| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Jun 09th, 2010 @ 07:27 ( . ) |
Hi there. the .nib file of Armageddon man will not load when remastered to a disk. First I tried it on my c128, but after thrashing 8 times, it crashes. Then I loaded it on my 1541 connected to my c64, and the disk drive makes a different sound, it's hard to describe exactly. a sort of stuttering sputtering noise like an old car engine dying? anyway, it crashes on the c64 too. It uses cyan loader v2 but it cannot find the weak bits. I've tried remastering other cyan loader v2 games, and they load fine. I'll try putting a weak bit from another cyan loader v2 game on to the armageddon man disk, and see if that fixes it. Nope, it does not fix the problem at all, I tried nibwriting -S31 -E31 with another cyan loader v2 game, but after thrashing 8 times, it crashes. I dont have any other 1541 drives to test it on. Peter, are you or other people on here able to verify that armageddon man works when remastered with the nib file? the nib file can be found in the gamebase 7 zip archive. Thanks. |
 | Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Jun 09th, 2010 @ 09:09 ( . ) |
Cyan loader remastering is hit and miss, and it only boots in PAL (I am in NTSC-land) so I don't test them. I always just do the 3-byte patch to get around it. None of those games check protection past the boot procedure. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Jun 09th, 2010 @ 17:23 ( . ) |
like I said, Armageddon man is the only cyan loader v2 game that won't remaster, all the other v2 Cyan loader games I've tried so far remaster without a problem. I imagine the NTSC checks would happen after the game has fully loaded. |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Wed, Jun 09th, 2010 @ 20:09 ( . ) |
Not sure, but feel free to dig in and let me know what you find. Maybe this protection check is different than the others and I didn't notice. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Thu, Jun 10th, 2010 @ 06:28 ( . ) |
something has just occurred to me. Some cyan loader titles will self-destruct after being loaded a set number of times, IE, the way of the tiger and lazer tag. I dont mean like in the movies where they crumble away into dust or explode in your face, hehehe, but you'll go to load the game up one day and you'll find it crashes at the weak bit check. Perhaps this is what's happened with armageddon man, maybe it's been loaded up too many times? What I was wondering if you could try is loading the original disk on your machine (yes, I know you have ntsc), but the video mode checker doesn't activate until the game has completely loaded, I know this because I tried putting vice in nts mode. The game will load all the way, then attempt to run, but it crashes obviously because I'm not running vice in pal mode, again I must emphasize the check is made after the game has loaded. I can't even get that far, when I nibwrite the copy to a real disk and then attempt to load it, it thrashes for a few seconds and just freezes, but if you can try it on your machine to see if you can get passed that point, then at least we know that the disk still works, which means maybe there was a problem when you used nibtools to read the disk. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Sun, Jun 13th, 2010 @ 06:01 ( . ) |
Update! Warning, the following maybe a lot of guesswork on my part, but it all seems to fit. further experimentation leads me to believe that my particular drive cannot handle fast head movement speeds. to explain what I mean, here's the following taken from the star commander help file. Head movement speed This option controls the speed of the stepper motor in the Commodore drive. A lower value makes head movement faster, thus speeding up file and disk copy a bit. However, a too low value may make the drive unable to seek correctly. The default value is 32. What the cyan loader appears to do is change the head speed of the stepper motor, setting it to about 16, and some drives are unable to cope with such a fast speed where as other drives can function without any issues. . I tried lowering the value in the star commander setup program from the default of 32, and the lower it went, the harder it became for my 1541 drive to read disks reliably. As for the inability to load some cyan-protected titles on a c128, it is not the drive that is at fault, but the c128 machine itself, and to my knowledge there is nothing that can be done to remedy this situation, but feel free to correct me if otherwise. It looks like there are not 2, but in fact 3 versions of the loader program that did the rounds. the first version I'll call 1.0 had a signature on track 40, and would crash if loaded on a c128. This was used on a few gremlin graphics and US gold titles. This includes the pal edditions of games like ace of aces, avenger, bulldog and express raider the second version I'll call 1.5 substitutes the signature on track 40 for a weak bit on track 31 or 32, but it exhibits the same anti-c128 policy as with version 1.0. This version was used on a small number of titles such as armageddon man, alternative world games and cosmic causeway, I was unable to even get these titles working on ccs64 or hoxs64. I'll call this next Version 2.0 because it is a major improvement over 1.0 and 1.5. It will load up on both 128 and 64 machines. This version is used on many games such as action fighter, black tiger, blues brothers, dream warrior, lazer tag and night rider. another possibility is that I could be wrong entirely about the 1.5 version of the cyan loader. I have encountered some titles that will dy on you after they are loaded a certain number of times, they were lazer tag and way of the tiger. Once this limit has been reached, the game will just crash and refuse to load. I'll need to do some more tests, also I'll have to see if my friend still has his old 1541 drive and find out if loading the suspect games on another 1541 will yield the same results. Watch this space! |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Mon, Jun 14th, 2010 @ 18:33 ( . ) |
Well, it looks like I was right about some things.but wrong about others. It seems as if the .nib files of Armageddon Man, Alternative world games and whatnot have got corrupted or missing weak-bit patterns. What I did was to copy track 32 from a working cyan title onto that of the broken one. Guys, please remember to run that nib file by your pal, before sending them in, cuz peter doesn't have a commodore pal machine, so he's awfully lonely with no pals to test his games on. Mr. Cyan loader only has eyes for mrs. commodore pal, Let's find Cyan a pal for peter to use so then we can all load happily ever after. <g> |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Mon, Jun 14th, 2010 @ 21:11 ( . ) |
Thanks, I do have a PAL C64, but I don't have time to test all the games, especially remastering. I really only test them under emulation. |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Tue, Jun 15th, 2010 @ 04:26 ( . ) |
at least we now know a lot more about it than we did a few days ago. Like I said before, this protection is really cunning, not because of the ease or difficulty in copying or remastering it, but because some versions of the cyan protection seem to put a limit on how many times the game can be loaded. Would you like me to edit the description of the cyan loader and send it over in an email? |
| Author: | Pete Rittwage (registered user: 558 posts ) |
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| Date: | Sat, Jun 26th, 2010 @ 09:47 ( . ) |
Sure. Do you mean that if you make a copy and don't write protect it, it self destructs? Interesting, but not too unusual. Which games do this? |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Sun, Jun 27th, 2010 @ 02:44 ( . ) |
I dont know. All I know is that in the spring of 1989 when my folks bought lazer tag from our local myres store, the disk had a limit on how many times it could be loaded. The disk was not write protected when I got it. Anyhow, when I exceeded this limit on the number of loads, the game would no longer run and play and we had to take the disk back to the shop and exchange it for another..... But the same thing happened with the second copy as well. The person at the shop thought I was trying to pull the old refund trick where you buy the game, make a copy, then take the original back and say that it's faulty...... until he had someone set up a c64 in the shop that he could try the disks out on. Sure enough, the darn thing refused to load. he threw the disks away and gave me the game on cassette. Well that was 21 years ago and guess what, the cassette still works. Another game I had trouble with was way of the tiger. That also used the "cough cough" faulty version of the cyan loader and wore out within a year, so I through the disk out, not knowing that in 22 years time I'd discover a way to "rejuvenate" it! the game used 2 sides of the disk. Side 1 was not write protected, but side 2 was. On the other hand, when a friend bought me the game night rider, it had a better version of the cyan loader that did not wear out, Unfortunately when I moved house, the disk got lost. I sent you the amended info on the cyan loader a couple of weeks back. Did you put that up on here? Thanks. |
 | Author: | Jani (guest: search) |
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| Date: | Sat, Jan 29th, 2011 @ 09:12 ( . ) |
AFAIR Cyan does not waste disks, but early rainbow titles does.. however, both rely on weak bits.. /Jani |
| Author: | hyper active (registered user: 296 posts ) |
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| Date: | Sat, Jan 29th, 2011 @ 20:31 ( . ) |
hmmm, well I had 2 - no wait: 3 bought copies of lazer tag die on me within a day of buying them, as well as my way of the tiger disk. Both of those games are cyan protected. Weird. |