Upgrade Time: Encounter

Want to talks about games you like, would like to see developed on the Oric, it's here.
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Upgrade Time: Encounter

Post by Dbug »

Hi, I wanted to look at the listing of the game Encounter (https://www.oric.org/software/encounter-1165.html) from Severn Software, and found out that both Oricutron and Tap2Bas were failing on the same place in the code:

Code: Select all

 11148 IF(B$="TIS")AND(TT=0)THENTT=A:GOTO15000
 11150 IF(B$="PET")AND(PT=0)THENPRINT:PRINT"The petrol evaporates":
So I looked directly in Oricutron and noticed that this particular line, instead of finishing by a "GOTO15000" like all the ones above instead had a "NEXT WITHOUT FORT13550"!
ErrorInLine11150.png
Looking with an hex editor we can see that instead of a code 97 (GOTO) it has F7 54
HexView.png
So basically what I'm wondering is if it's some sort of anti-printing out protection, or if it's just the result of a bad dumping of the game.
I looked at 5 different versions (OricBase, one I had laying around, plus two others downloaded from random sites) and they all seem to be the exact same version.

If any of you has the game on tape, could you take a look at this line?

Thanks :)
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

My transfer (2007), from an original tape and without errors reported, is similar too!
Jean also did a transfer from another tape, in 2004, and is byte-for-byte similar.

So I'd rather say all tapes were like this... Protection or bad master - I've seen several bugged tapes!

(message editied after I re-discovered Jean's version)
Last edited by Symoon on Sat Mar 10, 2018 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Dbug »

So basically the question become, what happens in the game if you try to use the petrol :)
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

Exactly ;)

It is also possible that earlier or later versions didn't have this bug. For example, if I recall correctly, "simulateur de vol" from ASN (French version of Tansoft's Flight Simulator) had tapes with a bug, and others without.
Loriciels also corrected spelling mistakes in Kikekankoi, and so on (Tyrann authors warned of a bug in the early tapes).
User avatar
dave3622
Flying Officer
Posts: 242
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:13 pm
Location: Brighouse, UK

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by dave3622 »

The version I had ended with GOT13550. I've checked line 13550 and it seems to be the correct GOTO line so I simply corrected the spelling mistake which doesn't appear to have caused any kind of corruption in the code.
Attachments
ENCOUNTER.tap
(30.24 KiB) Downloaded 444 times
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

Hi David!
That's interesting, do you know if it was a direct original tape dump?
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Dbug »

Interesting, this version seems to be almost identical up to half way in the program, and then there are minor changes pretty much everywhere!
DaveVersionComparison.png
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

Dbug: it's the Basic lines addresses that change, since I think two (faulty) bytes were replaced by a single one. You can see the values differ only by 1, which is the shifting due to the removed byte.
I suspect it just changes from the faulty bytes?

From 20 years of Oric tapes transfers, I came to the conslusion that the best way to compare two Basic programs is to LLIST them, then use any Windows (or Linux or Mac or whatever) text comparison tool ;)
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

Dbug wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 1:59 pm So basically the question become, what happens in the game if you try to use the petrol :)
bug_Encounter.png
bug_Encounter.png (2.43 KiB) Viewed 16647 times
Dom made the test today ;)
He gave a solution in the CEO-Mag in 2004, which didn't involve using the order DROP PETROL. So the game could be finished without the bug being triggered!
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Dbug »

Cool, so the version is indeed buggy :)

Can you tell me in which issue the solution is?
User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

Ceo-Mag #173, September 2004 (preceeded by several articles about the internals of the game in the 4 previous issues)
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Dbug »

Sorry for the crappy sound quality (and deafening PINGs), but here is the first part of a series of videos on how to improve old games.

User avatar
Symoon
Archivist
Posts: 2301
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Symoon »

BTW, just uploaded Encounter on Oric.org, along with inlay, tape scans, as usual ;)
User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Encounter - Corruption, or protection?

Post by Dbug »

and here is the second part of the "upgrade encounter" videos:

User avatar
Dbug
Site Admin
Posts: 4437
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:00 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway
Contact:

Re: Upgrade Time: Encounter

Post by Dbug »

Tomorrow I'm supposed to have the third part of the video series on "upgrading" Encounter, but I was told it would be nice to see how I'm actually doing the graphics.

Since it would be too long to do that as a normal video, I did instead a tile lapse at 15 times the normal speed to give you a rough idea of what it looks like.

Hope you like it :)
Post Reply