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Converted GX4000 .cpr - The topic (repository link in first post)

Started by remax, 22:14, 04 May 15

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dragon


zeropolis79

How does one put a game into a cartridge file without modding?

I'd like to put some adventures into a cartridge file to use on my Plus...

Many thanks..

dragon

You only need noscart is in the  first thread page.

DokiGames

Hey guys, Just wondering if there's a reason why the CPC game 'Defenders of the Earth' hasn't been converted to play on C4CPC yet?
I don't know whether nobody's attempted it yet or if there's a problem with it loading, but I realise you can start the game natively with a fire button, so keys don't seem to be a problem?
I haven't got a cartridge yet but when I do I'd love to play 'DoE' on my GX4000 so I'll be happy to convert it myself.
Sorry if this has already been discussed but I'm just getting used to the forum and sadly don't have time to sift through 170+ pages at the moment. ;)
Thanks,
Doki.

Phantomz

Quote from: DokiGames on 12:00, 19 August 16
Hey guys, Just wondering if there's a reason why the CPC game 'Defenders of the Earth' hasn't been converted to play on C4CPC yet?
I don't know whether nobody's attempted it yet or if there's a problem with it loading, but I realise you can start the game natively with a fire button, so keys don't seem to be a problem?
I haven't got a cartridge yet but when I do I'd love to play 'DoE' on my GX4000 so I'll be happy to convert it myself.
Sorry if this has already been discussed but I'm just getting used to the forum and sadly don't have time to sift through 170+ pages at the moment. ;)
Thanks,
Doki.

@DokiGames

Defenders Of The Earth

Press the console pause button to call for help.  ;D

Pause with Joypad 2 Button 1, unpause with Joypad 1 Button 1.

Quit game with Joypad 2 Button 2.

Keys Q,A,O,P changed to A, Z, K, L for PLUS Users. Space to Fire, P to call for Help, G to Pause, Space to unpause, F to Abort.

DokiGames

Thank you so much! I'm ordering a cart ASAP now! One of my favourite games that I actually had back in the day ;)

zeropolis79

Quote from: dragon on 10:21, 19 August 16
You only need noscart is in the  first thread page.

Thanks...

When I get some conversions done, I'll post them

Phantomz

After watching @Novabug NRG: 5-10 Minutes of Gameplay - Krakout [Amstrad CPC] on youtube.

I realised that I converted this game some time ago, when I was looking for games that could be started with the fire button.

I've now done a new updated version.

Krakout

You can now start the game with Joypad 1 Button 1, or select options with Joypad 1 Button 2.

Use Joypad 1 UP and DOWN and Button 1 to select options, Use Button 2 to Return to Main Menu.

Don't press Joypad button 1 on " DO NOT USE! " or you will need to reload the game. this was " LOAD LEVELS " it's not needed.

Use Joypad 1 Button 2 to Pause / Unpause.

Console Pause Button to Quit, Are you sure? Y = Joypad 1 Button 1, N = Joypad 1 Button 2.

I've changed P and L for up and down to Q and A.


xenon

Quote from: dragon on 23:48, 23 July 16
Yes, the no poke is another diferent crack and the game over is fixed.



Oh, great! :) , so this fixed Galaxy Force cart must be uploaded to the wiki and removed from "Need a Fix" list.

Thanks!  ;)

Regards,

Salva

dragon

Quote from: xenon on 10:18, 24 August 16
Oh, great! :) , so this fixed Galaxy Force cart must be uploaded to the wiki and removed from "Need a Fix" list.

Thanks!  ;)

Regards,

Salva


mmm,no i play it and the last level the ship not go forwad. Or when you pause the enemys dissapear So the crack is bad.

The only left is xor. That not run in plus. Arnolemu tellme how make it run.But i not have time these weeks to try it, as i made plus os cartridges with hxc and c4cpc.

DokiGames

Hope you don't mind, I have another request – 'Strider II'. Probably not the best CPC game ever but I've been a 'Strider' fan for years and I remember struggling with this game on the Spectrum due to colour-clash, whilst ogling the Amstrad screen-shots back in the day!
The game looks GX-4000 convertible to me, as the menu reads 'press fire to start'. I can't remember whether you needed to hit '2' to select joystick first (very likely) or if fire literally will start the game. If so, perhaps the CPC '2' key (to select joystick) can be mapped to button '2' and whatever the pause key was ('P' or 'H'?) can be transposed to the GX's 'pause' button?
I'm sorry I can't be much help as I haven't played either of the 'Strider' games on a CPC but whilst the first game seems to be a lazy Speccy port, it looks like more effort went into its sequel and could be an interesting version, kind of like the Master System version but with robot Hiryu!
Out of curiousity, how do you guys map keys to GX paddles? I'd like to help with porting if I can gain a good enough level of understanding.
Cheers,
Doki

Skunkfish

@DokiGames

Took a look at this today as my first conversion project. The copy protection on the disk means I had to use the cracked version which unfortunately further keypresses. I managed to get through the pressing '2' on the main menu though, will report back on my progress.

I'm attempting to skip the intro and trainer entirely if I can....
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

DokiGames

Sweet, thanks, Skunkfish! I got my card today and am loving it so far, 3d case is coming next month so I'm using a broken Mega Drive cart shell as a dust cover for now. If Strider II is playable I'll be very happy! :D x

Skunkfish

No worries, it's all new to me and I'm no programmer so I will write up my experiences as a little guide to be published if I can get it working fully! (give me a few days)

For the Strider II main menu, despite it saying press fire to start it won't work until '2' is pressed for Joystick.

Having a quick read-up on keyboard scanning on the Wiki, and using the WinAPE debugger I went step-by-step through the code being ran on the main menu. Basically at that point ALL it really seems to be doing is waiting for the keyboard input which makes things easier!

I found which value it was looking to change for the '2' keypress and changed the code so that it pointed to the new value and the BIT so that it was set to the joystick fire button instead (there are keyboard matrix tables on-line with this mapping information)

This worked almost better than I expected, as in one pass through of the code it switched to Joystick AND subsequently started the game when you press fire.

I then went to look at setting up the GX4000 'Pause' button. My understanding is that this is the same as 'P' on a CPC keyboard. Strider pauses using the buttons 'H' to pause and 'G' to start again (I don't know why, Halt and Go?!)

Unfortunately, Strider maps the keyboard controls to 'Q,A,O,P' so there is a bit of a conflict there. If I want to implement the Pause button then I'll need to reconfigure those keys as well to prevent the game pausing if someone tries to play with the keyboard! Obviously, there's a lot more code being run in the game loop than on the menu, so it's a bit harder to pick out - but I think I MAY have found the right code, I'll need to have a play around tonight and see how it goes.

Regarding the intro and trainer (weirdly the intro needs you to press 1 or 2 on the function keypad, and then there's a level skip that takes 1 to 5 on either keypad), I'm going to attempt to remove this completely by looking at where the code jumps to and just going there directly (all we need is the loader) - not sure how this will work out, as like I said I'm no coder but it's fun to have a go!

Will update tonight on my progress, although I do have a fanzine to write as well!  ;D
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

xenon

Quote from: dragon on 10:57, 24 August 16

mmm,no i play it and the last level the ship not go forwad. Or when you pause the enemys dissapear So the crack is bad.

The only left is xor. That not run in plus. Arnolemu tellme how make it run.But i not have time these weeks to try it, as i made plus os cartridges with hxc and c4cpc.

Ok :) , thanks for the answer and don't worry, take your time. Thanks!  ;)

Regards,

Salva

DokiGames

Woah, sounds like a lot of work - much harder than mapping to the ZX Vega (you only need to create a simple text file and the console reads your control scheme), though of course we're talking real hardware with the GX4000.


It's a shame there doesn't seem to be as big a scene for the Amstrad as there is for Spectrum (though you guys are much nicer!) because a modern-style handheld CPC would be very cool, especially with the limited amount of GX's and decent non-PC emulators out there. Sorry, I digress. Enjoy the projects and take your time, matey. :)


Skunkfish

I imagine this would be really quick for someone who knows what they're doing.

I've managed to get the game to unpause with 'P' but pausing is proving harder, I'm thinking because it's still checking the 'P' key as right first and that's why it's not working to Pause as well.

As we speak I'm redefining the keyboard controls to 'A,Z,K,L' (nor sure if this is the standard?) to see if this let's me pause with 'P'.
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

Skunkfish

I found the problem with pausing... Having both pause and unpause set to 'P' meant that the game paused and unpaused instantly when 'P' was pressed.

I've changed unpause to be the fire button which works, but would mean that you couldn't unpause from keyboard if you were playing on a 464/6128+.

Any ideas anyone?

Also, found out that I've knocked out the ability to go back to keyboard control once you've started a game with the joystick. Not sure if it's a huge issue or not....
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

Phantomz

Quote from: Skunkfish on 11:56, 25 August 16
I found the problem with pausing... Having both pause and unpause set to 'P' meant that the game paused and unpaused instantly when 'P' was pressed.

I've changed unpause to be the fire button which works, but would mean that you couldn't unpause from keyboard if you were playing on a 464/6128+.

Any ideas anyone?

Also, found out that I've knocked out the ability to go back to keyboard control once you've started a game with the joystick. Not sure if it's a huge issue or not....

I always try and make the game compatible with the GX4000 to go onto the ( Converted GX4000 Software ) page first, then add compatibility with the plus after if possible.

At the end of the day the plus machines have a keyboard so a port to work on those machine could be made in seconds with nocart as no keys need remapping, therefore I wouldn't worry about the plus to much.

If you want to make it Keyboard and plus friendly, maybe change the Pause and unpause to Joypad 2 buttons, which would use G and F on the keyboard too.  ;)

I've had a look at " Strider 2 " but haven't worked on it as you're doing this conversion  ;D

What do you mean " I've knocked out the ability to go back to keyboard control once you've started a game with the joystick " ?

Have you made the game default to Joystick to start the game with the fire button?

Also, have you made it so you can change the two options on the menu between keyboard and joystick?

Glad you got the pause sorted, some games are like that, where they need to be separate buttons for on and off.  ;)

Skunkfish

An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

Bryce


Skunkfish

Oops, I thought I had copied and pasted an image (it seemed to work!)

I'll attach normally. Just the intro/trainer to get past now....

[attachimg=1]
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

Phantomz

Quote from: Skunkfish on 14:53, 25 August 16
Oops, I thought I had copied and pasted an image (it seemed to work!)

I'll attach normally. Just the intro/trainer to get past now....

[attachimg=1]

Nice one.   8)

When I had a quick look at it, I made it default to the Joystick, and you could push up or down on the joystick / joypad to select between the two options, or just press fire to start with the joypad. :D


Phantomz

" Guzzler ".

Press Joypad 1 Button 1 to Start game for colour screen, Button 2 to Start game for green screen.

Pause with Joypad 1 Button 2, unpause with any button, maybe not Button 1 or you will drop a bomb, maybe push a direction on the pad.  ;)

Joypad 2 Button 1 to turn music off, Joypad 2 Button 2 to turn music on.

I've included a couple of poked versions, one giving infinite lives, the other giving infinite lives & bombs.  ;D


Skunkfish

I have to admit I'm struggling with Strider II a little.

I've found all the right bits (or bytes!) that I want to change, but I suspect both the loader and the game are using some sort of compression as I can't find the same data using a sector editor....
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

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