12 Lost Souls

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Alex
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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#91 Post by Alex » Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:19 pm

Alex wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 12:14 am
The next bug is when you try to dig, You have to type DIG FIELD , but the noun FIELD does not exist in the code. Because I am changing the game using a hex editor only, I can't add new nouns to the game so I will have to choose one from the existing below nouns:

DIG SPADE
DIG HILLSIDE
DIG MOUNTAIN
DIG DUNES

Unfortunately not very good alternatives to DIG FIELD are available. Which one should I choose the best?
I found a solution for this problem.
farmer.png
farmer.png (10.27 KiB) Viewed 1739 times
Note the image above the text is wrong, but I was just testing :).


Only one problem to solve before the game can be completed: What about the 12th soul? The game ends when you have found 12 souls. At the moment you can only find 11 souls inside the game. The easiest solution is to rename the game to the 11 Lost souls (lower the amount of souls you need to collect and do some other textual changes as well), but it seems the author has forgotten to include a bit of code "(9 to x)". According to the code there are 2 probable locations where you should have encountered the last one. I'll give it a closer look , but if it is not clear I will go for the easy solution, making the game at least playable.

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Alex
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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#92 Post by Alex » Sun Dec 19, 2021 9:14 pm

Just realized this is from the same author of "Labyrinth Hall" another game I played and which couldn't be solved due to a bug. However that bug is a lot easier to solve' than 12 Lost Souls. I don't think this author used to play the games for testing :lol:

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Strident
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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#93 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:05 pm

A lot of these games, such as Len's, were distributed for free on the Public Domain circuit.

The Amstrad CPC online archives, in particular, are very (very) far from being complete... so sometimes it's the case that we don't actually have the final versions of these games.

Unlike mass-produced text adventures, homegrown games could be constantly tweaked and re-shared. I know, even from the Spectrum scene, which is incredibly well documented, that there are a lot of pre-playtest versions floating around, and the actual finished games aren't themselves preserved.

In this particular instance, though, all four of Len's games seem to suffer from issues. His "commercial" titles, Tulgey Woods and The Chaos Maze, didn't go down that well with Amstrad Action which gave them 62% and 57% respectively... "mediocre".

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Alex
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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#94 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 21, 2021 1:20 am

The fixed version of Labyrinth Hall I made today at least now is fully playable. I was a bit optimistic because I encountered several more bugs then one, but they were all fairly easy to solve. Most of the time went in finding the right locations in the dsk file with a hex editor.

Hopefully I will manage to get 12 lost souls also fully playable. I encountered another bug, but I have already some idea how to solve it. The command is a bit farfetched and I can’t imagine someone actually thinking about it without some help. I won’t mention it here because it is a big spoiler. The author wanted to use the pronoun “I”, but this can’t be done if there are already verbs starting with this letter in GAC. The game identified I as the verb IN. First I wanted to remove IN because it is only a synonym for ENTER but that wouldn’t solve the problem as there is also the verb INVENTORY. Therefore I’ll try to replace the pronoun I with another word.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#95 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:51 pm

So far I have encountered 11 bugs and the problem of not finding the 12th soul. Most of the bugs I managed to fix and the ones I didn't fix aren't important to the gameplay. The reason I didn’t fix them is I only change the code with a hex editor and therefore I can’t add verbs or nouns (some of them are missing like “scroll” and ”field” for instance) to the code without ruining the rest of the game. I can only change values. However with some creativity I managed to solve the most important bugs.

I've noticed two strange things and if I change them the game becomes fully playable, but it will be a guess.

First, if you leave the room with the broken mirrors you enter the university (room 98) this is strange because the old man opens a secret panel for you so you can get inside the university and why should there be another entrance? Furthermore there are some rooms inside the game that are currently not accessible. One is a Ferris wheel site (room 48). It would make sense to go from a mirror room to a Ferris wheel site I guess. From the Ferris wheel site you can reach the locations with the cochineal, which takes me to the second thing I noticed. So instead of going to room 98 you would go to room 48 which could be a typo like there exist many inside the code.

Second: The old man gives a hint on where to find the souls:
“Find where mythical creatures dwell" replies the man rises & bids you good day.”

Most mystical creatures ask for something and they give you a soul, but the fairy doesn’t. Assuming I am right with the above mentioned bug, why should she take you to the location of the Cochineal if it already can be reached? It would make sense if you get a soul like you get from the others. Only thing which makes this theory less certain is it is a different code so it can’t be a typo like the other bugs.

However we probable will never learn how it was meant to be and with making these two small changes it is the only way to make the game solvable. So I guess I’ll just do it like that. For the ones who don’t like this solution, just ignore my fixed game :).
Any better suggestions are always welcome, but due to the limitations of only being able to change values with a hex editor I can’t solve bugs as easy as it would have been if I had the source code in GAC.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#96 Post by Garry » Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:43 am

Without having played the game, your logic sounds reasonable. It would allow you to at least finish the game.

Having done the hex editor thing myself on other games, I know how difficult it can be when you can't add or delete bytes. When you've got the source code, it's not a problem, because you can just make the changes and recompile it or resave the data file. You've done a great job to get this far.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#97 Post by auraes » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:34 am

Alex wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 12:14 am
Dave's excellent tool grackle allowed me to quickly and easily review the code and verify that the changes I made were correct.
Yes great tool, I didn't know it.

I hope they had printers back then, otherwise I have trouble understanding how they could deal so many lines of code on a screen with such a tiny text resolution.
However, today with our indecent text resolution, we are still using the good old hexadecimal editor!

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#98 Post by Alex » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:33 pm

Garry wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:43 am
You've done a great job to get this far.
Thank you.

Today I’ve finished my map and uploaded it. I've tested all the changes I made. They work :D . Only thing to do before I can upload the fixed version is playtest the game and check if it can be solved with the changes I made. Could take a few days as I have to prepare some things for Christmas as well :) .

Regarding the command you have to give at the farmer to find the soul I actually managed to use the same command as the author wanted, making use of the same glitch of GAC why it didn't work in the first place :D . However I don't think anyone will guess that command. I certainly never would. There is no hint why you should use it.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#99 Post by Alex » Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:16 pm

Alex wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:33 pm
Today I’ve finished my map and uploaded it.
I forgot something on the map. I removed it and will upload it soon.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#100 Post by Alex » Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:03 pm

Unfortunately I found several more bugs while playing the game:

-Several object are still in your possession after you have used them (pebbles and brass object for instance). Unfortunately I can't correct this because I would have to add some more code and I can't do that in the hex editor. Solution for this is just drop the objects after you have used them.

-When I throw a certain object at the hags to destroy them, it works but you also get the message the Greemon walks away with the object. Something which happens in all rooms when you throw an object, but in this one it shouldn't happen. However it is not a problem for solving the game.

-If you try to get something in this room after killing the hags, they still kill you preventing you to take the spirit. This one has to be solved, but I think I can do that.

After I have solved this bug I have checked getting 6 of 12 the souls. Hopefully the others are without encountering new bugs :) .

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#101 Post by Alex » Fri Dec 24, 2021 1:07 am

And I found another bug :) after using the boat, you drop the oar, but this is coded wrong. The program thinks you are still carrying the weight of the oar. I'll change this.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#102 Post by Alex » Sat Dec 25, 2021 12:26 am

Alex wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 1:07 am
And I found another bug :) after using the boat, you drop the oar, but this is coded wrong. The program thinks you are still carrying the weight of the oar. I'll change this.
Solved this problem. I also solved the bug where you get killed by the hags after, killing them. Only bug to solve is a problem at the hags where you can't take the spirit, because it is dropped again automatically.
I think I can solve that one as well and after that the game finally, after solving numerous bugs, should be playable :). But this will be after this weekend.

However some commands are rather difficult to know so it still will be very difficult to solve this game without help.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#103 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:12 pm

Just finished playing 12 Lost Souls. I have uploaded a solution, map and the fixed game. It still has some bugs, but now at least it can be solved.

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#104 Post by Strident » Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:43 pm

I'm amazed at how much you've been able to sort out using a hex editor!

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Re: 12 Lost Souls

#105 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 28, 2021 8:52 pm

Strident wrote:
Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:43 pm
I'm amazed at how much you've been able to sort out using a hex editor!
A lot of practice (read years :) ) makes it easier to understand data files. In this case the easy thing was using Grackle I could check if I made the right adjustments. But even if the game wasn't programmed with GAC I always enjoy extracting data from code (bit of a nerd thing I'm afraid :lol: ).

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