How hard would it be to fix Forgotten Worlds?

[StanVanman]

Aha,OK - understood! - just switch off Auto Load:

Tools -> Options -> Cassette Recorder -> [Untick] Enable auto loading

Insert the crack TZX image

Manually select the [Tape] Loader option from the 128K startup menu

Manually play the tape image

Wait for it to load

Change tape to the FW128 TZX

Manually play the tape image

Cheers. Although unless I've misunderstood something (highly possible), that seems like MORE faff than just loading the original TZX and dropping the POK file on it...

[jpnz]

OK - so how would you drop a POK file on real machine? pfft

[Adrian_Singh]

Give this a try - it's an old school crack...

Load it first, then playback the FW128 TZX (Alkatraz) - all the decryption is worked out (the border changes colour each time a decrypter is executed), the game will load and @Adrian_Singh's autofire pokes are applied

The crack is 99% code that Graham 'Turbo' Mason wrote back in the day - just a couple of adjustments on my behalf specifically for FW128

Very nice way @jpnz for inserting pokes into the actual hardware! Alcatraz was one of the better protection systems and it looks like Graham put a lot of clever thought into his routine for doing the multitude of decryption stages necessary for cracking this protection. I'm sure he'd appreciate your reuse of this base code all these years later!

[StanVanman]

OK - so how would you drop a POK file on real machine? pfft

So if it was on real hardware could you just record the hack bit onto a tape and manually record the rest of the original after it so that the whole thing would load seamlessly?

(And if so, logically wouldn't you then be able to turn that WAV into a new TZX with the hack built in?)

[Stu]

You can use a tool like tzxmerge or similar to combine them into one file, eg:

Code: Select all

tzxmerge -o fw_autofire.tzx ForgottenWorlds128KAutofireMod.tzx "Forgotten Worlds (1989)(US Gold)(128k).tzx"

[StanVanman]

You can use a tool like tzxmerge or similar to combine them into one file, eg:

Code: Select all

tzxmerge -o fw_autofire.tzx ForgottenWorlds128KAutofireMod.tzx "Forgotten Worlds (1989)(US Gold)(128k).tzx"

I feel like we're excitingly close now, but what the flip do I do with files written in Python? Is there like a download for normal computers?

[Adrian_Singh]

Instead you can use the ZX-Blockeditor to merge the 2 TZX files together...

1) Open ZX-Blockeditor and drag in "ForgottenWorlds128KAutofireMod.tzx".

2) Go to Tools->Import File and select "Forgotten Worlds (1989)(US Gold)(128k).tzx" (or whatever the game file is named), a dialog box will appear showing the blocks in the file, just click OK for these to be added to the end of the existing list of TZX blocks.

3) Then File->Save As whatever name you wish to give the combined TZX file.

I've tested and found the resulting file loads in both Spectaculator and SpecEmu with the mod correctly applied so I guess it should work in other emulators too.

[StanVanman]

Instead you can use the ZX-Blockeditor to merge the 2 TZX files together...

1) Open ZX-Blockeditor and drag in "ForgottenWorlds128KAutofireMod.tzx".

2) Go to Tools->Import File and select "Forgotten Worlds (1989)(US Gold)(128k).tzx" (or whatever the game file is named), a dialog box will appear showing the blocks in the file, just click OK for these to be added to the end of the existing list of TZX blocks.

Man! That must have been just about the only option I didn't see. Cheers, seems to work. I think we've turned a completely unplayable game into one of the best in its genre.

[Lethargeek]

so i see you guys just modded the original tzx version
which (controls aside) is unfortunately buggy as hell
things like freezing, resetting and graphics corruption

FYI there was the bugfixed TR-DOS release in 2020

[StanVanman]

so i see you guys just modded the original tzx version
which (controls aside) is unfortunately buggy as hell
things like freezing, resetting and graphics corruption

FYI there was the bugfixed TR-DOS release in 2020

Feel free to fix that one up

[presh]

As an experiment I tried a couple of things that were relatively easy to implement with a little massaging of the existing code...

[...]

2) The other was to simply make firing automatic as someone had suggested given the nature of game pretty much requires firing most of the time. So the controls remain the same with fire only needed for changing the rotation of the gun with left and right. This works with joystick also and seems to work well so may be the better choice.

Awesome! I could never get to grips with the original controls, but the auto-fire pokes make this actually playable and fun, rather than a nice-looking but frustrating experience.

[Seven.FFF]

(Can anyone hack those pokes into the actual TZX, though? It's a pain having to apply the pokes manually every time and saving 128K multiload snapshots is a bit problematic )

You may have moved beyond the need to do this already, but the SZX snapshot format allows you to embed an entire TZX file, positioned at the place where the snapshot was taken, inside the snapshot.

https://www.spectaculator.com/docs/zx-s ... rder.shtml

So you could load from TZX, apply the POK file, then save a SZX.

I don't know which emulators allow you to do this without futher investigation, although it's a good bet that Spectaculator might, given that Jon invented the SZX format. I also remember Patrik taking about supporting this in ZXDS.

[StanVanman]

You may have moved beyond the need to do this already, but the SZX snapshot format allows you to embed an entire TZX file, positioned at the place where the snapshot was taken, inside the snapshot.

https://www.spectaculator.com/docs/zx-s ... rder.shtml

So you could load from TZX, apply the POK file, then save a SZX.

I don't know which emulators allow you to do this without futher investigation, although it's a good bet that Spectaculator might, given that Jon invented the SZX format. I also remember Patrik taking about supporting this in ZXDS.

SZX doesn't support multiload, though, so the SZX fails when it's time to load a new level. But yeah, this problem was solved

[Seven.FFF]

SZX doesn't support multiload, though, so the SZX fails when it's time to load a new level.

That's literally the entire point of embedding a tape file inside a SZX file. If you can't load or save to the tape after loading the snapshot then the embedded tape file serves no purpose.

Maybe your emulator doesn't implement that part of SZX, or it has bugs?

I just tried it in SpecEmu, and I was able to see that it mounted the embedded tape even after I had deleted the original on my disk, and was able to multiload from it just fine.

[Old-User]

so i see you guys just modded the original tzx version
which (controls aside) is unfortunately buggy as hell
things like freezing, resetting and graphics corruption

FYI there was the bugfixed TR-DOS release in 2020

Feel free to fix that one up

That one could use a re-crack!
But is anyone doing those these days...?