Posted By
Luca
on 2010-08-22
15:27:52
 |  Are You A Maze Maniac?
 The noble art of converting games from other machines comes again in the year 2010 with its spotless aura of approval.
This time it's because of Kichy/ASN, which has considered as very addictive and fun Maziacs, an old (1983!) ZX Spectrum game with its relative incarnations on Commodore 64 and MSX too. You play the role of a brave treasure hunter in search of the treasure box buried somewhere in a randomly generated maze teemed with horrible monsters which unfortunately have humans in their dietrician's prescription. Leashed prisoners will help you about the best path to walk to, and there's food too in order to set up your energy. Swords can be picked up in order to be sure to overcome a fighting monster, but remember: you can handle either the sword or the treasure box at one time! The challenge is: take the treasure back in the minimum number of moves, and you'll be awarded by score.
Download Maziacs now, and try to master the advanced levels. Once more time: simpler plays better!
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2010-08-23
15:27:52
 | Thumbs up!
Well done, Kichy 
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Posted By
Ati
on 2010-08-24
00:38:49
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
A converted game in 2010! It's brutal.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-09-03
19:09:37
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Did anyone get this game working? I dies for me in YAPE, and I just got an email from Erich/Ultd reporting that it doesn't work on the real iron. What gives?
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2010-09-03
21:17:03
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
It works in Yape for me. I died, not the game  I was able to actually play it.
Furthermore, I checked both download locations. Both are fine.
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Posted By
KiCHY
on 2010-09-04
06:21:39
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Hi,
Sad to hear it does not work on real iron. Can anyone else test it on the real iron? Also, I'd like to cooperate with you to make it work on the real plussy (I try to give you any helpful info, but the debugging is up to you with the real iron )
I used yape 0.86 to develop it, Csabo if you wish I can post my config.
Cheer,
K.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2010-09-04
16:21:32
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Sadly, it does crash on the real machine indeed (just tested). The title part starts up, then (having pressed space) the screen blanks as intended (for a second run of unpacking stuff), then nothing happens, the game menu never comes up. It did run well in Yape 0.86 in highest compatibility mode with emulating a "real" Plus/4 configuration (with ACIA and stuff).
Edit: In the main part, right after the first initializations, the code looks like this:
.1024 JSR $FFD2
.1027 TSX
.1028 ??? (---> $FF )
.1029 CMP ($45),Y (---> D1 45)
.102B LDA #$00
This looks like some bug (something might have overwritten the code).
$FF is an illegal opcode (X-indexed absolute ISC, ie. increment, then subtract from accu). X gets initialized from S, which is in turn a function of how SP is initialized upon reset, + whatever happens until the code gets here. I'd suggest that on the real machine, this single operand punches something betwen $45D1-$46D0 (that looks well like some code anyway), which in turn causes the stuff to crash.
(I might possibly be wrong in some details. I obviously didn't verify if SP really differs in Yape and the real machine at this particular point. At least, the unpacked program started up well even on the real machine, even though I left this seemingly suspicious part in the code -- which shows that the problem depends on how things get initialized before the code is started).
Edit (2):
The problem now looks less likely to be caused by accidentally overwriting something from $45D1 and on, rather than not saving SP (as probably originally intended), as $45D1 later would be read out and the value transferred back to SP).
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-09-04
22:21:53
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Dies in Plus4Emu as well. My YAPE is apparently a bit newer than 0.86, which means it's now emulating the real machine a bit better (yay, beta testing!).
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Posted By
marcos64
on 2010-09-05
09:23:48
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
It works OK in my C16+64KB most of the time, only 1 time he has crashed.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-09-12
12:32:17
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
maziacs.prg has been fixed.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2010-09-13
08:53:27
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
And the solution?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2010-09-13
09:07:07
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Uhmmm, Kichy talked be about some garbage badly added by his own crossassembler. Oh well, he will explain better than me
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Posted By
KiCHY
on 2010-09-13
09:33:22
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
I use CC65 package and lots of small external exes to create the final PRG with a "build.bat". One of these external tools is "trim.exe" which I used to remove the load address (first two byte of PRG file) of the exomized game prg. But it had a bug and it also removed the very last byte of the file it worked on. So, at this stage, i had a compressed game (without intro pic) file without load address and last byte. I included this binary into the intro. It tried to uncompress the exomized game and failed somehow. It depended on the default memory pattern of Plussy. I used Yape with "Fill memory with zeroes at warm-up" options while the real iron has 00 00 ... FF FF patterns.
So I learned something again. I hope the currently running project will work on the real machine flawlessy. Our highly qualified development team will test against this issue too. All I can say it will be released soon
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Posted By
TLC
on 2010-09-13
18:23:21
| Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
Ah, yet another from the the infamous "there was only one single byte missing" phenomenon... :-/
I saved the unpacked game memory dump from $1001 to something like $E100... strange thing is, I definitely must have saved the full dump, and I could obviously only save what the depacker wrote there; yet, when I loaded the dump back, it ran... (despite the fact that it should have already failed by then, ie. the memory dump I saved must have been bad already, since the "missing byte" must have caused the exomizer unpack routine to fail). Strange. Very strange.
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2010-12-04
06:14:55
 | Re: Are You A Maze Maniac?
I'll add this to my playlist. I love any new games.
Seems it already has problems on the C16+64K system, so this is a good chance to give it a second opinion.
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