Re: 48K stage-loaded to 64K single-load?

[Michael <michael.pohoreski@gmail.com>]

On May 9, 6:57 am, Steve Nickolas
<lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org> wrote:
> Some games have been cracked to use the language card or Apple //e
> extended memory to allow themselves to be single-loaded into memory.

Sounds like a fun project!  Please keep us posted -- Lode Runner is
one of my favorites!

Each Tile is 10x11 pixels. Each Map is 28x16 tiles = 448 bytes/level =
67,200 bytes uncompressed.

I would try compressing the levels.  Even using RLE you should be able
to save some significant space.
i.e. top NIB = Length, bot NIB = Sprite

If you can't store all 150 levels on one file, I wouldn't mind if
there were 3 files.
  Part A = Levels 1 - 50
  Part B = Levels 51 - 100
  Part C = Levels 101 - 150

I haven't gotten around to doing an Apple Games Disassembly Project
for it, yet.  I still want to annotate the sprites, map drawing code,
analyze the AI and write a C version, along with the cool "Iris In/
Out" level transition. =)

If there are any features in AppleWin's Debugger that would help this
project, let me know, and I'll bump up its priority.

Cheers!
Michael "AppleWin Debugger Dev"



> Obviously this isn't possible with every game.  For example Lode Runner
> needs 37.5K to hold its levels.  (Championship Lode Runner may be viable;
> it doesn't have the editor and only needs 12.5K for its levels - some of
> which may be able to be placed where the disk read code is now, and over
> video memory during the load process.)
>
> I wonder if it might be possible for, specifically, Joust and Karateka.
> (Some of the glorious cinematics, unfortunately, might need to be
> truncated or removed for a filecrack of Karateka.)  I'm not good at
> reverse engineering, admittedly - though games which are single-load but
> require multiple files to initialize, even 64K games, I have been able to
> filecrack successfully.
>
> -uso.