Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
10:30:57
 |  Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Hollywood Poker: One of the biggest commercial tapes ever to be released on Plus/4 has finally been converted to TAP files!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
11:03:49
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
The real TAPE:
Like most games from Players, Hollywood Poker was never saved with a Turbo Loader which makes it the biggest and longest loading commercial tape game of all if you play all 4 Girls in turn. This one is only for the brave!
The genuine real tape of Hollywood Poker released by Players running on a real Plus4 does not work properly if you follow the loading instructions from the cassette cover! I have two copies and both hang after loading is finished on side 1 if you use LOAD from BASIC. Either it was saved wrong to the tape which I'm sure it was, or it was done to stop children from playing it with the thinking an adult would have a better understanding of what to do... I doubt that was the case though! 
In short on a real Plus4 you have to enter the monitor and type L"",1 and after FOUND the game will load for a short while and then you need to type from the monitor G1010. The game then loads correctly on side1 and in turn allows you to play the whole game normally.
Hollywood Poker uses both sides of the tape.
Side1: Game Data
Once loaded your asked to turn the tape over and rewind to load the first Girl Isabell.
Side2: Girl Data
Contains all 4 Girls being
1. Isabell
2. Lorence
3. Denise
4. Stephanie
To play a Girl you press which number she is so if Girl 1 is loaded your press key 1 to play her. If the game is over and you wish to play Girl 1 again then press 1 again, no loading is required as she is already in memory, (unlike the D64 version).
I'll take a picture when I can but there are 2 different covers of the Players version. It's a bit of a spot the difference as a silly small change was made but as +4 commercial releases were not that common this cover is very unique! 
TAP version:
Obviously it comes as two tap images.
Hollywood Poker Side1
Hollywood Poker Side2
Having only tested the game with Yape there might be a couple of issues with the way Yape loads tapes. I believe the tap's are fine as the real game on the real tape was saved with the normal kernel save routine. Nothing special at all for Yape or MTAP to work with!
One problem with Yape is that the game actually loads perfectly from BASIC using LOAD unlike the real machine.
The first 3 Girls loaded perfectly, however once the last Girl had finally loaded the game was now displaying in the wrong graphics mode yet it had not crashed! I started playing it blind hoping I would lose the game knowing once it goes back to the title screen it will refresh the screen and display properly... sure enough Girl 4 displayed properly!!
I then loaded Girl 1 back in, she loaded fine.
I then press key 4 to skip the others and only load Girl 4 and this time she displayed perfectly!!!
Maybe something to do with Yape why that might of happened?
The last issue Yape has is that once a Girl has fully loaded it does not automatically stop the tape! Is does on a real plus/4, so if you load the first Girl on tap be ready to hit SHIFT & F5 to stop the tape running over. Could this be linked to a line of BASIC or Machine code being a byte out in memory with how it loads in YAPE when normally it should not?
Obviously the original tape release is at fault and a way round that can be done to play it, just Yape having done amazingly has a couple of hick ups maybe?
What I'll do is I'll upload the tap's to Plus4 World so either Luca and Csabo can add them, hopefully Gaia can get a moment to have a look.
If it proves side 2 needs looking at then I'll dig a brand new 1531 out and record it again off of that one! The 1531 I did use to create the TAP loads the game fine on the real machine! 
TAP Loading & timer info:
Type Load
after a short while at the READY type RUN. The game will now load.
On the Yape tap timer on the bottom left corner this is how long it takes from the start of the tape each side until something has loaded.
Side1: 10.25
attach Tape 2 when told to turn tape over.
Side 2:
Isabell: 8.50
Lorence: 19.10
Denise: 27.24
Stephanie: 37.24
*** As soon as a Girl has loaded don't forget to STOP the tape! ***
Hope that's all clear, any questions you know what to do.
BTW there is no rush, it's a slow loading game so take ya time if you fancy a look.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2014-08-20
10:58:01
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Wow, cool stuff! Checking it now, so far so good.
(Off topic: I fixed a bug with the one-liners, if the text contained a link, the automatically generated subject was bad, now it should work fine.)
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2014-08-20
13:23:19
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
btw: if someone has a real tape of Hollywood Poker for sale or..... please let me know, i like to have that one in my collection!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
16:04:34
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Sorry to be a tease... I sent in a close up of the actual tape and both covers side by side, hopefully they will be added soon to the game page.
Below was one of my testing shots to see how it would come out. While the tape is the same for both versions it's only the cover face that has a minor change. Stupid I know, but such an oddity I want to keep. Really sorry!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2014-08-20
14:05:20
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
I put up the images of the cassette(s). Also finished testing it: to me it loaded just fine... So I'd say the TAP files are good. These are definitely one of the biggest we have (though not the biggest, I checked the file sizes on the FTP).
Good work
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
16:07:25
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Cool, that's good news!
Yeah when I tried again I loaded just Girl 1 and then Girl 4 in that order, Girl 4 displayed perfectly as if nothing was wrong and the game ran fine! Just one of those things I guess. Nice one, thanks for having a look!
Without looking, I wonder if the biggest Plus4 tape game for file memory size is Bridgehead, and it would be a half wav.
I guess I mean the amount of tape that needs to be loaded, the time it takes. Time wise side 2 of Hollywood Poker is bigger than ACE+4 Long Load and Ace is 30mins of tape loading. Add side 1 to Hollywood Poker and it must be over 45mins to load everything it has on offer in total? I've never timed it. It's long though.
Maybe the biggest for file size is a compilation?
PS. That shot you have now added of the 2 actual tape games next to each other looks like we win this round, we have a pair!
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Posted By
George
on 2014-08-20
16:14:38
 | Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
I see a small variation in the two covers... is that why you put them together on the photo?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2014-08-20
16:41:17
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Did you notice the nice cleanup job I did on the photos, BTW?
The biggest one in terms of file size is Go Games 1. I guess this depends on the compression, which in turn depends on how "noisy" (random) the file is.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
17:03:46
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Yes George. It is not a sticker but printed on the card.
For anyone that's not sure how it was done...
In printing such as these covers they are printed with 4 colours on white card. Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. The cover is 5 colours in total when you add the reverse, (inside instructions) being black.
On the face the ink is put on to 4 different plates which in turn are printed on a blanket to then be printed on the card. Controlling the amount of ink and getting each plate lined up makes the picture you see on the card. They can also use a lacquer printed directly over the finished image so to protect the printed picture, this allows you to wiped it off if it gets dirty and so does not come off on to your fingers like a news paper does.
So for one cover to of added the yellow background and red text, 2 brand new plates were made up. To me , "Actual Digitized Photos" box stands out more in plain black.
I'm not sure which one came first.
BTW, now you can understand how Mastertronic had the wrong plate on the reverse, (inside instructions). The print operator normally looks at the face as it's being printed on the press and being such a repetitive job the reverse was forgotten about and why some titles had the wrong instructions. Printing is not only money but also time, they had to let the mistakes go!
PS. Nice one Csabo, I just caught your post as I posted this! :)
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Posted By
George
on 2014-08-20
17:06:01
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Great informations about the game.
Looking at the game-record, i miss pictures of:
1. Isabell
2. Lorence
3. Denise
4. Stephanie
in their natural grace and beauty. How about posting some before-after pics.
I am not willing to load 40minutes an play the game hours only to get a quick glance at them..
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-09-13
10:56:13
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
Once a girl is loaded in Yape, save an emulator snapshot of each one and from then on load the snapshots and each girl will load instantly when ever you wish to play them. Your never have to load the tap again after that.
EDIT:
Patrick, I'm sure this is not what your looking for but just in case... There is a plus/4 bundle on ebay in the UK that has Hollywood Poker. It's a new member on ebay with only 3 feedback and unknown if they would ship outside of the UK. Cardiff is in Wales, part of the UK.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/commodore-plus-4-Computer-/171457599977
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Posted By
Epy
on 2014-09-13
13:39:18
| Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
A little bit off but connected to that ebay auction.
I think it's funny for us if a 'today user' calls the old computer parts like this:
Commodore Plus/4 itself - Commodore keyboard
power supply - charger
datasette - type loader
cassette game - type game
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