Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-05
|  Terra Nova TAP
Hi,
I've recently transferred all my old cassettes to the PC, into TAP format, and I've noticed that "Terra Nova" isn't in the "Tapes" section of this page. I wonder why?
I've made a TAP file of Terra Nova. I'm not 100% sure if it works though. The game loads properly (ok, Yape shows garbage on the screen while loading the main program, and the game doesn't run too well in Yape because the vertical scrolling is very jumpy, but I think those are both Yape's faults...), including the nice title screen with the speech playback, and I can load the later levels by doing a "load screen2", for example. So it _should_ work correctly, but I don't have the time to actually play the game and test it properly. 
Interested? 
Greetz,
Lord Voldemort
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-05
| additional info
That's strange, my version is different from the D64 file on this site! The D64 version has more speech output, and it looks somewhat different. But I definitely have got an original: my Terra Nova was part of an Anco "Power Pack" which contains 10 games on 2 cassettes (Atlantis, Pin Point, Thai Kendo (AKA Thai Boxing), Panic Penguin, Flight Path 737, Minipedes, Speedboat Race (AKA Speedboat), European Cup Finals (AKA European Cup), Skramble, Terra Nova).
By the way: I've made TAPs of all 10 games (there are some that aren't on this site) and scans of the package.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-05
 | ..
Hi,
That garbage on the screen while loading is I think a random 1/2 wav multiloader bug as seen with Taskforce. The game will load or it won't kind of bug. I havent tryed Taskforce for a while, but if you loaded it and then did a soft reset and loaded it it again it would'nt work the second time round. The memory of emulation was messed up. I just tested my Terra Nova on beta YAPE 0.43 and got the garbage screen. So I droped back to 0.40 as a quick test and the title screen showed perfect as it does on Plus4 while loading. Then this was odd. I went back to beta 0.43 and the title sceen was perfect! ????
You may remember me going on about 1/2 wav's and multi loaders having major problems. I believe this is the case for Terra Nova as well. From memory (My Terra Nova tape got chewed up trying to make a working tap a 100 times.....  ), the title screen does clear just before the game loads on plus4, so the video memory is being over written??... Running my TAP that does'nt happen on YAPE which makes me wonder if the game is loading into memory correct... The game does load all the way, music, speach and GFX all look fine although YAPE does have a problem with virtical scrolling. BUT, before long the game GFX starts to mess up while playing, you get so far up and the whole game does a wobbler big time.
Its a hard question... Terra Nova was always a bugger to load on my Plus4 so the tape might of been no good any way...
Has yours got the C16 version on the other side of the tape?
Out on a Limb TAP isn't working correct.. Ati fixed the TAP so it would load, but part2 did'nt even have the turbo bars flashing when it was trying to load and this isn't a 1/2 wav!
Winter Events took for ever to work properly. This also suffered the multiload 1/2 wav bug, but later YAPE did load it!! So the question is, is MTAP at fault or YAPE or both because some where these differnt turbos are causing problems.
My Terra Nova TAP since the day I lost my tape to the 1531 that got chucked in the bin has been archived, but I won't add it for downloading unless I know its 100% right. How every your llecome to grab it and compair notes with yours. Link: Terra Nova C16 and Plus4 versions.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-05
| ..
Maybe your Terra Nova is the C16 version ??????
I don't think that ANCO pack was released over here?? Ummm. Or it was released very late 1988-89 ??
Just out of intrest can you check your Skramble to see if the Turbo matches the same as the original release from 1985 here on the site. Cheers.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-02-06
| TAP vs Yape
Could you guys send me a copy of this Terra Nova TAP? I'd like to debug it with Yape and see if I can come up with something.
Lando: I just realised that Summer Events TAP stopped working recently. This is bad news, but we should leave the TAP on the site I think...
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-06
| Ati,
If you missed mine the link is above, "Terra Nova C16 and Plus4 versions".
A shame abut Summer Events! Sure I'll leave it up.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-02-06
| ooops, my bad
Yeah right!
Anyway I tried them and they all loaded back properly?! The C16 version indeed has a garbage on the screen during loading but that might have to do something with the limited RAM capacity so certain parts are loaded to the screen memory.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-02-06
| Re: Terra Nova
The opening screen leaves the graphic mode on, so you can see the actual program as it fills up the memory. While we are on this topic, I looked into this game a bit, here's a few cheats:
>794D AD (unlimited lives)
>7276 60 (invulnerability!)
G 685C restart
I tried to figure out the bug with the screen flicker. FF06 sure must be hard to emulate. Ati, is it correctly emulated yet?
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-02-06
| Terra Nova vs Yape
Csabo: the problem is that the game writes to the vertical sub-address register ($FF1F) in the IRQ routine. This is not yet correctly emulated. Similar technique is used in a couple of other games like Legionnaire, Bounder, Thrust, Paperboy etc... Once....
While we're at it... A working crack could be made, as I assume the disk version we recently have has some bugs...
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2003-02-06
| Re: Terra Nova
"Terra Nova vs. YAPE"? Now that's funny... I laughed out loud when I read your title, hehehe... So it's FF1F? I didn't see that, I only looked for the FF06 sets. That too must be difficult to emulate.
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-06
| Aaahh... I don't have time at the moment...
Anyway I tried them and they all loaded back properly?!
Wanna have a look at my version? Terra Nova.tap.rar (266 KB)
I'm not sure what you call "correctly"...
...I have some garbage during the game, too, adding to the vertical scrolling-bug...
...I think in the very top of the screen...
But I think the tape version is quite interesting, since at least mine is original, uncracked, from a bought tape. The D64 here is cracked.
And I don't think that the garbage is a halfwave-bug? I had no problems with the other halfwave-tapes, if I remember correctly...
The C16 version indeed has a garbage on the screen during loading but that might have to do something with the limited RAM capacity so certain parts are loaded to the screen memory.
Definitely not! Lando is right: I have got the C16 version of Terra Nova (damn! I hate C16 versions!), but it loads _without_ garbage on the original Plus/4! Only in Yape there's the garbage.
About that ANCO pack: I can't find a release date. If you'd like to have the cover scans, just tell me.
Just out of intrest can you check your Skramble to see if the Turbo matches the same as the original release from 1985 here on the site. Cheers.
How can I do that?
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-06
| Ok, heres the garbage during the game...
I've just made a screenshot of the garbage in the game. I think it's connected to the vertical scrolling bug very closely.
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-06
| differences between the two Skramble TAPs
Hi again,
there is indeed one tiny difference between our two Skramble TAPs:
 
And that's no error! The "LOADING" looks like that on my real Plus/4 as well.
The Turbo Loader looks the same in both versions.
- What about the game itself? Is there a possibility to compare it byte-wise?
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-06
| Oops...
Yeah, great. I'm somewhat slow today. Here's my Skramble TAP: Skramble.tap.rar (37 KB)
It's very late here already (2:49), so please forgive me this chaos...
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2003-02-07
| Garbage in Terra Nova
The garbage during gameplay is caused by the incorrect $FF06+$FF1F emulation.
It has nothing to do with the TAP. The other phemomen realted to the garbage
during loading is indeed strange, I'll have a look later! Cheers!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2003-02-07
| Sure I would love to have a look,
But I can't extract .rar
About Skramble, all I wanted to know if the flashing Turbo bars/lines looked the same. Seeing as this was released later it might of used a different one, I imagined like Terra Nova and Pin Point
Have a look on the cassette for the copyright date. Yeah I would lov to see the cover
cheers,
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-07
| Skramble Turbo and Unrar
Hi again,
to unrar the files, use unrarw32.exe (135 kb), it's Freeware.
About the Turbo: I wrote The Turbo Loader looks the same in both versions., and I mean it. It looks perfectly the same.
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Posted By
Thomas
on 2003-02-07
| RAR vs. ZIP
I had to rar them, since the original TAP is 1538 KB big. And ZIP is very inferior to RAR, so I used RAR instead (266 KB vs. 399 KB). Sorry for the inconvenience!
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