| Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-02-06
13:19:38
|  Savage Island Colors
Ever play Savage Island? Noticed that something is wrong with the colors? They always looked odd to me. Today I fiddled with it a little, and found out why: the game uses luminance 7 (the brightest) for all colors. That's not right. My suspicion is that this could be because of a buggy conversion, altough I couldn't find the C64 version with the pictures so far (if anyone has a link, please post it).
Anyway, with a little hack, I adjusted the game to use different luminances for the colors. Here are the results. It should be easy to tell which ones are the originals, and which ones are the 'corrected' ones...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
If we could find the C64 version with pictures, we could probably see how they were really supposed to look. But I'm 100% sure that it's not the way it is in the original game.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-02-06
14:35:40
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Thanks! I could not find this version anywhere on the 'net. Hmm, it looks like not only the luminance is wrong, but some of the colors too... The original creators did a pretty poor job. It's strange that they didn't see how BAD it looks. Maybe they didn't care... or didn't know better.
Anyway, I think this calls for a fixed release. 
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Posted By
Crown
on 2004-02-06
14:37:14
| Re: Savage Island Colors
This looks like like they didn't even bothered to find the correct colors either, seems like they assumed that the same color code is the same on the plus4...
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-02-06
18:06:03
 | Re: Savage Island Colors
Nice find Csabo, never would of noticed that!!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-02-07
14:31:05
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Hehe, if Tom Thumb had the same bug, and all the colors were set to the brightest luminance, you would have noticed for sure! Anyway, I found out that the game actually does perform a color conversion! (Code is at $4227, color lookup table is at $118D.) It matches up everything properly, except for one color, that gray -> cyan (hence the head looks cyan instead of gray on the first screenshot I made). I also found another bug which is present even in the TAP version: just type GET ALL as soon as you begin, and watch the garbage come up...
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-02-07
21:42:43
| Re: Savage Island Colors
I got to the bottom of the GET ALL bug. This special command has a completely separate handler. It looks through all the objects in the game, and the ones that are in the same room as the player are processed. What is processing here? Just a sec, first:
Something about all the Scott Adams adventures: the objects that are just 'decoration', (such as Sand, Lake, Wind, or anything that CANNOT be picked up) just have a regular name, ending with a zero byte $00 as an end mark. Any object that CAN be picked up, such as the bottle, will have a name like this: "Bottle of rum/BOTT/". Therefore it always ends with a slash.
In the first 'room' we have Sand, Large stone head, Edge of impenetrable jungle. None can be picked up, right? When the GET ALL command finds an object, the processing starts by printing the object's name. That is, it keeps printing characters until it finds a slash... Ouch! So after "Sand", for example, will be a whole bunch of other object names, until it finally bumps into one which can be picked up. Hence all the garbage.
You could think that by changing the part that checks for the slash to check for a zero byte instead, the problem would be solved. Well, those of you who are actually reading this and feel adventurous can try this: after loading the game, go to YAPE monitor and type >19C7 00. Now try the GET ALL command... Well, the garbage problem is solved, but the game says it picked up all three items, head, jungle and all! Ouch once again... Do anything else for a few moves and watch the game go crazy. Bug city! Didn't these people ever test their stuff???
So after further digging I found something else. There is a table at $5160-$519B. That's one byte for each object in the game. It's only used twice in the whole code. One of those times is when the user types GET ALL... We're getting warmer! If you take a peek at the code at $1995, it reads from that table, and checks if the hightest bit ($80) is on. If it would be, it exludes that object from the GET command, and goes to the next one. But NONE of the objects have their $80 bit set in that table, so that jump NEVER takes place. Bingo.
The colors look pretty good, and I will fix this bug by actually filling out that table the way it was meant to be. Then comes a little testing, and then a release for sure.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-02-08
17:29:42
| Re: Savage Island Colors
The worst colour bug I found was Manic Miner. At first I thought it was the emu's, I even asked Mike D to correct his emu pallet as it looked worse on that, but it was infact a poor crack lmao! As soon as we sorted out another version Minus4 looked great. 
And BMX Racers with green road.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-02-08
23:30:54
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Argh! Now this is really upsetting...
My version of Savage Island Part 1 is done, pretty much bug free and can be completed. On to the next chapter: Savage Island Part 2. Let's see what we have here... Colors: all screwed up. GET ALL bug: present. Both can be fixed though. Now the game itself is very difficult, and below will be some spoilers, so stop reading now if you want to finish it yourself. Although, if I'm right, that may be impossible.
So, let's go: HYPE, GO FIELD, BREATHE OUT, E, S, W, W, GO FIELD. Now here's the Neanderthal in the display case, who we have to sedate, otherwise he will attack us. So: LOOK HYDR -> we find PLANTS. LOOK PLANTS and we find... NOTHING! And that's where the game, at least the Plus/4 version of it ends... A new item (FLOWERS) is supposed to show up, but it doesn't. Check it please if you can. The C64 version works ok... Ours doesn't. I pity the unsuspecting players who spent their money back then to buy this beautifully packaged, interesting game, only to find out it's pretty much useless. That's the second bug I found in a Brian Howarth program, the other one is in Golden Baton. Sad, very sad.
Someone please tell me that I'm wrong... Perhaps it works on the real plussy?
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2004-02-09
03:04:20
 | Re: Savage Island Colors
I also left one bug in one of my adventures. However, it is fixed in the English version. Anyone remembers the bug?
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Posted By
Adam
on 2004-02-10
17:43:00
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Lavina:I played most of your adventures, but couldn't win either of them..So I might have missed the bug..Any hint?
Scott Adams adventures are pretty strange...I could never get them right. Anyways, the color correction of Csabo is better than the original on C64. Congratulations!
Plus/4 and prosper!
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2004-02-24
02:53:53
| Re: Savage Island Colors
I've found the reason of "flower missed in plants" bug. C+4
version has no handler for 75th Scott Adams standard action (put
two objects simultaneously?) - this handler contains only one command - RTS
(at address $4d6d). Action 75 must drop plants and flower.
Error maybe caused by wrong vector to this handler.
This problem may be fixed by changing action 75 on two simple drop actions.
Replacing of bytes $3e $2c (at address $5354 in running program) on bytes
$43 $1f has to remove the bug.
I've also performed conversion of both parts of Savage Island from TAP to
PRG format and sent 2 PRGs to c64.rules.org and to plus4.emucamp.
Bad news. Savage Island 2 TAP (with 1387160 bytes length) besides fixed
error has completely missed graphical pictures for rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,
26, ... This hangs the computer. It's easy to show pictures of other rooms
instead of missed ones (this makes possible to finish this game), but I hope
that I can find other correct TAP. The mentioned missed pictures must be
situated after $a000 in the running program. The table of pictures #s is at
$6b0f (change all bytes greater than $0e to 4 and this makes game
finishable).
Some words about TAPs.
Both parts consist of 9 blocks (4 turbo blocks & last is garbage). Second
turbo block is a big (about 16KB) program (this maybe corrupted C16 version),
but it's broken by 00 00 00 after about 300 bytes so only these 300 bytes
are really used (they print several lines of text on screen which are visible
during loading process), these and next bytes completely overwritten by the
next blocks. So I have conclusion - size of the TAPs may be reduced
approximately by 40%.
I have only to add I absolutly sure that anyone can't finish any part of this adventure without solution.
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Posted By
Brataccas
on 2014-08-08
20:32:00
| Re: Savage Island Colors
I know this is an ancient thread and the C+4 game was long ago fixed and released.
I've actually been looking into fixing the C64 version. The only version of part 1 available from gb64 has all screens from $20 and higher corrupted.
Litwr> For the TAP conversions that you made and sent to c64.rules.org, were any of those for the C64?
I'm pretty sure that I can rip the fixed C+4 screens back over to the C64, if necessary. Any help you can provide is much appreciated.
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2014-08-09
03:19:40
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Hi, Brataccas! I worked only with C+4 files. Csabo made all pictures fix. I was a bit busy and maybe lazy.
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Posted By
Brataccas
on 2014-08-09
11:59:33
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Thanks for the quick reply. You guys did an excellent job restoring this game. I'll work a little more on trying to fix the C64.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2014-08-09
16:36:07
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Thanks! Besides the color fix and the bugfix from Litwr, I also improved the graphics engine: it's much faster. I did something similar for Rebel Planet as well, my conversion is actually faster and smoother than the original.
As it happens, I'm doing similar right now, once again So, hopefully there's a new release coming soon.
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Posted By
Brataccas
on 2014-10-12
18:32:09
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Hi Csabo and Litwr,
To close the loop on this topic, I just finished and released a fixed C64 version of Savage Island. Part 2 had the exact same bug with the flower as the Plus 4 version.
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53627
http://cloud.cbm8bit.com/brataccas/savage_island_fixed.zip
Thank you for providing inspiration and laying the groundwork for the flower bug fix.
I didn't manage to re-write the graphics engine like you did, but I did add a trainer. I feel that the random death system just isn't fair in an adventure game of this type. With the trainer enabled, the message explaining your death appears, but you will not die.
- Brataccas
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2014-10-12
19:28:26
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Very nice work, thanks for letting us know!
The game I hinted at in my previous comment is now out, it's Temple of Terror. If you're looking for another project to take on, this could be it. None of the other systems have working (as in: completable) versions, the C64 would deserve one. Drop me an email if you want the source: I think taking my source and re-converting that to C64 should be relatively easy for someone who knows that machine, and it would retain all the other added stuff (e.g. graphics engine improvements).
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-10-13
07:59:22
| Re: Savage Island Colors
Good Work.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2014-10-13
13:38:31
 | Re: Savage Island Colors
Nice job done. Finally we have a grey stone head
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