Federation of free traders stream

[copse]

I've always wanted to see more of Federation of Free Traders, but I kind of prefer to watch others play games than play them myself. Longplays, streams and what not. But no-one seems to do this game, so I am going to try and play it myself for as long as I can.

Not a streamer. But I'll stream it on Twitch in case anyone else wants to help me play. Doing it now, will start by reading the manual.

https://www.twitch.tv/zachary_hutton

[copse]

Okay, here's what 3 hours got me.

• You start off in station and see presumably the docking bay doors.
• You press F8 for the ships computer. Then type "net" to get galnet.
• The first time you use it, it tells you to enter "help" as your user name.
• You then enter your name and it gives you a number. This number is your id and is used to log in next time.
• Now as the manual instructs (atari one appears to be on fileserver as zipped pdf) you press "t" to transmit, and enter "foft" for who you are transmitting to.
• It will request a mission. When it shows the mission do not press anything because if you do, the mission instructions will disappear and you will just get told you already have a mission next time.
• This could be courier. It could be patrol. It could be take a message. It is randomised. It might be close or it might be up to 150 space distances away.
• You only start with 50 fuel units and your ship can only hold 100. These cost 1 credit per fuel unit.
• Type "q" to leave galnet, then "quit" to leave the ships computer. This will put you back at the docking bay.
• Press F6 for the navigation system. It will show you a line from where you are to where your mission is. This is very useful because if you lose that line, you will never find the dot that has the name specified in your mission. Trust me, I lost the line the first time and looked for ages for the right random word name.
• Map zooming is on a numeric keypad. If you don't have one and are using WinUAE like me, then you have to do some rebinding for that and other keys. I have a logitech 3d pro joystick so rebound some of the buttons to missing keys.
• In order to lock a destination in you press enter when it is selected. If it is outside your fuel range the enter key will do nothing. So time to start looking at the planets that are in range along the way. Press d to see the details of the selected planet, then try and work out what that means for the goods you need to buy to sell there. I saw a planet with no water and bought agricultural goods and got there to find they were cheaper. ?
• Press space to get out of the system detail view. Press space to get out of the navigation computer back to the docking bay view. The pressing of space is unlike a lot of other things very clearly documented in the manual.
• Press backspace to undock.
• Left control increases speed, left alt decreases speed. If you locked a destination in, in the navigation computer you press h to enter hyperspace. You should be near the station you undocked from, I recommend finding it on the radar to get familiar with these things.
• At this point I press h and hyperspace engages and I end up in another system. You move the joystick around and there is an indicator of directional arrows in the bottom left of the 3D view once you are within camera direction of the planet. This indicator will point you to the planet you need to get close to.
• When you get the planet in your sights, it turns from the arrows to a coloured wavey indicator I think. At this point make sure your speed is full (~153) and then press j for time jump or something.
• Maybe it works, maybe it seems to work, maybe sometimes it does, maybe sometimes it doesn't. It might also depend on how well you have the wavey thing aligned. It seems really unreliable to me.
• So you eventually jump towards the planet, then you maybe have to realign the arrows to get the wavey thing, and when you are close enough it tells you you need to visit the station for immigration before approaching the planet.
• Now you need to know how to read the radar. The manual tells you white vertical bar for station, reddish dot of the white bar on top is above you, bottom is below. The triangle is field of view. So presumably you want as close as just a dot in your field of view.
• I really struggled with this. There's radar zoom in and out (F9 and F10) and a docking system available indicator on the left of the center of the top of the screen.
• One time I must have gotten close enough but couldn't for the life of me see the station. But the docking light changed, so I pressed D and the ship turned in a random direction and docked.

The latest review on LemonAmiga says "A brilliant idea really badly implemented. Hidden amongst all the jank is a better game than Elite, but you need a whole lot of patience to find it."

At this point I either am terminally untalented or this is generally unplayable. I would kill for an instructional youtube video that showed me how to use the radar. I might experiment with landing on a planet and call it a day. There's probably a reason there's no longplays or people actually playing this game on youtube.

Further thoughts:

• I am not sure why, but the joystick required me to give it a yank to get the 3D view to change. Maybe I need to up the sensitivity. Or maybe it's FOFT jank.
• The planet arrow indicator is interesting in the sense that it's a early prelude to later 3D space game indicators. Let's say we look at EVE online, out of view objects of interest had indicators that moved around the screen border and you could use these to find the object. As you got the object on screen the indicator would move on screen with the object.
• It took me a while to work out how to map joystick buttons to keys my laptop was missing. There were mentions that this was not well known or documented. You can't add buttons to the detected joystick you put in a port in the Game Ports in WinUAE. You need to select a custom entry in the port. Then remap each of the listed joystick controls to joystick usage, then you can add more events like "help key" and remap that to extreme 3d joystick button 8 for instance. I mapped help and del for navigation system zoom, and some other keys from the manual. [ Show youtube player ].
• The music is fantastic. The manual from the file server says you can press help in flight and a prompt will have you insert the music disk with the 20 songs. All the Amiga disk images (and for that matter the ST one) on the file server are one disk. ??

[Captain_ Kal]

It's been a very long time since I played it, but you can get a lot of money, by "cornering" the market:

You can buy something, any commodity, until there is no more of it, and then you can resell back all of it, for profit.

I am not sure why, but the joystick required me to give it a yank to get the 3D view to change. Maybe I need to up the sensitivity. Or maybe it's FOFT jank.

The Logitech 3d pro, is an analog joystick, and the game expects a digital one. You might want to play around with the dead zone, to emulate a digital one.

The music is fantastic. The manual from the file server says you can press help in flight and a prompt will have you insert the music disk with the 20 songs. All the Amiga disk images (and for that matter the ST one) on the file server are one disk. ??

I bought the physical box, back in the 80's (unfortunately I think I've lost it), and the game came, in one disk. But it also included an audio tape, with the game's music. There was no other soundtrack!!

I might also give it a try, this week!! I am spending my time on Gunship 2000!!!!!

[copse]

Originally Posted by Captain_ Kal

It's been a very long time since I played it, but you can get a lot of money, by "cornering" the market:

You can buy something, any commodity, until there is no more of it, and then you can resell back all of it, for profit.

In an ideal world I'd try and do loads based on demand. But if there's no way to discern how to sell enough to pay for travel, then either doing this or hacking the game to have unlimited fuel might be the way to go.

Originally Posted by Captain_ Kal

The Logitech 3d pro, is an analog joystick, and the game expects a digital one. You might want to play around with the dead zone, to emulate a digital one.

Thanks! This is invaluable. I haven't used a joystick since playing Amiga 500 games back in the 90's.

Originally Posted by Captain_ Kal

I bought the physical box, back in the 80's (unfortunately I think I've lost it), and the game came, in one disk. But it also included an audio tape, with the game's music. There was no other soundtrack!!

I might also give it a try, this week!! I am spending my time on Gunship 2000!!!!!

Interesting. So maybe the ST version had 2 disks. I just gave it a quick try and mapped the help key in to F1 and undocked. No music menu or disk request.

If you do, please give me any pointers about how you manage to go from having a blip on the radar to seeing the object on screen. Not being able to do that makes quite a bit of the game harder than it needs to be.

Hope you are enjoyin Gunship 2000!

[copse]

Exotica has 19 tracks (not the 20 the Atari manual makes note of). HOL also notes that the UK release had a tape of the tracks.

The HOL manual is also the same as on the file server, the ST manual. Whether this is because they didn't bother customising it for the Amiga, or because it's the only one anyone bothered to scan.. is unclear. The reference to the "Alternate" and "Undo" keys are tells, but I am pretty sure I read Atari in there somewhere. If it is possible to access alternate tracks, it'll need the Amiga manual or some debugging.

Atari Legend both quotes the manual about the HELP key and the music disk, and also states "audio tape included". Atari Mania shows photos of a two disk release, although there's no note on the second saying "music disk". My assumption would be that the manual is correct and that this second disk for the ST release is a music disk, but it'd need confirmation by someone with a copy if anyone really cared.

[copse]

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see in FoFT. This appears to be Pico8 Elite port with target markers.

https://twitter.com/jamesedge/status...01941504143364

[Belgarath]

The 19 audio tracks are accessible on the Amiga version and are present on the game disk. I pressed page down (Help) when in dock and the tracks came up. Interestingly, this didn't seem to work with the WHDLoad version as it asked for the game disk to be put in df0:.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Belgarath

The 19 audio tracks are accessible on the Amiga version and are present on the game disk. I pressed page down (Help) when in dock and the tracks came up. Interestingly, this didn't seem to work with the WHDLoad version as it asked for the game disk to be put in df0:.

the whdload has to be fixed

[copse]

Originally Posted by Belgarath

The 19 audio tracks are accessible on the Amiga version and are present on the game disk. I pressed page down (Help) when in dock and the tracks came up. Interestingly, this didn't seem to work with the WHDLoad version as it asked for the game disk to be put in df0:.

The manual was a little ambiguous about this:

FOFT is supplied with a disk of 20 tunes for your enjoyment. To select a tune simply press 'HELP'. When in flight mode a prompt will ask you to insert the music disk.

Knowing it works for you, I went back and tried the WinUAE key rebinding in station with different TOSEC (?) releases.

• Trilogy crack: The HELP key does nothing in space or station.
• Quartex crack: The AmigaDOS text from Quartex mentions contact them for a music disk. Pressing HELP in station asks for the game disk then pressing space. It pauses for a bit and then displays "THIS IS NOT A MUSIC DISK".
• Telstar crack: This has a message about bad cracks and releases starting up (I think it might be the only non-DOS version I downloaded). Success. HELP asks for the game disk then displays a list of tracks to play.

So for a working Amiga disk, HELP works in-space and in-station to choose music tracks. It just needs a decent version of the game (Telstar and not Quartex or Trilogy).

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by copse

Knowing it works for you, I went back and tried the WinUAE key rebinding in station with different TOSEC (?) releases.

• Trilogy crack: The HELP key does nothing in space or station.
• Quartex crack: The AmigaDOS text from Quartex mentions contact them for a music disk. Pressing HELP in station asks for the game disk then pressing space. It pauses for a bit and then displays "THIS IS NOT A MUSIC DISK".
• Telstar crack: This has a message about bad cracks and releases starting up (I think it might be the only non-DOS version I downloaded). Success. HELP asks for the game disk then displays a list of tracks to play.

So for a working Amiga disk, HELP works in-space and in-station to choose music tracks. It just needs a decent version of the game (Telstar and not Quartex or Trilogy).

You can find clean disk image on https://ftp.grandis.nu/turran/ under TOSEC -> Games -> Commodore Amiga - Games - SPS/

[copse]

I've been disassembling the SPS release, and there's a few things I've seen:

• If you leave it sitting on the title screen with the animated planet, fight for a few minutes it starts displaying messages on the screen. Along the lines of "Are you still here?" and eventually "Say hello for extra credits".
• There's messages about elite in some data.

sNotBoredYet XREF[1]: 0002c58e(*)
0002c66c 00 07 dw 7h
0002c66e 00 54 dw 54h
0002c670 20 20 20 ds " Not Bored Yet"
20 20 20
20 4e 6f
0002c685 00 ?? 00h
sArentYouGoingToPlay XREF[1]: 0002c5c8(*)
0002c686 00 07 dw 7h
0002c688 00 54 dw 54h
0002c68a 20 41 72 ds " Aren't You Going to Play ?"
65 6e 27
74 20 59
sNormalityIsBoring XREF[1]: 0002c602(*)
0002c6a6 00 07 dw 7h
0002c6a8 00 54 dw 54h
0002c6aa 20 20 20 ds " Normality Is Boring"
20 4e 6f
72 6d 61
sSayHelloForCredits XREF[1]: 0002c63e(*)
0002c6c2 00 04 dw 4h
0002c6c4 00 54 dw 54h
0002c6c6 46 6f 72 ds "For A Few Extra Credits Say Hello"
20 41 20
46 65 77

Oh, this appears to be the bulletins you read in the net section.. half the bulletins appear to be this and there's only about nine of them.

WORD_00031c42 XREF[1]: 00031b6e(*)
00031c42 00 00 dw 0h
00031c44 00 00 dw 0h
00031c46 41 6e 79 ds "Anyone heard of Elite"
6f 6e 65
20 68 65

[copse]

Bought an xbox controller. Mapped it into WinUAE in gameport 2. It works great for moving the ship, but only the up/down (pitch) and left/right (roll) controls seem to work. It'd be easy to map in the extra controls to keys, but it's odd that none of the mapped joystick buttons seem to do anything.

Maybe it's intended to be a historical version of the later mouse and keyboard PC 3d gaming to a limited extent. You move the joystick with your right hand, and your left speeds up (control) and slows down (alt). The moves all the way up and over to F9 and F10 to zoom in and zoom out the radar. ??

Lots of potential for improvement here.

[copse]

Streaming Ghidra disassembly of FoFT. Feel free to pop in and chide me about how I'm using it the hard way, or how Resource would be better..

https://www.twitch.tv/zachary_hutton

[Captain_ Kal]

Maybe it's intended to be a historical version of the later mouse and keyboard PC 3d gaming to a limited extent. You move the joystick with your right hand, and your left speeds up (control) and slows down (alt). The moves all the way up and over to F9 and F10 to zoom in and zoom out the radar. ??

Lots of potential for improvement here.

While playing Gunship 2000, I remapped the game controls to my joystick (Velocity One https://eu.turtlebeach.com/pages/vel...e-flight-stick), although G2000 accepts analog controls.

I will try to do the same with FOFT!! (Although I spend a lot of time, in No Man's Sky Expeditions lately!!!!!!! )

[copse]

Originally Posted by Captain_ Kal

While playing Gunship 2000, I remapped the game controls to my joystick (Velocity One https://eu.turtlebeach.com/pages/vel...e-flight-stick), although G2000 accepts analog controls.

I will try to do the same with FOFT!! (Although I spend a lot of time, in No Man's Sky Expeditions lately!!!!!!! )

Wow, that's a nice joystick. Let me know how it goes.

[Captain_ Kal]

Wow, that's a nice joystick. Let me know how it goes.

It's in the sweet price spot between a Logitech and a full blown HOTAS!! (I still have my HOTAS Cougar, but it's far more convenient without loosing much of its functionality).

If you want to replace your Logitech (as I did), you cannot go wrong. And it's also XBox Series compatible.

[copse]

I think it's interesting to note down bugs in older games, this one is in disk code (second to last line uses clobbered A4/CIAB).

                                                          undefined DiskSomething2()
             undefined         D0b:1          <RETURN>
                             DiskSomething2                                  XREF[2]:     FUN_00046650:000466ba(c), 
                                                                                          FUN_00046d10:00046d18(c)  
        00046ae4 4b f9 00        lea        (0xbfe001).l,A5
                 bf e0 01
        00046aea 49 f9 00        lea        (0xbfd000).l,A4
                 bf d0 00
        00046af0 08 ec 00        bset.b     0x1,(0x100,A4)=>DAT_00bfd100                     DSKDIREC (1 = outward toward tra
                 01 01 00
                             .loop1                                          XREF[1]:     00046b1e(j)  
        00046af6 08 15 00 04     btst.b     0x4,(A5)=>DAT_00bfe001
        00046afa 67 24           beq.b      .exit
        00046afc 08 ec 00        bset.b     0x0,(0x100,A4)=>DAT_00bfd100                     DSKSTEP (high, low, high)
                 00 01 00
        00046b02 08 ac 00        bclr.b     0x0,(0x100,A4)=>DAT_00bfd100
                 00 01 00
        00046b08 4e 71           nop
        00046b0a 4e 71           nop
        00046b0c 4e 71           nop
        00046b0e 4e 71           nop
        00046b10 08 ec 00        bset.b     0x0,(0x100,A4)=>DAT_00bfd100
                 00 01 00
        00046b16 30 3c 0f a0     move.w     #0xfa0,D0w
                             .loop2                                          XREF[1]:     00046b1a(j)  
        00046b1a 51 c8 ff fe     dbf        D0w,.loop2
        00046b1e 60 d6           bra.b      .loop1
                             .exit                                           XREF[1]:     00046afa(j)  
        00046b20 49 fa 02 a2     lea        (0x2a2,PC)=>WORD_00046dc4,A4
        00046b24 42 54           clr.w      (A4)=>WORD_00046dc4
        00046b26 08 ac 00        bclr.b     0x2,(0x100,A4)=>DAT_00046ec4                     = 63h
                 02 01 00
        00046b2c 4e 75           rts

DAT_00046ec4 happens by chance to be trailing characters in a string used for music disk selection.

[copse]

What looks like seven ship handling routines I have yet been unable to find a jump table for. For instance, one of the other ship handling routines in another jump table I can find the absolute address if I search for it, but these.. not so far.

274f4
27b20
27d9c
28080
28a1e
28d9a
29318

Maybe they are just dead code, but it seems unlikely.