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Re: Single-load games - cracking for fun?





On Wed, 24 Dec 2008, sicklittlemonkey wrote:

On Dec 24, 3:51 am, lyricalnanoha
<lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org> wrote:
I wonder if I could shove the image into an unused part of the memory
instead...or even, if must be, onto the language card.

I created the Moon Patrol NIB and notes for it.

The data loaded is necessary unless you omit the moon base animation
(as all file versions do), so as Brendan and Antoine say you'll have
to find somewhere like the language card or aux mem to put it.
(Antoine is referring to the aux mem move routine at $C311).

Another option is to store the image data compressed in unused memory
and decompress it to the hires screen, thus keeping to the game's
original 48K spec. I was in the process of doing this some time ago,
but it was pushed on the back burner.

One problem is there isn't enough free memory to do that without
drawing to the displayed screen (or showing a messy data-filled
screen) unless you go beyond 48K.

Cheers,
Nick.

A couple years ago I did a compressed version of "Hard Hat Mack" from the cracked copy. It takes time to decompress during which it garbles the text page - then it runs fine. (The normal version, which has a special loader and has its own RWTS down in the screen memory, also garbles the screen during load, for a similar reason.)

That was a trick in itself as it used ALL available memory, from $0400 all the way up to $BFFF, as I recall.

A somewhat easier stunt was crunching Xevious, which also used the LC, but didn't use all of low memory.

-uso.