| Posted By
Strassen, Patrick
on 2005-01-27
06:33:24
|  Cheat mode for GWNN
I see that someone finally found the password for all my C16 games. I guess that must have come from someone who saw the stuff that I sent to ANCO or Mastertronic (or knew the TI99).
The reason why I chose the word patscram is because it was the name of the first game that I wrote (on the TI99/4a). I chose this name because at the time one of the current arcade games was Scramble and I wanted to write my own version of it (and I chose a ridiculous name like patscram because my brother said noone will ever play a game with a silly name).
I first sent it to 'Personal Computing Today' back in 1982. They said they would publish it, but never did. There was an entry in the January 1983 TI User's newsletter which said "The January edition of Personal Computing Today'did not bring us "Patscram" as promised. Instead a program called "Earth Attack" was published and contained a number of bugs.". I then worked with Stainless Software and they released 6+ of my games (including Patscram Mission).
When the C16 came out (1983?), the guy that wrote Purple Turtles was in my O level computer studies class (and was porting it to the C16). He gave me the notes that Commodore sent him on the C16 internals etc.. Once I'd understood the specifics of the C16 I used many of my earlier games as a starting point for Vox, Powerball etc..
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Posted By
MIK
on 2005-01-27
09:55:18
 | Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
Hi Patrick, great to hear from you once again and I loved what you had to say which was intresting stuff. 
Ever since you told us there was a PW Cheat the topic poped up time and time again. It was last summer when that secret was unlocked.
Ulysses777 and Csabo both found it around the same time.
Ulysses777 used the Yape emulator and by pressing keys one at a time you could see the memory jumping to a different location if you pressed the right keys in the correct order. Some time later it was cracked.
Csabo got stuck in and had a look at your code and found it that way.
Here is the topic from when your PW Cheat was first found: GWNN's cheat mode password. I'm sure there was more just before this, maybe Ulysses777 found a site with the word Patscram and your name if I remember correct or this was found after the PW was found...
Some time ago we got in contact with Udo Gertz who was very kind and sent in a whole load of goodies. He had a copy of your Challenger!!
Download: Kingsoft.zip.
Its under the Paperboy_ChallengerMK2.D64
Intresting how it has the "Anco Presents Challenger" on the main screen.
If you get time to reply then please do as we would love to hear how Udo Gertz ended up with your never released game or the story behind how he may of got it regarding Kingsoft and Anco. 
Cheers,
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Posted By
Strassen, Patrick
on 2005-01-27
13:24:21
| Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
I am very impressed with the way the password was found. (BTW I have learnt a lot more about encryption in the last 20 years). Have you found the cheat mode in Street Olympics, Bounder or Xcellor8? (without using pokes)?
I don't know how Udo got hold of a copy of Challenger (which I see is MK2). I gave a few versions to ANCO for appraisal (along with a very basic port of Uridium (from the C64)) and made numerous versions (about 5) with different levels, game starts etc. and in the end he wasn't happy (from my recollection anyway). However, the only change that Mastertronic wanted was the name. I also started a Suicide Express and Warhawk conversion (which were sent as demos to DPA and maybe ANCO). I think I have lost my copies.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2005-01-27
13:31:29
 | Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
Patrick,
I guess I'm talking in the everybody's interest.
I'm very very hungry about all the stuff you'd sent around!
An Uridium port on c16, can't believe it, can't believe what we missed!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2005-01-27
14:12:37
| Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
Btw, Patrick:
in the Mastertronic release of GWNN, a second charset was added, but what with the enemy sprites?
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Posted By
Strassen, Patrick
on 2005-01-27
14:58:21
| Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
On looking at the 2 versions they are quite similar. This looks like the initial version I gave to Anil (at ANCO). From my vague recollection, in the final version I sent to Anco there was a bit at the beginning where you were flying through space with aliens firing at you. I can't remember why I didn't use that version for Mastertronic.
With the enemy sprites, I was trying to get more of a Sanxion look (which is where I got the idea of the screen layout from). The problem on the C16 was always balancing speed of drawing sprites with quality of graphics. I wanted the screen to scroll as fast as possible and gave up on the more detailed (better?) sprites. And besides, I spent most of my time getting the rainbow in the border to not flicker (too much).
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Posted By
Luca
on 2005-01-27
15:19:41
| Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
Ok, but did you see the sprites are corrupted in all the Matertronic's tape?
The .tap files we have, shows corrupted sprites, and the .prg files too, but in a different way!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2005-01-28
02:24:57
| Re: Cheat mode for GWNN
I spent alot of time looking at your rainbow and was amazed GFX were being displayed in the border. In its day it was one of the greatest achivements because no one had used that trick before and the game also ran super smooth.
I'm not sure why Anco didn't take your game up, but all I can think of is they wanted not only quality which GWNN was but quanity maybe. I'm sure they may of been looking to put GWNN out at £7.99. If it was a multi loader, say a 4 part loader then they may of taken it up.... I'm thinking on the lines of Terra Nova which to be honest isn't the best shooter ever made on C16/Plus4 but quanity one the day. Digi speech, Plus4 only version which featured music and more speech ect.
But then again Gremlin took up your Xcellor8 where both Gwnn and Xcellor8 used your awesome GFX styling. I think Gremlin appreciated what you were doing with the C16 because Xcellor8 had that wow factor displaying almost C64 graphics. Mastertronic ended up releasing something they could only dream of having for our system because for £1.99 Gwnn was an absolute technological coded gem.
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