Ultima 2 strength increase bug
SloppyMagoo
This message is directed towards Linards Ticmanis.
Back in 2002 you posted that there was a bug in the Ultima 2 Program
Disk image that did not allow the increase of strength during the
progress of the game.
I am replaying Ultima 2 for the first time in while with my children
and have been frustrated that I cannot increase my strength past the
initial amount no matter how many times I give money to the clerk at
the Hotel California.
In desparation I finally consulted my trusty old "Book of Adventure
Games" ( circa 1985) by Kim Schuette for advice. Sure enough, it
confirms this problem:
"Strength, however, is never augmented, so start out with at least 30
(and preferably 40), because that's all you'll ever get."
Now that my memory is kicking in I remember running into this with the
big box version (original Sierra release). I'm not positive about the
small box one (also Sierra but later on) but I ended up playing both
and consulted this same book to get past the problem.
I am impressed you were able to isolate and fix this bug after so many
years. I would be very interested in hearing how you achieved this
feat. Well done!
Thanks,
Joe
Linards Ticmanis
> I am impressed you were able to isolate and fix this bug after so many
> years. I would be very interested in hearing how you achieved this
> feat. Well done!
Thanks for the compliments. I'm sorry I have to say I don't really
remember too many details about this one. But the code of Ultima II is
pretty straightforward assembly code, which is easy enough to decode.
The bug is simply an off-by-one issue (a very common kind of bug where
some value is one too high or too low.) I think I looked hard at my
attributes, then I hit RESET and examined RAM contents to find the same
values. Then I tried to find code that modifies those locations and
found the bug there.
Do you still have your originals? Because I'm currently looking to find
an uncracked, unmodified copy of them. I wonder if maybe I could mail
you some empty floppies and you could use Copy II Plus or whatever to
make me a copy. I'd be very thankful for that
(Posted and mailed in case you don't read this group).
Merry Christmas!
--
Linards Ticmanis
Poake
news:1135064898....@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
I have a few different dsk images of Ultima II I've collected over the
years.
1) 1982 Original? On-Line version
2) 1989 PRODos version
3) Cracked DOS file version (has DSR DOS on it. BRUN HELLO to start it)
4) My own hacked version of the 1982 copy to allow IBM keyboard arrow
key movement for up, down, left, right. The PRODos version already does
this.
I remember back in 96/97 when I first found Asimov and the Apple
Emulators, I wanted to play U2 and was annoyed with having to use / and
return to move. So I loaded up Tricky Dick and changed the routine. My
first Apple hack using an emulator =p
Let me know if anyone is interested in these files.
Mike Maginnis
>"SloppyMagoo" <joes...@gmail.com> wrote in
>news:1135064898....@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
--<snip>--
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Joe
>>
>>
>
>I have a few different dsk images of Ultima II I've collected over the
>years.
>
>1) 1982 Original? On-Line version
>2) 1989 PRODos version
>3) Cracked DOS file version (has DSR DOS on it. BRUN HELLO to start it)
>4) My own hacked version of the 1982 copy to allow IBM keyboard arrow
>key movement for up, down, left, right. The PRODos version already does
>this.
>
>I remember back in 96/97 when I first found Asimov and the Apple
>Emulators, I wanted to play U2 and was annoyed with having to use / and
>return to move. So I loaded up Tricky Dick and changed the routine. My
>first Apple hack using an emulator =p
>
>Let me know if anyone is interested in these files.
I'm interested...
- Mike
magi...@tarnover.org
The Computist Project
http://www.computist-project.net
Linards Ticmanis
> 1) 1982 Original? On-Line version
I'm very interested in that one. Especially if it is basically unmodified.
> 4) My own hacked version of the 1982 copy to allow IBM keyboard arrow
> key movement for up, down, left, right. The PRODos version already does
> this.
That'd be cool as well.
I have the other two already.
--
Linards Ticmanis
Great Hierophant
becomes impossible to hit a target ship in space if you are using an
Apple IIe, IIc or IIgs (anything beyond a II or II+.) I wonder if it
works on an unenhanced Apple IIe.
Also, I know of no one who has pristine copies of Ultima III's player
disk, Mockingboard Enhanced Version. The player's disk from the
non-Mockingboard Enhanced Version is not interchangeable. This is
important because what you do on the worldmap is saved even if you
delete all saved characters.
The status of the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, is interesting.
Most of the two-disk and all the one-disk images are hacked. The
two-disk image that isn't obviously hacked is overdumped and therefore
somewhat unusable.
I don't know if there is a version of Ultima IV that is completely
uncracked. As I understand it, it uses a custom DOS or something.
Lockar
I just sold my Ultima III (Mockingboard version) package (pristine
contion) a year ago on ebay. Funny thing is though I didn't get much
for it. :/
-Lockar
In article <1135112862.8...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Mark Geary
Great Hierophant <great_hi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<
< disk, Mockingboard Enhanced Version. The player's disk from the
Maybe I don't understand what you are saying, but this seems
odd. Because IIRC the player disk had no write enable notch, so there
should be plenty of pristine copies out there.
Mark Geary
--
"It's going to be a tough one Sam...Ziggy hasn't got a clue and the
guy in the waiting room keeps asking me if I want a jelly baby."
greathi...@gmail.com
have seen some Origin Apple II disks that did. I know that no
Mockingboard-enhanced Program Disk image works with any advertised
pristine Player's Disk on Asimov.
Linards Ticmanis
> There is a bug in the old version of Ultima (non-remake) where it
> becomes impossible to hit a target ship in space if you are using an
> Apple IIe, IIc or IIgs (anything beyond a II or II+.) I wonder if it
> works on an unenhanced Apple IIe.
I've only ever played it that far on a II+. Do you know the reason for
the problem? Applesoft changes in the IIe? Illegal opcodes?
> Also, I know of no one who has pristine copies of Ultima III's player
> disk, Mockingboard Enhanced Version. The player's disk from the
> non-Mockingboard Enhanced Version is not interchangeable. This is
> important because what you do on the worldmap is saved even if you
> delete all saved characters.
I do have an original that I believe is pristine. The disk was never
notched. If your mail address is working, I can mail an image to you --
after all the back side is not protected.
> The status of the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, is interesting.
> Most of the two-disk and all the one-disk images are hacked. The
> two-disk image that isn't obviously hacked is overdumped and therefore
> somewhat unusable.
I always found that remake rather lame anyway.
> I don't know if there is a version of Ultima IV that is completely
> uncracked. As I understand it, it uses a custom DOS or something.
Probably it does. You can easily copy it with Copy II+, though I've
never tried if SST works on it.
--
Linards Ticmanis
Linards Ticmanis
> I don't know whether Ultima III had a write-enable notch or not, but I
> have seen some Origin Apple II disks that did.
U4 and U5 did. But the U3 instructions explicitly say to make a copy of
the back side of the disk for use, and indeed it is not notched.
> I know that no
> Mockingboard-enhanced Program Disk image works with any advertised
> pristine Player's Disk on Asimov.
I'll try if SST works on the original Program disk.
--
Linards Ticmanis
sicklittlemonkey
> the problem? Applesoft changes in the IIe? Illegal opcodes?
The unenhanced Apple //e also used the original 6502 with illegal
opcodes, so this is unlikely to be the reason. If it did work on an
unenhanced Apple //e, it could be firmware changes which cause the
incompatibilty. (Not really a bug.)
This happened with "Kabul Spy" for instance. It doesn't work on the
unenhanced Apple //e, but works fine on all the other Apple ][, //e,
//c versions! The first //e firmware saved the character under the
cursor to a zero page location, which trashes Kabul Spy's RWTS. Later
revisions of the firmware saved it on the stack, so it works fine.
Yes, I think we need a wiki!
Cheers,
Nick.
Mark Percival
>I've only ever played it that far on a II+. Do you know the reason for
>the problem? Applesoft changes in the IIe? Illegal opcodes?
Illegal opcode is exactly the problem. I posted a patch to this
problem 9 1/2 years ago.
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.sys.apple2/msg/f54a2fd34a27b967?hl=en&
-- Mark
Try DiskMaker 8
http://www.syndicomm.com/~mark/DM8/
SloppyMagoo
I gave away my last big box original Ultima 2 some years ago to a UDIC
member named Cary Guy. His email address was: cg...@fix.net but this was
a while back. Don't know if he checks these groups anymore. If not him,
hopefully somebody else can get you these copies.
As an aside, at the same time Cary also tried to make a disk image of
my copy of Ultimore: A Divided World by Joel Fenton. But it did not
work properly. And since then, due to moves, I must sadly report I've
lost the original! :'-(
Thanks though for the reply, I found it quite interesting!
Sincerely,
Joe
SloppyMagoo
I have an original Ultima III players disk. And on the outside of my
box is the sticker, "Apple Version: Mockingboard Music Enhanced."
But since I don't own a Mockingboard (yet - waiting for the IIC
compatible one to come out), I cannot tell you with 100% certainly that
it is enhanced.
However, I thought these were rather common and easy to pick up on
eBay. But if you still would like a copy, let me know.
Thanks,
Joe
Michael J. Mahon
<snip>
> The status of the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, is interesting.
> Most of the two-disk and all the one-disk images are hacked. The
> two-disk image that isn't obviously hacked is overdumped and therefore
> somewhat unusable.
What is "overdumped"?
-michael
Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it is seriously underused."
Michael J. Mahon
> Linards Ticmanis <ticm...@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
>>I've only ever played it that far on a II+. Do you know the reason for
>>the problem? Applesoft changes in the IIe? Illegal opcodes?
>
>
> Illegal opcode is exactly the problem. I posted a patch to this
> problem 9 1/2 years ago.
>
> http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.sys.apple2/msg/f54a2fd34a27b967?hl=en&
While we're talking wiki here, I'd like to suggest that in addition
to patch instructions, it would always be nice to have a couple of
paragraphs on exactly what the issue was, and what fix resulted in
the patch... ;-)
Ed Eastman
> I know of no one who has pristine copies of Ultima III's player
> disk, Mockingboard Enhanced Version.
How do I know if mine is the mocking board version? BTW, mine is the
trilogy version of Ultimas 1-3.
> The status of the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, is interesting.
> Most of the two-disk and all the one-disk images are hacked. The
> two-disk image that isn't obviously hacked is overdumped and therefore
> somewhat unusable.
>
> I don't know if there is a version of Ultima IV that is completely
> uncracked. As I understand it, it uses a custom DOS or something.
Ultima 4 uses an epilog byte and slightly modified RWTS that checks for
either byte so it can read both a normal player disk and the protected
sectors of the original disk without dual RWTS or hacking it on the fly.
All of my stuff, Ultimas included, are pristine and deprotected.
(Protection removed/bypassed and no hacks added.) I never played on my
original disks so my originals are also pristine. I'm working on
getting all my stuff into a 'clean archive'. But who has time?
Thankx,
Ed
sicklittlemonkey
> to patch instructions, it would always be nice to have a couple of
> paragraphs on exactly what the issue was, and what fix resulted in
> the patch... ;-)
Yes, this wiki idea is looking better with each post that links to an
older and more informative post. ;-)
I'd love more details on the above patch, because then I could verify
(easy) or depatch (need the original bytes) to get the original.
Cheers,
Nick.
sicklittlemonkey
> problem 9 1/2 years ago.
Excellent. Undocumented opcodes are one of my hobbies!
This adds one to the short list of games that I know uses them.
(Others are Bug Attack, Ms Pacman, Roundabout.)
The patch also implies the result of the illegal opcode is used.
If so, it's the only instance of that I've seen. For that reason,
and because the patch differs from the normal 6502 execution
flow, it's something worth looking into ... when there's time.
For those interested, the asimov disk image "ultima_1.dsk.gz"
is unpatched, the original bytes being:
74D1:47 43 B0 08
Cheers,
Nick.
Lyrical Nanoha
> Excellent. Undocumented opcodes are one of my hobbies!
> This adds one to the short list of games that I know uses them.
> (Others are Bug Attack, Ms Pacman, Roundabout.)
I've removed or at least disabled (with someone's help here) a
hack-validity check from Ms. Pac-Man which I believe was where the illops
were exclusively used. I can send this if someone wants to check.
> The patch also implies the result of the illegal opcode is used.
> If so, it's the only instance of that I've seen.
I think it's done a lot in C64-land.
-uso.
Linards Ticmanis
> What is "overdumped"?
In the Atari 2600 emulation world, it means "longer than it should be",
for example if a 2 KB game is treated as if it was 4 KB in size.
So I guess it means "longer than 143,360 bytes" in this case.
--
Linards Ticmanis
greathi...@gmail.com
First Age of Darkness disks at 147,456 bytes. Also, three out of four
of my The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate disks at 2 bytes shy of
143,360 bytes. Getting them to work reliably is more than simply
adding or subtracting the bytes at the end.
It would be really nice to have an unhacked, fresh copy of the one-disk
version of Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness. I believe it is only
included in the Ultima Trilogy. Unfortunately, they didn't decide to
convert Ultima III to ProDos like Ultima I and Ultima II in the Ultima
Trilogy.
Only early copies of Ultima III should be without Mockingboard support.
It is good that Ultima III did not have a write tab. Many copies of
Ultima and Ultima IIn did not either. This forced people to cut their
own into their original disks or to copy them. Ultima I, II and III
all irrevocably change the contents of any save disk. They cannot be
restored to their pristine state once written to. Wasteland is another
example of a game that does not have write notches and requires four
blank disks. Ultima IV and V do not irrevocably change their disks'
contents, so they have write notches.
> All of my stuff, Ultimas included, are pristine and deprotected.
> (Protection removed/bypassed and no hacks added.) I never played on my
> original disks so my originals are also pristine. I'm working on
> getting all my stuff into a 'clean archive'. But who has time?
Believe me, I would not be the only unappreciative recipient of such a
great archive. Someday we may even modify the games so that they work
on hard drives (I, II and V already use ProDos.)
Lyrical Nanoha
> Believe me, I would not be the only unappreciative recipient of such a
> great archive. Someday we may even modify the games so that they work
> on hard drives (I, II and V already use ProDos.)
And 3, I have a .shk here somewhere for a ProDOS port of Ultima 3.
-uso.
Michael J. Mahon
> For overdumped games, I have the two seemingly-uncracked Ultima I: The
> First Age of Darkness disks at 147,456 bytes. Also, three out of four
> of my The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate disks at 2 bytes shy of
> 143,360 bytes. Getting them to work reliably is more than simply
> adding or subtracting the bytes at the end.
I'd be more inclined to think that the images were corrupt.
Perhaps CRs or LFs have been changed into CR-LFs...
Sean Fahey
> For overdumped games,
I think we've just always referred to that "extra track data".
greathi...@gmail.com
The reports state that the Ultimas in the Apple II Ultima Trilogy do
not have write notches. This means that the Player Master disks sides
for Ultimas II and III should be pristine. Also, the Ultima I remake
also does not have a write notch. I thought that the boxed version of
the remake used a separate disk (or disk side) for saving games and the
Trilogy version saved games on the same disk. It turns out that they
both require a separate disk.
I would like to know whether Ultima III was modified for the Ultima
Trilogy to work in ProDos like the other Ultimas. Somehow I doubt it.
Linards Ticmanis
> I would like to know whether Ultima III was modified for the Ultima
> Trilogy to work in ProDos like the other Ultimas. Somehow I doubt it.
I don't think so. Ultima III supported the IIe's arrow keys from the
start, was written in ML, was fairly bug-free, doesn't seem to have any
issues with the 65C02 CPU, and always had a nice blue border around the
screen, so the main reasons to modify the other two were gone.
--
Linards Ticmanis
Great Hierophant
from going to ProDos would not have been as dramatic as they were for
Ultima and Ultima II.
Of course, I'm not sure Origin was very picky about the disks they
used, as the Commodore 64 version of the Ultima Trilogy had notched
disks for three of the five disk sides. However, the C64 Ultima I
allowed you to save and delete up to four characters compared to the
A2's one character. Since the A2's disk was copy protected, if you
stored the character on the same disk you could only have one character
active at a time, which wasn't very fun for siblings. Also, the C64
version of Ultima II had a utility that allowed you to fully reset the
Player Master, so maybe the C64 version of Ultima III did as well?
Mark Percival
>I don't think so. Ultima III supported the IIe's arrow keys from the
>start, was written in ML, was fairly bug-free, doesn't seem to have any
>issues with the 65C02 CPU, and always had a nice blue border around the
>screen, so the main reasons to modify the other two were gone.
Also keep in mind that the original Ultima was owned by California
Pacific and Ultima ][ by Sierra Online. The Ultima Trilogy I-II-III
was done by Origin and Ultima III may have been the only one that they
had the rights to. That could have added to the need for the
rewrites.
Great Hierophant
to the original Ultima reverted back to Richard Garriott. This allowed
his new company Origin to do a ML rewrite in 1986. Origin purchased
the rights to Ultima II (except for the title art apparently) back from
Sierra On-Line by the late 80's. I think the only reasons why Origin
updated Ultima II to look cosmetically similar to the ML UItima I is to
take advantage of the of the Apple IIe keys, to speed up the loading
times with ProDos and to give the whole package a more uniform look.
Sean Fahey
> Also keep in mind that the original Ultima was owned by California
> Pacific and Ultima ][ by Sierra Online. The Ultima Trilogy I-II-III
> was done by Origin and Ultima III may have been the only one that they
> had the rights to. That could have added to the need for the
> rewrites.
I think a distinction between "owned" and "distributed by" needs to be made.
Also, Richard Garriott himself coded much of Ultima I and II, though I'm
not quite sure at which point he brought in help. I have a book
(luckily, I know exactly where it is) that has all that info - pretty
much the Ultima life story up to a point (VI?) and it's also a strategy
guide. I'll dig it out tonight and check it.
Ah, here it is: I have the first edition.
Linards Ticmanis
> Also keep in mind that the original Ultima was owned by California
> Pacific and Ultima ][ by Sierra Online. The Ultima Trilogy I-II-III
> was done by Origin and Ultima III may have been the only one that they
> had the rights to. That could have added to the need for the
> rewrites.
The Ultima Trilogy was released for some other systems as well (such as
PC, Commodore 64 and maybe others). But the Apple version was the only
one to contain a substantially changed version of Ultima II.
Thus I think rights can't be the reason.
Also, the Apple U2 in the Trilogy is not a complete rewrite AFAIK,
unlike U1 it seems to reuse much of the older code.
--
Linards Ticmanis