Boulder Dash was originally released for the IBM PC and PCjr. in 1984 by First Star Software. The disk included two separate executables, one for the IBM PC and one for the IBM PCjr. The disk was a PC booter.
The IBM PC executable is serviceable but not particularly impressive. There is a distinct lack of animation on the title screen and for the amoeba tiles. There is also no color-cycling effect for the diamonds. It is debatable whether the game really uses composite color graphics. Sound effects are weak even by PC speaker standards.
The IBM PCjr executable, on the other hand, is much, much more impressive. It uses the 3-voice PCjr. chip for music and sound effects. It supports 16-color graphics with full animation and color cycling. Despite the PCjr. being slower than the PC, it does not suffer from a lot of slowdown, despite the extra effort. Compare these pairs of screenshots from the PC and PCjr. executables :
Showing posts with label PC Booter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PC Booter. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Early PC Game Miscellaneous Notablility
IBM's First PC Game Releases
IBM released games for the PC and PCjr. from 1981 to 1985. However, IBM did not always develop the games. These games came in a gray plastic over cardboard folder or folio without artwork on the covers. The game and manual would fit into plastic sleeves on the inside of the folder. The disk label was originally gray, but turned to red for Casino Games.
These were the among the first commercially sold games released for the PC.
Adventure in Serenia - Sierra
Casino Games - IBM
Microsoft Adventure - Microsoft
Microsoft Decathalon - Microsoft
Arithemitic Games Set 1 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
Arithemitic Games Set 2 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes - IBM
Strategy Games - IBM
Microsoft Adventure was the first commercial PC game ever released, it was available at the PC's launch, August 12, 1981. The first actual PC game was the Donkey game included with PC-DOS 1.0 and run in BASIC.
One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes is the first non-text game released exclusively for the Monochrome and Printer Display Adapter, and only works with that display hardware or compatible hardware. It does not work with the PCjr. It also uses a black folio instead of a gray folio.
Microsoft Decathalon does not work with the PCjr. Adventure in Serenia relies on CGA Composite Color and will show incorrect colors with the PCjr. You can run Microsoft Adventure on the PCjr. but cannot set the foreground and background colors. Adventure in Serenia will not show correct composite colors with a PCjr.
IBM released games for the PC and PCjr. from 1981 to 1985. However, IBM did not always develop the games. These games came in a gray plastic over cardboard folder or folio without artwork on the covers. The game and manual would fit into plastic sleeves on the inside of the folder. The disk label was originally gray, but turned to red for Casino Games.
These were the among the first commercially sold games released for the PC.
Adventure in Serenia - Sierra
Casino Games - IBM
Microsoft Adventure - Microsoft
Microsoft Decathalon - Microsoft
Arithemitic Games Set 1 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
Arithemitic Games Set 2 - Science Research Associates, Inc.
One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes - IBM
Strategy Games - IBM
Microsoft Adventure was the first commercial PC game ever released, it was available at the PC's launch, August 12, 1981. The first actual PC game was the Donkey game included with PC-DOS 1.0 and run in BASIC.
One Hundred and One Monochrome Mazes is the first non-text game released exclusively for the Monochrome and Printer Display Adapter, and only works with that display hardware or compatible hardware. It does not work with the PCjr. It also uses a black folio instead of a gray folio.
Microsoft Decathalon does not work with the PCjr. Adventure in Serenia relies on CGA Composite Color and will show incorrect colors with the PCjr. You can run Microsoft Adventure on the PCjr. but cannot set the foreground and background colors. Adventure in Serenia will not show correct composite colors with a PCjr.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Alley Cat - Epitome of a Timeless Early PC Classic
IBM PC Screenshots on the Left Side of the Page IBM PCjr. Screenshots on the Right Side of the Page
Alley Cat from Synapse Software is one of the best examples of a classic game released for the IBM PC. Originally programmed for the Atari 8-bit computers by Bill Williams in 1983, it was soon ported over for the PC by Williams and published by IBM.
Alley Cat is not an overly complex game and is easy to pick up and play. You play as an alley cat named Freddy who is trying to impress his would-be girlfriend Felicia by doing all sorts of alley cat things that people who live in the alley find to be a nuisance. The object of each level is to get into one of the rooms of the condominiums above the alley using the windows that open and then complete the challenge in that room. Once you complete the challenge, Felicia will beckon to you through an open window. There you must dodge her brothers and reach her to get a kiss. Once you kiss her you will advance to the next level, which is more difficult than the last. When you start you can select one of four difficulty levels, Kitten (easiest), House Cat, Tomcat or Alley Cat.
You can control the game with the cursor keys or a joystick, but I highly recommend using a joystick.
Moving Freddy is done by pushing left or right and jumping by pressing up. Pressing down descends off clotheslines, fences and other platforms. Jumping left and right is done with by holding the up and left or right cursor keys or directionals on the joystick. Freddy can cover a lot more distance from a running jump than a walking or stationary jump. The jumping mechanics are a bit stiff in this game, but eventually you should be able to get a feel for the game's mechanics.
Holding down the cursor key down will make Freddy move faster. The same thing happens with an analog joystick no matter how far from the center the stick's position is held. Considering that Alley Cat was originally programmed for the Atari 8-bit computers and their digital joysticks, it is not surprising that there is no real analog joystick support. It seemed to have no problem with a "digital" Gravis Gamepad when run on a real IBM PC. You can "paws the game" by pressing the Escape key.
You begin in the alley with three lives and can earn up to an appropriate nine. Your task is to hop on the small or large trash cans, then onto the fence. You can run on top of the fence but not on the clotheslines. You must jump onto the clotheselines where there are clothes hanging off them. From there you can leap or descend into an open window. This screen is the most lethal between the dog patrolling the ground (helped by the other alley cat that pushes you off trash cans) and the things thrown out of windows. You can catch the three mice for points, but they can knock you off a clothesline by touching Freddy as he clings to laundry. The high score is displayed on the left side of the fence and the current score is on the right side of the fence (as telephone numbers) with the number of lives you have remaining.
There are five challenge rooms and when you jump into a window you can encounter any of them :
The first room you may enter is the Aquarium. Your first task is to hop into the bowl by touching it. Then the screen will change to Freddy swimming in the bowl. He needs to catch all twelve fish without touching the increasing number of electric eels or suffocating. Freddy and the screen border will change color as his oxygen runs out. You can replenish your air supply by swimming to the surface.
The second room is the Pantry. Here there is a huge wedge of cheese with multiple holes. You have to catch four mice in this stage. You can jump across the cheese or use the action button to crawl between holes in the cheese.
The third room is the Aviary. Here you must knock the bird cage off the table by touching it several times. Once the bird cage falls to the floor, it will break and a bird will fly out. Catch the bird to complete the challenge.
The fourth room is the Library. Here you must collect all three flower plants on top of the bookshelf without touching the two spiders.
The fifth room is the Kennel. Here you must drink all the dogs' water bowls (twelve in all) with the action button without waking up the dogs. You only have a certain amount of time to drink bows next to a dog before he wakes up. The screen will flash red when one starts to wake up and if he does wake up, he will attack you like the dog in the alley.
In each of these rooms is a mad housekeeping broom that will chase you and fling you about the room with contact. It will also sweep up your paw prints, which you can use to distract it. Sometimes, it is helpful to propel Freddy to a hard to reach area. In each of these challenge rooms, the dog from the alley can run across the screen and the consequences are identical as if you encountered him in the alley. You can jump out of the window from which you entered, which causes you to lose the challenge room and return to the alley. You earn points depending on how quickly you completed the challenge room, and on the score screen the background and border will flash green.
Felicia's room is a little different. No dogs or broomsticks here. However, there are six levels between you and her, and each one is patrolled by one of her feline siblings who will knock you down to the level below. Moreover, the cupids shoot arrows that can turn parts of the floor solid or allow you to fall. If you fall off the lowest level, you lose and must complete a challenge room before you can get to Felicia's room again. When you enter Felicia's room, you will find one present for each time you have tried the room. If you drop this present and one of her cat brothers touch it, it will leave the room. The black colored objects and border will change to blue when you have a present. All the colors change if you get to kiss Felicia. If you kiss Felicia you will get a bonus depending on how fast you cleared the level and may also earn extra lives.
You will not lose a life if you fall off the fence, get knocked off a clothesline by a mouse, fall off a clothesline and go behind the fence, jump into the window from whence you came after entering a room or falling below the lowest level in Felicia's room. You will lose a life if you get hit by an object thrown out of a window, being touched by an awake dog, an electric eel, a spider or drowning in the fish bowl.
Alley Cat is a very fun game, one you can or could have found yourself losing half an hour of time (when you should be working). The challenge rooms are fun without getting too frustrating at the lower levels. The graphics are cute and clear, the sound effects are quite appropriately done for the PC speaker. Getting the noise sound effect when the dog attacks you is pretty impressive. This game was a product of its time when character control was seen as part of the challenge, but the jumping control is still on par with Mario Bros. It proves that fast paced, engaging arcade-style games are quite possible on the limited graphics and sound capabilities of the PC speaker.
Many other games from the IBM-dominated PC era (1981-1986) will fail when run at a playable on hardware substantially faster than that in the IBM PC. One of the most interesting things about Alley Cat for the IBM PC is that it is very speed friendly when it comes to faster machines, something very rare in its day. However, this is not quite as forward thinking as you may believe. When this port was released in 1984, IBM had no less than three speed classes of PCs on the market during that year. First there was the 8088 running at 4.77MHz running in the IBM PC, IBM PC/XT and IBM PC Portable. Second was the PCjr., which had the same CPU and ran it at the same speed as the PC, but system is slower with 128KB due to the sharing of the memory between the CPU and PCjr. graphics adapter. Third was the IBM PC AT with a 80286 CPU running at 6MHz and up to three times as fast as the IBM PC. The developer probably had to sign a few non-disclosure agreements and put up with the legendary IBM secrecy in order to gain access to that information or hardware, since the AT was not released until August of 1984 and was incredibly expensive when first released. The result is a same that runs at a consistent speed regardless of the hardware being used to run it. It does a speed test prior to loading and uses it to adjust its timing appropriately.
On any system other than a PCjr., Alley Cat is displayed using CGA color limitations. Alley Cat has better color selections and some 3-voice music when run on an IBM PCjr. However, this information had to be re-discovered at some point during the 2000s, Alley Cat has some support of PCjr. graphics and sound. There is three voice PCjr. sound chip music on the title screen. (The PCjr. can play the PC speaker music by selecting N for the prompt "Are you using a TV or an external speaker (Y/N)?") However, all in-game music and sound effects use the PC speaker with the PCjr.
For graphics, as with the CGA card, only four colors are used. However, the PCjr. allows the colors to be selected freely from its 16 color palette. Of course this is not a patch on the Atari 8-bit plaform, which could display 16 colors from a 256 color palette, and on some screens even more can be seen because Alley Cat uses scanline interrupts. You can see differences in the screenshots posted throughout this blog entry. CGA screenshots are on the left side of the page, PCjr. screenshots are on the right side of the page.
Outside the PCjr., all later graphics cards should display the colors and effects correctly. Alley Cat strove for compatibility by avoiding direct hardware access to the CGA card and instead used BIOS functions for its graphics control. All other graphics cards except for Hercules monochrome are or should be CGA compatible at the BIOS level. The BIOS functions are more limited than direct hardware access; BIOS functions only allow the programmer to change the palette color in 320x200 Mode 4 to either green/red/brown or cyan/magenta/light gray and to set the background and border color. It does not allow you to change the palette intensity and emulation of BIOS functions after the Tandy Graphics Adapter tend not to allow you to show the alternate cyan/red/white palette by selectiong 320x200 Mode 5 (which is a side-effect of how the color palettes work on the CGA card). Many other games write to the CGA registers directly to change modes and colors displayed by the card and these tend to fail on the PCjr. and graphics adapters more advanced than Tandy's. Some cards may show this game using the intense versions of the standard CGA palettes, but you should see both palettes employed.
Very recently, there have been patches made to allow the 3-voice introduction music and the PCjr. colors to be seen and heard on Tandy 1000s. Also there are patches to allow EGA and VGA cards to display the PCjr. palette colors. Find them here : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=45896&view=unread#unread
Monday, February 16, 2015
Will Harvey's Music Construction Set - PC Sound Device Support
In 1984 Electronic Arts introduced a program called Music Construction Set. It was originally written by 15 year old Will Harvey for his Apple II computer. Electronic Arts liked what it saw and published it to great success. It also ported the program to every popular U.S. computer with any kind of sound hardware, the Atari 8-bit machines, the Commodore 64, the Atari ST, the Apple IIgs and the IBM PC. An upgraded version called Deluxe Music Construction Set was released for the Macintosh and Amiga. Each version would take advantage of the native sound capabilities of the hardware.
Unfortunately, the Apple II and the IBM PC's hardware was unimpressive compared to the other machines. They only have a speaker. The Apple II's CPU must directly drive the speaker, so there was no CPU time left over for scrolling the screen on the Apple II version using the built-in speaker. The IBM PC's speaker was timer driven, so it could still scroll the screen using the 1-note speaker option.
Fortunately, both the Apple II and the IBM PC supported alternatives. The Apple II version supported a Mockingboard card for six voices of stereo sound. Using the timer-supplied Mockingboard allowed the CPU to scroll the note sheet. The IBM PC versions are much more interesting from a hardware perspective.
Original Release
The original release for the PC supported the IBM PC, XT and PCjr. and "COMPAQ" Because it calibrated itself for CPU speed, it would also work in faster machines like the IBM AT., although the loading time may be increased as a result. This program was a PC booter, and the version widely available also has Tandy 1000 support. Tandy marketed Music Construction Set, so this version may have originally have been from Tandy.
Interestingly, the program does detect the machine it is being used in on startup and will adjust its configuration options accordingly.
On the Tandy 1000, here are the options :
Input - Keyboard; Joystick (Right Port)
Sound - 3 Notes, Scroll; Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - Tandy Graphics Printer (IBM Mode), Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
On the IBM PCjr., here are the options :
Input - Keyboard, Koala Pad, Joystick
Sound - PCjr - 3 Notes, Scroll; Cassette - 4 Notes, Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - IBM Graphics Printer, Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
On the IBM PC, here are the options :
Input - Keyboard, Koala Pad, Joystick
Sound - Speaker, 4 Notes; Cassette - 4 Notes; Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll; Cassette - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - IBM Graphics Printer, Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
I do not own a Koala Pad, but it uses the joystick port. It probably would have been the smoothest way to control the icon-based interface of MCS. Because of the special characters, a character-based printer would not work to print Treble and Bass clefs and musical notes, so a Graphics Printer was required. Interestingly, I find no mention of the PCjr. Compact Printer in the PCjr.'s options, but if there is no parallel port sidecar, it may work as it would designated as LPT1. The Compact Printer does support bitmap modes like the listed Graphics Printers. A list of the printers it has been tested with can be found in the Reference Card. Music is printed vertically down the printer page, rather than horizontally as one would expect sheet music to print.
The 4 Notes selections used up all the available CPU time, so the music did not scroll when played with these modes. For the PCjr and Tandy, the 3 note option, using the built-in sound chip, was obviously the way to go. I do not know why they even bothered with the cassette option for the PCjr., a person with a cassette player could record the 3-voice music just as easily. I do not know if the cassette option is still selectable on an IBM PC/XT, which does not have a cassette port and can be uniquely identified. Most generic PC compatibles identify themselves as an IBM PC, so the cassette option is still there although it will not work.
Despite being deemed a PC booter, MCS is tied very much to DOS. The disk is readable in DOS, but only the song files will be seen. When loading and saving songs, a DOS prompt is used and the commands are very DOS and BASIC like. A standard DOS formatted disk can save and load more songs. Oddly, the
loading screen uses a 40-column mode, probably for the PCjr. Full instructions for use in the PC can be found in the Reference Card. The manual and reference card for the IBM PC version can be found at replacementdocs.com. Listings for the sample songs can also be found in the reference card.
IBM Music Feature Card Version
In 1987, Electronic Arts released a revised version of Music Construction Set for the IBM Music Feature Card. I was able to find a download of this program. This version of MCS is a true DOS program, although presumably still protected. If you load a mouse driver beforehand (CTMOUSE.EXE 1.91 works, make sure your COM1 settings are standard 3F8/04), you can use a Microsoft protocol-compatible mouse to control the cursor. The movement is still a bit rough and only supports one button, but better than a joystick. Using the keyboard will allow for fine placement of notes. PCjr. support was removed, but the program still works on an IMFC-less PC and a Tandy 1000.
The IBM Music Feature and mouse are autodetected, but if one or the other is not present, you still have some options. On the IBM PC, the sound options are Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll; Cassette - 1 Note, Scroll. On the Tandy 1000, the options are the same as they were for the non-IMFC version. Koala Pad support is not present, but joysticks are still supported.
The loading screen for the IMFC version is now using 80-columns and has a text based cursor select system. It was very forward thinking for EA to provide a command list on the screen. Also, if the settings button (the plug) is clicked after the program starts, a menu displays that allows you to select the instruments to be used from the 240 voice patches available on the IMFC. The program does not appear to supply custom voice patches, even though the IMFC has room for 96 of them. When you play back a song, it will show one of the voice patches assigned to the treble and bass clefs.
The Setup Screen allows to choose up to 13 voices for customization. You can customize each instrument from the IMFC by the following :
Pan : L, L+R, R
Portamento : Off, Slow, Med., Fast
Vibrato : Off, On
Octave : -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
While you can only use two instruments at a time for playback, the SO sliders allow you to select one instrument for each stave on the Music Screen. On a PCjr. or Tandy, the SO sliders had 13 steps which determined the character of the sound for each stave. With the IMFC, the name of the instrument will change if you raise or lower the respective SO slider. The VO slider does the same for the volume of the stave on either the PCjr., Tandy or IMFC. Because DOSBox does not support the IMFC, I cannot post a screenshot of the Setup Screen. Unfortunately, the instruments selected cannot be changed during the song, but this is a handy way of quickly trying out new instruments.
Most of the songs found on the original version can be found on the IMFC version, but weirdly Daisy and the Canon in D Major are not present. The modern songs are not present, but there are several other songs, such as Dixie, Yankee Doodle Dandy and the first few bars of M.U.L.E.'s theme song. Mystery, Buggy, Rhythm and Scales are present. Songs from either version will not necessarily sound the same as the song on the other version on the same hardware.
Why no further versions?
MCS had always tried to provide broad sound support, and this version for the IMFC was the first and last time the program was updated to support a PC sound peripheral. Electronic Arts did not attempt to release a version for the Adlib. In 1987, IBM was still considered a sure thing and Adlib was barely known. The IMFC filled a niche with the IMFC by providing a basic, easy to use music program. This program was especially useful to younger people. However, considering the rarity of both the IMFC and this version, it was no great seller and EA probably lost money on the conversion. By the end of 1988, when an Adlib version would have been feasible, MCS was looking a bit long in the tooth. Adlib also had its Visual Composer software that took many cues from MCS. EA itself was transitioning from a publisher-assisted producer to a fully-fledged game studio. The end result was that this was the end of the venerable MCS.
Sound Samples
All captured from real hardware. No post-processing of any sort has been done (that I know of), so you may want to turn the volume up for the Tandy recordings. For the PC Speaker recordings, I used my cassette cable to capture the equivalent of what would be heard through the speaker. I used a Tandy 1000SX for the Tandy recordings and used my IMFC in my IBM PC.
IBM PC Speaker/Cassette 1-Note Original
IBM PC Speaker/Cassette 4-Note
PCjr./Tandy 3-Note Original Version
PCjr./Tandy 3-Note IMFC Version
IBM Music Feature Card
Unfortunately, the Apple II and the IBM PC's hardware was unimpressive compared to the other machines. They only have a speaker. The Apple II's CPU must directly drive the speaker, so there was no CPU time left over for scrolling the screen on the Apple II version using the built-in speaker. The IBM PC's speaker was timer driven, so it could still scroll the screen using the 1-note speaker option.
Fortunately, both the Apple II and the IBM PC supported alternatives. The Apple II version supported a Mockingboard card for six voices of stereo sound. Using the timer-supplied Mockingboard allowed the CPU to scroll the note sheet. The IBM PC versions are much more interesting from a hardware perspective.
Original Release
The original release for the PC supported the IBM PC, XT and PCjr. and "COMPAQ" Because it calibrated itself for CPU speed, it would also work in faster machines like the IBM AT., although the loading time may be increased as a result. This program was a PC booter, and the version widely available also has Tandy 1000 support. Tandy marketed Music Construction Set, so this version may have originally have been from Tandy.
Interestingly, the program does detect the machine it is being used in on startup and will adjust its configuration options accordingly.
On the Tandy 1000, here are the options :
Input - Keyboard; Joystick (Right Port)
Sound - 3 Notes, Scroll; Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - Tandy Graphics Printer (IBM Mode), Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
On the IBM PCjr., here are the options :
Input - Keyboard, Koala Pad, Joystick
Sound - PCjr - 3 Notes, Scroll; Cassette - 4 Notes, Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - IBM Graphics Printer, Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
On the IBM PC, here are the options :
Input - Keyboard, Koala Pad, Joystick
Sound - Speaker, 4 Notes; Cassette - 4 Notes; Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll; Cassette - 1 Note, Scroll
Printer - IBM Graphics Printer, Epson Graphics Printer, Okidata Graphics Printer, No Printer
I do not own a Koala Pad, but it uses the joystick port. It probably would have been the smoothest way to control the icon-based interface of MCS. Because of the special characters, a character-based printer would not work to print Treble and Bass clefs and musical notes, so a Graphics Printer was required. Interestingly, I find no mention of the PCjr. Compact Printer in the PCjr.'s options, but if there is no parallel port sidecar, it may work as it would designated as LPT1. The Compact Printer does support bitmap modes like the listed Graphics Printers. A list of the printers it has been tested with can be found in the Reference Card. Music is printed vertically down the printer page, rather than horizontally as one would expect sheet music to print.
The 4 Notes selections used up all the available CPU time, so the music did not scroll when played with these modes. For the PCjr and Tandy, the 3 note option, using the built-in sound chip, was obviously the way to go. I do not know why they even bothered with the cassette option for the PCjr., a person with a cassette player could record the 3-voice music just as easily. I do not know if the cassette option is still selectable on an IBM PC/XT, which does not have a cassette port and can be uniquely identified. Most generic PC compatibles identify themselves as an IBM PC, so the cassette option is still there although it will not work.
Despite being deemed a PC booter, MCS is tied very much to DOS. The disk is readable in DOS, but only the song files will be seen. When loading and saving songs, a DOS prompt is used and the commands are very DOS and BASIC like. A standard DOS formatted disk can save and load more songs. Oddly, the
loading screen uses a 40-column mode, probably for the PCjr. Full instructions for use in the PC can be found in the Reference Card. The manual and reference card for the IBM PC version can be found at replacementdocs.com. Listings for the sample songs can also be found in the reference card.
IBM Music Feature Card Version
In 1987, Electronic Arts released a revised version of Music Construction Set for the IBM Music Feature Card. I was able to find a download of this program. This version of MCS is a true DOS program, although presumably still protected. If you load a mouse driver beforehand (CTMOUSE.EXE 1.91 works, make sure your COM1 settings are standard 3F8/04), you can use a Microsoft protocol-compatible mouse to control the cursor. The movement is still a bit rough and only supports one button, but better than a joystick. Using the keyboard will allow for fine placement of notes. PCjr. support was removed, but the program still works on an IMFC-less PC and a Tandy 1000.
The IBM Music Feature and mouse are autodetected, but if one or the other is not present, you still have some options. On the IBM PC, the sound options are Speaker - 1 Note, Scroll; Cassette - 1 Note, Scroll. On the Tandy 1000, the options are the same as they were for the non-IMFC version. Koala Pad support is not present, but joysticks are still supported.
The loading screen for the IMFC version is now using 80-columns and has a text based cursor select system. It was very forward thinking for EA to provide a command list on the screen. Also, if the settings button (the plug) is clicked after the program starts, a menu displays that allows you to select the instruments to be used from the 240 voice patches available on the IMFC. The program does not appear to supply custom voice patches, even though the IMFC has room for 96 of them. When you play back a song, it will show one of the voice patches assigned to the treble and bass clefs.
The Setup Screen allows to choose up to 13 voices for customization. You can customize each instrument from the IMFC by the following :
Pan : L, L+R, R
Portamento : Off, Slow, Med., Fast
Vibrato : Off, On
Octave : -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
While you can only use two instruments at a time for playback, the SO sliders allow you to select one instrument for each stave on the Music Screen. On a PCjr. or Tandy, the SO sliders had 13 steps which determined the character of the sound for each stave. With the IMFC, the name of the instrument will change if you raise or lower the respective SO slider. The VO slider does the same for the volume of the stave on either the PCjr., Tandy or IMFC. Because DOSBox does not support the IMFC, I cannot post a screenshot of the Setup Screen. Unfortunately, the instruments selected cannot be changed during the song, but this is a handy way of quickly trying out new instruments.
Most of the songs found on the original version can be found on the IMFC version, but weirdly Daisy and the Canon in D Major are not present. The modern songs are not present, but there are several other songs, such as Dixie, Yankee Doodle Dandy and the first few bars of M.U.L.E.'s theme song. Mystery, Buggy, Rhythm and Scales are present. Songs from either version will not necessarily sound the same as the song on the other version on the same hardware.
Why no further versions?
MCS had always tried to provide broad sound support, and this version for the IMFC was the first and last time the program was updated to support a PC sound peripheral. Electronic Arts did not attempt to release a version for the Adlib. In 1987, IBM was still considered a sure thing and Adlib was barely known. The IMFC filled a niche with the IMFC by providing a basic, easy to use music program. This program was especially useful to younger people. However, considering the rarity of both the IMFC and this version, it was no great seller and EA probably lost money on the conversion. By the end of 1988, when an Adlib version would have been feasible, MCS was looking a bit long in the tooth. Adlib also had its Visual Composer software that took many cues from MCS. EA itself was transitioning from a publisher-assisted producer to a fully-fledged game studio. The end result was that this was the end of the venerable MCS.
Sound Samples
All captured from real hardware. No post-processing of any sort has been done (that I know of), so you may want to turn the volume up for the Tandy recordings. For the PC Speaker recordings, I used my cassette cable to capture the equivalent of what would be heard through the speaker. I used a Tandy 1000SX for the Tandy recordings and used my IMFC in my IBM PC.
IBM PC Speaker/Cassette 1-Note Original
IBM PC Speaker/Cassette 4-Note
PCjr./Tandy 3-Note Original Version
IBM Music Feature Card
Sunday, December 21, 2014
The Wringer - Breaking PC DOS Game Copy Protection
Copy Protection is the bane of the PC Gamer's existence. It ranges from "You must insert your ORIGINAL disk into drive a:" whenever you play the game to "Find the fifth word in the third paragraph on page eight in your manual" and "Type in the name of this planet at coordinayes x 645 and y 743". However, if you want to enjoy games from their original media, it is necessary to deal with it. It stinks when you buy a PC game from a thift store or on ebay and it is missing the code wheel or the map or the manual. If you do not want to deal with it, there are several programs you can use to break the protection. In this blog post, I will identify these programs, point out some special cases and generally help people play their games without the original documentation. Let me start with a group of cracking programs I call, collectively, "The Wringer".
The Wringer
The Wringer consists of eight DOS programs. All these programs have a text-based GUI that allows you to select your game from a list. There is undoubtedly considerable overlap among these programs, but I have not the time or the patience to create a spreadsheet identifying which program has a crack for which game. It is an unusual game that cannot be cracked by one of these programs. Unfortunately, this means that you may not find a crack for your game until the fifth or sixth program you try. DOSBox is excellent for going those these programs and applying their patches quickly.
NoGuard R6.0 by Central Point Software
This program is the oldest, dated 10/11/1990. It says it can break the SuperLok, ProLok and EverLock disk-based protections and Sierra Online's protections. It then has a list of individual games and programs. It can also detect some protection schemes.
Central Point Software was the publisher of CopyIIPC, and versions of CopyIIPC would include NoGuard for people to make hassle free backups and fully hard drive functional installations. It also included the NoKey program for certain disks for which CopyIIPC could not make a working backup.
The executable is NOGUARD.EXE.
The Patcher v6.5 by Michael Caldwell
This program has a file date of 05/09/1995. It supports 171 distinct games. The executable is PATCHER.EXE
CrackAid v3.39 by Rawhide
This program supports 323 entries, but some games have more than one entry. This is because they have multiple versions. The file date is 11/05/1993 and the executable is CRACKAID.EXE. It should be kept in its own subdirectory.
Crock v2.32 by Firebug & Eryx
This program is good when you want to crack CGA or Tandy versions of some games. It has 624 cracks and some cheats as well. It also comes with UNP, (see below).
The files date from 01/16/1995 and the executable is CROCK2.EXE. It should be kept in its own subdirectory.
Locksmith v1.31 by REM Software
This program is by far the most annoying of the bunch. If you move the subdirectory, you must reinstall the program again. You need to mount the install files to a floppy drive and you need a serial number. If you download it where indicated, the serial will be included. The executable is LOCK.EXE. The program is dated 07-17-1994 and consists of 792 entries. It does include a Hex Editor and will tell you what each crack does.
NeverLock by Copyware Inc.
This version is from Spring, 1996, dated 03/30/1996 and has a nag screen or two. It can search for some commercial copy protections. It has 424 protections divided into a Modern and a Classic Collection. The executable is NEV_UNIV.EXE. The executable NEV_BUSI.EXE is for commercial programs.
Dprotector v3.1 by Tim Trahan
This program was compiled on 12/10/1993. It has libraries for Classic and Modern games, a TSR loader library (see below). One really nice feature is that the program will tell you exactly what it does for each game. Annoyingly, there is a nag screen when the program starts. The executable is DPRO3DOS.EXE and it requires its own subdirectory.
Rawcopy PC v1.0 from "MSI"
Program date is 1992-1993. This supports 476 entries. The executable is RAWCOPY.EXE.
Where to Find
You can find all the programs I have identified here : http://retro.icequake.net/dob/#soft
Limitations
The cracks contained in these programs tend to be of varying quality. They may not work on every version of a game, may only work on a narrow range of systems, or may work to get into the game but do not defeat protection checks later on.
Special Cases
Cracked by the Publisher
When companies started to release their floppy disk titles on CDs, they would have to break the copy protection to get them to run. Sierra did this for their AGI games on their Anniversary and Collection CDs. However they included the necessary information for the SCI games in the manual for the collection, so those games had intact copy protection. LucasArts cracked their games, even for floppy compilations, but they did not release every version in a Collection, so there are versions that need to be cracked manually. Origin and Sir-Tech cracked the games that relied on disk based protection like Sierra, but included full documentation for all their games because the later games used a manual-lookup protection. SSI included code wheels for compilations that included their early Gold Box games, even with compilations released in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The "SUP" Sierra Unprotection Program v2.01 by Anders M. Olsson
This is a special but important case, it only deals with Sierra floppy games that use the SuperLok v3.2 disk-based protection system. This includes all v2 AGI DOS games and a few others. It does not work with any other AGI Sierra games such as the booter versions of King's Quest and King's Quest II, the Black Cauldron or Donald Duck's Playground. It is not needed with v3 AGI DOS games. The list of games which it supports are as follows :
3-D Helicopter Simulator
Black Cauldron, The (comes in v2 and v3 AGI versions, v3 is unprotected)
King's Quest I, II and III
Leisure Suit Larry
Space Quest I & II
Police Quest (most versions are not protected)
Thexder
The program can be found here : http://www.sierrahelp.com/GeneralHelp/FloppyDiskBackupProblems.html
The program requires the original disk 1 from the game, it reads the encryption string from the disk, inserts it into the Sierra .COM loader and patches the floppy disk error checks so that the loader will decrypt the AGI file, which is the real executable file.
CD-ROM Protection
CD versions of games rarely had copy protection. In the early and mid-90s, the cost of duplicating a CD was well out of reach and CD-Rs were not really available. In the late 1990s, burners and writable CDs had become affordable and publishers again looked to disc-based methods to protect their games, but this was typically after the DOS era. However, there are DOS games like Orion Burger and Championship Manager 2 series, which rely on an early version of the LaserLok CD protection system. This is not an issue if you are trying to run these games on real hardware or have a CD image and a burner that can support this protection. However, with DOSBox, you will need patches, found here :
http://pferrie.host22.com/misc/dosbox.htm
Some CD-ROM versions of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans will ask for a word from the manual in order to install and use the game. I believe this is a holdover from the floppy disk version, which has the same protection. Once the game has passed the SETUP.EXE, which selects the sound devices, it can be played freely without needing to look up a word in the manual. If you have the combo MS-DOS and Macintosh CD (with CD-Audio tracks used only by the Mac executable), then you won't encounter this problem.
If your CD has files in the root directory with 05/02/1995 dates, you will encounter the protection. If your CD has 11/03/1994 or 09/06/1996 root directory files (the latter is the CD-Audio version), then you won't have to deal with the protection.
Compressed Executables
To save space, and to prevent instant debugging, several programs compressed their executables with a program like LZEXE In order to crack them, these executables have to be uncompressed with a program like UNP v3.31, then have the crack applied.
Loaders
There are some games that simply could not be easily cracked. This is because they encrypt or otherwise obfuscates that portion of the program that controls the protection. In this case, a .COM loader may be provided that will intercept the protection and allow you to get past it. The .COM may be loaded as a TSR or simply run in place of the game's actual executable.
Documents Required (No Crack Known)
Finally, some games had protection that could not be broken easily. You will not find a ready crack for King's Quest V, for example. KQ5's protection does not occur on startup. In fact, it often does not popup until you have progressed through a substantial portion of the game. The protection requires you to enter four symbols found on a particular page of the manual. Because the protection is buried within the SCI engine files, it was not something that could be broken with a few bytes. In this case, its usually easier just to get a scan of the manual, but back in the day, people used ASCII art and paint program printouts to display the symbols. Fortunately, scans for the most popular games can be found. Here are some good places to look for them :
http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php
http://www.mocagh.org/index.php
http://www.sierragamers.com/aspx/m/634055
In addition, there are versions of games or obscure games for which no crack may be available. The cracks contained in The Wringer for King's Quest IV, for example, only work with the early versions.
Other Resources
The Textfiles site contains many files with unprotection instructions for DOS games. You can find them here : http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/ You can also search the site for cracking information located elsewhere.
Other sites with cracking information include :
http://www.oocities.org/gammadragon/Cracks2.html
http://www.mmnt.net/db/0/0/ftp.gamers.org/pub/archives/uwp-uml/romulus/cracks/
Scene Releases
If there is no other choice, and you must play a game and you can't find a crack for it, then you may want to look for scene releases by warez groups. Typically scene releases game with softdocs, which is the manual information in plain text. Otherwise they would come with a crack or pre-cracked. The game Dyna Blaster for DOS comes with a unique copy protection method, it requires you to use an Atari-style joystick with a parallel port adapter, which came with the game, to make menu selections. The Wringer does not contain a crack for that obscure, Europe-only game, so you will have to play the cracked version if you do not have the dongle.
The Wringer
The Wringer consists of eight DOS programs. All these programs have a text-based GUI that allows you to select your game from a list. There is undoubtedly considerable overlap among these programs, but I have not the time or the patience to create a spreadsheet identifying which program has a crack for which game. It is an unusual game that cannot be cracked by one of these programs. Unfortunately, this means that you may not find a crack for your game until the fifth or sixth program you try. DOSBox is excellent for going those these programs and applying their patches quickly.
NoGuard R6.0 by Central Point Software
This program is the oldest, dated 10/11/1990. It says it can break the SuperLok, ProLok and EverLock disk-based protections and Sierra Online's protections. It then has a list of individual games and programs. It can also detect some protection schemes.
Central Point Software was the publisher of CopyIIPC, and versions of CopyIIPC would include NoGuard for people to make hassle free backups and fully hard drive functional installations. It also included the NoKey program for certain disks for which CopyIIPC could not make a working backup.
The executable is NOGUARD.EXE.
The Patcher v6.5 by Michael Caldwell
This program has a file date of 05/09/1995. It supports 171 distinct games. The executable is PATCHER.EXE
CrackAid v3.39 by Rawhide
This program supports 323 entries, but some games have more than one entry. This is because they have multiple versions. The file date is 11/05/1993 and the executable is CRACKAID.EXE. It should be kept in its own subdirectory.
Crock v2.32 by Firebug & Eryx
This program is good when you want to crack CGA or Tandy versions of some games. It has 624 cracks and some cheats as well. It also comes with UNP, (see below).
The files date from 01/16/1995 and the executable is CROCK2.EXE. It should be kept in its own subdirectory.
Locksmith v1.31 by REM Software
This program is by far the most annoying of the bunch. If you move the subdirectory, you must reinstall the program again. You need to mount the install files to a floppy drive and you need a serial number. If you download it where indicated, the serial will be included. The executable is LOCK.EXE. The program is dated 07-17-1994 and consists of 792 entries. It does include a Hex Editor and will tell you what each crack does.
NeverLock by Copyware Inc.
This version is from Spring, 1996, dated 03/30/1996 and has a nag screen or two. It can search for some commercial copy protections. It has 424 protections divided into a Modern and a Classic Collection. The executable is NEV_UNIV.EXE. The executable NEV_BUSI.EXE is for commercial programs.
Dprotector v3.1 by Tim Trahan
This program was compiled on 12/10/1993. It has libraries for Classic and Modern games, a TSR loader library (see below). One really nice feature is that the program will tell you exactly what it does for each game. Annoyingly, there is a nag screen when the program starts. The executable is DPRO3DOS.EXE and it requires its own subdirectory.
Rawcopy PC v1.0 from "MSI"
Program date is 1992-1993. This supports 476 entries. The executable is RAWCOPY.EXE.
Where to Find
You can find all the programs I have identified here : http://retro.icequake.net/dob/#soft
Limitations
The cracks contained in these programs tend to be of varying quality. They may not work on every version of a game, may only work on a narrow range of systems, or may work to get into the game but do not defeat protection checks later on.
Special Cases
Cracked by the Publisher
When companies started to release their floppy disk titles on CDs, they would have to break the copy protection to get them to run. Sierra did this for their AGI games on their Anniversary and Collection CDs. However they included the necessary information for the SCI games in the manual for the collection, so those games had intact copy protection. LucasArts cracked their games, even for floppy compilations, but they did not release every version in a Collection, so there are versions that need to be cracked manually. Origin and Sir-Tech cracked the games that relied on disk based protection like Sierra, but included full documentation for all their games because the later games used a manual-lookup protection. SSI included code wheels for compilations that included their early Gold Box games, even with compilations released in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The "SUP" Sierra Unprotection Program v2.01 by Anders M. Olsson
This is a special but important case, it only deals with Sierra floppy games that use the SuperLok v3.2 disk-based protection system. This includes all v2 AGI DOS games and a few others. It does not work with any other AGI Sierra games such as the booter versions of King's Quest and King's Quest II, the Black Cauldron or Donald Duck's Playground. It is not needed with v3 AGI DOS games. The list of games which it supports are as follows :
3-D Helicopter Simulator
Black Cauldron, The (comes in v2 and v3 AGI versions, v3 is unprotected)
King's Quest I, II and III
Leisure Suit Larry
Space Quest I & II
Police Quest (most versions are not protected)
Thexder
The program can be found here : http://www.sierrahelp.com/GeneralHelp/FloppyDiskBackupProblems.html
The program requires the original disk 1 from the game, it reads the encryption string from the disk, inserts it into the Sierra .COM loader and patches the floppy disk error checks so that the loader will decrypt the AGI file, which is the real executable file.
CD versions of games rarely had copy protection. In the early and mid-90s, the cost of duplicating a CD was well out of reach and CD-Rs were not really available. In the late 1990s, burners and writable CDs had become affordable and publishers again looked to disc-based methods to protect their games, but this was typically after the DOS era. However, there are DOS games like Orion Burger and Championship Manager 2 series, which rely on an early version of the LaserLok CD protection system. This is not an issue if you are trying to run these games on real hardware or have a CD image and a burner that can support this protection. However, with DOSBox, you will need patches, found here :
http://pferrie.host22.com/misc/dosbox.htm
Some CD-ROM versions of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans will ask for a word from the manual in order to install and use the game. I believe this is a holdover from the floppy disk version, which has the same protection. Once the game has passed the SETUP.EXE, which selects the sound devices, it can be played freely without needing to look up a word in the manual. If you have the combo MS-DOS and Macintosh CD (with CD-Audio tracks used only by the Mac executable), then you won't encounter this problem.
If your CD has files in the root directory with 05/02/1995 dates, you will encounter the protection. If your CD has 11/03/1994 or 09/06/1996 root directory files (the latter is the CD-Audio version), then you won't have to deal with the protection.
Compressed Executables
To save space, and to prevent instant debugging, several programs compressed their executables with a program like LZEXE In order to crack them, these executables have to be uncompressed with a program like UNP v3.31, then have the crack applied.
Loaders
There are some games that simply could not be easily cracked. This is because they encrypt or otherwise obfuscates that portion of the program that controls the protection. In this case, a .COM loader may be provided that will intercept the protection and allow you to get past it. The .COM may be loaded as a TSR or simply run in place of the game's actual executable.
Documents Required (No Crack Known)
Finally, some games had protection that could not be broken easily. You will not find a ready crack for King's Quest V, for example. KQ5's protection does not occur on startup. In fact, it often does not popup until you have progressed through a substantial portion of the game. The protection requires you to enter four symbols found on a particular page of the manual. Because the protection is buried within the SCI engine files, it was not something that could be broken with a few bytes. In this case, its usually easier just to get a scan of the manual, but back in the day, people used ASCII art and paint program printouts to display the symbols. Fortunately, scans for the most popular games can be found. Here are some good places to look for them :
http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php
http://www.mocagh.org/index.php
http://www.sierragamers.com/aspx/m/634055
In addition, there are versions of games or obscure games for which no crack may be available. The cracks contained in The Wringer for King's Quest IV, for example, only work with the early versions.
Other Resources
The Textfiles site contains many files with unprotection instructions for DOS games. You can find them here : http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/ You can also search the site for cracking information located elsewhere.
Other sites with cracking information include :
http://www.oocities.org/gammadragon/Cracks2.html
http://www.mmnt.net/db/0/0/ftp.gamers.org/pub/archives/uwp-uml/romulus/cracks/
Scene Releases
If there is no other choice, and you must play a game and you can't find a crack for it, then you may want to look for scene releases by warez groups. Typically scene releases game with softdocs, which is the manual information in plain text. Otherwise they would come with a crack or pre-cracked. The game Dyna Blaster for DOS comes with a unique copy protection method, it requires you to use an Atari-style joystick with a parallel port adapter, which came with the game, to make menu selections. The Wringer does not contain a crack for that obscure, Europe-only game, so you will have to play the cracked version if you do not have the dongle.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
4.77MHz 8088, You're Needed!
The floor for all PCs, in terms of speed, is the Intel 8088 CPU running at 4.77MHz, the speed it ran in the IBM PC Model 5150 released in 1981. However, there are various nuances when it comes to PC speed :
The IBM PCjr. also ran at 4.77MHz, but its access to 128KB of RAM was substantially slower than the PC because the video chip also accessed memory to refresh the memory. It could decrease performance by 15-20%. However, if software is ran in memory above 128KB, the performance is slightly better than the IBM PC. Because the PCjr. was not designed to use more than 128KB, at least in the beginning, most early software did not account for the speed increase. On the other hand, most PCjr.-specific software was contained on cartridges or self-booting disks and did not need RAM about 128KB.
A DOS rip of a PCjr. booter may run too fast. Lode Runner is a good example of a game with this problem. Fortunately it does have a speed adjustment that can reduce the speed to sane levels. This is, however, a rare feature.
A DOS rip of a PCjr. booter may run too fast. Lode Runner is a good example of a game with this problem. Fortunately it does have a speed adjustment that can reduce the speed to sane levels. This is, however, a rare feature.
Most 8088s in the PCs and compatibles, including all the IBM PCs, XTs most of the PCjr.s, were socketed. The NEC V20 was a very popular upgrade and was a simple replacement for the 8088. It could increase performance by 15-20%, depending on the application. Later, ISA accelerator cards like the Orchid Tiny Turbo and the Intel Inboard 386PC plugged into an ISA slot and the CPU socket and could speed up the system to be the equivalent of a low end AT or 386 machine. Some brave users would try to overclock their machines by using crystal-switching devices like PC Sprint, which allowed the processor to use a faster clock crystal while the rest of the system used the standard clock crystal, vital for system timing.
Later PC compatibles bumped the clock speed (Tandy 1000 SX, EX and HX), used a V20 (Tandy 1400) or the 8086 with a true 16-bit data path to RAM (some Compaq machines, Tandy SL, SL/2 and RL, IBM PS/2 Models 25 and 30) to improve speed without seriously sacrificing compatibility with software that relied on the basic speed. Usually one speed "bump" would not be sufficiently serious to break software, but gameplay, sound effects and graphical effects could be affected when compared to the base machine.
However, when IBM released the IBM PC AT in 1984, it included a 6MHz 80286, which could run applications three times faster than the original PC or XT. All the software that had been written before the AT's release had only to cope with one speed, so code that was dependent on processor speed could run far faster than intended. Even when the AT was released, programmers did not necessarily put speed checks in their code overnight, the AT was an enormously expensive machine and games would be the last kind of software expected to run on it. Thus for a five year period, 1981-1986, game software was generally designed to run on a 4.77MHz 8088.
In addition to the CPU speed, the speed of the video card sometimes needs to be taken into account. The IBM Color/Graphics Display Adapter was the first graphics card for the IBM PC and compatibles, and it was widely cloned. (By contrast, the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter could only show 80-column text and was not suitable for most games). The PCjr. was only semi-compatible and the Tandy 1000 was (almost) fully compatible with IBM CGA, but it accessed memory far faster than the IBM card. Some games rely on the performance of the IBM CGA card to produce special graphical effects.
Eventually, most early games will break sooner or later as the processor speed and generations increase, or the CGA hardware found less and less support with more advanced graphic cards. Some games, however, like Shamus and Alley Cat, were famously far-sighted and could be run on virtually any system that can run DOS, regardless of processor speed.
IBM PC 4.77MHz
Defender
Defender simply runs too fast when the speed becomes any greater than one bump. Forget about it running at a playable speed on a 286, even one that has been slowed down to 4MHz as with a Tandy 1000 TX or TL. A 4MHz 286 is about as an 8MHz V20 or 8086.
Ultima I-IV
All of the first four Ultima ports to the PC vary the length of their sound effects, the speed of attacks and the spawning rate based on the system speed.
Dunzhin: Warrior of RAS
Dunzhin features synthesized speech, and the pitch of the speech is speed sensitive. "Welcome to Dunzhin!"
IBM PCjr. 4.77MHz
Lode Runner & Championship Lode Runner
These games detect the presence of the PCjr. and adjust their speed. Running games like these as a DOS conversion will result in the action running very fast. The speed settings contained in the game may not fully compensate.
IBM PCjr. 4.77MHz and Tandy 1000 4.77MHz
Touchdown Football
This game was released by Imagic first for the PCjr. and somewhat later for the Tandy 1000. At this point, the Tandy 1000 only ran at 4.77MHz and came with 128KB of RAM onboard. The PCjr. version could run in a 128KB Tandy 1000, but the digitized speech would play back too quickly because the Tandy does not have same the speed penalty for memory accesses in its 128KB of RAM. If you were able to accelerate your PCjr., the speech would playback too quickly. The digitized speech in the Tandy version is affected by any speed bump, such as the 7.16MHz Tandy 1000 SX. Fortunately, Tandy allowed you to change the speed of the CPU to 4.77MHz either at boot-up or in DOS.
Demon Attack
Also developed by Imagic and ported from the PCjr. cartridge version. Similar to Touchdown Football, this game is extremely speed sensitive and runs properly only on a 4.77MHz 8088 Tandy 1000/A/HD/EX/HX/SX.
IBM PC 4.77MHz and Tandy 1000 4.77MHz
Super Boulder Dash
As discussed here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2016/08/boulder-dash-pc-speed-and-joysticks.html, the joystick will respond correctly only at this speed. Fortunately it will still work with a V20 CPU.
IBM CGA Graphical Effects
Frogger
Jungle Hunt
Frogger and Jungle Hunt rely not so much on processor speed as they do on CGA speed to achieve the effect of making a change in the background color (Frogger) or palette (Jungle Hunt), in mid-frame. Thus, the default graphics in Frogger will show blue water on the top and black pavement on the bottom, and show a white score text (using the intense cyan, magenta and white palette) on the top and green, red and brown in the playfield for Jungle Hunt. Even at 4.77MHz, I discovered that at least Jungle Hunt will have an issue with initiating the palette switch on the right scanline when I was using an ADP-50L hard drive controller. Using a different hard drive controller fixed the issue.
Digger
Digger uses a color-cycling effect on its High Score screen that looks properly when run on a 4.77MHz machine with a CGA card.
8088mph
This recent (2015) demo will only run correctly with a 4.77MHz 8088 CPU and an IBM CGA card. It relies both on the speed of the CPU and the video memory speed access of the CGA card, as well as the composite colors generated by the IBM CGA card. It has different settings for Old and New IBM CGA cards.
However, when IBM released the IBM PC AT in 1984, it included a 6MHz 80286, which could run applications three times faster than the original PC or XT. All the software that had been written before the AT's release had only to cope with one speed, so code that was dependent on processor speed could run far faster than intended. Even when the AT was released, programmers did not necessarily put speed checks in their code overnight, the AT was an enormously expensive machine and games would be the last kind of software expected to run on it. Thus for a five year period, 1981-1986, game software was generally designed to run on a 4.77MHz 8088.
In addition to the CPU speed, the speed of the video card sometimes needs to be taken into account. The IBM Color/Graphics Display Adapter was the first graphics card for the IBM PC and compatibles, and it was widely cloned. (By contrast, the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter could only show 80-column text and was not suitable for most games). The PCjr. was only semi-compatible and the Tandy 1000 was (almost) fully compatible with IBM CGA, but it accessed memory far faster than the IBM card. Some games rely on the performance of the IBM CGA card to produce special graphical effects.
Eventually, most early games will break sooner or later as the processor speed and generations increase, or the CGA hardware found less and less support with more advanced graphic cards. Some games, however, like Shamus and Alley Cat, were famously far-sighted and could be run on virtually any system that can run DOS, regardless of processor speed.
IBM PC 4.77MHz
Defender
Defender simply runs too fast when the speed becomes any greater than one bump. Forget about it running at a playable speed on a 286, even one that has been slowed down to 4MHz as with a Tandy 1000 TX or TL. A 4MHz 286 is about as an 8MHz V20 or 8086.
Ultima I-IV
All of the first four Ultima ports to the PC vary the length of their sound effects, the speed of attacks and the spawning rate based on the system speed.
Dunzhin: Warrior of RAS
Dunzhin features synthesized speech, and the pitch of the speech is speed sensitive. "Welcome to Dunzhin!"
IBM PCjr. 4.77MHz
Lode Runner & Championship Lode Runner
These games detect the presence of the PCjr. and adjust their speed. Running games like these as a DOS conversion will result in the action running very fast. The speed settings contained in the game may not fully compensate.
IBM PCjr. 4.77MHz and Tandy 1000 4.77MHz
Touchdown Football
This game was released by Imagic first for the PCjr. and somewhat later for the Tandy 1000. At this point, the Tandy 1000 only ran at 4.77MHz and came with 128KB of RAM onboard. The PCjr. version could run in a 128KB Tandy 1000, but the digitized speech would play back too quickly because the Tandy does not have same the speed penalty for memory accesses in its 128KB of RAM. If you were able to accelerate your PCjr., the speech would playback too quickly. The digitized speech in the Tandy version is affected by any speed bump, such as the 7.16MHz Tandy 1000 SX. Fortunately, Tandy allowed you to change the speed of the CPU to 4.77MHz either at boot-up or in DOS.
Demon Attack
Also developed by Imagic and ported from the PCjr. cartridge version. Similar to Touchdown Football, this game is extremely speed sensitive and runs properly only on a 4.77MHz 8088 Tandy 1000/A/HD/EX/HX/SX.
IBM PC 4.77MHz and Tandy 1000 4.77MHz
Super Boulder Dash
As discussed here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2016/08/boulder-dash-pc-speed-and-joysticks.html, the joystick will respond correctly only at this speed. Fortunately it will still work with a V20 CPU.
IBM CGA Graphical Effects
Frogger
Jungle Hunt
Frogger and Jungle Hunt rely not so much on processor speed as they do on CGA speed to achieve the effect of making a change in the background color (Frogger) or palette (Jungle Hunt), in mid-frame. Thus, the default graphics in Frogger will show blue water on the top and black pavement on the bottom, and show a white score text (using the intense cyan, magenta and white palette) on the top and green, red and brown in the playfield for Jungle Hunt. Even at 4.77MHz, I discovered that at least Jungle Hunt will have an issue with initiating the palette switch on the right scanline when I was using an ADP-50L hard drive controller. Using a different hard drive controller fixed the issue.
Digger
Digger uses a color-cycling effect on its High Score screen that looks properly when run on a 4.77MHz machine with a CGA card.
8088mph
This recent (2015) demo will only run correctly with a 4.77MHz 8088 CPU and an IBM CGA card. It relies both on the speed of the CPU and the video memory speed access of the CGA card, as well as the composite colors generated by the IBM CGA card. It has different settings for Old and New IBM CGA cards.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
The Lost PC Game Versions
Updated 03-28-2021
Originally this blog entry was titled "The Lost PCjr. and Tandy 1000 Game Versions". However, several years later there are very few games known to have any special support for PCjr./Tandy graphics or sound remaining unavailable. So I have decided to expand this list with other notable games. You won't find these games in any DOS or ROM collection, on any abandonware site, from any torrent site, or to buy from any legitimate retro PC game selling site like Good Old Games. Where I know of corroboration for these games, I will give it.
Agent USA - Tandy
Supports PCjr. graphics and was advertised for sale in Tandy's catalogs, so a Tandy version with support for enhanced graphics may exist.
Congo Bongo - CGA Composite
This game, like Tapper, came as a "flippy" disk. This is a disk where both sides are independent of each other and can be used in single or double sided drives. This is rare on the IBM PC, and disks for the IBM PC have two index holes. Ultima 3 also used a flippy. One version had graphics suitable for RGBI monitors, the other was meant for composite color monitors. The composite color version has yet to be preserved and distributed.
Dragon's Keep - PCjr.
Based on installation instructions in the manual for the PCjr. and magazine articles from the time period, this game may have been ported to the PCjr.
EcoQuest 1 - EGA 16-Color
EcoQuest uses the Sierra SCI1 engine, and like other SCI1 games, it had separate 16-color and 256-color versions. Other SCI1 games like King's Quest V and Conquests of the Longbow have their 16-color versions available, this is the only one which is not available.
Gauntlet II - Tandy DAC
Gauntlet II had a bonus disk, which you had to send away for to Mindscape, that added digitized sound support for owners of a Tandy 1000 with a DAC, such as the TL, SL and their successors.
Mouskattack - PC
A 2019 discovery of this Sierra port from the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers : https://www.mobygames.com/game/mouskattack/cover-art
Oil's Well - PCjr.- PCjr.
Although there is a hack which gets Oil's Well working on a PCjr./Tandy 1000, the original disk still needs to be redumped because the disk was damaged where the PCjr. code was. The original game may have PCjr/Tandy sound support.
Superbowl Sunday - Tandy
Supports enhanced PCjr. graphics. Advertised in Tandy's catalogs, so a version that supports enhanced graphics on a Tandy may exist.
Wizardry II - 5.25" Disk
The Wizardry sequels were released on 5.25" disks and 3.5" disks, but only the latter are available for Wizardry II. All booters should have 5.25" disks versions available because early computers like the IBM PC, XT and PCjr. did not have 3.5" drives.
Originally this blog entry was titled "The Lost PCjr. and Tandy 1000 Game Versions". However, several years later there are very few games known to have any special support for PCjr./Tandy graphics or sound remaining unavailable. So I have decided to expand this list with other notable games. You won't find these games in any DOS or ROM collection, on any abandonware site, from any torrent site, or to buy from any legitimate retro PC game selling site like Good Old Games. Where I know of corroboration for these games, I will give it.
Agent USA - Tandy
Supports PCjr. graphics and was advertised for sale in Tandy's catalogs, so a Tandy version with support for enhanced graphics may exist.
Congo Bongo - CGA Composite
This game, like Tapper, came as a "flippy" disk. This is a disk where both sides are independent of each other and can be used in single or double sided drives. This is rare on the IBM PC, and disks for the IBM PC have two index holes. Ultima 3 also used a flippy. One version had graphics suitable for RGBI monitors, the other was meant for composite color monitors. The composite color version has yet to be preserved and distributed.
Dragon's Keep - PCjr.
Based on installation instructions in the manual for the PCjr. and magazine articles from the time period, this game may have been ported to the PCjr.
EcoQuest 1 - EGA 16-Color
EcoQuest uses the Sierra SCI1 engine, and like other SCI1 games, it had separate 16-color and 256-color versions. Other SCI1 games like King's Quest V and Conquests of the Longbow have their 16-color versions available, this is the only one which is not available.
Gauntlet II - Tandy DAC
Gauntlet II had a bonus disk, which you had to send away for to Mindscape, that added digitized sound support for owners of a Tandy 1000 with a DAC, such as the TL, SL and their successors.
Mouskattack - PC
A 2019 discovery of this Sierra port from the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers : https://www.mobygames.com/game/mouskattack/cover-art
Oil's Well - PCjr.- PCjr.
Although there is a hack which gets Oil's Well working on a PCjr./Tandy 1000, the original disk still needs to be redumped because the disk was damaged where the PCjr. code was. The original game may have PCjr/Tandy sound support.
Superbowl Sunday - Tandy
Supports enhanced PCjr. graphics. Advertised in Tandy's catalogs, so a version that supports enhanced graphics on a Tandy may exist.
Wizardry II - 5.25" Disk
The Wizardry sequels were released on 5.25" disks and 3.5" disks, but only the latter are available for Wizardry II. All booters should have 5.25" disks versions available because early computers like the IBM PC, XT and PCjr. did not have 3.5" drives.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
IBM PCjr. Exclusive Games - ScubaVenture & Mouser
The IBM PCjr. had eight cartridge games, and of them, two are exclusive to the system. They don't exist for anything other than a PCjr. and since they came on cartridges, they are not designed to work with any other computer. These games are ScubaVenture and Mouser.
ScubaVenture and Mouser, both programmed by Nasir Gebelli, are very minimalist, enigmatic games. As Gebelli only had 8,192 bytes to fit the program in (they use 8KB cartridges), you can understand why they lack anything beyond the minimum necessary to make playable games.
Gebelli himself is something of an enigma, as he began programming games for the Apple II, then he did these PCjr. games and some years later worked for Square in Japan programming Rad Racer, Final Fantasy 1-3 and Secret of Mana. Thereafter, he quit video games altogether and has not returned to them, despite his obvious talents.
Gebelli's PCjr. games lack polish, which is very unusual as IBM released them and shipped them on expensive cartridges. ScubaVenture has some very impressive smooth vertical scrolling and supports two player simultaneous play. Mouser is more of a puzzle game requiring a fair bit of strategy. Both use the PCjr.'s 160x200x16c mode for colorful low resolution graphics and 3-voice sound.
Common Controls
Press F1 for one player and F2 for two player (That is Fn and 1 or 2 on the PCjr. keyboard). If left untouched, the programs will enter a demo mode. Both games use the keyboard by default. They can use joysticks by pressing the J key on the keyboard. You can return to the keyboard by pressing the K key on the keyboard. Press Esc to pause. Each uses the cursor control keys and the spacebar or the joystick positions and button 1 on the joystick. When your game is over, you will not be returned to the title screen, so press F1 or F2 to start a new game.
ScubaVenture
The object of ScubaVenture is to collect treasures while swimming to avoid the eel on the bottom of the screen. If you touch the eel, you are stuck on the bottom of the screen. Press spacebar/button1 to launch a new diver. Once your third diver is eaten, the game is over.
You will come across yellow keys, each looking different. Touch the key to take it, and if you touch another key, you will take that. Soon you will see some "treasure boxes", and each corresponds to the shape of one key. If you touch the box with the right key, you will earn points. You will also earn points if you touch the red fish. Obstacles include seaweed, seahorses and the yellow "walls" on the sides of the screen. If you touch one of these obstacles, you will not be able to move forward and must try to find a way to move around or you will be eaten by the eel. In the one player game, a white diver will randomly swim across the screen and can block you and can take fish. He can swim through the yellow walls and the eel will not eat him.
In the two player game, each player will have three divers and compete on points. If you are using the keyboard, player one will use the regular keys and player two will use the AWSZ to move Left, Up, Right and Down. The Tab key will release another diver for player two. Player one's divers wear a green suit, player two's divers wear a red suit. When one player loses all of his divers, his diver will turn white and move randomly, just like the one player game.
Starting the game is a bit confusing. When you press F1 or F2, the title screen will seem to reset itself. If you keep pressing F1 or F2, the title screen will continue to reset. Let the music play until the ScubaVenture and NASIR text begin to flash. When that is finished, the game will start.
Mouser
The object of Mouser is to trap all the mice in each of the nine rooms. In each room there are walls that you can push clockwise or counterclockwise. The nine rooms are laid out in a 3x3 arrangement, and you can exit the rooms using the passages indicated. Each room is laid out in a 9x5 grid.
To trap a mouse, you must box it in on all four sides by walls. You cannot leave it any space to move. If you trap a mouse, the cat will eat it when you leave the screen. The cats are useless otherwise. If the mouse can move a square, then he isn't trapped. If one of the sides of the trap is the cat, the mouse will not be eaten when you leave the screen and you can't win the game. If you trap a mouse, a special sound will be heard and you will receive the points for trapping a mouse. Sometimes you will enter a screen and the mouse will already be trapped and you earn the points automatically. The time will also be reset.
To push a wall clockwise around a pivot, walk into it. To push a wall counterclockwise, push the spacebar/button 1 as you walk into it. The wall will turn 90 degrees on the pivot, and you can use the directions to move the walls to where you need them in the room. If you push one wall onto another, the wall will turn white and the next time you push that wall, one of the walls will be pushed forward in that direction one space. You cannot push a wall if it would go through a space occupied by a mouse, a cat, the cheese or a wall. Nor can you push a white wall onto a white wall. Sometimes when pushing a wall, there is some residue of it left behind, enough to block your character from that direction, but the mice can chew their way through it.
In some rooms, there are pieces of cheese. If a male (light red) mouse touches the cheese, he will eat it and the cheese will appear elsewhere on the screen. If a female (light magenta) mouse eats the cheese, it will spawn another male mouse. Male mice are stupid and walk back and forth in a pattern, but female mice can walk in a much less restricted fashion and are more likely to chase the player.
Some rooms are dark and require a flashlight to illuminate. You can find a flashlight in one of the rooms. The flashlight will only illuminate a circular space around the character, but as you enter and leave the room you can see the full layout for a second.
Two players alternate in trying to clear their rooms. If the player touches a mouse or runs out of time, he loses a life. Each player has three lives and the rooms are supposedly randomized every time the system boots the cartridge. When you start a new game, the same room layouts are used.
Conclusion
ScubaVenture was probably intended for younger players, as the game is much more simple than Mouser. While River Raid probably influenced the game's development, it quickly becomes repetitive in a way that River Raid does not. Each time you complete a section in River Raid, a new section appears. In ScubaVenture, each time you complete the section, the same section appears until you get all the treasures.
Mouser reminds me of Clu Clu Land for the NES, although Mouser came first. It is a very frustrating game due to the way the game moves the walls. You have to think about the direction the wall moves and hope you actually get it to move in the direction you want. The mice always seem to move in a pattern just one square away from being trapped. The timer runs down very quickly while you painstakingly try to manipulate the mice into your traps. Mouser is also buggy in that you can die upon entering a screen where a mouse happens to be in the same place as the entrance.
ScubaVenture and Mouser, both programmed by Nasir Gebelli, are very minimalist, enigmatic games. As Gebelli only had 8,192 bytes to fit the program in (they use 8KB cartridges), you can understand why they lack anything beyond the minimum necessary to make playable games.
Gebelli himself is something of an enigma, as he began programming games for the Apple II, then he did these PCjr. games and some years later worked for Square in Japan programming Rad Racer, Final Fantasy 1-3 and Secret of Mana. Thereafter, he quit video games altogether and has not returned to them, despite his obvious talents.
Gebelli's PCjr. games lack polish, which is very unusual as IBM released them and shipped them on expensive cartridges. ScubaVenture has some very impressive smooth vertical scrolling and supports two player simultaneous play. Mouser is more of a puzzle game requiring a fair bit of strategy. Both use the PCjr.'s 160x200x16c mode for colorful low resolution graphics and 3-voice sound.
Common Controls
Press F1 for one player and F2 for two player (That is Fn and 1 or 2 on the PCjr. keyboard). If left untouched, the programs will enter a demo mode. Both games use the keyboard by default. They can use joysticks by pressing the J key on the keyboard. You can return to the keyboard by pressing the K key on the keyboard. Press Esc to pause. Each uses the cursor control keys and the spacebar or the joystick positions and button 1 on the joystick. When your game is over, you will not be returned to the title screen, so press F1 or F2 to start a new game.
ScubaVenture
 |
| Title Screen |
 |
| Divers, Eel, Score, Fish |
 |
| Keys and more Keys |
Eventually, the tunnel will loop around. This will allow you to try to obtain a(nother) treasure. The cavern will loop until you have obtained all the treasures or have lost all your lives. Once you have obtained all the treasures, you will move onto a different tunnel.
 |
| Treasure Boxes |
 |
| Obstacles |
 |
| More Obstacles |
 |
| Two Player Mode |
 |
| Title Screen |
 |
| Starting Out |
 |
| I trapped a mouse! |
 |
| The Flashlight |
 |
| Dark Rooms and a Female Mouse |
Two players alternate in trying to clear their rooms. If the player touches a mouse or runs out of time, he loses a life. Each player has three lives and the rooms are supposedly randomized every time the system boots the cartridge. When you start a new game, the same room layouts are used.
Conclusion
ScubaVenture was probably intended for younger players, as the game is much more simple than Mouser. While River Raid probably influenced the game's development, it quickly becomes repetitive in a way that River Raid does not. Each time you complete a section in River Raid, a new section appears. In ScubaVenture, each time you complete the section, the same section appears until you get all the treasures.
Mouser reminds me of Clu Clu Land for the NES, although Mouser came first. It is a very frustrating game due to the way the game moves the walls. You have to think about the direction the wall moves and hope you actually get it to move in the direction you want. The mice always seem to move in a pattern just one square away from being trapped. The timer runs down very quickly while you painstakingly try to manipulate the mice into your traps. Mouser is also buggy in that you can die upon entering a screen where a mouse happens to be in the same place as the entrance.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
M.U.L.E. - The PC Port on Real Hardware
1985 was the last year that IBM was known to have published any games for its IBM PC family. It had seen games as one of the things that consumers could do with their PCs, and had released Microsoft Adventure at the launch of the original IBM PC Model 5150. However, by 1985 IBM no longer looked to the home consumer market as a primary market, and thus the number of games it published dwindled to nothing. One of the last titles it published was a port of Electronic Arts and Ozark Softscape's classic M.U.L.E. This port was ported by K-Byte Software and released very quietly. In fact, until 2012, no one had probably played it for 15 years. It remained a mystery and completely unavailable until someone opened up a box of old IBM games, found it, became aware of its significance and allowed it to be cracked and distributed. The story is recited here : http://www.worldofmule.net/tiki-index.php?page=IBM+PC Others have analyzed it for differences between it and the Atari 400/800 original and Commodore 64 port, read here : http://bringerp.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=166 In this port I will discuss how it actually plays on the systems it was intended for.
Speed
M.U.L.E. for the IBM PC requires 128KB of RAM and a CGA card. It only supports PC speaker sound and music and one physical joystick. The cover explicitly lists the IBM PC (Model 5150) IBM PC/XT, IBM PC Portable and IBM PCjr. as supported systems. Note that it does not mention the IBM PC AT, which was released in 1984 and used a 6MHz 80286 CPU. This game is speed sensitive and the game will probably run to fast on the AT, which is roughly three times as fast as the PC or XT. Running on more modestly upgraded or faster systems, like a V20 IBM PC, XT or PCjr. or a Tandy 1000EX, SX or HX at 7.16MHz will not give such a noticeable effect on speed to make the game unplayable.
On the packaging, there is no explicit mention of the IBM Personal Computer AT. This is probably not an oversight, as some other IBM released games from 1984-85 explicitly included the AT in the list of supported systems on the box. The AT was released in 1984 and thus its omission was almost certainly intentional. (K-Byte does not seem like an outfit that could afford an AT). The game adjusts its speed for a PCjr., so if you have an exotic speedup method in your PCjr. (V20 is fine), the game will probably run too fast.
Graphics
On an IBM PC, XT or 100% compatible system with a CGA card, the game will use the 320x200 Mode 4, Palette 0 (cyan, magenta, white) in low intensity with a bright white background/border. While the game is playable on an RGB monitor, it was clearly meant to be connected to a TV or color composite monitor. Instead of stripey cyan and magenta graphics for the four players and their plots, composite color gives brown-gold, orange, red and light blue. It seems clear that a late CGA card was intended because the text (white/light gray against bright white) on a real color composite monitor or TV is almost totally illegible with an early CGA card (without adjustments to the brightness and contrast). EGA and VGA cards probably will not display the intended colors.
It was a long-standing myth that this game was either released solely for the PCjr. or took advantage of the PCjr.'s advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared to the IBM PC with CGA and PC Speaker. The sound is exactly the same on either the IBM PC or PCjr.
On an IBM PCjr., the game uses a 320x200 resolution four color mode with colors similar to CGA. The bright white background is the same, but the RGB colors are now light cyan, light magenta and white. The pixel patterns are not the same as with a non-PCjr., but still show that the game was meant to be displayed on a color composite monitor or TV. The PCjr. artifact colors the programmers chose are not as distinct as on a CGA card, there are two shades of magenta or purple and two shades of cyan or blue-green to choose from.
Control
This section requires a digression. When M.U.L.E. was released for the Atari home computer systems in 1983, officially it could only run on the Atari 800 with 48KB of RAM. The Atari 400 was not easily upgradeable to 48KB (but when upgraded was indistinguishable from an 800 to software) and the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL and later machines only had two joystick ports. For the Atari original, there was no keyboard control of the characters. At least one joystick was required, and a pair of paddles could be used by two players in the auctions. If there were fewer joysticks than human players, the players had to share the joystick for each player's main turn.
The Commodore 64 only had two joystick ports, and its port of MULE did not support paddles. Thus, players three and four had to use a pair of keyboard keys during the auctions, and the joysticks had to be shared during the player's main turns.
The IBM port only supported one joystick, notwithstanding the IBM Game Control Adapter could support two joysticks with a Y-splitter and the IBM PCjr. had two distinct joystick ports. Unlike the Atari and Commodore versions, it did not require a joystick to play the game. If you did not have a joystick, the arrow keys could be used to control the player during his or her main turn. Only the main four cardinal directions could be used, the "diagonals", 1, 3, 7 and 9, do nothing on the PC keyboard. The PCjr.'s keyboard has no numberpad, only dedicated cursor keys.
For the auction phase, the keyboard controls for each player on the IBM PC are as follows :
Player - 1 2 3 4
Up - F1 W O ↑
Down - F5 X . ↓
On the PCjr., the keyboard controls are different, due to the differing layout of the PCjr.'s keyboard :
Player - 1 2 3 4
Up - W Y [ ↑
Down - Z B / ↓
There is a game crashing bug when selecting joystick control with four planeteers. The Alt key is pressed to determine which player will use the joystick. However, if players 1-3 use the joystick, the game will not allow you to press key to select player 4. Player 4 must use the joystick in this case.
This game was designed for the IBM PC 83-key keyboard. On the 83-key keyboard, Player 1's auction up key, F1 is above the down key, F5, by one key, just like the keys for Players 2-4. On a 101-key keyboard, F1 is three keys to the left of F5. This arrangement simply does not work well with three other people.
The keyboard handling takes some getting used to. The Enter key corresponds to the joystick button. When doing anything requiring a button press like selecting a land plot, beginning your turn or installing a M.U.L.E., it is best to hold the button down until the game acknowledges the input.
The Alt key functions essentially as a speedup key in the game. It can end auctions after everybody has bought and sold what they can. It can bypass the summary screen and the chance animations.
The Esc key acts as a pause key. Unfortunately, it will cause the game to freeze on a Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard. If you are going to play M.U.L.E. on a Tandy 1000, I would advise using the joystick and setting the speed machine to slow (if an EX, HX, SX or faster) at boot time. On the Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard, the Esc key is right below the F1 key, making it too easy to press if you are controlling Player 1. The composite colors on a Tandy with an RCA video jack (TX or earlier) will look different than on an IBM PC with a CGA card.
Finally, the game can be saved in progress by pressing Ctrl-Q. This does not appear to be a feature of the earlier versions.
Speed
M.U.L.E. for the IBM PC requires 128KB of RAM and a CGA card. It only supports PC speaker sound and music and one physical joystick. The cover explicitly lists the IBM PC (Model 5150) IBM PC/XT, IBM PC Portable and IBM PCjr. as supported systems. Note that it does not mention the IBM PC AT, which was released in 1984 and used a 6MHz 80286 CPU. This game is speed sensitive and the game will probably run to fast on the AT, which is roughly three times as fast as the PC or XT. Running on more modestly upgraded or faster systems, like a V20 IBM PC, XT or PCjr. or a Tandy 1000EX, SX or HX at 7.16MHz will not give such a noticeable effect on speed to make the game unplayable.
On the packaging, there is no explicit mention of the IBM Personal Computer AT. This is probably not an oversight, as some other IBM released games from 1984-85 explicitly included the AT in the list of supported systems on the box. The AT was released in 1984 and thus its omission was almost certainly intentional. (K-Byte does not seem like an outfit that could afford an AT). The game adjusts its speed for a PCjr., so if you have an exotic speedup method in your PCjr. (V20 is fine), the game will probably run too fast.
Graphics
 |
| IBM PC with CGA on an RGB Monitor |
On an IBM PC, XT or 100% compatible system with a CGA card, the game will use the 320x200 Mode 4, Palette 0 (cyan, magenta, white) in low intensity with a bright white background/border. While the game is playable on an RGB monitor, it was clearly meant to be connected to a TV or color composite monitor. Instead of stripey cyan and magenta graphics for the four players and their plots, composite color gives brown-gold, orange, red and light blue. It seems clear that a late CGA card was intended because the text (white/light gray against bright white) on a real color composite monitor or TV is almost totally illegible with an early CGA card (without adjustments to the brightness and contrast). EGA and VGA cards probably will not display the intended colors.
 |
| IBM PC with Old CGA on a Composite Monitor |
 |
| IBM PC with New CGA on a Composite Monitor |
On an IBM PCjr., the game uses a 320x200 resolution four color mode with colors similar to CGA. The bright white background is the same, but the RGB colors are now light cyan, light magenta and white. The pixel patterns are not the same as with a non-PCjr., but still show that the game was meant to be displayed on a color composite monitor or TV. The PCjr. artifact colors the programmers chose are not as distinct as on a CGA card, there are two shades of magenta or purple and two shades of cyan or blue-green to choose from.
 |
| IBM PCjr. with an RGB Monitor |
Control
This section requires a digression. When M.U.L.E. was released for the Atari home computer systems in 1983, officially it could only run on the Atari 800 with 48KB of RAM. The Atari 400 was not easily upgradeable to 48KB (but when upgraded was indistinguishable from an 800 to software) and the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL and later machines only had two joystick ports. For the Atari original, there was no keyboard control of the characters. At least one joystick was required, and a pair of paddles could be used by two players in the auctions. If there were fewer joysticks than human players, the players had to share the joystick for each player's main turn.
 |
| IBM PCjr. on a Composite Monitor |
The Commodore 64 only had two joystick ports, and its port of MULE did not support paddles. Thus, players three and four had to use a pair of keyboard keys during the auctions, and the joysticks had to be shared during the player's main turns.
The IBM port only supported one joystick, notwithstanding the IBM Game Control Adapter could support two joysticks with a Y-splitter and the IBM PCjr. had two distinct joystick ports. Unlike the Atari and Commodore versions, it did not require a joystick to play the game. If you did not have a joystick, the arrow keys could be used to control the player during his or her main turn. Only the main four cardinal directions could be used, the "diagonals", 1, 3, 7 and 9, do nothing on the PC keyboard. The PCjr.'s keyboard has no numberpad, only dedicated cursor keys.
For the auction phase, the keyboard controls for each player on the IBM PC are as follows :
Player - 1 2 3 4
Up - F1 W O ↑
Down - F5 X . ↓
On the PCjr., the keyboard controls are different, due to the differing layout of the PCjr.'s keyboard :
Player - 1 2 3 4
Up - W Y [ ↑
Down - Z B / ↓
There is a game crashing bug when selecting joystick control with four planeteers. The Alt key is pressed to determine which player will use the joystick. However, if players 1-3 use the joystick, the game will not allow you to press key to select player 4. Player 4 must use the joystick in this case.
This game was designed for the IBM PC 83-key keyboard. On the 83-key keyboard, Player 1's auction up key, F1 is above the down key, F5, by one key, just like the keys for Players 2-4. On a 101-key keyboard, F1 is three keys to the left of F5. This arrangement simply does not work well with three other people.
The keyboard handling takes some getting used to. The Enter key corresponds to the joystick button. When doing anything requiring a button press like selecting a land plot, beginning your turn or installing a M.U.L.E., it is best to hold the button down until the game acknowledges the input.
The Alt key functions essentially as a speedup key in the game. It can end auctions after everybody has bought and sold what they can. It can bypass the summary screen and the chance animations.
The Esc key acts as a pause key. Unfortunately, it will cause the game to freeze on a Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard. If you are going to play M.U.L.E. on a Tandy 1000, I would advise using the joystick and setting the speed machine to slow (if an EX, HX, SX or faster) at boot time. On the Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard, the Esc key is right below the F1 key, making it too easy to press if you are controlling Player 1. The composite colors on a Tandy with an RCA video jack (TX or earlier) will look different than on an IBM PC with a CGA card.
Finally, the game can be saved in progress by pressing Ctrl-Q. This does not appear to be a feature of the earlier versions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)