Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

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Heart
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Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

Post by Heart »

I modified Dragon Wars for myself to use on a SuperCPU and thought other SuperCPU users might like to try it as well.

You need a SuperCPU and either a RAMLink, FD-2000, or CMD-HD. Other storage devices will not work. If you are using an FD-2000 or CMD-HD, SuperRAM or GEORAM is supported and recommended.

The attached file is a 6400 block native partition. You need to be able to copy the file back to a CMD native partition, sector by sector. I don't know how you will do this, but the process is similar to copying a d81 image back to disk, but instead of 80 tracks of 40 sectors, it is 25 tracks of 256 sectors. I wrote my own program to read the sectors from a RAMLink partition to a file and then zipped the file.

What's different about running DragonWars on a SuperCPU? Well, for one thing, the monsters you run into in the game now display correctly. On a stock 64, the pictures were always glitchy. Also, the game plays faster and therefore, in my opinion, plays better. Another bonus, no disk swapping.
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dragon wars.dnp.zip
(500.51 KiB) Downloaded 234 times


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Heart
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Re: Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

Post by Heart »

The above file got corrupted by my compressor. Don't use it.

Use the following instead.
dragon wars.dnp.zip
(500.33 KiB) Downloaded 305 times
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eslapion
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Re: Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

Post by eslapion »

Any chance for a version for the Ultimate-64 ?

It can run at up to 48 MHz and has a REU up to 16 MBytes.

Sidenote: This is one mighty nice game !! Nice job!! :shock:
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Heart
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Re: Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

Post by Heart »

30 years ago, I patched this game for my brother to use on the RAMDrive. Actually, at the time, I didn't really rate the game that highly because the graphics were glitchy. It seemed like kind of a cheap game when they couldn't even get the graphics right. :roll:

A month ago, I started playing around with Dragon Wars' graphics on the SuperCPU, and I was surprised when I saw the pictures displayed correctly for the first time. Dragon Wars is trying to multiplex 36 sprites over an outlined background for its monster pictures, plus, I think, as many as 4 more sprites for other things. Fourty sprites plus badlines is problematic to say the least, for a stock 64 to display.

So now my rating for this game has gone from a low score to a high score. But someone else will have to patch the game for the Ultimate-64 or Turbo Chameleon -- I'm burned out on patching it and I don't have that hardware anyway. I sold my 1750 years ago, so that's why I didn't add REU support -- that, and I'm lazy.
The_Other_Shaun_B
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Re: Dragon Wars and the SuperCPU

Post by The_Other_Shaun_B »

I'll try it on real hardware. Thanks. Actually, I'll need to work out how to write it back to my RAMLink... a BEP image for geoBeap would have been more useful, but there must be a way.

Regards,

Shaun.
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