[Coco] Interbank Incident for Drivewire

Robert Gault robert.gault at att.net
Thu Jan 3 16:54:25 EST 2013


L. Curtis Boyle wrote:
> It should just involve patching the game itself. If Interbank is using either display graphics commands, or normal bitmapped graphics, then a PMODE 4 style artifacting screen is identically set up to a PMODE 3 style 4 color screen. You would lose "subtle" colors (yellows,etc.), but it should work fairly well. I know I had patched Biosphere the same way many years back, and it worked fine.
>
> L. Curtis Boyle
> curtisboyle at sasktel.net

Curtis,

I just tried "messing" with Interbank using the MESS debugger. I started Coco3 
emulation and started the game to reach the first graphics screen where you see 
a coastline scene and are asked if you have a Speech Sound Pak.

With MESS artifacting the graphic looks very good. I started the debugger and 
changed the value at $FF22 from $F8 to $E8 (PMODE4 to PMODE3). That produced a 
true color screen but of course with incorrect colors.
Changing the palette colors as follows, the screen was almost acceptable with 
unfortunately almost unreadable text.
Palette       Value
$FFB4           0
$FFB5           9
$FFB6         $24
$FFB7         $3F
The net result was similar to the VCC composite presentation but the text was 
not as sharp.

I don't have any method for doing the above on a real Coco3 so either the system 
code or the game will need patching. I'm not sure which type of patching will be 
easiest. It will be interesting to see if the text is readable on a real Coco3 
in "PMODE3" graphics.

Robert





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