Scuba dive bugs

[Andre Majorel]

Has anyone identified, maybe even fixed, the bugs that make
"Scuba dive" crash ?

--
André Majorel http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends upon his not understanding it. -- Upton Sinclair

[Simon]

Le 24/07/2015 09:52, Andre Majorel a écrit :
> Has anyone identified, maybe even fixed, the bugs that make
> "Scuba dive" crash ?
>

Never heared of that, what crashes?

[Andre Majorel]

The game freezes. I could never find a correlation with a place
or time ; it seems completely random.

This is from memory of playing Scuba dive on my real Oric-1. I
haven't played it in many years. It's a difficult game and the
inevitable crashes made it very frustrating.

[Simon]

Le 17/09/2015 07:54, Andre Majorel a écrit :
> On 2015-09-15, Simon <n...@no.no> wrote:
>> Le 24/07/2015 09:52, Andre Majorel a écrit :
>>
>>> Has anyone identified, maybe even fixed, the bugs that make
>>> "Scuba dive" crash ?
>>>
>> Never heared of that, what crashes?
>
> The game freezes. I could never find a correlation with a place
> or time ; it seems completely random.
>
> This is from memory of playing Scuba dive on my real Oric-1. I
> haven't played it in many years. It's a difficult game and the
> inevitable crashes made it very frustrating.

Did it just happen with Scuba Dive?
15 years later, my first Oric-1 ended up hanging with no apparent reason
after being plugged for a while.
If you spent more time on Scuba Dive than any other thing on your Oric,
maybe then the hardware could be responsible?

[Andre Majorel]

On 2015-09-19, Simon <n...@no.no> wrote:
> Le 17/09/2015 07:54, Andre Majorel a écrit :
>>
>> The game freezes. I could never find a correlation with a place
>> or time ; it seems completely random.
>

> Did it just happen with Scuba Dive?
> 15 years later, my first Oric-1 ended up hanging with no
> apparent reason after being plugged for a while.
> If you spent more time on Scuba Dive than any other thing on
> your Oric, maybe then the hardware could be responsible?

Oh, be assured that Scuba dive was not the only piece of
software I spent a lot of time on. All in the interest of QA, of
course. ;-)

My Oric was generally reliable. Maybe the game was corrupted
while it was transfered from tape to disquette. Guess I should
try a .tap.

Have you ever completed SD ?

[Simon]

Le 20/09/2015 14:08, Andre Majorel a écrit :
> On 2015-09-19, Simon <n...@no.no> wrote:
>> Le 17/09/2015 07:54, Andre Majorel a écrit :
>>> The game freezes. I could never find a correlation with a place
>>> or time ; it seems completely random.
>> Did it just happen with Scuba Dive?
>> 15 years later, my first Oric-1 ended up hanging with no
>> apparent reason after being plugged for a while.
>> If you spent more time on Scuba Dive than any other thing on
>> your Oric, maybe then the hardware could be responsible?
>
> Oh, be assured that Scuba dive was not the only piece of
> software I spent a lot of time on. All in the interest of QA, of
> course. ;-)
>
> My Oric was generally reliable. Maybe the game was corrupted
> while it was transfered from tape to disquette. Guess I should
> try a .tap.

Also, try to read back the article about Asteroids from Arctic Computing
in the CEO-Mag 225 (January 2009). It tells how some programming could
overheat the PSG on some Oric-1n and crash it. Who knows, it might (or
not!) be the cause.

> Have you ever completed SD ?

No, I have never played much to it, I wasn't a big fan of that game in
my gamining days ;)

[Andre Majorel]

On 2015-09-20, Simon <n...@no.no> wrote:

> Also, try to read back the article about Asteroids from Arctic
> Computing in the CEO-Mag 225 (January 2009). It tells how some
> programming could overheat the PSG on some Oric-1n and crash
> it. Who knows, it might (or not!) be the cause.

Thanks for the pointer !

> No, I have never played much to it, I wasn't a big fan of that
> game in my gamining days ;)

Scuba Dive requires precision and concentration. Between that
and the slow pace, playing it can feel more like work than fun.
But there is something satisfying for me in how nice the
graphics and animation are. Sort of the inverse of The Ultra or
Rat Splat (which I also like, but for the opposite reason).

--
André Majorel http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/

J'ai des vrais problèmes, vous avez des faux problèmes.

[Oric Muso]

Just to confirm that my Scuba Dive crashed too. It was one of the few games I had back in the 80s. It didn't crash until I was deep underground and that took a while to get to. But in more recent years it seemed to crash more with my original Oric-1 tape. I have now got another one and , I think , and Atmos version which doesn't seem to crash so much but it can be hard getting to that stage.
I'm not sure if there is ever a point that you can win or complete a level. It just seems to go on and on and become so difficult that you eventually die. (?) That big floating fuzzball thing used to get as it seemed to appear out of nowhere.
I had the game on Speccy but never liked it as much as on the Oric.

[Andre Majorel]

On 2017-02-27, Oric Muso <oric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, 24 July 2015 08:52:04 UTC+1, Andre Majorel wrote:
>> Has anyone identified, maybe even fixed, the bugs that make
>> "Scuba dive" crash ?
>

> Just to confirm that my Scuba Dive crashed too. It was one of
> the few games I had back in the 80s. It didn't crash until I
> was deep underground and that took a while to get to. But in
> more recent years it seemed to crash more with my original
> Oric-1 tape. I have now got another one and , I think , and
> Atmos version which doesn't seem to crash so much but it can
> be hard getting to that stage.

I seem to remember something similar, ie it crashing more often
when you're deep in the caves. I played it on an Oric-1, if that
matters.

> I'm not sure if there is ever a point that you can win or
> complete a level. It just seems to go on and on and become so
> difficult that you eventually die. (?) That big floating
> fuzzball thing used to get as it seemed to appear out of
> nowhere.

Yes, it's a difficult game. Guess I'd have to find or write a
cheat and use a debugger to see what makes it hang.

--
André Majorel http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/

"Pauvreté n'est pas vice ! Parbleu ! Un vice est agréable."
-- _Passe-temps_

[Didier VALLET]

Wonderful idea André +1,
I'll lve to play again with a cheat version of scuba dive.

I don't remember any bug when i've played a long long time ago but i remember that the game was very hard.

[dbug...@gmail.com]

On Friday, July 24, 2015 at 9:52:04 AM UTC+2, Andre Majorel wrote:
> Has anyone identified, maybe even fixed, the bugs that make
> "Scuba dive" crash ?

Has anyone tried to play the game in Euphoric or Oricutron, and see if the game crashes at a particular location using the built-in debuggers?

[Andre Majorel]

On 2017-03-20, Didier VALLET <dv.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll lve to play again with a cheat version of scuba dive.

Maybe Dominique P. did one. Is there a web page somewhere with
the index of all the issues of the CEO Mag ?

[Dom50]

Hi André,
You are talking about me ? ( :-) ref. Scorsese)
Well, in fact no, I had not done a cheat version of Scuba Dive..before reading this thread :-)
But as I saw here, that at least 2 oricians are interrested in, I Did one (well, I tried).
What would you like exactly ?
- Infinite number of divers ?
- to get rid of oxygène management?
- to asleep octopuses ?
- to asleep all what is moving under sea ?
I think I find a way to manage each of these possibilities.

But of course, with some of them, the game interest falls near to zero...
I did a version with all these modifications. This allows me to dive until the deepest seabed, wWithout any crashing (with Euphoric)
however, i found a bug transfer on The Atmos version (from both Simoon archive and Oric.org ). When you go back to the ship with a high score the screen freezes for a while, with a window of black and white vertical (one pixel width) stripes. Then the game goes on..

[Simon]

Le 26/01/2018 à 16:13, Dom50 a écrit :

> however, i found a bug transfer on The Atmos version (from both Simoon archive and Oric.org ). When you go back to the ship with a high score the screen freezes for a while, with a window of black and white vertical (one pixel width) stripes. Then the game goes on..
>

I checked again and did a new transfer, and looked at other sources: the
bugs Dom reports don't seem to be from a bad transfer, but from the
original "any Oric/Atmos" version indeed.
I have a 100% Oric-1 version that doesn't seem to have these bugs.

So, it seems Durell Software is to blame here!

Andre, you played on Oric-1, but do you remember if your tape was the
Oric-1 version, or the later Oric/Atmos version?

[Andre Majorel]

On 2018-01-27, Simon <o...@no.no> wrote:
> Le 26/01/2018 à 16:13, Dom50 a écrit :
>
>> however, i found a bug transfer on The Atmos version (from
>> both Simoon archive and Oric.org ). When you go back to the
>> ship with a high score the screen freezes for a while, with a
>> window of black and white vertical (one pixel width) stripes.
>> Then the game goes on..

The bug I encountered froze the Oric but I don't remember the
game resuming within seconds. Then again, that was some 30 years
ago so forgive me if my memory fails me.

> I checked again and did a new transfer, and looked at other sources: the
> bugs Dom reports don't seem to be from a bad transfer, but from the
> original "any Oric/Atmos" version indeed.
> I have a 100% Oric-1 version that doesn't seem to have these bugs.
>
> So, it seems Durell Software is to blame here!
>
> Andre, you played on Oric-1, but do you remember if your tape was the
> Oric-1 version, or the later Oric/Atmos version?

Can't remember but quite possibly Oric-1/Atmos as I think I got
it in mid-1984 or later.

I shall have to go back to my floppies to check what it is I
have. Or if there was a transfer error on my side. It won't be
any time soon, though. :-/

--
André Majorel http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/

Si le nationalisme est un vice, le patriotisme peut-il être une vertu ?

[Andre Majorel]

On 2018-01-26, Dom50 <d.pe...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Le mardi 28 mars 2017 14:58:05 UTC+2, Andre Majorel a écrit :
>> On 2017-03-20, Didier VALLET <dv.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I'll lve to play again with a cheat version of scuba dive.
>>
>> Maybe Dominique P. did one. Is there a web page somewhere with
>> the index of all the issues of the CEO Mag ?
>

> Hi André,

Wow, a rare sight on c.s.o. Hi Dominique.

> You are talking about me ? ( :-) ref. Scorsese)

As long as you don't have a knife taped to your boot. :-)

> Well, in fact no, I had not done a cheat version of Scuba
> Dive..before reading this thread :-)
> But as I saw here, that at least 2 oricians are interrested
> in, I Did one (well, I tried).
> What would you like exactly ?
> - Infinite number of divers ?
> - to get rid of oxygène management?
> - to asleep octopuses ?
> - to asleep all what is moving under sea ?

In this particular case, the purpose of the cheat is not so much
to make the game more enjoyable as to be able to roam around and
see if I can trigger the bug. So, with a game like Scuba Dive,
invulnerability (ie player cannot die) would be perfect.

> I think I find a way to manage each of these possibilities.
>
> But of course, with some of them, the game interest falls near
> to zero...
> I did a version with all these modifications.
> This allows me to dive until the deepest seabed, wWithout any
> crashing (with Euphoric)

Wonderful, thanks. I'm interested. Is it available somewhere ?

--
André Majorel http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/

[Dom50]

Hello,
Simon sent me this WE, a new tap version without the "GREAT SCORE achieE " bug. I have modified this version so that it complies your wishes.

If you are on the forum "forums.oric.org", just send me a private message with your e-mail adress. I'll send you the Scuba.tap of your dreams :-)(Oric-1 only)

Dom