Tape specific game.

[VincentGR]

Hello everybody!

So, I've found a specific game for tape and it requires 1.1 basic to run.
I did some experiments just to remember the old dayzzz by copying some games from disk to tape and via versa with the supreme discology 

Until I saw that "specific" image that I tried to convert to disk.
I converted Toys (name of the game) to .wav so I could run it from my phone to my 6128 via tape cable.

I fired up my trusty cpc and start the copy. I did many pauses on wav player from block to block as I do on every game that I copy with success.

Finally the disk was ready and I run the game...not.
The game is freezing. I listed the .bak file which is the one that loads the .bas one !?!?

The command after the salute/instruction msg in Spanish I think is.

run"!toys.bas",&40


The game propably maps something on this memory but I am not a coder to understand or find another way.
I saw somewhere that &40 refers to restart block.

I don't want to play that game, just to make it run from disk only from curiosity.

Thanks in advance.

[AMSDOS]

BASIC programs normally start at &170 as a rule, when something is loaded from address &40 it's most certainly a binary which can have an execution address anywhere in memory (not necessarily &40). You can RUN one of these programs from BASIC, but it requires an execution address, LOADing is not possible from BASIC because you cannot simply MEMORY &3F, even OPENOUT"d":MEMORY &3F won't work.


You can have a M/C routine poked to that address (as long as you don't go over &170) I think. I'm unsure if a BASIC stub file would work like that (BASIC stub file is a BASIC file with a little bit of M/C incorporated into it), in theory if that was what it was it should be possible to load it. Unsure though since I've never done it like that.

[TFM]

That's right. &40 indicated either an autostart or a fake (part of copy protection).

[AMSDOS]

Hmm okay I located the game in question on CPC-Power & used Lara to transfer it to Disk Image, but the game still insists on loading from Tape.


So the program looks like this:


Toys - BASIC File, RUNs Toys (Binary File) to &40
Toys - Binary File, Appears to handle other files
G - Screen Image
J - Another Binary File


I had a look at the program through Lara and found this program to be extensively using the Cassette Manager Firmware and playing around with the Firmware doesn't seem to want to make the program work from Disk Image - returning me with Runtime error messages, so whoever made this program seriously wanted to make it difficult to run from Disk unfortunately. You could possibly make a loader to load all the files from Disk, though I suspect the file which does all that (TOYS Binary File), will do some other stuff for setting up the game, the trick is doing that before getting to the loading parts or working out which bits deal with loading.

[VincentGR]

Wow! Thank you all for you time.