon

F7AD  B3,A4 ;Magnet,Red Dragon

F7AF  B6,A4 ;Sword,Red Dragon

F7B1  B9,A4 ;Chalise,Red Dragon

F7B3  BC,A4 ;Bridge,Red Dragon

F7B5  BF,A4 ;Yellow Key,Red Dragon

F7B7  C2,A4 ;White Key,Red Dragon

F7B9  C5,A4 ;Black Key,Red Dragon

F7BB  CB,A4 ;Bat,Red Dragon

F7BD  00    ;(end of table)

 

 

That edit makes the red dragon afraid of everything except itself (if you included a byte pair A4,A4 the dragon would be catatonic). Naturally, you'd need to use some free space to do this edit (and the optimized code has plenty). Other dragons can be done similarly...just replace the $A4's with $A9 (for the yellow dragon's matrix), or $AE (for the green's).

 

 

Note: it's possible to place the key directly AT the yellow dragon's co-ordinates. If that is done, the dragon is frozen in place (since it cannot determine which direction to move in). There's a thread around here that has a video of how to do this.

[Curt Vendel]

Cheater!!!

 

 

 

Curt

[ulij20]

It's not possible for the black key to begin in it's own castle...nor for the white key to begin in it's own castle.  But it is possible for the white key to begin in the black castle, and any/all 3 keys are allowed to begin in the yellow castle.  You only need to look at the room boundry matrix to see which objects could begin where:

 

Boundry data:

Address Ram*    Lower   Upper

F439    B9      13      1A  ;Chalise

F43C    A4      01      1D  ;Red dragon.

F43F    A9      01      1D  ;Yellow dragon.

F442    AE      01      1D  ;Green Dragon.

F445    B6      01      1D  ;Sword

F448    BC      01      1D  ;Bridge

F44B    BF      01      1D  ;Yellow Key

F44E    C2      01      16  ;White Key

F451    C5      01      12  ;Black Key

F454    CB      01      1D  ;Bat

F457    B3      01      1D  ;Magnet



* Ram address used to hold the object's room number

 

Room 00 is the game select screen.

Rooms 01 to 0E are out in the open.

Rooms 0F, 10, and 11 are the white, black, and yellow castles.

Room 12 is inside the yellow castle.

Rooms 13 to 16 are the black castle's maze.

Rooms 17 to 1A are the white castle's maze.

Room 1B is just inside the black castle.

Rooms 1C and 1D are either side of the catacombs.

And room 1E is the secret message room.

 

I don't follow, since most of the information listed in the last paragraph doesn't match the stuff in the "Boundary Data".

[Spirantho]

Boundry data:

Address Ram*    Lower   Upper

F439    B9      13      1A  ;Chalise

I don't follow, since most of the information listed in the last paragraph doesn't match the stuff in the "Boundary Data".

 

My interpretation is that:

Address: where in RAM the table is

RAM: The game's ID for the object

Lower: The lower end of the range in which the object can appear (in this case the any room in the black castle's maze

Upper: The higher end (here the last room in the white maze).

In other words, the entry at location F439 says that the Chalice can start anywhere in the black or white castles' mazes.

 

Does that make sense?

[ulij20]

I thought that I'd posted a message but apparently, it didn't go through. Oh well.

 

Anyway, yes this does make sense, except for the part of Rooms 1C and 1D being either side of the catacombs. Wouldn't that be considered "Out in the open" (I'm assuming that you mean those rooms with the barriers).

 

So basically, all of the objects can start out anywhere, and the chalice is given the smallest amount of possibilities.

 

The Black Key is given the second smallest amount of possibilities. Since the White Castle is in the upper end of the range, it is impossible for the black key to start out in the White Castle, since, if it was given that high a range, it would start out in the Black Castle at times.

 

That said, in the aforementioned game where I could only find the bat and magnet, then the black key had to be in the Gold Castle and the White Key had to be somewhere in the Black Castle. If the range had been corrected so that it was impossible for the Gold Key to start out in the Gold Castle, then this Bat/Magnet scenario would be the only unsolvable game, correct?

[Nukey Shay]

It would have to involve the yellow key - that is definate (since in game 3, it's impossible for the black key to start in any castle room except the yellow castle's). So the unwinnable senario could be the black and yellow keys in each other's castle...or the white and yellow keys in each other's castle. I never did find out for sure which one it was (tho this could be hacked in pretty easy...just allow objects to enter -closed- gates instead of open ones...or just set all the gates to be open right at the start...by changing those 3 $1C's at $F4B8 to $F4BA to be $00 instead

 

 

Boundry data:

Address Ram*    Lower   Upper

F439    B9      13      1A  ;Chalise

I don't follow, since most of the information listed in the last paragraph doesn't match the stuff in the "Boundary Data".

 

My interpretation is that:

Address: where in RAM the table is

RAM: The game's ID for the object

Lower: The lower end of the range in which the object can appear (in this case the any room in the black castle's maze

Upper: The higher end (here the last room in the white maze).

In other words, the entry at location F439 says that the Chalice can start anywhere in the black or white castles' mazes.

 

Does that make sense?

 

Close..."Address" is where in cartridge rom the next 3 values are at (ram, lower, and upper). Ram is the actual ram address that the game stores room numbers in (for example, if ram address $B9 holds a value of $12...the game "knows" that the chalise is inside the yellow castle). The next two bytes that follow this "identifier" ($BA and $BB for the chalise) holds it's X and Y coordinates on the screen. You have "lower" and "upper" defined correctly...those are the screen numbers that the objects are allowed to begin at (so the chalise can only start on one of those 8 screens inside the black or white castles). When randomly picking rooms, if the chalise gets a value of $01 for example, the game recognises that it's out of range ($01 is not between $13 and $1A)...and goes back for a new value.

 

BTW yes, the two rooms aside the catacombs are numbered higher than castle rooms (and are part of the "open" area). I dunno why that was done either (maybe the game had fewer screens during development?). Optimally, W.R. should have given the yellow castle inside the lowest number (screen $01) and the other ones the highest ($15 to $1D). That would have still allowed the chalise to begin in one of those rooms...while eliminating the possibility of the yellow key appearing inside the yellow castle and making the game unwinnable. All other objects besides the chalise/keys would be unaffected...since they are allowed to begin anywhere. Perhaps a hack of the "official" Adventure should be done to correct these problems? All you'd need to do is hack the map directions for a dozen screens...and place them in the revised order.

[ulij20]

Those two rooms numbered higher than the castles - wouldn't those be the two rooms in that area to the right of the catacombs (the red and purple rooms)? Because I'm sure I've found the black and white key in the barrier rooms (the gray-green room, one screen below the White Castle and the light blue room two screens to the left), but I don't believe I've ever found them in the purple or red rooms. In fact, there is only one game in which the gold key is in the red room and only a few others in which the gold key is in the purple room. It's inside the gold castle more often than it's in those rooms.

 

One other thing - there are several games where I've found the bat flying in place with the sword (in the Dot room of the Black Castle, in the light blue room by the catacombs, and inside the White Castle). Is that a glitch in the system or something that causes that to happen?

[Nukey Shay]

Oops...my mistake

Room $1C is the purple room that has a lower exit. This room is the 2nd inside the black castle in game 1...and the upper portion of the area right of the catacombs in the other 2 games.

Room $1D is the red room that has both upper and lower exits, and is just inside the black castle in all games.

 

 

As an experiment, I made this hack of the original program (it disables all collisions, stops all enemy movement, and has all the castle gates open from the start). There are 2 instances in game 3 where the game is unwinnable that I've found...

 

- The yellow key is inside it's own castle

 

or

 

- The yellow and black keys are in each other's castles

adventure_test.zip

[Nukey Shay]

EDIT

Oh God...I gotta stop sniffing this ajax!

[ulij20]

Oops...my mistake

Room $1C is the purple room that has a lower exit.  This room is the 2nd inside the black castle in game 1...and the upper portion of the area right of the catacombs in the other 2 games.

Room $1D is the red room that has both upper and lower exits, and is just inside the black castle in all games.

OK, that's cool. I knew that I had found the white or black key in both of the barrier rooms

 

As an experiment, I made this hack of the original program (it disables all collisions, stops all enemy movement, and has all the castle gates open from the start).  There are 2 instances in game 3 where the game is unwinnable that I've found...

 

- The yellow key is inside it's own castle

 

or

 

- The yellow and black keys are in each other's castles

Wow! Say, I tried to open up the file that you posted, but I can't seem to do it. Does this enable you to play certain games in Level 3? If so, where are the other items placed in that one Bat/Magnet unsolvable game, just out of curiosity?

[Nukey Shay]

Say, I tried to open up the file that you posted, but I can't seem to do it.

It's a standard Winzip file...unpack it with Winzip or WinRar and load the .bin file with your emulator.

 

 

 

Does this enable you to play certain games in Level 3?

"Play" does not really apply...since you are allowed to move around and see where the game objects have been placed (but are unable to pick up any of them - all collisions are off except hitting gates to let you in a castle). Enemy motion was killed by NOP'ing over the subroutine jumps in the main program loop. The randomizing routine (as well as most of the program) is unaltered, so it should give the same results as the unhacked game.

 

 

Random routine:

;Put objects in random rooms for level 3.

RandomizeLevel3:

      LDY    #$1E               ;For each of the eleven objects..                                         ;2

RandomizeLevel3_2:

      LDA    $E5                ;Get the low input counter as seed.                                       ;3

      LSR                                                                                                  ;2

      LSR                                                                                                  ;2

      LSR                       ;Generate a psudo-random                                                  ;2

      LSR                       ;room number.                                                             ;2

      LSR                                                                                                  ;2

      SEC                                                                                                  ;2

      ADC    $E5                ;Store the low input counter.                                             ;3

      STA    $E5                                                                                           ;3

      AND    #$1F               ;Trim so represents a room value.                                         ;2

      CMP    Loc_2,Y            ;If it is less than the                                                   ;4

      BCC    RandomizeLevel3_2  ;lower bound for object then get another.                                 ;2

      CMP    Loc_3,Y            ;If it equals or is                                                       ;4

      BEQ    RandomizeLevel3_3  ;Less than the higher bound for object                                    ;2

      BCS    RandomizeLevel3_2  ;Then continue (branch if higher)                                         ;2

RandomizeLevel3_3:

      LDX    Loc_1,Y            ;Get the dynamic data index for this object                               ;4

      STA    VSYNC,X            ;Store the new room value.                                                ;4

      DEY                                                                                                  ;2

      DEY                       ;Goto the next object.                                                    ;2

      DEY                                                                                                  ;2

      BPL    RandomizeLevel3_2  ;Untill all done                                                          ;2

      RTS                                                                                                  ;6

 

 

 

 

If so, where are the other items placed in that one Bat/Magnet unsolvable game, just out of curiosity?

I dunno...there's a number of random results based off it's "seed" (the input counter), so the only way would be to walk around and make a chart of all the differing combinations. This just allows you to see where it placed them. One thing that I'm not sure about is if any of those other routines affected the input counter in any way (if so, the random results with this might differ from the actual cart)...or if emulation in general would give different results.

[sidcrowe]

There's a thread around here that has a video of how to do this.

 

I downloaded another member's "thrust" vid, and as I did so, I noted that it came from this website. Is there a "video" area of AA?

 

Man, even the parts of this thread I don't understand are blowing my mind

[Nukey Shay]

If it was posted before as an attachment, it would show up as an AA link if the poster included it as a shortcut instead of a new attachment

 

Here's a better version of the first file that just kills playfield collisions and enemy movement...that way, you can see objects that were previously hidden by dark room walls by running into them.

 

 

Edits:

;main game loop: kill enemy JSR's by using 3 NOP's each

LF323: LDY    #$00   ;2

      JSR    LF4C2  ;6

      JSR    LF5D4  ;6

      JSR    LF0EC  ;6

      JSR    LF10F  ;6

      JSR    LF008  ;6

      JSR    LF556  ;6

      LDY    #$01   ;2

      JSR    LF4C2  ;6

      JSR    LF9E7  ;6

      JSR    LF0EC  ;6


;       JSR    LF8A5  ;6
;disable bat

      NOP

      NOP

      NOP



      JSR    LF93C  ;6

      JSR    LF008  ;6




;       JSR    LF7CB  ;6
;disable green dragon

      NOP

      NOP

      NOP


;       JSR    LF7B0  ;6
;disable yellow dragon

      NOP

      NOP

      NOP



      JSR    LF0EC  ;6

      LDY    #$02   ;2

      JSR    LF4C2  ;6


;       JSR    LF795  ;6
;disable red dragon

      NOP

      NOP

      NOP


;       JSR    LF9B3  ;6
;disable magnet attract

      NOP

      NOP

      NOP



      JSR    LF008  ;6

      JMP    LF306  ;3

 

;object tables: change closed gates ($1C) to open ($00)

LF45B: .byte $F4,$91,$F4,$91,$F4,$15,$51,$12,$0E,$50,$20,$00,$00,$01,$50,$20

      .byte $00,$00,$1D,$50,$20,$00,$00,$1B,$80,$20,$12,$20,$20,$1C,$30,$20

      .byte $04,$29,$37,$11,$20,$40,$0E,$20,$40,$1D,$20,$40


;       .byte $1C,$1C,$1C
;set game 1 gates to "open"

      .byte $00,$00,$00



      .byte $1A

      .byte $20,$20,$00,$00,$78,$00,$15,$51,$12,$14,$50,$20,$A0,$00,$19,$50

      .byte $20,$A0,$00,$04,$50,$20,$A0,$00,$0E,$80,$20,$11,$20,$20,$14,$30

      .byte $20,$0B,$40,$40,$09,$20,$40,$06,$20,$40,$19,$20,$40


;       .byte $1C,$1C,$1C
;set game 2/3 gates to "open"

      .byte $00,$00,$00



      .byte $02,$20,$20,$90,$00,$78,$00

 

;collisions: change AND instructions to LDA #00

LF4C2: LDA    CXBLPF ;3


;       AND    #$80   ;2
;disable wall collisions

      LDA    #$00   ;2



      BNE    LF4F5  ;2

      LDA    CXM0FB ;3


;       AND    #$40   ;2
;disable left panel collisions

      LDA    #$00   ;2



      BNE    LF4F5  ;2

      LDA    CXM1FB ;3


;       AND    #$40   ;2
;disable right panel collisions

      LDA    #$00   ;2



      BEQ    LF4DA  ;2

      LDA    $96    ;3

      CMP    #$87   ;2

      BNE    LF4F5  ;2

adventure_test.zip

[Nukey Shay]

Oops...the dragons can still be hidden as well. So here's a fix for that that allows you to pick them up and move their worthless carcasses...

 

LF593: LDX    $97    ;3

      JSR    LF2E4  ;6

      LDA    $97    ;3 check object bumped into


;       CMP    #$51   ;2 is it less than the sword's number?

      CMP    #$30   ;2 is it less than the red dragon's number?



      BCC    LF5D3  ;2 branch if so (do not pick up)

adventure_test.zip

[sidcrowe]

If it was posted before as an attachment, it would show up as an AA link if the poster included it as a shortcut instead of a new attachment

 

Thanks. Now at least I won't keep hunting for the AA "video section."

 

Can you imagine Adventure on a PS2 disc, using all the old graphics and sounds, but the size of a disc? Woo

[ulij20]

Oops...my mistake

Room $1C is the purple room that has a lower exit.  This room is the 2nd inside the black castle in game 1...and the upper portion of the area right of the catacombs in the other 2 games.

Room $1D is the red room that has both upper and lower exits, and is just inside the black castle in all games.

 

 

As an experiment, I made this hack of the original program (it disables all collisions, stops all enemy movement, and has all the castle gates open from the start).  There are 2 instances in game 3 where the game is unwinnable that I've found...

 

- The yellow key is inside it's own castle

 

or

 

- The yellow and black keys are in each other's castles

For the latter, I've never found any game like that, well, except the one where just the Bat and Magnet are out in the open. In other words, there has never been any other game where I couldn't find any of the keys, nor has there been a game where I could only find the white game.

 

Of course, that's not to say that there's only one Bat/Magnet game. There could be several, one of which has the bridge inside the Gold Castle (with the black key, natch!) and the other, the bridge could be inside the White Castle. I always assumed that, since I didn't get the Bat/Magnet game very often, that the results were always the same (and they could be still)

[ulij20]

I have a question: Is there a hidden room in Level 1 where Rhindle and the White Key are placed? Because, as I've said in several other threads, frying sometimes makes these items appear in the game. When the White Key appears on the Level Select screen through frying, Rhindle is often in the game (usually guarding the Chalice in the Black Castle) and he actually hesitates after he hits you, just like Yorgle and Grundle in Level 1, and I didn't think Rhindle was programmed to do that. Plus, one time, I forget what was on the Level Select screen, but I found the White key in the Blue Labyrinth (on the Labyrinth screen furthest south from the Black Castle, with that huge open field). So I was wondering, is there an inaccessible room in Level 1 where the dragon and the key are (sort of like the hidden room where all the characters in Superman start out)?

[Nukey Shay]

Yes and no. The screen that the red dragon and white key are at is 2 screens below the white castle. The bat is just inside the white castle. Not really "hidden" screens...just inacessable from game #1 (because moving south from the panel screen won't put you in the labyrinth in that variation). The reason that frying might make these sprites appear in game 1 is because the game isn't initialized properly when frying is used...so that the game sprites could appear on any screen instead of the ones that the program is designed to put them at.

The speed change noticed with the red dragon is normal (because in game #1, all dragons use alternate speed values). This is not a side effect from frying.

[ulij20]

Yes and no.  The screen that the red dragon and white key are at is 2 screens below the white castle.  The bat is just inside the white castle.  Not really "hidden" screens...just inacessable from game #1 (because moving south from the panel screen won't put you in the labyrinth in that variation).  The reason that frying might make these sprites appear in game 1 is because the game isn't initialized properly when frying is used...so that the game sprites could appear on any screen instead of the ones that the program is designed to put them at.

The speed change noticed with the red dragon is normal (because in game #1, all dragons use alternate speed values).  This is not a side effect from frying.

838492[/snapback]

Two screens below the white castle. That's the light blue room, right? Wow, there's a variation of that game in Level 3, with the white key in the light blue room and the bat inside the white castle, not carrying anything. The only thing is, Rhindle isn't guarding the white key in the Level 3 (I believe he's in the black castle guarding the chalice).

You mentioned a panel screen. Which screen would that be?