Project X: Special Edition 2.0

[earok]

Are both of them in tosec? I could do a binary compare. I know that there's an issue booting F17 on at least one version (need to put the disc in after booting the console)

Edit: Project now has a canonical home: http://earok.net/game/project-x-special-edition-2017

Edit 2: I own version 2.0 of the double pack, which still seems to have the bug where you can't play F17 challenge unless you boot the "rainbow screen" and then put the disc in

[ross]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Nice work earok and ross128b!!!

<in fact ross; I'm going to ask RCK to change your memebership name>

thanks but i'm more comfortable with only "ross"

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

I love Apidya and agree it is often over looked but i feel this game too falls foul of the did and your fucked situation. Loss of levels of power ups over a couple of lives and you quickly cant kill enemies

Apidya has many recoverable spots to be honest. On my original comment I was going to comment that many great games has at least one of the flaws, but none has ALL the possible flaws

Gradius games are awesome but nearly all of them suffer from the same problem. I've seen people losing like 15 lives one after the other on the SAME SPOT on Gradius III after losing the 1st one because of that shit, it's almost like extra lives are useless

[DamienD]

Slap Fight suffers from this

[zzbylu]

Gameplay on YT:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Neil79]

[Lord Riton]

Originally Posted by zzbylu

Gameplay on YT:
[ Show youtube player ]

This is so bad looking at full screen. Maybe use a filter to make it look like it was on an old TV.

.. i miss old TVs !!..

[NeoHippie2016]

@Earok:i don't know. But I know is, that in December i would upload both Versions incl Scans and more amiga stuff (Tools, Utilities, Games,...) some of it are hard or very hard to find...Please be Patient. It is a lot of work to Scan all the Cover and Disks or CDs...

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Slap Fight suffers from this

Even worse than any Gradius game IMO Still a great game.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Gradius games are awesome but nearly all of them suffer from the same problem.

Yeah I was gonna say, all Gradius games are so lauded as some of the best shmups ever,m but lose ONE life and you are fucked, game over.
That's at least 3 series ruined: Gradius, Salamander and Parodius. Am I missing any? Wait, you know, Twinbee can also be a bit like this. Damn you Konami.

I love in general how they are/work, but this flaw makes me not play them very often. It's really terrible.

[AmigaBill]

Played it on my A1200 today, and it is awesome! Earock for president!!!

[jotd]

Project-X SE doesn't have "die once and you're toast" syndrome. You just lose 1 power up per weapon, not all, like Project-X.

But yes, it cannot compete with Japanese shmups. 1 type of enemy at a time for instance. Dull...
Z-Out is waaay better: euro, 2 player game, hard but doable until level 5, that's the best euro shmup IMHO (not to mention the good graphics & playability & Chris H. music even during the game which PX doesn't have)

[earok]

I've had a few requests for an ADF version for Gotek users but it might be a little too hard for me - does anyone else want to jump in and have a look?

I did some preliminary investigation (using the Ministry crack as a base), the executables are stored as imploder files so patching them seems relatively straight forward (and indeed I was able to patch the menu executable on the Ministry Crack to list all five levels). But where I got stuck was this: the code for jumping to a level seems to be quite different between CD32 and floppy releases.

Originally the CD32 code for that part seemed to be like this:

- Have we selected level 1? branch to level 1
- Have we selected level 2? Assign a few variables (presumably ship load out) and then branch to level 2
- Have we selected level 3? Assign a few variables (presumably ship load out) and then branch to level 3

Since the code for assigning the variables was duplicated, that gave me space to change it like this:

- Have we selected level 1? branch to level 1
- Assign variables (for ship loadout?)
- Have we selected level 5? branch to level 5
- Have we selected level 4? branch to level 4
- Have we selected level 3? branch to level 3
- We MUST have selected level 2, so branch there.

But again, since the code for this stuff seems to be quite different in the floppy release (I have not studied this yet), I'm not quite sure how to patch it to functionally work the same. If someone else wants to take over - great - otherwise I may take another look at it in the future.


An alternative and extremely lazy way may be to spread the CD32 files across floppies, copy them all to RAM: on boot and run from there. You'd need a lot of RAM obviously, but disk swapping wouldn't be required afterwards.


Edit: Aahh.. the code isn't so different after all, just seems to be that the CD32 version uses offsets based on the PC, whereas the Floppy version uses absolute memory addresses.. I can likely work it out, I just need a block of time to work on it. But of course the offer's still stands for anyone who can do the job quicker and better.

[Shatterhand]

Yeah I was gonna say, all Gradius games are so lauded as some of the best shmups ever,m but lose ONE life and you are fucked, game over.
That's at least 3 series ruined: Gradius, Salamander and Parodius. Am I missing any? Wait, you know, Twinbee can also be a bit like this. Damn you Konami.

My hi-score on the NES version of Twinbee is higher than 3 million and I had lot of recoveries on that game

But yes, it cannot compete with Japanese shmups. 1 type of enemy at a time for instance. Dull...
Z-Out is waaay better: euro, 2 player game, hard but doable until level 5, that's the best euro shmup IMHO (not to mention the good graphics & playability & Chris H. music even during the game which PX doesn't have)

Z-Out, Apidya, Uridium 2, Swiv, Silkworm, R-Type, R-Type 2, Dragon Breed, ST Dragon, Hybris, Battle Squadron, Mega Typhoon are all good shmups on Amiga that are way better than Project-X (even though some of those are arcade ports). I'm even inclined to say Disposable Hero is also a better game than Project-X.

[earok]

I've just zoned an ADF version (Ministry Crack). Like the HDD/CD32 based editions, it features:

- No waggle weapon select
- All five levels accessible from menu
- Level five can be played on rookie

This is NOT thoroughly tested, so I'm considering it a beta just for now please let me know if there are any issues.

Edit: Well, ADF edition seems to work on real hardware.. this guy is happy that he can start on the third level right from boot

[ransom1122]

Tested ADF's on WINUAE & AMIBERRY (Raspberry Pie) all working perfectly as far as I can tell. Works well with 3 disks attached to 3 disk drives (No disk swaps required)

[earok]

Great stuff thanks ransom!

[breech]

I would prefer this version to be converted - Project-X (Europe) (v2.0) (Disk 1).ipf

Old-timer mode is intact (alt music!)
Has the newer death penalty
2 button mode built in
Probably all the original levels (4 disk)
Improved compatibility (a1200)

I think the SE version was just a disk count reduction where they shortened levels and removed music. Note, both non SE versions don't have the purple loading image.