Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador If everything goes right now, we will present MoSII this weekend at the Revision in Saarbrücken. I think you will be pretty amazed, the game got a major liftup. If it is not possible to release it at Revision we will put it online within the next week(s) . And of course it gets a Psytronik release aswell.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador this is seriously, seriously great production. I played this today on real machine and I have to tell you that at some point I forgot that this machine doesn't have hw sprites. I can't pass the first level but the game is so kool I'll try again, and again...
technically wise when looking at this game I was thinking... is chuck rock I or II possible on c+4? IMO it is. ofcoz it will need many sacrifises here and there in terms of gfx but looking at Zador it is possible IMHO.
oh and one last thing. who is the guy responsible of the title screen? it's nice!
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador @luca I'm talking about the fullscreen pic. Read, or heard somewhere it is done by some comic book artist? was it on FB that somebody mentioned it...? or am I wrong?
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador I read the comments about the main sprite colors on Pouet. I think some of them still do not know what is the Plus/4: it is not a small C64, but a big VIC-20.
Technically speaking, game realization point of view the Plus/4 is closer to ZX Spectrum than to C64. (sprite handling is SW VS HW; color attribute clash VS floating spites over background; not to mention collision detection (SW VS HW) and foreground/background pixel logical handling). The multicolor 2 fixed colors make it slightly better, but I think MOS and AIT brough it to the possible maximum.
Still, ZX Spectrum has a great SW catalog, looks OK, despite evident color clashes. But transferring them to Plus/4 keeps the color clash as it was.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador MMS: What's the point of comparing platforms that have something in common and even more differences? The plus/4 is neither a big VIC20 nor a small C64. The plus/4's color palette outshines most other 8bit machines. Certain color restrictions exist even on bigger machines. And every machine's programmers have found some way to deal with it. Be it color clashes or clever raster interrupts or whatever.
Speccy's huge software catalogue has nothing to do with the Speccy being a better machine than the plus/4.
About the comments on Pouet: I do agree that the main character sticks a bit out – especially due to the amazingly colorful backgrounds. In my opinion that's partially because of the character's design and choice of colors (and less because of the technical limitations that apply): Rather big filled areas and somewhat "dull" colors. (Sometimes limitations ask for a certain design/character: I doubt that anyone would call the Last Ninja "flat" looking even if it's mainly black!) So yes, I think there's still some room for improvement but that's a tiny point compared to the overall achievement. It's an awesome game!
Some of the comments on YouTube were pretty lame because those people judged the scrolling by watching a video. Not even an emulator comes close enough to the real experience on original hardware. And yet, these people say that the plus/4 is obviously not a game machine. If they were right, we should consider removing this section: Games
Obviously, some of the people commenting on Pouet don't know the plus/4's software catalogue very much. Even some C16 (16kb that is) games have huge or at least big levels (e.g. Tom, Tube Runner, Xcellor8, Thrust, Molecule Man). Though, that doesn't make the levels in Zador less impressive.
On sprites and colors … Remember Degauss' small demo with priority checks? I know, games and demos are a different story but that's a concept I haven't seen applied in any game and it sure looked promising. So I do think there are still paths untravelled and there's life after MOS, AIT and MOS II
Anyway, thanks to all the people involved for bringing the Lands of Zador to our machines!
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Yes, these recent releases are fantastic. Hard to believe, that it required almost 30 years to realize fluent software sprite emulation on the C16.
I have only very few games in my mind from the historical ones (not converted) that made it pretty well without major color clashes: Magicians Curse, Trailblazer, Bongo, Zylon. (I also liked the way Auf wiedersehen Monty managed sprites). I know it is not easy. You may list more... (Certainly the newer games like Quadrillion or the converted ones are more advanced then the average historical ones).
Thanks for the programmers for the great stuffs we get!
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Mh, we're mixing and stirring several different concepts here. I'm with most of the Chicken's arguments he brilliantly did express into his post. In addition to that, I would like to point out that Mad has played with the conditional colour clash in this game: Kate's sprite sustains colour clashing only when the author decides to actually use it (behind waterfalls, into magma pits, when enlightened by a light from below.
This sounds obviously partially unrelated to what Chicken refers to, but it helps me to connect to another clarification I feel I've to remind: both games run in double buffered bitmap, not in charmode, where the management of the reduced clashes results to be far more easy to apply. Double buffered bitmap means you've to burn off _as minimum_ 20K only to display the game: MMS, that's the reason why we'd to wait 30 years to accomplish a goal like this, simply because there had been absolutely not one single specimen of "original 64K effort" on the 264 series. I added "original" in order to cut out all the conversions from C64 like ACE or Mercenary. This is a typical Lamarckian kind of evolution: if the market would have casted a need during those times, we would had been able to play a The Lands Of Zador years and years before
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Ah if you want, in a moment
EDIT: after you request, I've immediately moved on to refresh HVTC. All the new stuff is just in, but there are sometexts and links I'm not able to edit, since the renewal of HVTC's page, so I've to wait Csabo's spare time. Give us a dozen hours and we''l do that ;)
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Yes.. The cover artwork is done by Nero (with a painting by Helge), and thus The lands of Zador is already visible in the psytronik shop http://www.psytronik.net/newsite/index.php/plus4/76-majesty-2.. Have fun!!!
[edit] And by the way: here is the repository of all "The lands of Zador" data and code and editors free to modify or whatever: https://github.com/kosmonautdnb/TheLandsOfZador.. Just in case that it could be useful for whatever.. :)
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Reactivating this old thread just to announce the grand re-opening at Psytronik just after the summer holidays, with The Lands Of Zador now available in the classic premium/budget formats, here.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Hey Baz,
the flickering of the loader is normal if you do use disc drive devices not supported by the loader.
The error looks like there was something loaded wrong into the memory.
The best way to let the game run is from a 1541II which is the standard drive supported by the loader. Tests with 1551 and SD2IEC have been confirmed to work well, too, but they do the screen flickering (they rely on the internal bios loading).
If you do have the time, you could try to copy the game to a physical floppy. I am not sure what sort of drive you use there and my assumption would be that the bios loading of this devices loads the data somehow different to e.g. the SD2IEC (or is it a SD2IEC?).
The loader should support the following drives natively (the loading doesn't flicker then): native support for 1541, 1541-C, 1541-II, 1570, 1571, 1571CR, 1581, CMD FD
There should be no issue with a C16 with 64k at all, the game should work normally on this setup. It was tested already on C16s with 64k. As said I would suggest, that it's a loader problem and some memory was loaded corruptly from the "disc".
I just looked into the code and the data for the textscreens should be loaded along with the other leveldata, which is already displayed corretly. So I just have no clue, what did go wrong at your setup. Another idea would be that the memory somewhere beyond $3000 is not working correctly, but let's hope that this is not the case.
Perhaps some devices are supported differently by the bios. Sadly I can't support every device, since there is literally not one single byte left anymore.
If you don't mind, I would give copying to a real disc a try.
edit: perhaps you could check if other levels do have the same bug. The passwords for the levels can be found in the forum at The lands of Zador. the secondlevel password for instance is: "CASTLY". And it would be really great if it also could run at your setup.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador I copied it over to a real floppy, I use the 1541-II drive. No errors on the disk reported.
Tried it again on my C16 via the floppy on my 1541-II drive. Totally unplugged my Princess SD64 device too. No flickering with the fastloader, but getting the same problem with the game crashing even on the second level. It happens whenever you pull down on one of those stone tablets (or whatever it is). Damn
My C16 is internally upgraded, not using an expansion cartridge. Is there anyway it could cause some kind of conflict?
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Hello Baz!
I really don't know where the problem resides. There should be everything right with the setup you described.
I don't know about memcheck tools for the plus/4, however I would give testing the memory around $3000 - $3800 a try, that's where the texts gets decrunched to. I just tried it with yape and xplus4 and a non loader compatible setting, and everything worked as expected. Perhaps this link helps:
If it doesn't then buying the version from Psytronik clearly makes no sense.
It's very sad to hear.. And I don't know anything to get around this bug.. Hope it's not too embarassing.
All what I know is that a C16 with 64K behaves almost 100% like a Plus/4, there where never incompatibilities spotted. That's all whats told to me. (And it ran in test on other C16s already)
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Tried the latest version you just gave me, same problem. Drat. Just my rotten luck to own the only machine to misbehave.
I have no idea how to run a memcheck on my internally expanded C16. Perhaps you or someone else may enlighten me with an idiot guide.
Maybe there's a problem with one of my chips or internal memory upgrade, looking likely. It may look like I will need to acquire either an unexpanded C16 and use my 16 To 64 external expansion cartridge with that, or play safe and buy a Plus/4.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Here is a simple basic program which should test the memory from $3000 till $8000.. You should let it run from 12288 to 32768 if it doesn't stop with executing then everything is alright with this memory area. Perhaps let it run a second loop from 12288 again (it never stops, so just let it run till it loops for a second time).. If the error isn't there then it must be somewhere else, perhaps something with the higher area. But then I wonder why the level is displayed correctly.
the program tests from 12288 ($3000) and if it reached around 15000 then it is already pretty save that everything should work fine just let it run a little longer to be sure.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Yes, everything is fine with it. Seems that atleast the memory from $3000 till $8000 is ok.. I am out of clues about this problem.. But fine to know, that the memory there is fine.. If some other people had reported this, too it would be different. Perhaps some other people have some ideas about this. Your memory expansion seem to work correctly. (The number is 12288 + 64, which is fine)
Do you have done some other modifications except this memoryexpansion?
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Someone else from the Lemon64 forum kindly modded my C16 to 64k including heatsinking it. To my knowledge no other modifications were made. It's a bit of an enigma
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador I just wait if other people have ideas about this.. Sadly can't help anymore :|.. Perhaps the best is to wait and don't buy the disc..
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Buying the disc is definitely on hold for the timebeing. It's the only game I have problems with so far, other 64k games are playing just fine, so far. Just played Gunfright and more noticeably the original Majesty Of Sprites without any issues.
Seeing as you used all available memory for Zador, I can only guess that it has picked up on an internal hardware error somewhere in my machine which other games so far has (un)fortunately missed. Perhaps someone here will figure out what it could be.
A pity as I was really looking forward to playing this one. The rest of the game seems to work fine. It's just that part of the game it crashes on. -------------------- P.S. Incidentally I just had another minor issue with your other game Slipstream using my SD2iec. It froze just before the game began on this double image. Fortunately this time around, copying it over to a real floppy worked and was able to play the game fine with no issues. Dunno if that's an SD2iec issue or just down to my setup.
So, again just tried copying Zador to another disk with another copy method (although the last time it reported no errors. Nope. Still no luck. This could end up being costly if I need to send it away for fixing as I'm clueless when it comes to electronic repairs and soldering.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Regarding Zador, I am sorry for that (just have no more clues, what to do..). Slipstream uses also the complete memory, but there are some sd2iec fixes in this release (but the image flickering will stay): http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=69108 just at the download section perhaps this works! Have a good day and all the best!
edit: And if someone could help with the c16 64k issue I would be grateful. All that was told to me was that a C16 with 64K behaves exactly like a Plus/4.
edit2: Baz, is the image you posted the real one from your ram (64k) expansion. Perhaps it's worth a try to find out the specs of it. Eventually there is some strobe register, which I wrote to and infact shouldn't.. degauss pointed me to that issue.. Can you write down the real naming of the ram expansion? perhaps it's worth a try!
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Well it's just a 64k ram chip hauled from a Plus/4 heatsinked into my C16 so I was told. They're all real images taken from my machine.
I'm not that techy, do you need the specs of the actual chip? They all look alike to me once I open the C16, although I'll give it a go.
Incidentally, I know a Plus/4 sometimes has issues with certain C16 games. Maybe the same can be said the other way around?
Does the original MOS use all available memory too? I get no issues with that game.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador So if it's just a real heatsinked chip, then it should run anyways. I thought perhaps you used some memory expansion cartridge or something (you wrote already that it was heatsinked and no cartridge at all). MOS doesn't use as much memory as Zador, however this shouldn't be a problem here. I never heard of incompatibilities between both computers..
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador I do have a 64k memory expansion cartridge but have no use for it at present as my machine is already internally modded to 64k. Clearly there seems to be some conflict for me somewhere with the new code added to MOS when writing Zador. It is a mystery.
Was Zador definitely tested on real C16's which has been internally modded to 64k, also on any unmodded C16's with a 64k cartridge expansion? Not just tested via PC emulation. Can anyone here clarify whether it works or not on their real expanded C16's or C116, let us know if it crashes with garbled writing when you pull down on tne stone tablet thing, and tell us what kind of 64k expansion they have?
Edit: I now strongly suspect that there is an issue with my C16. Xzap is playing me up now. Both in loading from a .tap file and original cassette, and also the .prg file. I may move this convo over in a new separate topic soon. But if anyone can confirm whether Zador runs on a real C16+64k (not emulation such as yape) without issues, that'd be great.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador I don't think it's a C16 vs plus/4 issue, unless the code somehow implicitly relies on some ACIA registers (if memory serves it did occur to a few titles that depacking failed on expanded C16's because of this). I know Murphy has one and I have one as well but I need to find a working power adapter first... so I hope others can be quicker
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Well, I've been quiet on this thread, cause I don't know much about the hardware, but I've been in touch with Baz and we run into a similar issue. He couldn't run Pac-Pac; crashed some time during unpacking. So, first good news: it's definitely not Zador! (Sorry if this has already been established.)
I sent him an unpacked version of Pac-Pac for testing. It's from $1001-$FD00, so full RAM. The thing is, Baz reported that right after LOAD the screen got garbled and the machine needed a reset (after which the game worked fine, more or less). But this is already weird. The LOAD command is basically KERNAL, and it should not really do anything odd that would make a difference on a C16 with 64K versus a Plus/4.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador -Zero page is heavily used by kernal routines. -C16 and Plus/4 had a difference there, although C16 should provide more free space than the Plus/4. Not to logical to cause anything, but a difference.
No speech module ("tragic voice") added by Baz? (just asking)
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Well the normal compressed version of Pac-Pac won't run at all. But with the unpacked version of Pac-Pac which Csabo sent me, it freezes after a while during loading so I have to then reset/runstop it and start the game with G1010. Obviously there's an internal problem which prevents this particular game from loading normally for me. I can still play the game fine, but when the game ends and asks me to input my initials for the high-score, the game totally freezes, except for the music which plays at near infinite speed. All I can then do is reset/runstop the game and run the game again with G1010 (RETURN) to get back to the title screen and play again. I have to repeat the same step each time, to begin a new game.
Anyway, Csabo has also just sent me a memcheck routine he wrote for me to run which checks the whole memory from $1000 to $FCFF. If it stops with a green border, all is fine. If a red border, then whatever address it displays on the screen has a problem.
My test stopped with a red border, at memory address $F910
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Sad to hear. The packed textscreens of Zador are placed in the first level from $f6bc to $fa50. So they hit $f910. I should have checked the whole mem, too. Thanks to Csabo. Now atleast it is not a "Zador" C16 issue. Baz, hope you can fix your c16! Would be nice to hear that it's working again!
Edit: Perhaps the memcheck tool should be placed in the tools section. I didn't found a "tool" to do this here.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Thanks Mad. Glad it's not a problem with your game itself, but leaves me with an expensive problem as I am clueless with a soldering iron, lol.
So, what's the issue do you all think? What needs replacing?
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador From what I know you should replace one ram chip, perhaps it would be the easiest to replace all. If someone knows which ram belongs to $f910 that would be even better.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Well Csabo advised me to check further thsn $F910 for anymore errors. Definitely memory locations $F910-$F91F showed up red. All went green after that, although from $F920 up until $F99F, it crashed freezing with garbage yet still a green border. It worked normally again from $FA00 onwards to $FCFF which is the end of the RAM. Weird.
I did try the memcheck from $FD00 onwards and border started showing up red. I guess that's normal due to being outside the RAM, maybe.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Yes! $FD00 onwards are "system registers". I would suspect the ram for this issue (with $f910 and so on). However I am also not into hardware electronics by myself.
edit: Perhaps it's worth checking for the corrupted bits at $f910. To do that type: poke63760,0 and then printpeek(63760). Notify the number shown on the screen and then do: poke63760,255 and then printpeek(63760). The two printed numbers are of interest. Perhaps you get different numbers and we can see which bits are corrupted. Perhaps you can do both steps then a second time and if the numbers are the same we can see which bits are permanently corrupt. I know it's somehow possible to map the corrupt bits to a defective ram unit. And perhaps the same procedure with 63761 (so we know from two memory locations which bits are corrupted).
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Finally gotten around to trying to resolve this.
I tried changing both mm41464p-12 ram chips for new ones, same error.
I then removed those chips entirely and booted it up via my 64k ram cartridge. Zador is still corrupted, Slipstream and Pets Rescue doesn't work too. I then ran that memory test program csabo gave me without the chips in, and the cartridge plugged in. Same error at $F910.
Photo of my socketed C16+64k board. My 64k ram cartridge.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Trying to find one which doesn’t bankrupt me, and works. I would like this one working though as it is socketed.
Nobody has any idea?
Edit: It has this chip. C318004-05 It states: This 16KB chip contains the KERNAL. It's mapped to the high area ($C000-$FFFF) in the ROM.
Could that be corrupted? Or should I be using the rev4 version for an upgraded C16? C318004-04
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Hi Baz,
It won't be a dodgy ROM. Given you swapped the RAMs with no effect, I'm wondering if it's a capacitor issue on the board. Has it been re-capped?
It would be good to know if you're seeing stuck bits at those locations, or bit decay. Have you tried manually poking in values and reading back, several times?
Cheers, Doug
PS: what's puzzling me is the address. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador You’re talking to someone with no knowledge of such things. No idea what recapping is. If it is a capacitor issue then I’m probably at a loss. No idea what to look for.
How will poking and peeking values at the error locations determine things?
I might send it to a dealer for repair then, probably work out cheaper than buying another C16. Plus I’d prefer to have a socketed upgraded C16. Sorry for hijacking this thread again. It just all began with not being able to enjoy this game.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador No worries! It's not really my area either - I try to keep well away from soldering irons! Recapping == replace the (electrolytic) capacitors. They die over time, and can cause weird effects. It's quite simple (so I've been told - never done it!).
Examination of the data in memory over time would show if it's got bits stuck on/off (maybe a short? Dead RAM cell), or the value written starts off ok, but then decays away: could be caps, or refresh issue (dead TED?)
You can usually learn something from the address, but yours is very odd! Best bet is probably get it to a pro.
Re: Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador Well I feel stupid now.
I just purchased another upgraded socketed C16 on fleabay, one with a 16k/64k mode switch at the back, and the game works. It must be some capacitor issue going on then.
Anyway, finally got a chance to play this little gem. Long time in coming but fabulous work guys. This game is huge.
If it helps, you can delete all my irrelevant distracting posts about my wonky machine. Keep it about this game only. I should really have made a separate topic for this. Sorry about that.
Majesty of Sprites II the lands of Zador
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We did it, in the very end! 
