Lost Tomb

[www.atarimania.com]

Well, it took some 22 years but better late than never... Here's a working version of Lost Tomb by Datasoft: http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=3047

 

For some reason, the disk release has a serious bug and the game becomes unplayable. Basically, the screen goes berzerk after a while... The tape version we uploaded works fine.

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[deathtrappomegranate]

[DjayBee]

Can somebody please try if the attached DISK version does work correct?

Lost Tomb.atx.zip

Edited November 12, 2016 by DjayBee

[+therealbountybob]

Lost Tomb is a great game.

 

This may be of interest, we played it in the HSC a while ago... start flashback daydream sequence...

 

>>>

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/165385-hsc7-bonus-round-time-for-desert/?p=2042652

The xex of Lost Tomb on our ATR has a bug, screen goes shake-crazy after the whip sale (room 9ish) so I'm checking out one on Fandal's site & the v1 'Homesoft turbo version' there are two ATR versions on atarionline.pl too. for emulator users Atarimania has the .cas version which the comments say works ok. Score 12,640. Make use of the whips (fire when not moving to bash through walls).

Now that 20 people have downloaded the first ATR I've added a new version with the fixed/tape version of Lost Tomb (it has a turbo-loader screen so takes a little while to start but at least you can get past screen 6 now!)

If you only have the first "disk" version of Lost Tomb you can get past room 6 by playing on 2 player and killing player 1 off... but the 2nd player freezes once player 1 is dead Also found a cool bug if you go through the gap on screen 1 (player 2) you get out to the secret staircase where rooms 00 01 and 02 are shown then if you go into room 2 which is now on the wrong side of the pyramid there is no way out

More Hints:
Lost Tomb - you are two graphics blocks tall so just watch your feet when walking around: your head/body can touch the traps/bad guys before they have come to life(?)/blocks in the throne rooms etc without you getting killed

<<<

[+Philsan]

Jason, does Fandal's xex work?

[+therealbountybob]

Jason, does Fandal's xex work?

In more recent times I've asked him to fix them, and he puts a comment on the info on his site (Zone Ranger, Up'n Down...) but I don't think this one was done... I'll have a play when my latest SFO assemble has finished and report back

 

p.s. I don't think APE supports ATX files so I can't load that version.

[DjayBee]

p.s. I don't think APE supports ATX files so I can't load that version.

 

Try the attached ATR.

Lost Tomb.atr

[+therealbountybob]

Thanks DjayBee your ATR version works nicely

Fandal's XEX has the room 6 display list goes crazy causing the screen to flicker/shake problem. I'll let him know.

[MrFish]

p.s. I don't think APE supports ATX files so I can't load that version.

 

APE does support ATX, but you need to install the "VAPI.dll" in the root directory of APE first.

[DjayBee]

My images seem to work correct, so here is their story.

While comparing Datasoft dumps from Farb's torrent and Atarimania I saw that the booting process of Lost Tomb looked very similar to that one of Mr. Do!.
Lost Tomb actually uses (at least) two of the four protection checks from Mr. Do!. This is true down to the binary code level and in-memory addresses. Comparing the disk images showed that the loading code is identical except for three boot sectors. But it showed also evidence that Lost Tomb unlike Mr. Do! has no protection on track 40 of the disk.

In Atarimania's Lost Tomb the first protection (duplicate sector $11) was patched out but the second one (track alignment) was not. The track alignment is verified by a VBI which counts the time it takes to get four times from sector 1 to sector $23 and keeps the result in memory location $113 but does no comparison or other verification of the result. I ran the game until somewhere in level 2 and there was no further access to $113.

I then "uncracked" the first protection and put the data sectors of Lost Tomb onto the ATX disk image of Mr. Do! and alas the "Frankendisk" - how I call these hand-crafted ATXs - worked.

Furthermore I verified that the VBI counter is the same for both games. Its value is $38 for the protected ATX and >$40 for an ATX with unaligned tracks.

Atarimania states that their tape version works fine, but the disk dump crashes sometime later in the game. This fits to my observation that there is no access to memory location $113 (at least) until level 2.
I then loaded the tape image in Altirra and found address $113 to be set to $3B. This made me quite confident that this memory location is the key to a working disk version of Lost Tomb.

Disclaimer: Because of the very different boot sectors I am not confident that "my" ATX is a completely rebuilt/recovered image of Lost Tomb. But it is far more than not having any working disk version of the game. And "my" ATR is version with both protections cracked.

 

If someone owns an original disk of Lost Tomb then please contact me to verify if it too contains protections three (second check for the duplicate sector) and four (duplicate, bad and weak sectors on track 40) from Mr. Do!.

Lost Tomb (1984)(Datasoft)(US).zip

[Tempest]

Wow, this is a really interesting read. Most of this copy protection stuff is above my pay grade, but I love to read about it. Thanks for posting.

[DjayBee]

Further investigation showed that there are several titles from Datasoft which use the exact same protection as Lost Tomb.

 

All titles have the same boot loader which in fact is a wrapper which does the - up to now from Lost Tomb missing - first protection check and loads three sectors which are a boot loader themselves (including the 6 byte header). And these following three sectors are the same ones which the current dump of Lost Tomb used as its initial boot loader.

Replacing the first three sectors of Lost Tomb with the first three sectors of Dig Dug made Lost Tomb behave identical to these other titles.

 

So, mistery solved:
Lost Tomb uses the first check for duplicate sectors as well and now the ATX should be very close to the real thing.

It seems that only Mr. Do has the fourth protection on track 40.

 

Lost Tomb (1984)(Datasoft)(US)(p).atx.zip

Lost Tomb (1984)(Datasoft)(US)(p).atr