Notes on Alternate Reality - The City (version 1.2 and version 2.0)

You should probably avoid using the 2.0 version as the
copy protection is active and will not allow you to
enter taverns in the game (GET OUT YOU WORM!!!).

There is an excellent FAQ in progress on an AR web
page at: http://www.ksk.sala.se/~rob/alternate-reality
written by Robert Hagenstrom.  It covers all aspects
of the game, as well as information on running it on
the available emulator platforms.

Below is the pertinent excerpt for running the ST version
on two of the available ST emulators for the IBM PC.  The
game also works quite well with the Macintosh ST emulator
(noSTalgia).  Be sure to read the additional note I have 
included at the end of the document if you are a Pacifist 
user.

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  PACIFIST (http://www.pacifist.fatal-design.com/)

Download the emulator and refer to it's manual for details on installtion for each
individual system. Remember to put a TOS rom into the directory of the emulator (and there are
alot of different versions of these) and if you don't use a launcher program, remember to
change the path to your roms in the pacifist.ini file!

When you start the emulator you'll end up in the monitor (no, not _inside_ your monitor...
it's a screen with a command prompt, which is called the "monitor"). From here, you type in
different commands for what you want to to, eg. "g" for go and "x" for exit. But first, you
should insert a disk image into your virtual Atari ST. Do that by pressing F12 and following
the onscreen instructions (look at the bottom right hand corner for the keyboard commands, and
the disk image you want to insert would be the AR one).

NOTE: If you are using version 1.2 of The City, and you should be, you must insert that disk
image into both drives, or PacifiST will crash (does anyone know why?). You can however, later
switch disk when the game wants you to without the emu crashing.

Now you are almost ready to go, but first, hit F1 to ensure that you have "line" screen
emulation (check the upper left hand part of the monitor). This is to get correct colors
when you later run The City.

Right, press "g" to start the emulation and watch a wonderfull blue screen appear. Then
watch it go black. And black it stays. Time to hit tilde (the key above tab ~) and enter the
monitor again. Try to enter "t" as a command a couple of times and you should see the
emulator step through some addresses and then suddenly come to a loop.

This loop is what causes all trouble and needs to be eliminated. The loop should be at
address 00C204 (00EE7C if you are using version 2.0, but then you must make sure you are using
TOS 2.06 also), so enter "nop C204 1" to get rid of it. Press "g" again, and voila, life is
good.

So, is it worth all trouble? Yes, I think it is. PacifiST is a very good emulator with
extremely good sound and Alternate Reality: The City for the Atari ST is very faithfull
to the Atari 8-bit version, but of course, with all the 16-bit features, such as jobs and the
ability to join guilds, in place. The Atari ST only has three channels of music, however, but
all the songs from the 8-bit version is there, including encounter music, secret door music
and palace famfares and arena fights! There's also the lack of need to constantly change
disks, as with the 8-bit version of The City.

Also, as mentioned earlier, you should be using version 1.2 of The City (should work with
any TOS rom) and not version 2.0. You see, version 2.0 of the game thinks you are running
a pirated copy of it, and therefor treates you in that way. That is, your character becomes
extremely evil and you won't be able to enter any taverns or save the game. Sneaky?
Oh, yes indeed!

NEWS FLASH: PacifiST is a emulator that is constantly being updated (version 0.48 at the
time of writing), and the latest addition of new features is a command that lets you save
the state of emulation and load it at any given time! And this is good news, since it
completely removes the need for hacking the game every time you want to load it, as
demonstrated above and even removes the need for a character disk!

To save, simply type "fz x y" in the monitor, where x is the name of the file (8 characters,
no spaces) and y is a description (more characters and space is allowed!). Later, to load
your saved game, just insert the disk into the emulator and type "uz x" to restore the emulator
to exact state as you left it in the last time!

   WinSTon (http://winston.fatal-design.com/)

Download the emulator and refer to it's manual for details on installtion for each
individual system. Remember to put the TOS roms into the directory of the emulator.

Now this is as easy as it gets. WinSTon must be the slickest thing the emulation scene has
ever seen, it's simply gorgeous!

When you load it up, you get a perfect, small, easy-to-handle window, that's extremely cute
(it even looks like an Atari ST).

Simply press F12 and click on the first drive and select the file you want to insert into
it, then click the reset button and off you go!

Note the blinking led, and you can rezise the window to any size too!

Okie, so does it run AR? No. But don't worry, it's only version 0.0005 yet, and still, it
looks extremely promising even at this early stage, so I recommend you to stay tuned for
updates on this one (also, it only accepts TOS 1.0 at this point too...).
============================================================================================

ADDITIONAL PACIFIST NOTE:  The memory locations given above CAN 
differ from what is listed. The essential idea is to remove the 
loop that causes the game to freeze on a black screen right before 
the intro.  So, after entering the monitor window, look for a BNE.S
instruction (likely at 00EE7C for version 2.0 or 00C204 for
version 1.2, as indicated above), replace this instruction with
a NOP instruction by typing "NOP <address> 1" where <address> is
the address of the offending BNE.S branch instruction. 

WARNING:  There are two BNE.S instructions close to one another,
only one causes the infinite loop to occur, it should be the first 
of the two in memory (sequentially).  This is the one you want to
replace with the NOP.  If in doubt, trace through the instructions
and watch to see which BNE.S instruction keeps looping back.

	Pacifist doesn't like long file names; this can cause 
problems with some front-end applications.  Use the eight-dot-three 
convention for your file names (example: "foobar16.st" instead of "foo_bar_file_16.st").

