Legend of Blacksilver (C64) Question

[Jorpho]

Anyone here familiar with this old C64 game? The sequel to Legacy of the Ancients, apparently.

There's something I was hoping someone would be able to help me with. Home of the Underdogs has this game up for download, but the archive contains four disk images, the third of which (and possibily the fourth) is corrupted. I'd like to replace it with a set from GameBase64, but that set has six completely different images!

Can anyone tell me why there might be this discrepancy?

[Pete Rittwage]

The original is only 4 sides, and while heavily protected at boot time, is not compressed where it would take more than that in a crack.

I have imaged the original disks and they are assimilated into GB64 as 'originals' on the extras disk.

[Pete Rittwage]

I don't own this original in my collection as I first thought, so I will ask my team members if they have the disks or if it was from a loaned collection.

[Mayhem]

Well I've got the game at home myself, so what's the question? :)

[Jorpho]

Now I'm confused too.

Does this game in fact come on four disks? Did it ever come on six disks? And if it uses copy protection, is the copy protection sufficiently exotic that one of the disk images might appear to be corrupted when read by an emulator?

[Mayhem]

Afaik the game comes on two double-sided disks (aka four sides). A directory will look "corrupted" if it is pure data and there are no actual files listed within track 18 of the disk (where it normally keeps a record of the contents, like a FAT). I guess I can see if I can transfer my disks tonight and see what I get.

[Pete Rittwage]

The main question is: Is the game on 3 disks (6 sides) or only 2 disks (4 sides).

Protection-wise: Yes, it is the newer Vorpal protection that cannot be copied directly with a stock 1541. It requires slowing the drive motor and extra drive RAM to do it. Each disk side has sync-less tracks that cannot be imaged without preprocessing.

[Pete Rittwage]

The originals are in fact 4 sides, and the crack is 6 sides due to having to convert Vorpal to normal DOS routines. That means the crack and the original are not interchangeble.

The original should show up in the new Gamebase, so you can play that way (from my processed originals) when it's released.

[Jorpho]

Ah, that explains it.

I guess there's no reason to keep making the four-disk set available at HOTU, then...

[Pete Rittwage]

If they do not play properly, then no. Are you sure they are corrupt from playing the game, or are you just guessing because they don't have a proper directory. The latter may be by design.

[Ze_ro]

Can mnib handle Vorpal protection properly? I suppose it's a moot point, as no emulators I know of can handle .nib files, but at least it would be something... Personally, I prefer to have authentic images rather than cracks, but in this case I have a legit original copy of the game.

--Zero

[Mayhem]

I'll let Peter answer the first question as he's in a much better position to comment than I am on it. I just do the backing up and glitch reporting :)

NIB can be turned into G64 for emulator use, which is usually successful enough. Some might require a bit of tweaking to get them to run. So if you have NIBs for whatever reason, look out for the NIB2G64 DOS utility available as part of the zip file on Peter's site.

[Pete Rittwage]

The newer Vorpal protection used on LOB shows up on 7 late games from Epyx that I've found.

California Games
The Games: Winter Edition
The Games: Summer Edition
L.A. Crackdown
Legend of Blacksilver
World Championship Wrestling
Street Sports Basketball

The only software I have come across that can back them up directly is SuperCard. Maverick will do it, but it does so by patching the protection (parameter). Both copiers require extra drive RAM and a very slowed down drive motor (about 296.5 RPM).

MNIB will not copy them directly either, as I had to make a special version to process the syncless tracks at read time and had to make many, many passes at it. The protection is done in such a way that the sectors are written out with no sync marks and individually bitshifted from each other. This keeps us from being able to read the whole track in one try because you have 0 chance of it being all in the same framing, and you can't even detect a valid track cycle.

I am still missing Street Sports Basketball, as the only copies I have (2 of them) are defective. I am also missing some PAL versions.

[Flack]

Yeah, I remember the original of California Games was two disk sides while the cracked copy (by ESI, I believe) was three. Same thing. I remember having a copy of The Games: Winter Edition that someone had given me that I was never able to copy for anyone else.