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Elwyndas
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2018
Posts: 5 |
Racing Destruction Set Cartridge Version
This is a lovely game that suffers greatly from disk swapping, loading times, and to top it off, time consuming track building of pre-made tracks that should load immediately instead.
I think it's a long overdue candidate for a CRT version, which will make this classic shine.
It has so much to offer, like a track editor, vehicle selection and customization, dozens of pre-built tracks, and a crazy gravity setting feature. The AI of the computer vehicles is pretty good. They actually train on the track before it starts!
This is an underrated game that suffered not by design, but by the challenging hardware limit of the 1541. I'm hoping that someone will pick this up :) |
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hedning
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4586 |
Quote: Master recently created a 1581 one sided version, which is very neat. For me this is good enough. Only problem is the track selection page has a limit of how many tracks it can show, and that's it. No option to browse to a 2nd page.
I uploaded the release here.
Racing Destruction Set [1581]
The onesided thing is not a thing actually when using a 1581 disk, as it can hold 3160 blocks compared to a 1541 disk (664 blocks). Ergo: It's not onesided at all. If Master was able to fit the game on one 1541 disk side, then it would have been onesided. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
I made an EasyFlash version, that you can save TRACKS & VEHICLES back to cartridge. I limited the file names 0-3, so you can have 4 of each tracks and vehicles.
As I don't really know the game, assistance from a true fan is needed. I don't want to release it and then find out it's broken.
Any interest, then PM me here. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
Quoting KrillIt looks like it could be one-sided rather easily, and fast loaders decompressing on the fly have been invented in the meanwhile. :)
Done. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
Quoting KrillA cartridge version would be nice, but this game appears to have never gotten a decent disk-based crack treatment.
In addition to the "FAT Track 34/35" copy protection, the game even has some protections inside:
. Main Menu encrypted and will lead to a crash, if original loader bypassed
. Stealth protection #1, leading to exploding cars from time to time incase original loader is bypassed
. Stealth protection #2, leading to yellow car flipping onto roof and not recovering if memory modified
These are all now fixed, and we are doing a final QA before releasing the one sider and EasyFlash cartridge. |
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Elwyndas
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2018
Posts: 5 |
Very cool. I tested version 0.3 and the only thing I noticed is that the tracks on disc 3 are not included. Not all ancient releases have that 3rd disc.
I'm not actually sure if they were official, or rather homebrew tracks included by the "cracker". Obviously the game was never truly cracked until you started working on it in earnest. Thank you for that.
This release has the third disc with the additional tracks. They are really good and should be included in your release.
Racing Destruction Set
A feature request I have is that all tracks are being loaded already "built". Right now if you pick any track other than default, the game builds the track in a lengthy process and stores it in RAM. I can imagine that this can be bypassed, by loading the readily built tracks straight into memory. Feasable?
I'm travelling right now and can only test on VICE for Nintendo 3DS and not on real hardware. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
I don't think the disk #3 is original. It's certainly not on the 1984 EA or 1985 EA releases.
The 'precalculation' and adding the disk #3 won't be done for the 'one sided' version - as they simply won't fit.
I will take a quick look at the disk #3 for the EasyFlash version, however I believe there will be a paging issue (you already mentioned on MASTER's 1581 release) when the number of tracks goes over the 3x20 limit.
The precalculation on the EasyFlash release could be an enhancement for a future release, but unlikely for this upcoming one. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
See
Racing Destruction Set
Racing Destruction Set |
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Elwyndas
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2018
Posts: 5 |
Outstanding work. Thank you.
What do you mean by
"I limited the file names 0-3, so you can have 4 of each tracks and vehicles."
in an earlier post.
I can see the numbers at the end of the track listing, but they just make you go back to the menu. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
You can give any name you want when you are saving vehicles or tracks (EasyFlash), limited to 1 char of 0, 1, 2 or 3. |
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Knight Rider
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 114 |
Quoting ElwyndasThis release has the third disc with the additional tracks. They are really good and should be included in your release.
Racing Destruction Set
I linked the "3rd Disk" into the EasyFlash to see how it behaved. The answer was 'not good', so I left it. The dynamically built directory view has no paging, so the additional tracks were placed in a 4th column, that wrapped around around to the left again. This is possibly something that I will revisit at another point in time. I didn't even look into the pre-calculation part at all. |
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