Re: Two different versions of 'Moon Patrol'?

["sicklittlemonkey" <Nick.Westgate@gmail.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> Interesting.  Usually games that would fit were single-load, just
> because it was simpler.  Of course, as Wildcards proliferated, there
> were reasons *not* to be single-load.  ;-)

Quite. It might be one of those cases, though as noted by Michael
Deutschmann the cracked versions leave out the graphics for the "base"
used at the beginning of each game so perhaps it is a tight squeeze.

> I believe the signature tracks involve synchronization, but I haven't
> fully unravelled that yet.  I *have* recovered the unprotected code so
> that I can make a deprotected version.

Hmm, synch would be a problem. I'd like to be able to resolve that,
actually. The emulation side might not be too bad - the real work would
be properly capturing synched NIBs.

> I'll check whether a NIB image will work.

Great.

> It is the most full-blown case of security by obscurity that I've
> encountered.  I wrote to Bill and he confirmed that he used a Pascal
> program to "scramble" his code into hundreds of little pieces connected
> by indirect JMPs!  I, in turn, wrote a little Ctl-Y routine to call
> INSTDSP one instruction at a time, *following* JMPs instead of LISTing
> them--which straightens out the scrambled code.  ;-)

Classic. What a pro! It's quite nice you can converse with him about
it!
Ingenious solution you've come up with too. Chess across decades. ;-)

Cheers,
Nick.