Can Fairlight II be completed?

[MartynC]

The Spectrum version of Fairlight II (The Trail of Darkness) is bugged, so that it is not possible to complete the game without cheating.

Matt Wilson describes the problem in detail here.

The game was originally written for the Spectrum by Bo Jangeborg. Due to a dispute with the publisher, the game was released in a beta state without Bo's approval, so it's hardly surprising that it was buggy.

However, Bo didn't handle the ports, so there's a chance that whoever ported the game to the CPC (possibly Pennsoft, who ported the original game to CPC and PCW), realised that the game was a bit broken and fixed it?

Supporting this suggestion is this map on CPC Power.

The map includes the final room (with the bat and the Book of Light on the desk). I imagine this map is a scan from a magazine back in the day? If so, the player had been able to access the final room.

So, all that's a long way of saying: did anyone manage to complete Fairlight II on the CPC?

(FWIW, I've been trying to finish it under emulation, but all versions of the game I've tried - both disk and tape - lock up at the end of part one, when you rescue the captain on the ship).

[MartynC]

Determined to get to the bottom of this one lol. Two quick questions. Can anyone help?


1) Did Fairlight II receive a standalone full-price release on CPC, or was it only on the compilation Fairlight: The Legend?


2) Is anyone aware of a dump that includes the second part (the castle bit)? I've downloaded various disk and tape images and they all freeze at the end of part one (when you get to the ship and release the captain using the knife). I'm using Caprice on PC.

[Gryzor]

123 views and no reply... a shame, I guess people don't have the slightest idea!

[dcdrac]

Time for me to play it again.....Sam hit, play it again Sam

[MartynC]

Time for me to play it again.....Sam hit, play it again Sam

Please do! There's a walkthrough of the Spectrum version on YouTube:



Fairlight II (ZX Spectrum) part 1


You can see that it's possible to complete part one in under eight minutes (the map is quite big, but you don't need to visit a lot of it).

[cngsoft]

I've examined the code of Fairlight 2, not too deeply because I'm supposed to study for the exams, but here are several conclusions:

1.- The main loader is a BASIC programme that does several CALLs to a jumptable of binary code handling the tape and (in some cases) the upper 64k RAM. It's relatively easy to hijack it.

2.- The game is a multiloader - forcing a jump to $60BC loads the second title screen "Sailing across" and the second big block. However, there aren't any jumps to that address anywhere in the game (or to the actual code summonned by $60BC) in the first big block. The second block seems unrunnable as it is - when the aforementioned jump is over, the screen corrupts and everything freezes.

3.- Forcing a jump to $60BE loads the final block of the tape and shows its contents on screen: it's indeed the "The end?" picture.




4.- The game uses a Spectrum tape encoding, and not only it includes code able to read it (and use the famous red, cyan, yellow and blue border stripes) but also to save it! Jump to $60C4 and enjoy the show.

[MartynC]

Fantastic work cng!

So the second part, and indeed the final 'End?' screen, are all there on tape, but there's no way to access either in normal gameplay?

My hope was that the CPC version would lack the bugs that plague the Spectrum version, but it seems the CPC version is even worse 

(I'm now suspecting that the PCW version is the same, as this also locks up at the end of part one [although it does display the 'sailing across' screen]).

[TFM]

A true Spectrum port 

[Gryzor]

Great detective work!


Ugh... so they didn't even play-test it when they were done? What shoddy work...

[6128HOG]

Ah yes fairlight.... really scratched me where I itched back in the day. So fairlight2 was one of the first games I hunted down when emulating, never played it on the real thing.

Anyway yes I have finished the first level no bugs...ends on the ship. Now I am reaching back through the years here. But from memory...when you finish the first level you get some sort of password which allows you to load the second level. So when you finish with the ship you quit the game and load up a separate image and enter the password to continue the adventure.

Now I have just checked and all the obvious downloads they only contain the one file. So maybe you need to find a special CPC464 version. The second level is a castle with skeletons running around the place...I stopped playing around here so never finished.

[blackdalek]

I've had a cracked version of this sitting on one of my old disks for years and thought I'd give it another go. I know it's cracked because the life meter never changes from 99. Having never had any instructions or game manual for it, I've never been able to figure out what the goal was and hence never completed it.
Now I find this thread which seems to suggest that it can't be completed under normal circumstances anyway.
I've also found there is a terribly low res scan of the instructions at CPC Power, but this appears to be from the Spectrum version as the keys listed are not the CPC keys - e.g. it lists X, C or V to pick up instead of 6 and Z or CAPS to drop instead of 7. Perhaps someone has the proper CPC instructions to scan at a more eye-friendly resolution for CPC Power's database?
So, did anyone ever find a way to complete it and is there a walk through anywhere? (The link to the spectrum walk through is dead).

Some general questions about the game:
1. What is the goal?
2. Apart from the keys to unlock doors, do ANY of the other objects serve any purpose apart from stacking for steps or blocking doorways?
3. Some doors, when you pass through them, take you to a different part of the map if you try to go back. Is that intended?
4. Where is the use key on the CPC version? CPC Power scan lists 6 and 7 as use, but these keys are pickup/drop. I haven't found a use key yet.
**edit: OK, I found the use key is 8**
5. At the very start of the game something looking like an infinity symbol drops from the sky, presumably landing behind the large centre tree. What is it and can I pick it up? (I can never seem to locate it once the game starts).

Not so important questions:
1. Is it possible to undo the crack so that the life meter decreases from 99 like it is supposed to?
2. Will I get into trouble for resurrecting old threads?

[Johnny Olsen]

There is a lot of tips here, but only spectrum version
http://www.the-tipshop.co.uk/cgi-bin/info.pl?wosid=0001715

To undo the crack - poke &3208,&32

Manual from Loic Daneels Amstrad CPC gamebase.

[blackdalek]

@Johnny Olsen  Thank you. There's a lot of useful information there.
And the attached scan of the instruction slip, although still the same spectrum version as on CPC Power, is now actually readable. So now I have a better understanding of what is actually meant to be going on