So far I've been unsuccessful in copying out nma0.prg, editing it, and then writing the modified file back onto the disk image. The game refuses to enter the dungeon successfully using the altered disk image.
Darendor wrote:I want to try to figure out whether the special text size is pre-set or if we can modify them to make them longer/shorter.
We still need to figure out where the pointer code is for when the party steps on a special square.
A limitation of modifying the disk images directly is that we'll be stuck with whatever file sizes are originally stored on the disk. You can re-arrange the special text messages so that they had different lengths, but all the messages must add up to less (or peharps exactly the same) as the full set of messages for that level. So far.
For some reason your attempts to edit the text portion aren't getting saved.
So far, Star Commander is the only program I've found that will let me edit a file on a disk image directly, and with a minimum of fuss. Unfotunately, on Windows XP it seems to crash often. However, when I run it from within DOSBOX it works fine.
I'm going to try messing with the compatibility settings on XP to see if I can get it to stop crashing.
Horpner wrote:For some reason your attempts to edit the text portion aren't getting saved.
I think I figured out what's going wrong, because it just happened to me.
Make sure the disk image you are modifying is not running in the emulator when you xxd -r over the top of it. You can't write to a file when Vice has it open.
I dub our project "The Bard's Tale 8-Bit Builder Kit", version zero, alpha build.
Do you concur?
That's awesome!
So far, you just need tons of arcane knowledge, a bunch of weird programs, massive patience, and then it doesn't even do that much. But hey, release early and often, as they say..
