Weird controls for Pinball Magic

[Vanessa1903]

Hi

Firstly, this is my very first post in here so I hope I'm doing this right.

Pinball Magic is a game I absolutely when I had my Amstrad CPC 6128 so, of course, I'd like to play it on emulator but I discovered a weird problem : the controls are particularly unpractical : W for the left flipper and TAB for the right flipper (on my AZERTY keyboard) I tried with several emulators but I still get the same problem specifically for this game (not for any other) Is there a way to remedy to this ? The controls weren't like that at all on my old Amstrad so I don't understand why it happens with the emulators.
I'd be really greatful if someone could help me because I'm really a beginner when it comes to emulators and even worse when it comes to programming so I'm a bit lost. Does the problem come from the configuration of the emulators ? Is it possible to directly change the controls on the .dsk files ?

Thanks for any help or any tip you can give me.
Vanessa

PS : sorry if there are a few grammatical errors in this message. English isn't my first language, I'm French (as you probably guessed because of my AZERTY keyboard)

[arnoldemu]

Hi and welcome,

Please help me to understand the problem.

Your CPC6128.. did it have AZERTY or QWERTY keyboard?

You are playing on an emulator for Mac, PC or Linux? And the keyboard you use on the computer running the emulator is AZERTY or QWERTY?

[Johnny Olsen]

You can easily change right flipper to key m.
Use winape and goto &898a and change 16 to 26.

[Morri]

In WinApe you can also change the keyboard mapping. Go to Settings -> Input. Not sure if other emulators can do the same.

[Vanessa1903]

Hi !

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

My CPC6128 had an AZERTY keyboard. And I'm playing on an emulator for PC on Windows 10 (I tried Winape, Arnold and Javacpc) and my PC has an AZERTY keyboard too. Sorry I forgot to add all that in my first post.

Hi and welcome,

Please help me to understand the problem.

Your CPC6128.. did it have AZERTY or QWERTY keyboard?

You are playing on an emulator for Mac, PC or Linux? And the keyboard you use on the computer running the emulator is AZERTY or QWERTY?

[Vanessa1903]

How do I do that exactly ? How do I access &898a ? M isn't the best choice (on an AZERTY keyboard) but it's definitely better than how it is now.

You can easily change right flipper to key m.
Use winape and goto &898a and change 16 to 26.

[Johnny Olsen]

What keys do you want to use?

[Vanessa1903]

Ideally I'd like to use this "!" Is that possible ? Or anything in the same line as W. But I guess M would be okey too if I configure my keyboard in QWERTY.

In all cases, thanks anyway.

[Johnny Olsen]

Does this game work on a real Amstrad?
Why publish a game with such strange key choices?
Does it have anything to do with protection?

I have used the winApe's poke database to change the keys,
It's faster than changing the game and easier to test
different versions of the game.


Use Winape as Emulator.

Replace winape.pok with this new "WINAPE.POK" in winApe directory.
run"pinball"
CTRL F8 takes you to winApe pokes
Highligt Default Keys
Press Poke
Press ok
Play the game

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=notices&num=1636

See keys in "ADDENDUM PINBALL MAGIC"

[Vanessa1903]

Thank you very much ! It works perfectly. Is there a way to save it so that I wouldn't have to do this every time I play the game ? If not, that's fine : that's already way better than what I had before.

To answer your question, yes it worked on a real Amstrad. Actually I'm almost certain it was my first Amstrad game ever. And it had normal controls at the time. I don't know why it's not the case now. That's why I tried downloading different version of the dsk file on different websites : I thought that maybe somehow there was an error on the first one I had downloaded but the keys were exactly the same with all the versions I tried. It's a really good game so I'm really happy you found a solution. Thank you so much !!!

[Phantomz]

Is there a way to save it so that I wouldn't have to do this every time I play the game ? If not, that's fine : that's already way better than what I had before.

I've applied the poke changes to the cracked version of the game, give the following disk a try. 

[Johnny Olsen]

Thank you very much ! It works perfectly. Is there a way to save it so that I wouldn't have to do this every time I play the game ? If not, that's fine : that's already way better than what I had before.

My idea of using WinApe poke was, that you could choose the keys you wanted and then save them to the game.

It's easy to change the key. Find the key number here
https://cpcrulez.fr/codingBOOK_weka_041202.htm

and switch it to hex with windows calculator.

For example, switch "flip left" to A

A Key = 69 dec or 45 hex
Open WinApe poke
Highlight "Flip left" press edit
Press 47 - Change it to 45
Press poke

[Vanessa1903]

Thank you very much, it works perfectly ! But it seems it works only with Winape, not with other emulators but it's not a big deal : I'll use Winape, that's all.

Thanks again !

I've applied the poke changes to the cracked version of the game, give the following disk a try. 

[Vanessa1903]

Thank you very much for these explanations. This way I can do it for other games if needed.

My idea of using WinApe poke was, that you could choose the keys you wanted and then save them to the game.

It's easy to change the key. Find the key number here
https://cpcrulez.fr/codingBOOK_weka_041202.htm

and switch it to hex with windows calculator.

For example, switch "flip left" to A

A Key = 69 dec or 45 hex
Open WinApe poke
Highlight "Flip left" press edit
Press 47 - Change it to 45
Press poke

[Phantomz]

Thank you very much, it works perfectly ! But it seems it works only with Winape, not with other emulators but it's not a big deal : I'll use Winape, that's all.

Thanks again !

If you're referring to the disk I patched, then it should work in any emulator or even a real cpc in a hxc or gotek as I've changed the disk file itself.   

[Vanessa1903]

Yes, that's what I thought too but it doesn't work on the Arnold emulator. But, as I said, It's not a big deal : I'll use Winape, that's all. That was just an observation that I wanted to share because I found it strange.

If you're referring to the disk I patched, then it should work in any emulator or even a real cpc in a hxc or gotek as I've changed the disk file itself.   

[remax]

I'm quite sure you have a QWERTY/AZERTY configuration problem on the emulator.