Last Ninja Acorn Archimedes version?

[laffer]

From a textfile on the image -

TO CHEAT PAUSE THE GAME AND HOLD DOWN THE
KEYS LV246 THEN WHEN THE GAME IS PAUSED PRESS
F5,F6,F7,F8,F9,F10,F11,F12 FOR VARIOUS EFFECTS

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by laffer

TO CHEAT PAUSE THE GAME AND HOLD DOWN THE
KEYS LV246 THEN WHEN THE GAME IS PAUSED PRESS
F5,F6,F7,F8,F9,F10,F11,F12 FOR VARIOUS EFFECTS

The programmer were Aliens fans?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The programmer were Aliens fans?

Except it was LV426 in Aliens? :-)

D.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Except it was LV426 in Aliens? :-)

D.

Maybe the writer of the cheat just put the keys in the 'right' order

[laffer]

Yeah you can press the keys in whatever order you want as long as you hold them all down at the same time

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by laffer

I cheated to check and all the levels in this version works.. it seems the only problem is that sprite corruption.

I tried RiscOS 4.02 as well.. no change.

I found the RiscOS 2.0 roms, but Arculator can't read the disk image then.

[Charlie]

Hello,
Behind the times again.

I'll have a go with this one - thanks for zoning the .adf laffer.

I've got an A3000, A3020 & several RiscPCs along with a couple of commercial emulators that others may not have...
...if it's a good image I'll get it working.

Sunday night - may be a day or three.

I'm pretty sure L.N. should work with 2.0 or 3.1 Roms.
The main compatibility issue for Acorn games software is the version of VIDC chip.
"Classic" Arc`s for which LN was written have a VIDC1(a) while "modern" systems have a VIDC20 - the main video chip.
There's a nice little poggie called GameON that fixes most of those hardware issues.
The big compatibility issues come when you go from 3.1ish to 3.5 (small) though 3.6/3.7 (tricky) to 4.0 & above (forget it).
So...
An "Arc" game should run on anything up to a RiscPC 600/700 with OS 3.5/3.6 with the aid of GameON for the VIDC20 systems. But will likely fail on a Strong ARM based system or OS>=3.7.

[laffer]

Great! Looking forward to hearing the results!

[Charlie]

Hmmm, most interesting:

Round1:
.adf image into VirtualA5000 - probably the best 'classic' Arc emulator.
(sadly no-longer available to buy & hard to find as download )

-Recognises the .adf
-Runs the proggie -> various errors that I couldn't fix.
-Game won't start.

Round2:
Try real hardware.
-Format 800k floppy
-Write image to floppy -> write-error
Hmmm, recheck image...
...ah! it's a 1600k image - odd.

Round3:
-Format 1600k floppy
-Write image to floppy -> success!
-Try on a RiscPC -> no chance! (not a surprise)

Round4:
-Try in A3020 -> It works, kind-of...
...runs too fast & right edge of sprites are occ missing...
...I suspect a timing issue not a problem with the game.
-No sign of the graphic corruption mentioned earlier in the thread, so maybe an emulator issue.
-Interestingly it won't run if the computer has booted off HDD.

Round5:
-Try in A3000 -> No point as it has a 800k floppy drive.
N.B. I'll try to HDD run it on the A3000 at some point. (requires HDD)
-Will tell definitively if the copy is a good one.

Round6:
-I'll try it on a 'native' emulator,.. later...

So, for any who are interested:

Why is this odd?
-It's an 'Arc' game - i.e. won't run on a RiscPC (possibly)
-It's an 'Arc' game made to run only on 8mhz bus Arcs not 12mhz ones...
...because it runs too fast on my 12mhz A3020. (later Arc games would auto-detect the bus speed & run accordingly)
-All earlier 8mhz Arcs have a 800k floppy drive only, but this copy of LN is on a 1600k image...
...but the game is not 12mhz bus-aware. (all Arcs with 1600k floppies)
-The game takes up more than 800k of the image

So it's an 800k-only floppy game on a 1600k image taking up more than 800k of space...
...it's not an original image.

I'd be interested in what laffer finds when he gets his hands on the original.
My guess:
-The full game comes on two 800k floppies. (it's rare for Arc discs to use compressed / propriety formats)
-This version has been made by cobbling together a single executable from the files on both discs. Why? If it was just a copy of a HD-installed game it would work in the presence of a HDD. (or at least throw up a copy-protection error)
-It may be old enough & badly-written enough to be one of the rare ones that won't run from HDD no-matter what.

This is good!
Why?
If the original discs had any real copy protection the above wouldn't work.

Now, pardon me while I go play LN...
...back in the day my brother played this for hours & it's obviously popular here - I wasn't that fussed, hence the reason why I don't have my own copy.
Time for a bit of rediscovery.

[Retro-Nerd]

Nice conclusion, Charlie. I hope you are right.

[Belgarath]

The missing right edge of the sprites is the graphics corruption that was talked about earlier in the thread.

At least it's the only corruption I saw running it on Arculator.

[laffer]

Thanks for testing it, Charlie! Very interesting.

The sprite 'corruption' I was referring to was the missing right side though, happens after you leave the screen (and gets worse as you play).

I'm curious if the one I sent to Interceptor will be the same. If you read this, have you received the floppies yet?

[Interceptor]

The disks arrived here safe and well about 5 minutes ago

interesting was that it had a big red sticked on it saying 'Signature Required' and yet they never asked anyone here to sign for it.

anyways, i will dump these tonight, IFW is away for a couple of days not sure if he's back today or not, but one of us will let you know out findings ASAP.

once the dumps are confirmed final, i'll send the disks back...which reminds me i have about 4 packages to send back :\

PS - with your permission, i'll check these on a A3010 Archie if you like? i have one here.

[laffer]

Please do Will be interesting to hear the results.

I only hope the floppes don't have any read errors.

[rygar]

Here is demo of VirtualA5000:
ftp://livedlSLOW:2bradley@194.73.226...lAcornDemo.exe

[tomcat666]

hehe, found this text on the disk ... interesting read :

if you've waded your way through all the code before this message then I think you deserve a bit of inside info. But before I tell you about all the secret features I'll give you a bit of information about the game in general. I got the opportunity to do the conversion when Peter Scott packed it in because he was busy doing some work for Audiogenic. Rather rashly I decided that it would only take me about three months to finish the job, so I signed the contract commiting me to a completion date of March 31st on January 1st. I then spent the next three months sweating my guts out trying to bring the game in on time. I didn't quite make it, but it was a close run thing. I'm writing this on the 30th March with about a weeks work left to do... ...For all you programming types out there you may be wondering how the depth sorting works, ie the way the sprites move infront of and behind the scenery. The technique involved is actually very similar to the one used in Talisman where a screen is setup with all the background scenery plotted in single colour outlines. These colours are infact the numbers denoting the object's depth into the screen, so an object in colour 1 will be at the back of the screen and an object in colour 255 will be at the front. Every sprite is then given a depth value and when it is plotted this value is compared with the pixels on the depth screen. If the value is greater than the colour on the depth screen then the pixel in the sprite is plotted, otherwise it isn't. It's a simple but effective technique, ideal for a game like The Last Ninja where there are only a few sprites on screen.........Well enough of this techno babble, let's get to the really important stuff. There is an extensive cheat mode in this game which is accessed by holding down a certain combination of keys while the game is paused. I'm not going to tell you what these keys are, but what I will do is give you some clues. If you are familiar with my previous games you will know that I had a Rotor style game published by The Fouth Dimension( motto 'Fill Em Full of Bullshit' ).The title of the game was inspired by a film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver. The keys you should hold down to activate the cheat mode are the name of the planet in that film. If you get the right combination of keys then the border of the PAUSE box will change to blue, indicating that the cheat is now ready for use. Now try pressing the following keys: f5 - Toggle infinite energy ON/OFF ( while paused ),f6 - Toggle invincibility ON/OFF ( while paused ), f7 - Infinite lives ( while paused ), f8 - Skip to next screen ( while paused ), f9 - Toggle object pointer ON/OFF ( while paused ), f10 - Save screen to disc, f11 - Toggle slow mo ON/OFF ( while paused ), f12 - skip to next level.... ....Finally, before I get on with the programming I would just like to say that I hope you enjoy the game ( but you're probably sick of it if you've resorted to hacking for entertainment ) and I hope you buy my next game which might be a conversion of Barbarian, or it might be Monsters 92, or it might be a secret project for Eterna or it might be....

[Charlie]

Ah! The good ol' days.

[Interceptor]

okay, i dumped both disks the other day using the SPS dump tools, both disks are not duplicated by proper disk duplicators. this makes it difficult to analyse, but it's being worked on and has been for several days.

in the meantime i tested both disks on my archimedes. there is both bad news and good news.

the bad news is my keyboard seems to have a fault and the shift function is always on (boo!)

the good news is both last ninja disks seem to boot fine, and when i played it there is no sprite corruption, all seems fine. (yay!)

[Charlie]

Idle curiosity - Was it running fast on your A3010?
The reason I ask is the zoned version did on my A3020 hence my assumption that LN is a 800k / 8mhz only game...
...that or there's summit-else up with that version.
BTW:
You'll find a functioning copy of Axis in the zone atm.

Regards.

[laffer]

Very cool I was worried there might be read errors on the floppies, being so old and all.