Re: Rare game uploaded to Asimov

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, March 6, 2013 9:09:54 AM UTC-6, Hot Rod wrote:
> On Thursday, February 28, 2013 7:20:11 PM UTC-6, Chuck Morris wrote:
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> > By rare, I mainly mean virtually unknown, of course.  A long-standing goal of mine over the years has been to eventually manage to either create or locate disk images for all of the titles I ever owned for my Apple II.  For the most part, that's been fairly simple, as most titles were widely distributed.  A few were not, and the fairly cumbersome process required to create nib images of copy protected titles has generally discouraged me from spending much time in the effort.  The CFFA3000 card has greatly simplified that process, so I've uploaded a new nib image to Asimov's incoming directory that few are likely to have seen before.  The text of the readme uploaded with the image follows:
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> > In the early days of home computers, a trip to the local computer store might
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> > occasionally turn up a locally produced game, hanging on the wall in a baggie.
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> > One such example, purchased along with my first Apple II+ was "John's Space War
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> > Games - Saga I".  The documentation consisted of nothing more than the following
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> > text, which appeared on a label on the disk sleeve:
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> > John's Space War Games - Saga I
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> > By John Broderick, CPA
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> > 8635 Shagrock
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> > Dallas, TX 75238
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> > To play, press C)ombat
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> > To demo, press D)emo
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> > ----- Key Press Codes -----
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> > S     = Speaker on/off
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> > C     = Enter combat
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> > X     = Exit combat
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> > W     = Warp spd (1-9)
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> > I     = Ion spd (1-9)
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> > F     = Forward drive
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> > R     = Reverse drive
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> > ESC   = Restart game
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> > T     = Torpedo firing skill (1-6)
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> > E     = Evasive action skill (1-6)
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> > BLUE  = Robot Ships Destroyed
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> > GOLD  = Commando Ships Destroyed
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> > RED   = Torpedo energy remaining
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> > GREEN = Shile energy remaining
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> This is interesting.  I've been away from Apple stuff for the last few months, but did take a peek at this.
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> It looks like the disk is formatted as a DOS 3.2 13-sector, but only tracks $00-$0A (or was it $09?  Rats - forgot to jot that down), and is a single-load game.
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> The boot is somewhat interesting; copies itself from $800 down to $200, then loads into $300, eventually winding up at $7700 to do the final load.  Looks like it uses a DOS 3.2 RWTS relocated from $B700 down to $7700.  I haven't spent the time to decode which exact track/sectors are loaded, but it seems like a single load from there.  Afterwards it covers its tracks by erasing the RWTS from memory.  Goes to $3700 to set up things, then bails out to $401 (which in turn goes to $50E0) to start the game (via some stack manipulation and RTS).
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> Anyway, I grabbed the RWTS and used Advanced Demuffin to convert the 13-sector data into DOS 3.3 format, with the thought of putting this into a more convenient single file (and to see what else is on the disk), but I thought I'd mention that I get a read error on track $00, sector $0A.  So there may be a problem with the .nib image.
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> I don't know yet if track $00, sector $0A is used in the load though (and the program does seem to run), so it might be moot.
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> I did a quick scan of the converted disk image data, and I do see the author's name, and what appears to be fragments of source code here and there (and fragments of an Apple DOS Master disk I think).
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> Should be a fairly straightforward project to file this game, which would allow it to be used more conveniently.  If no one else gets to it, I might.
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> Cheers.
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> ]HR

Yes, please do.  The single-load version I have in Apple Game Server is very hit-or-miss and doesn't seem to always work correctly.  Sometimes sound is disabled, sometimes it doesn't start unless cold-booted.  Very wonky.

-B