Games on ProDOS

[cb meeks]

Pardon my ignorance....but being an amateur Apple II user over the years, 99% of my usage has been simply playing games. Which almost all of them have their own boot loaders (I assume DOS 3.3).

Anyway, I was thinking of looking into a hard drive (or SD card) solution for my Apple IIe and running ProDOS.

So my question is, is there a list of games out there that are compatible with ProDOS? Or, are they just too different?

From what I understand, legacy games have their own copy protection in the form of some boot loader. This would have to be removed and "patched" to work with ProDOS. Has this been done with many games? Or, am I missing the picture completely.

Thanks for any education on this.

[Nootrac90]

qkumba has been doing ProDOS ports for quite some time and posting them on Asimov. Look on this group for ProDOS ports messages by qkumba.

Dana

[Marco Verpelli]

I can give you a couple of tips:
search for qkumba ProDOS port on Asimov.

A great choice of games & apps. in the 8-bit sections of http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za
here there is also my stuff ;)

Marco

[Steve Nickolas]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2017, Marco Verpelli wrote:

> On Friday, October 20, 2017 at 4:54:40 PM UTC+2, cb meeks wrote:
>> Pardon my ignorance....but being an amateur Apple II user over the
>> years, 99% of my usage has been simply playing games. Which almost all
>> of them have their own boot loaders (I assume DOS 3.3).

Not quite but kindasorta.

>> Anyway, I was thinking of looking into a hard drive (or SD card)
>> solution for my Apple IIe and running ProDOS.
>>
>> So my question is, is there a list of games out there that are
>> compatible with ProDOS? Or, are they just too different?
>>
>> From what I understand, legacy games have their own copy protection in
>> the form of some boot loader. This would have to be removed and
>> "patched" to work with ProDOS. Has this been done with many games?
>> Or, am I missing the picture completely.
>>
>> Thanks for any education on this.
>
> I can give you a couple of tips:
> search for qkumba ProDOS port on Asimov.

ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/collections/san_inc_prodos/

And here's some of mine, although many of these are dafter than qkumba's
cracks:

ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/collections/usotsuki_prodos/

-uso.

[qkumba]

> ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/collections/san_inc_prodos/

And that's a work in progress - I'm not done yet, so if you have specific requests that you don't see there, I can add them to my "to do" list.

[Michael 'AppleWin Debugger Dev']

> legacy games have their own copy protection in the form of some boot loader. This would have to be removed

For some of us this is our after-hours hobby. :-)

[Jeff Ramsey]

On Friday, October 20, 2017 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-7, qkumba wrote:
> > ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/collections/san_inc_prodos/
>
> And that's a work in progress - I'm not done yet, so if you have specific requests that you don't see there, I can add them to my "to do" list.

And how would one go about getting something added to your "to-do" list?

-Maniac Mansion (I read this has a custom boot loader, not a Dos3.3 loader. Not sure if that is a problem.)
-Leisure Suit Larry 1

For myself, these would work best if they were ported to PD, and then each disk was copied into one image so that I could run them from VSDrive. I was able to work out how to do that for Kid Niki, using ACMD to build an 800k .po image and then copying the files from each disk into it. Not sure how that would work for any other game, but I would be willing to work on it if you would be able to make the ProDos ports for me.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 20, 2017 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-7, qkumba wrote:

> > ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/collections/san_inc_prodos/
>
> And that's a work in progress - I'm not done yet, so if you have specific requests that you don't see there, I can add them to my "to do" list.

If you're asking for suggestions...

* Archon
* Archon II: Adept
* Aliens
* Sea Dragon
* Lode Runner
* Drol
* Star Blazer
* Dung Beetles

And my holy grail:

* Flight Simulator II w/ support for scenery disk content on a HD

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sun, 22 Oct 2017, inexora...@gmail.com wrote:

> If you're asking for suggestions...
>
> * Archon

This.

> * Archon II: Adept
> * Aliens
> * Sea Dragon

> * Lode Runner

I kinda got it up once (crippled) but not quite. :/

> * Drol
> * Star Blazer

> * Dung Beetles

*That* one should be a cakewalk.

> And my holy grail:
>
> * Flight Simulator II w/ support for scenery disk content on a HD

-uso.

[Bobbi]

> > * Flight Simulator II w/ support for scenery disk content on a HD

Yes, this!! I still spend quite a lot of time with A2FS2.

[Delfs]

> > If you're asking for suggestions...

> > * Flight Simulator II w/ support for scenery disk content on a HD

I concur Flight Simulator needs ported. The scenario disks need to made into a Prodos file 140k and blocks read off it as needed. May require 128k though the original flight simulator ran in 48k. Anyone truly wanting this has 128k and an accelerator, and potentially a IIgs. Just sayin. :)

[qkumba]

> I concur Flight Simulator needs ported. The scenario disks need to made into a Prodos file 140k and blocks read off it as needed. May require 128k though the original flight simulator ran in 48k. Anyone truly wanting this has 128k and an accelerator, and potentially a IIgs. Just sayin. :)

I ported Prince of Persia to ProDOS, using native files not disk images.
I can probably do this in 48kb with files, too. :-)

[qkumba]

> And how would one go about getting something added to your "to-do" list?

You just ask.

> -Maniac Mansion (I read this has a custom boot loader, not a Dos3.3 loader. Not sure if that is a problem.)
> -Leisure Suit Larry 1

I've added those to the list.

> For myself, these would work best if they were ported to PD, and then each disk was copied into one image so that I could run them from VSDrive. I was able to work out how to do that for Kid Niki, using ACMD to build an 800k .po image and then copying the files from each disk into it. Not sure how that would work for any other game, but I would be willing to work on it if you would be able to make the ProDos ports for me.

It would be similar. I'll make files that can be copied freely to other disks.

[qkumba]

> If you're asking for suggestions...
>
> * Archon
> * Archon II: Adept
> * Aliens
> * Sea Dragon
> * Lode Runner
> * Drol
> * Star Blazer
> * Dung Beetles
>
> And my holy grail:
>
> * Flight Simulator II w/ support for scenery disk content on a HD

Lode Runner is a popular request. I have it on the list already.
I'll add the others.

[qkumba]

> > * Dung Beetles
>
> *That* one should be a cakewalk.

As far as I know, there is no clean crack of it, though - only defaced versions.

[Steve Nickolas]

Some more defaced than others. I was trying to see if combining multiple
cracks would come up with a decent version.

Maybe I should look at the "Tumble Bugs" version instead...

-uso.

[Steve Nickolas]

Looks like I'd made a ProDOS 8 version a year ago based on one or two
"Tumble Bugs" versions, which seems to be undefaced.

http://3.buric.co/tumbug8.dsk.gz

-uso.

[Marco Verpelli]

+1 for Maniac Mansion

I repeat myself:
Deckard knows all of LodeRunner.
He decompile it, improve it, and reassembled for ProDOS.

Marco

[Anthony Ortiz]

Qkumba, by native files you mean source code or binaries? How hard do you think it would be to create a Second Sight version with higher res images from the PC version?

[Antoine Vignau]

On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 9:33:59 PM UTC+2, Anthony Ortiz wrote:
> Qkumba, by native files you mean source code or binaries? How hard do you think it would be to create a Second Sight version with higher res images from the PC version?

Of what?

[Antoine Vignau]

If only Jean-Marc were still active :-(

[Anthony Ortiz]

@Antoine : of Prince of Persia

[Steve Nickolas]

Will Second Sight give you more colors at 320x200? Anyway, I proposed
doing the same for regular GS mode, and if I had any idea how to port the
thing over, I probably would.

qkumba's compiled Prince of Persia a couple times direct from the original
source code.

-uso.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

More than that - FS2 ran in 48k, but enabled additional features if you had 64k. In the manual as Appendix 3 (and in 2.0 release notes), but for example: improved engine/instrument simulation, ADF, COM radio, seasons, faster I/O, wind, refined crash messages.

[qkumba]

> More than that - FS2 ran in 48k, but enabled additional features if you had 64k. In the manual as Appendix 3 (and in 2.0 release notes), but for example: improved engine/instrument simulation, ADF, COM radio, seasons, faster I/O, wind, refined crash messages.

That's still not a deal-breaker for me. If I can find two regions of 512 bytes anywhere in that 64kb, I can make it work with no additional memory.

[qkumba]

> Qkumba, by native files you mean source code or binaries?

I work with binaries, not source. I extract the relevant data from the disk, store it in files, and write a loader that can fetch them at the right moment.

> How hard do you think it would be to create a Second Sight version with higher res images from the PC version?

I have no idea about something like that.

[qkumba]

> qkumba's compiled Prince of Persia a couple times direct from the original
> source code.

Actually not. I have never compiled the source. I've looked at it a couple of times at most, primarily to know the names of some variables, but that's the extent of it. I worked with the binary instead. It was less distracting.

[Steve Nickolas]

What I'd want to do with Prince would require a major overhaul of the code
but would be best handled in stages. But I'd think a fair amount of the
original code would survive to the end.

-uso.

[Matt Lichtenberg]

If I could make a request: I've found a ProDOS version of Rocky's Boots, but I've yet to find one of Robot Odyssey.

[Alex Lee]

Lode Runner has been done excellently for ProDOS...twice.

Download the 32meg disk image towards the end of this post:

http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/time-out-for-some-8-bit-fun-iigs-style

Go to the 'ProDOSHackGames' folder and you'll find a collection of
games that run from ProDOS. From the 'L' folder, both versions hacked
of Lode Runner to load from ProDOS are there.

If you boot the 32meg image from a IIe or IIc, you'll get an error
about requiring a IIGS, but you need to remove the 'P8CDA' application,
then it will boot fine on everything.

Feel free to read the whole post as you'll pick up a whole bunch of
other info about running old school games from ProDOS.

- Alex

[qkumba]

> If I could make a request: I've found a ProDOS version of Rocky's Boots, but I've yet to find one of Robot Odyssey.

I'll add it to the list.

[qkumba]

> * Drol

Done.

[Steve Nickolas]

On Tue, 31 Oct 2017, qkumba wrote:

>> If I could make a request: I've found a ProDOS version of Rocky's Boots, but I've yet to find one of Robot Odyssey.
>
> I'll add it to the list.
>

I may point out that my ProDOS version of Rocky's Boots is only about 95%
functional - some of the objects in the "Logic Gates" module won't pick
up. If you can do a better port (and you almost certainly can), be my
guest. xD

-uso.

[Oliver Schmidt]

>> * Drol

> Done.

:-))

[Nick Westgate]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 18:58:47 UTC+13, qkumba wrote:
> > * Drol
>
> Done.

Drol was already on your list back in 2015 when I suggested it.

Good things take time ... awesome work!

Cheers,
Nick.

[Anthony Ortiz]

On Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 12:27:36 PM UTC-4, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> What I'd want to do with Prince would require a major overhaul of the code
> but would be best handled in stages. But I'd think a fair amount of the
> original code would survive to the end.
>
> -uso.

What are you looking to do with PoP?

[Steve Nickolas]

Make a native IIgs version, with IIgs graphics and sound (based either on
the EGA or Atari ST graphics).

-uso.

[qkumba]

> Drol was already on your list back in 2015 when I suggested it.

I must have misplaced that list, but I don't doubt it.
In any case, until recently I had neither clean version nor original copy from which to work. 4am shared with me an image from his original, from which I produced the versions that we have now.

> Good things take time ... awesome work!

Thanks.

[qkumba]

> I may point out that my ProDOS version of Rocky's Boots is only about 95%
> functional - some of the objects in the "Logic Gates" module won't pick
> up. If you can do a better port (and you almost certainly can), be my
> guest. xD

Apparently I started porting Rocky's Boots a couple of years ago, but never finished it. I might revisit it.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 10:58:47 PM UTC-7, qkumba wrote:
> > * Drol
>
> Done.

Under Virtual ][ if there's Thunderclock card in Slot 5 then the game freezes during start-up as the "Drol" logo is scrolling into view. After removing the (virtual) card the game runs fine when booted from the (virtual) floppy.

If then keep the machine configuration the same but I copy it to a hard disk image and boot with ProDOS 2.4.1 and invoke the launcher (yes, that's a lot of changed variables at once, sorry) then the "sprites" glitch during page flips (e.g. the columns are byte-shifted or show parts of scorpions)

[qkumba]

> Under Virtual ][ if there's Thunderclock card

I can stop you right there - it's caused by the game writing content all over the screen memory, and me saving only what's necessary for the disk drive to run and no other devices.
I will see about extending it to cover all slots.

[Alex Lee]

In addition to this, a quick play on my ROM01 IIGS with CFFA3000 and
Drol freezes at the same point – the logo and level screen appears, but
you can't start a game. I thought it might have still been loading or
decompressing and left it for a couple of minutes, but no go.

- Alex

[qkumba]

Joshua and Alex, please try
http://pferrie.host22.com/misc/tmp/drol%20(prodos).zip
to see if it runs for you. If so then I will place on Asimov.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

Sadly, almost exactly the same behavior as before.

* If a Thunderclock is present, it freezes at basically the same spot. I think it lights up slightly more pixels on the left side of the screen.

* I narrowed down the other failure (when the Thunderclock is not present): if the files are copied from a floppy to a new HD image (Virtual ]['s blank 32MB, formatted) and booted from that, the sprite glitches appear.

For kicks, I tried a Virtual ][ machine configuration with no other cards other than "SCSI" in slot 6 and an HD image (no floppy controller). Interestingly, rather than sprite glitching, this freezes as if a Thunderclock was present.

[qkumba]

Can we first rule out emulator-specific behaviours? Does it work for you in Open Emulator, for example?
It is known to work in MAME and AppleWin, and on my real IIe.
I hope that it works now on the IIGS.
I will try Virtual ][ myself but not today.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

On my Laser 128EX running off a SmartPort HD (Floppy Emu) it "glitches". Video showing the glitching at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te5uQl2twkA

If I copy the files to a floppy and boot from that, no glitches.

I don't have a physical Thunderclock to test with. Not quite the data points you're looking for, but it looks like the glitching is not Virtual ][-specific, at least.

[qkumba]

> On my Laser 128EX running off a SmartPort HD (Floppy Emu) it "glitches". Video showing the glitching at:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te5uQl2twkA
>
> If I copy the files to a floppy and boot from that, no glitches.
>
> I don't have a physical Thunderclock to test with. Not quite the data points you're looking for, but it looks like the glitching is not Virtual ][-specific, at least.

It's caused by a device in slot 7 saving state to the screen holes.
In the case of Virtual ][, the Thunderclock is periodically writing to the holes, which I can't control. I suppose that I could disable interrupts but the original game didn't do that. I don't know what the side-effect would be.
I'll double-check my code, too. I can't explain the Floppy Emu case yet.

[qkumba]

please try http://pferrie.host22.com/misc/tmp/drol%20(prodos).zip
I've disabled interrupts. Perhaps both problems will be solved at once.
I will add Virtual ][ to my test environment for future releases.

[John Brooks]

BTW, disabling interrupts is painful on the IIGS because it locks out user access to the control panel.

-JB
@JBrooksBSI

[qkumba]

> BTW, disabling interrupts is painful on the IIGS because it locks out user access to the control panel.

Yes, I'm well aware of that, but if the alternative is that the game crashes because of interrupt-driven devices making arbitrary changes to what's actually code in that environment, then I don't see another solution.

[qkumba]

And that wasn't the issue anyway.
I've uploaded a version that runs in Virtual ][, and interrupts aren't touched.

[inexora...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 5:39:47 PM UTC-8, qkumba wrote:
> And that wasn't the issue anyway.
> I've uploaded a version that runs in Virtual ][, and interrupts aren't touched.

Hah... I downloaded it about 20 minutes ago and didn't notice an improvement. To double check I redownloaded about 10 minutes ago and both problems (Thunderclock freeze and graphics glitching when launched from non-floppy) are resolved. I doubted my sanity and/or ability to download....

Thanks, qkumba! What was the problem?

[qkumba]

> Hah... I downloaded it about 20 minutes ago and didn't notice an improvement. To double check I redownloaded about 10 minutes ago and both problems (Thunderclock freeze and graphics glitching when launched from non-floppy) are resolved. I doubted my sanity and/or ability to download....

Ha, race condition.

> Thanks, qkumba! What was the problem?

In the slot-content-switching routine: the first time it's called, it just has to load from the screen into the array. Thereafter, it has to exchange the values. When patching the instruction from load to exchange... I was off by one, and patched the address instead so it was exchanging with random memory. You know what happened next.

[Alex Lee]

I can confirm that it plays fine on my ROM01 IIGS with ZipGSX at
8Mhz/64k with CFFA3K and 4meg RAM. Accessing the control can be done,
but returning to Drol results in a freeze. I can live with that myself
:-)

- Alex