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Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
FD2000/HD/1581 versions of multidisk games
Hi all,
I'm right now playing Ultima V on my C128. And even though I have a second drive connected I find the disk swapping extremely annoying. I wonder if one of those jewel crackers out there would like to do a version of that game (or other multidisk RPG like Bard's Tale II+III, Dragon Wars, just to name a few) that run from a single 1581/CMD FD2000/CMD HD or IDE64 (even 64HDD would be nice)?
I did a little research on Ultima V and discovered that the majority of the files on the 8 disks is redundant data! Actually only about 2 files per disk differ from files on other disks with the same filename! So I could imagine that all it takes is to modify the main program files, add a few branching instruction depending on the location of the game (Dungeons, Keeps, Towns...), rename the non-redundant files and adjust the main program files to load those renamed files instead.
Am I just blue-eyed, or do you think this is doable with reasonably low effort? |
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CyberBrain
Administrator
Posts: 392 |
(ofcoz i didn't mean entering the monitor and changing partitions - i thought you were gonna 'crack' (<- well, more or less) the game - i mean: put in code to change partitions) |
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Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Nah, honestly, I'm too lame for such things. ;-) |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1078 |
I disassembled and analyzed the Ultima IV loader, and I have it in readable source form. The game uses a link table in ram and reads raw 256 byte sectors off the disk, so the loader has to be rewritten completely to support normal file loading.
But some day...
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Hmm... Ultima IV or Ultima VI? I didn't take notice at first, but then I realized that Ultima IV never have been discussed earlier in this thread - just Ultima V and VI. |
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6r6_Nostalgia
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 14 |
Quote: I own an FD2000 and AFAIK it's said to be 100% compatible with the C1581, or am I wrong? Well, the Nostalgia releases won't work even on the "c1581-disks" (DS/DD, formatted for 800K), has anyone else come upon this problem. I also haven't been able to get The Games: Summer Edition/DSD 90 to work, even though it claims to be 1581 compatible. Have you had the same experience or know if something I don't, please tell me.
Btw, I have quite a bunch of games working on FD, if you anyone wants a list, I'll put it up here (all games are easy to find, I've just taken the time to check out if they work - which will save YOU a lot of time!).
Bender, yes the FD is bugging on our N0S games. Someone in
ntsc land mentioned to me it was working on FD over there,
but I havent gotten to verify that yet. If so, the bug is
simply a NOP in the handshaking routine.
The games are working on my 1581 drive. I have tested them all, when they fail it is due to bad disks. And I have experienced that on a few disks myself.
So make sure the disks are errorfree.
To copy the games I reccomend using starcommander and
a 1541 drive. After that use m5-1581 copy to file copy the files from 1541 to 1581.
6R6
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 468 |
Anything wrong with 1581Copy, can use Star Commander to edit D81 and xfer direct. |
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Steppe
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510 |
Using 1581copy myself, never had problems with it. All it takes are two properly aligned drives. ;-)
The 1581 support in SC really sucks big time (no offense, Joe), you feel set back to the old datasette days, where you loaded the game, then went to make homework. And when you came back it was either finished or you had a ?LOAD ERROR on screen... ;-) |
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6r6_Nostalgia
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 14 |
Quote: Anything wrong with 1581Copy, can use Star Commander to edit D81 and xfer direct.
1581copy is a nice tool for smaller files. But for large files, for instance a iffl file of 300+ blocks, it only gives me errors. |
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 468 |
Well I don't use it for files within a 1581 disk image - just for a plain disk image itself. Would be sweet if it worked under XP.
I use my own tools for the disk image fiddling.
I was only asking because GRG suggested copying to 1541 then to 1581 (way slower than the quick time 1581Copy takes).
Back to the original idea - I've found many older multilevel cracks worked fine with my FD as most used ROM file routines. Sweetness for the JiffyDOS people etc. |
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6r6_Nostalgia
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2003
Posts: 14 |
Stryyker, I do it your way, I fill up a output.d81 image
and transfer with 1581COPY /B OUTPUT.D81 A:
But that doesnt work for me on large games.
Moving all the files from my version of Project Firestart into a d81 image and copy with 1581copy doesnt work.
Copying with SC -> 1541 and then 1541 -> 1581 does work!
Maybe it has to do with what kind of hardware your pc got,
so I am only suggesting that the safest method seems to
be the slow method.
<6R6> |
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