C64 - A Bard's Tale version with cheats? (semi-tape)

[Twoflower]

Ponder the following - very hypothethical - scenario:

First of all - imagine that someone would get the idea to make a disk-version out of this game (Bard's Tale 64, tape version). Nothing would really be souped-up from the tape-version save for the fact that it would load from and save to disk. One diskside actually - and quite quickly.

Even if the engine and the game itself would be quite unaltered (due to the fact that the tape-version is quite hard to change - partly due to very little available memory and partly due to the amazing, charpacked scripting) there would be some openings to add a little bit of this and that to the engine - cheats which you would enable on the start of each session.

Now imagine that the common stuff - enemies never cause physical damage, enemies never cause magical / breath damage and unlimited use for items - would be covered. What would the next step be?

What (not too complex) cheats would you like to see in such a version?

Enchanting certain types of weapons would be doable, start the game with a stylish, summoned/bound monster (Mangar Guard? Jabberwock? Gimp? Lich?) would be doable, etc. Forcing Mangar to disco-dance while the bard plays the additional bard-tune "Stayin' Alive" is not doable.

[Darendor]

I would think the following might be good cheat ideas:

- PHDO & APAR always work, regardless of dungeon level settings
- Always run from battle, no matter with who/what
- Ignore labyrinth hazards such as:
a) Smoke in your eyes!
b) Darkness!
c) Hitpoint leech zones
d) Magic point leech zones
e) Anti-magic squares

Those are a couple off the top of my head, kind of like "debug" features.

[Flanimal]

Those are some GREAT suggestions. I would love to roam the dungeons with a permanent GRRE spell, which would also always reveal magic doors.

Maybe also lose the spinners.

It would be great if one way doors were visibly distinguishable from ordinary doors.

Maybe make sure that that Mangar killed is never set, or even better, create a new Scara Brea level if Mangar is killed, where all is well.

[Twoflower]

Maybe also lose the spinners.

Yes - the spinners must die. Same goes for most of Darendors suggestions, though some of them might be a bit hard to implement. PHDO / APAR would be a matter of ignoring the results of the check. Smoke, Darkness, Spinners and the rest of the square-specific features demand a little bit more work.

[Darendor]

The PHDO/APAR cheat thing would be simply setting the flag in memory to 0 or 1, as I recall from Zerozero's work back in the summer of 2010.

[Darendor]

Code: Select all

$0413 = PHDO
$040A - $0411 = APAR; FF = APAR disabled; 00 = APAR enabled

[ZeroZero]

It were easier to patch the regarding dungeon files on the disks,
if you permanently wanted APAR and/or PHDO on or off.

As for APAR: the flags are set for all levels belonging to a dungeon set.
Each dungeon file contains certain information about all levels of it.
Only that way a teleport to a locked level can be prevented.

[Twoflower]

Code: Select all

$0413 = PHDO
$040A - $0411 = APAR; FF = APAR disabled; 00 = APAR enabled

This would not be the case for the tape-version - i'll have to try to find it manually. Are there any easily reachable PHDO or APAR-disabled areas in some easily accessible dungeon such as the Catacombs or Harkyn's Castle?

@ZeroZero:

That'd be the best solution if you wanted a permanent switch. What i'm looking for is a temporary one, one which you can choose to turn on/off at every game-start. But - come to think of it - the dungeon data looks much the same in the disk/tape version. I'll check where that general information is stored in the disk dungeon-files and compare it.

[Flanimal]

Code: Select all

$0413 = PHDO
$040A - $0411 = APAR; FF = APAR disabled; 00 = APAR enabled

This would not be the case for the tape-version - i'll have to try to find it manually. Are there any easily reachable PHDO or APAR-disabled areas in some easily accessible dungeon such as the Catacombs or Harkyn's Castle?

If you load my c64 tape mega party, then you can waltz right into Kylearan's Tower as they have the key.

[Twoflower]

If you load my c64 tape mega party, then you can waltz right into Kylearan's Tower as they have the key.

Wasn't needed. Harkyn's Level 2 was both PHDO and APAR locked, so testing it out there worked like a charm - bypassing the two routines in question was quite easy. I'm quite glad that I made this little test-trip to Harkyn's though - in my attempts to prevent evil, offensive magic to strike my poor vanilla ATEAM I have also managed to thwart the evil, offensive magic from my own wizards. Fail. :-/

While fighting, I also remembered how much I hate withering, poisoning and the other special effects some high-level monsters are blessed with. Costs a fortune to heal too. Disabling that feels even more important than nullifying monster damage. Oh, and I discovered a quite funny thing - the level of random monsters are constantly kept as a value in zeropage. If you tamper with that value, you could actually make the entire game way easier or way harder - with other words, if you tamper with the writes to this value, you could choose to play the game on BEGINNER / INTERMEDIATE / HARD. It'd look a bit like this:

Code: Select all

EASY:  00 00 01 02 03 04 05 06
MEDM:  00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 (standard in the unmodified game)
HARD:  01 02 03 04 05 06 07 07

The reason for not passing 07 is that it'll revert to 0 again. But random encounters Level 07 is only encountered at Mangar level 4 and 5, so that'll still make it hard enough as it is. Playing it on EASY would naturally generate way less XP as the monsters you fight are of lower level, etc.

[Darendor]

Code: Select all

$0413 = PHDO
$040A - $0411 = APAR; FF = APAR disabled; 00 = APAR enabled

This would not be the case for the tape-version - i'll have to try to find it manually. Are there any easily reachable PHDO or APAR-disabled areas in some easily accessible dungeon such as the Catacombs or Harkyn's Castle?

@ZeroZero:

That'd be the best solution if you wanted a permanent switch. What i'm looking for is a temporary one, one which you can choose to turn on/off at every game-start. But - come to think of it - the dungeon data looks much the same in the disk/tape version. I'll check where that general information is stored in the disk dungeon-files and compare it.

Level 2 of Harkyn's Castle is APAR/PHDO disabled.

[Twoflower]

Level 2 of Harkyn's Castle is APAR/PHDO disabled.

Yup, that's exactly what I used - as written above.

@ZeroZero:

Do you have any idea where the value/percentage of "running away" from a battle is stored in the disk-version? Or even better, how the chance is calculated? I think I have understood how to circumvent the withered, stone, psnd statuses from that wonderful Item thread, but I could well use some input on that one as well.

[ZeroZero]

The whole fight is handled in the disk version in a subroutine
at mem address $0893. Within that routine the program checks
all menu options. If a party could successfully run away, that
routine sets the zp var $4b to 1, when LEAVING the routine.
WITHIN the routine this flags indicates the number of enemies
remaining (if I recall right).
To find the call to a check for a successful run, you must disassemble
this routine and find, where the menu choice "R" is handled.

[Twoflower]

Kind of a let-down with the last days meddling - yet not.

* I located the routine and memorylocations which directs the amount of enemies, enemy hitpoints and so on. Unfortunatly, success in running away seems to be calculated before the choice even sets in. If I savestate the game and continue, the results are constantly the same. Either you succeed or fail, depending on the precalculated result seeded prior to the Fight / Run-screen is shown. Haven't given it up yet though.

* Offensive magic is till either all on or all off as the damagevalue is written to the same zeropagevalue whether it is party- or enemy magic.

* What I have found is (possibly) free healing at the temples and the option to remove the special effects from monster-attacks (turning to stone, inflicting insanity, withering, critical strike etc.).

Let's see what the future turns up.

[Darendor]

I'm ready to go back to the future with ya. All we need is a source of 1.21 Gigawatts....