Hidden music in "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles : The Coin Op" & "Shadow Dancer" ?

[Xyphoe]

Both games -

* Were excellent arcade coversions
* By the same programmer Dave Semmens who did the Spectrum version which was identical apart from the colouring obviously (and it appears his only Amstrad games)
* But sadly both lacked music in game, making a very hollow gaming experience of an otherwise excellent arcade conversion

HOWEVER!

Very interesting topic on the World Of Spectrum forums....

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28189

Turns out there was music written and is present on the disks!
But never activated in game (presumably because of the slow down it caused)

Is this the same in the Amstrad version? Could anyone take a look and examine?

If so it would be nice to see if we could 'activate' this. It would also help the nice Speccy guys over on that forum who've been struggling to find real disks of both games.

Cheers!

[TFM]

... the nice Speccy guys over on that forum who've been struggling to find real disks of both games.

So... no speccy guy never ever bought an original?

[Xyphoe]

So... no speccy guy never ever bought an original?

+3 disks are quite rare, Spectrum disk machines never really took off. The 6128 had a good starting lead plus how successful it was in France and Europe generally.

[TFM]

Sadly, it seems to be a nice machine, no CPC though 

[Xyphoe]

Sadly, it seems to be a nice machine, no CPC though 

Indeed it was! Well ... what do you expect? It was made by Amstrad! 

[TFM]

Yes, but they had to stay compatible!?

[MacDeath]

Yeah, Speccy+3 was clearly an Amstrad ZX6128...

And it looks like a CPC6128 in black (20%cooler) but with a compact keyboard (minus the num-pad).

Do you know if the hard-plastic keys are compatible ?
Can you take an "A" key on a speccy+3 and put it on an CPC6128 per example ?

What hardware/chip compatibilities actually exist on both machines ?

Disk Drive : is it plugged exactly the same way ? does it uses the same Floppy Disk Controller ?

[SyX]

Well, they share z80, memory chips, fdc and the ay. I think that i didn't forget anything, +3 are great computers to repair CPCs 

And if i remember well, the keys are not the same size and the +3 keyboard always looked cheaper and worst than the CPC (of course, it was a big step over the zx 48 keyboard  )

[Bryce]

I won't go way off topic here, but I just got a Speccy +3 for the first time and have listed some of the hardware differences here: http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?topic=2696.msg29826#msg29826

The keyboard keys are very different.

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

Thx Bryce.

Now I won't go off-topic again here...

[Xyphoe]

So has anyone examined the disks yet?

Turtles CoinOp : http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2184
Shadow Dancer : http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1911

Does WinApe provide any tools for finding and extracting music?

Regarding the Speccy version -

I have just loaded the Russian version and there is a little intro from the hackers which explains things a little bit.
They write (in Russian) that the normal game has music data hidden in the code but music playing is disabled.
They also write that it was very hard to turn music on as the game uses stack a lot and has interrupts disabled all the time so you can't play the music on interrupts.
The don't write it but maybe music playing code expects to be played on interrupts. I can imagine a scenario of bad cooperation between coder and musician. The first wrote the game without interrupts and the second created a music in tracker which uses interrupts

[SyX]

I have added to my TODO list, but i haven't got time to take a look yet 

[Xyphoe]

I have added to my TODO list, but i haven't got time to take a look yet 

Thank you SyX

[redbox]

Had a quick look...


I think the screen RAM is double buffered (screens at &8000 and &C000) and the sprites appear to be stored from &4000 to &8000.  So I'll start looking between &0000 and &4000.


I'm assuming it's a 64kb game?

[MacDeath]

As told in the ShadowDancer Video thread... and here.

both those games were designed by the same team.

Coding : Dave SEMMENS
Graphics : Doug TOWNSLEY


this also Explain why those looks both so saucy and good.

The sad part IMO is that they failed to get it to support 128K RAM properly (if at all).


Doug Townsley seems to be good at Mode0. really.

This is a pleasure to see that for once the speccy guy got help from a real Graphician who spend real time on the CPC.

Also as the same guy did both codes, he could get it right on the porting matters... unlike hiring another guy to do what he can in a too short time and have only partial explanation on the original engine.


Had Shinobi benefited from such graphic quality it could have been even "Epicier" (pun on a french word...).
Had R-Type the same treatment, Fano would re-do another game At the moment...

[SyX]

Well, i have taken a look after lunch, and during the game the only sound subroutine is in $4C9B (send a byte to one of the AY register), and  it's only called for the routines that launches the SFXs, it looks that the hidden music isn't in the CPC version.

[redbox]

Ah, you beat me to it!  Well done SyX.

Unless it's in a hidden file on the disk somewhere - I thought of this because some games load music independently if there's 128kb of RAM available.

I've only been using the cracked GPA version though because the original has a password protection on it.

[kawickboy]

the manual has protection codes written in black&white (better than the 1st turtles written in black with dark brown paper).


http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=notices&num=2184

[redbox]

Well, with the original discs, on side 1 there appears to be just the loading screen and the game code.


Side 2 (which I think graphics are loaded from in game) is a bit of a mystery - I can't DIR the files, even using QCMD.  It's using some sort of CAT art to stop you listing the files.  Also weird they used 2 sides to the disc as there's more than enough room to fit in on 1 side. 


Only place it might be left is on side 2 then...?

[SyX]

Hi redbox 

I didn't look for a hidden files in the disk, your idea is great and it could be something hide in the B Face (this face is loaded by sectors, not files), although it looks that this game only use 64KBs.

And you can disable the password protection changing the CALL $27E0 in $255A to $00,$00,$00

[TFM]

Hi redbox 

I didn't look for a hidden files in the disk, your idea is great and it could be something hide in the B Face (this face is loaded by sectors, not files), although it looks that this game only use 64KBs.

And you can disable the password protection changing the CALL $27E0 in $255A to $00,$00,$00

Only 64 KB? Well, it's time for Fano to start another project ;-)

[Xyphoe]

Looks like Dave Semmens is still around and was quite prominent in the gaming industry -

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dave-semmens/a/73a/601

Not so since 2004 when he became project manager at http://www.zoodigital.com/ which appears to be a more general software company providing solutions to larger corporations. Maybe I'll dig up an email address for him there and we can ask him about this lol

[MacDeath]

Only 64 KB? Well, it's time for Fano to start another project ;-)

Shadow dancer could deal with some extra sprites animation frames perhaps...

Maybe I'll dig up an email address for him there and we can ask him about this

Those guys generally don't like the good old youth shames of CPC games...
Well, in this case the games were quite good so perhaps not that much of a shame.

I once tried to ask to the guy who did the GX4000 port of NoExit... never got any responses but this is quite understandable in this case...

Sadly, no Exit had great graphics... but the code simply do not work IMO.

I had better success with the team who did the CPC version of JimPowers though...

[Xyphoe]

Oh yea the No Exit guy appeared on the CPC Zone forums (RIP) to talk about the game ... but I saw his post too late and I sent him several PM's (wanted to interview him for the gx4000.co.uk site) but he never logged in again

[Xyphoe]

Hey guys ... any progress or update on this?

Was hoping to do a longplay vid of this soon, but holding off pending on discoveries!