Krakout... Were there any extra levels released/along with construction set?

[Puresox]

Just been giving this breakout clone a burn , I really like the production of this little game from Gremlin, it has nice options for bat and ball speed and physics etc... giving the game a lot of replay value.
I noticed in the options menu that there is facility to load extra levels, and wondered if Gremlin ever brought it to market ? Anyone know?

[Bryce]

More importantly, can we find out what format the new levels needed to be? Then we could make our own

Bryce.

[Puresox]

That would be cool!

[arnoldemu]

That would be cool!

levels are around 2b3d in memory.

1 byte per square.

9 wide. not sure how tall 8??.. but you can see that from the screenshots

not sure what the values mean. I am sure there will be colour, type etc encoded into them.
but I don't know how yet.


i

[Bryce]

It should be pretty easy to make a simple level editor as soon as you've worked out what does what.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Loved that game (could play it for hours, literally, taking turns with my dad while my mom was screaming for us to drag our asses to the dinner table), strange - it never occurred to me to try any extra levels. Strange that there's no info out there, even for the c64...

[SyX]

Lucky us, when i was a child i hacked Krakout for putting new levels... i have taken a look to my old notebooks and i have found this:

Code Select Expand

The screens are storaged in $2A40, every screen is 9x9 tiles (81 bytes).

And the different kind of bricks are encoded as:
$00       = Empty
$01       = Gray Indestructible
$02       = Gray needs 3 hits
$03       = Gray needs 2 hits
$04 - $09 = Red with probability of transform in 'G' brick
$0A - $11 = Pink with probability of transform in 'M' brick
$12 - $18 = Green with probability of transform in 'E' brick
$19 - $1F = Blue with probability of transform in 'S' brick
$20 - $26 = Yellow with probability of transform in 'B' brick
$27 - $2D = White with probability of transform in 'D' brick
$2E - $34 = Red with probability of transform in 'X' brick
$35 - $3B = Pink with probability of transform in '2x' brick
$3C - $42 = Green with probability of transform in '|||' brick
$43 - $49 = Red
$4A - $50 = Pink
$51 - $57 = Green
$58 - $5E = Blue
$5F - $65 = Yellow
$66 - $6C = White
$6D - $73 = Pink
$74 - $FF = Strange things happen!!! :P

I think i had more info, but that is the first thing that i have found, feel free to use for a nice editor

[Gryzor]

That's really nice If you find the rest of the info (what else is missing? Aliens and Bees, for one) we can do a level competition

[Bryce]

Can we have a CPCWiki or WikiLogo Level?? Puuulllleeeeesssssse!

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Can we have a CPCWiki or WikiLogo Level?? Puuulllleeeeesssssse!

Bryce.

We've got a winner

[arnoldemu]

@SyX: put the info in the wiki please!

[Gryzor]

I would do it myself, once it got completed

[arnoldemu]

In original disc:

b1fa is loading

it is triggered from 88b2

b094 is saving (not used it seems).

reads sectors direct from disc.

1e94 is the start of data... perhaps this means the tile gfx can be redefined too ..?

not sure yet how much data is loaded and from which track it starts, but it does direct loading from disc.

I think a re-crack of this game is needed, which can load other levels from amsdos files.

I didn't check tape version yet, but it may be possible with 2cdt to make the files more easily to test this all.



in original cassette:

b0d0 is load
called from 88c4

data end is 4e93
length is 2454

so starting at 2a40.

loads backwards

sync byte is 0xff

could be made with 2cdt if data was reversed before adding.

seems cassette loads just level data.

perhaps disc loads gfx AND level data.

[SyX]

1e94 is the start of data... perhaps this means the tile gfx can be redefined too ..?

not sure yet how much data is loaded and from which track it starts, but it does direct loading from disc.

In the disk cracked version that there is in cpc-power, after select "load levels" the ram between  $1E94 - $4E93 is filled with $E5 (formated track), it looks that read a serie of fixed sectors...

... and i think there is an error in the disk version, for trying to read too much. Because if you take a look to the graphics in that part of the ram, the data are loaded in the middle of the second sprite in the fitfh column (the levels start just after the last sprite in this snapshot)

[Johnny Olsen]

... and i think there is an error in the disk version, for trying to read too much.

The problem is that gremlin disk loader can't load under &1000 byte or one track.

You have to store the missing sprite with the new level's if you want to use the built-in loader / saver.

The level's is stored in track 30 to 32.

3 Track's = &3000 byte's

[arnoldemu]

What are the ids of the sectors and the number of sectors per track?

I have a tool that can be used to inject the data into the dsk.

So we should be able to have both cassette and disc covered if an editor was made.

[Johnny Olsen]

There is 8 sector per track &200 byte each = &1000 byte per track

They are named 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18

Another Problem with gremlin loader's is that they fill the whole memory (when loading a game)
and it's no easy to figure out the lenght of the game, but it's easy to find the start address.

I doubt we can use a standard loader without access the lower rom and that will demand some free memory.