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jcompton
Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70 |
Release id #164803 : Star Trek - The Rebel Universe
Attention underemployed trainers looking to be the first to address a long-standing issue! Please consider offering a trainer that neutralizes the effects of the Catastrophe Pods, Mike Singleton's regrettable design decision that makes the game stupidly difficult to play without constant restarting.
https://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?id=990 |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
Not sure about the constraints in this case, though.
I overwrote the star map once with the same value all over the place, and then the wireframe rebel ship was quite broken. So it could be that they actually re-used other data (namely the ship wireframe vectors) for the star map. :) |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
And as for tweaking the seed in Artefacts, there are only 256 different values, iirc, at least once it's running (you can set the seed to any 16-bit pointer value, but only the low byte is increased).
The routines would just linearly read one value whenever they need some randomness and advance the read pointer, until the low byte wraps. Some runs look pretty bad then for a given routine. Mind that the re-purposed program code is not that random, after all.
There should still be more than 256 different variations as the loops keep progressing, but i have never checked the amount of read random numbers per loop, or if it is prime. :D |
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jcompton
Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70 |
I think there's another source (Local Zone?) of map data somewhere. As an experiment I filled the $f60f Quarantine Zone area with 20 bytes from random.org and the $f623 with another 512 bytes from the same site.
The Quarantine Zone was totally different, but the Local Zone still had very recognizable names, like Dizok at 53.46.03 05 LY away. (It's one of the first planets "above" your start location on the Local Zone map.)
(bytes for the curious:
$f60f: 1b 0f ca 10 f7 54 2c 32 15 10 b5 a6 1d ac d5 46 60 52 69 07
$f623: 3a 8b 03 84 aa 97 e4 5a b1 14 4a 94 49 d2 f7 ad c9 47 60 c2 92 bf 81 73 38 3d f9 ab 0f 6e 6b 59 fe 32 cf b5 db 36 17 91 06 4b f3 1d f8 84 a5 14 ca ff 43 5d 8f 40 9a 50 71 46 84 df a0 40 bb 80 4b 76 c3 4f 5f a7 d2 13 06 fe 3f ee d1 d0 c9 75 e0 f7 94 7a 3f 59 25 5f ac 24 67 eb b0 9c 5d 78 25 4e e8 68 c8 3b 9b 02 40 e1 a3 97 c5 33 d8 63 7a f0 11 10 6b 30 b9 ab f2 43 71 f9 1a c1 63 0f d4 a4 ed 25 39 a7 62 ea a4 01 e6 a8 f8 ee e6 40 27 99 8b 2b 65 f2 b6 5b b3 ca 8b 60 dc 1d 58 a8 95 76 4c 2e 99 29 78 63 bb bc 24 5e ec 10 a3 11 eb 05 c5 9e 72 0f 00 ea 65 d6 64 95 25 75 ce 4d a8 d3 1c d2 ea 44 6e b7 66 75 bf d7 2c b4 f0 a9 9b 1a 3c bb bd e8 9b 8a aa 89 71 ae 72 c0 e9 c8 9f dc 01 23 98 80 68 b9 2c 68 00 8f 78 b9 d1 52 4d 98 a4 73 4f b2 ec 01 f0 49 02 49 83 1f 81 f1 27 8f 85 b8 45 32 70 bc 23 87 f2 38 99 99 62 33 1d 35 a8 fc 1b 11 02 27 44 e8 f7 a8 82 9a 06 9e 04 f8 ff 96 39 86 a2 02 66 3a 11 fb 24 77 b0 3b 62 0e e5 9f bb 84 12 86 ac 48 d7 4b 4f 62 d7 b0 11 d2 d1 5a 1d 97 9f c6 3e f3 d2 33 e8 5b 5b 82 fa 25 b7 f9 c0 ba e9 59 66 28 53 8d a2 a5 4d be d6 33 9a 88 48 62 bf 7a cd af 22 e9 95 db 7c 8e fe ee 3d 12 91 f2 32 d9 c3 71 40 0f 00 ec 50 9d b1 c5 e8 67 20 62 9f a4 c2 00 71 7a 8b 53 10 9e
b8 f6 01 e8 a3 27 cb a0 fa 31 b4 a0 a8 1a 47 50 5a 86 76 ad dc e1 10 d5 76 72 6f 16 35 6e 30 c4 c5 c8 55 a5 bc bd 84 10 cf a7 d3 e2 c1 fd 42 99 2b 43 74 47 eb 1a 27 01 c4 f9 f9 44 9f bc b3 f0 02 ed 9e 55 87 c9 97 50 06 9a 3e f9 0b 30 3b a4 38 3c 2a 76 dc 4e 90 d8 d1 cc 47 41 17 d9 b9 88 f4 19 de 7e 48 fe ad c7 d2 26 01 d5 e2 28 e0 e6 |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
Quoting jcomptonthe Local Zone still had very recognizable names, like Dizok at 53.46.03 05 LY away. (It's one of the first planets "above" your start location on the Local Zone map.) Quoting Krilland the systems' names are generated from their coordinates. It's not surprising that systems at (approximately?) the same position always have the same name, regardless of the actual star map. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
Quoting jcomptonAttention underemployed trainers looking to be the first to address a long-standing issue! Please consider offering a trainer that neutralizes the effects of the Catastrophe Pods, Mike Singleton's regrettable design decision that makes the game stupidly difficult to play without constant restarting.
https://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?id=990 Quoting KrillPOKE 4324,173
i.e., freeze the game, set $10e4 to $ad, restart.
This disables the "Catastrophe Pod" countdown so they never explode once you have contracted them. jcompton: Maybe you could add the POKE somewhere in your Lemon review or another prominent place where other users with your gripe would find it? :) |
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jcompton
Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70 |
Reasonable idea, I PM'ed a moderator, let's see what happens. |
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jcompton
Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70 |
They put the info on the Lemon game profile page: https://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2456 |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
Excellent! =) |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2968 |
I just noticed that this game's tape version Star Trek - The Rebel Universe differs significantly from the disk version Star Trek - The Rebel Universe - apart from the tape version having no intro screen with the theme tune.
So the "Catastrophe Pod" trainer poke is different:
Tape: POKE 4302,173 (> $10ce $ad)
Disk: POKE 4324,173 (> $10e4 $ad) Note how pretty much all the code is shifted up in memory for the disk version. The latter seems to have been made later, as it has more code (ends 8 bytes higher up in memory), with more code added in between and some routines shuffled around. The disk version seems to be a later build from a patched source.
Now the question is, apart from their binaries, do both versions differ noticeably, in gameplay or otherwise?
The tape version seems to exist in bugfixed ("100%") versions, but i haven't yet found out what was changed by the crackers there, and if those fixes are present in the disk version. |
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Count Zero
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 1919 |
Thanks for using the term "POKE" :) Triggered me to add it to https://rr.c64.org/wiki/Pokes:Star_Trek_-_The_Rebel_Universe_(T..) and (Disc) .. which triggers a bad url parser here :)
That linked Derbyshire Ram version ( Star Trek - The Rebel Universe ) has an obvious text output bug at start immediately on clicking Kirk though - the Pulsar version ( Star Trek ) is fine.
Wonder what made Derby call that 100% :) |
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