Casa Di Jack, La

[Spider]

I discovered this recently and have been examining it.

I could not find a lot of information out however its a Spanish translated version of JSW with a few mild tweaks.

 

Unfortunately its only available as a snapshot / z80 file so I had to do a bit of digging.

 

The keypad was bypassed in a slightly different way, namely a direct jump to "title screen" was put into the start of the keypad routine instead of either changing one of two two initial values to make HL equal this and / or just inserting a jump into the startup at 33792 after setting the stack.

 

 

The 'raw' game message is as follows:

 

 

The most intersting feature is when you choose to start the game (on the title screen) you are taken to a new screen where you can choose infinite lives or not. A look at the code shows this is a simple 'display message and read keyboard' routine that lives in the middle of the old keypad routine. Its called at 34158

 

It simply changes 35899 to 0 (infinite lives) or back to to 8 again if needed.

 

The start screen is set to what was "Master Bedroom" instead of the more usual Bathroom.

 

 

Now for a few room screenshots:

 

 

The original '4 bugs' are all still present and in full swing unfortunately too:

 

 

As can be seen by it "in process"

 

 

As mentioned its a .z80 file so there is no loader. I was able to extract the original loader out of it though. There are two pics of this as its got embedded colour codes in, so you can clearly see it all:

 

 

Its interesting to see there's two 16384 loads, one can only speculate what the second was was for (loader perhaps?)

 

The code is also missing the AIR string, so it will not edit in JSWED either until you 'fix' it:

 

 

After some thought on all this, I decided to slightly modify the startup Basic I extracted and create a 'dummy' screen and load that in. With this in mind I'm attaching some files as follows:

 

This is the .zip as supplied containing the .z80 file:

lacasadijack.zip

 

This is the extracted original loader code, just the loader no game code:

cdj_orig_loader_code.tap

 

This is the raw (unfixed) game data tape file. Its not suitable for editing in JSWED without the pokes above:

cdjdata.tap

 

This again is the raw (but fixed) game data tape file. This is suitable for editing. The only change between this and the file above are the three pokes to restore 'AIR' into the text:

cdjdata_air_fixed.tap

 

Finally this is my quick (I can do better) assembled tape file of the game. It contains the Basic (I've kept as much original as I can including the authors message) as well as creating a simple loading screen:

cdj_fixed.tap

 

Enjoy. :)

 

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Andy!

 

It's very interesting for me how you've been able to extract loaders from a Z80 file and ultimately create a TAP file. I think that it would be good to do that at some point with some of the MM and JSW games that have never been released as TAP files, just so that they exist as "tapes" as well.

[Spider]

Thanks, Andy!

 

It's very interesting for me how you've been able to extract loaders from a Z80 file and ultimately create a TAP file. I think that it would be good to do that at some point with some of the MM and JSW games that have never been released as TAP files, just so that they exist as "tapes" as well.

 

Most welcome. I tried to cover a few bits with this, I should comment the 'lives choice' bit next really I guess when I have a bit of time.

 

The 'tape loader' is as it was although given it loads two blocks to the screen I had to guess what to do, and its not accurate. I could do something that would use the original loader though but it would then end up being a headerless game load (possibly it was)

 

The loading screen, well I had to improvise as there's no way to see what was there originally so I settled for a partial (MM style) attribute section.

 

Hopefully the explainations on the tape files above will help too, I tried to 'cover all bases' sensibly so there's the original, a 'ready to edit' one as well as my 'ready to load in' one as well.

 

Regarding other games, I'm happy to have a look. :)

[jetsetdanny]

Regarding other games, I'm happy to have a look. :)

 

Thanks, Andy.

 

Of the ones that never surfaced on the internet in a form other than a snapshot (AFAIK), these two (attached below) may be of particular technical interest :

 

Manic Miner 5: Los peligros del LSD [ignacio P

MM5.Z80

JSW-WH.SNA

JSW-WH.Z80

[Spider]

There is no "Basic" loader data as such for them apart from JSW-WH which looks like this:

 

 

Ignoring the code hiding in the Basic and the 'anti tamper' line numbering (best plan) , we appear to have:

 

A codeblock that is then called. This is likely the "loading screen" but also contains something higher up (moved there) as...

 

A bit of Basic moving code from past the Basic (it appears) to 49963. There's then three calls, speculating about these:

 

31023 = No idea

32000 = Likely decompression call for the game data

33792 = Game start

 

I'll have a closer look at these later. If nothing else I guess I can assemble something that not far of mimics how it "probably was" :)

 

[Spider]

Thanks, Andy.

 

Of the ones that never surfaced on the internet in a form other than a snapshot (AFAIK), these two (attached below) may be of particular technical interest :

 

Manic Miner 5: Los peligros del LSD [ignacio P

[IRF]

Is it possible in some cases that there never was a loader in the first place, but the game was built by editing a screenshot from an earlier game?

Edited January 1, 2017 by IRF

[Spider]

There would of been some kind of loader, even if it was entered directly aka

 

CLEAR 28000 : LOAD "" CODE : LOAD "" CODE : PAUSE 0: PRINT USR 33792 , and then saved a snapshot. :)