Unable to get F.R.E.D to work from image

[Idge]

I have tried to image F.R.E.D however it does not seem to be working for me. The original game works fine from disk, however after imaging I get the following issues:

1. If I use Boot Floppy it says it is missing ArcFSMod (which does not exist on the original floppy)
2. If I run from the icon on the image it loads the F.R.E.D loading page then the screen goes black and asks me to insert the original disk in drive 0.

I have tried using the JASPP image file as well as my own recording file which did detect and image the copy protection sector.

Any thoughts, I am guessing my version must be different from the version imaged by JASPP given the fact I do not have the ArcFSMod or a loader file which is also mentionned in the boot script.

[JonAbbott]

You’re correct, you have a version I’ve not covered. I vaguely recall there was a pre-production version which only went to the press as a review copy, perhaps you have that version?

email an ADF over to me and I’ll figure out how to cover imaging it and what script changes are required to run it.

[Idge]

Thanks Jon,
Just emailed that over.
I dont think its a pre-production version, as its in a gamesware / Eclipse box with registration card etc, but could be.

Cheers

[JonAbbott]

I've had a look and it appears to be a version that's somewhere between v1.02 and v2.0 released as part of the Eclipse collection.

It has unique disc protection and uses a different compression Module to both versions. I was going to create a generic script that covers your version and the original, although I think the changes required to image it will break imaging the original.

[JonAbbott]

I've now looked at your recording/JFD and compared the protection captured against what's in the code. On the face of it, it looks like it should work, so I'll step through the code and figure out why its failing.

If required, I'll send you a revised recording to capture the floppy.

[Idge]

Thanks Jon,
Appreciate it
Yeah it all seemed to capture it all properly, it loads everything and just before the menu appears it asks for the original disk to be put in.

[JonAbbott]

What's throwing the ADFFS imager is the disc error 23's when reading the protection. It faithfully reproduces that, but the game expects three of the protection reads to succeed, disc error 23 is non-recoverable though so although they return the correct data, the imager is not including it in the image.

Although I don't know how the game actually runs from the original floppy, I have reconstructed it using the files you provided. However...

While attempting to recreate the floppy, I noticed ADFFS was corrupting the start of the floppy image every time I wrote a protection sector to track 159. I eventually tracked that down to code that inserts sectors into the sector table, which was moving too much data during the insert. The MemMove function was also corrupting the last word and the word following the moved area if trailing bytes exist during an insert.

I also noticed the imager wasn't clearing the sector data pointer when there's no sector data. That was causing several sectors to overlap in the data table, which although not fatal when reading the image, might lead to corruption when writing to it.

Anyhow, with the protection reconstructed the game is now running from the image so I can move on to checking it for bugs from the earlier release.

Once I've decided if this version needs its own game ID (due to the protection sectors, which might conflict with the earlier version's protection), I'll get a working image back to you. One minor issue if it does need its own game ID. I'm not sure how to name the two versions in a way that's obvious to someone trying to image the floppy; the differences are only evident when you look at the files.

[Idge]

Wow!

Great work tracking that all down Jon. I appreciate the update and the work checking into this

Cheers

[JonAbbott]

To conclude what happened in the background, in case anyone reads this thread in the future. This version of the game has been given a unique ID as the protection conflicts with previous releases of the game. To determine which version to select when imaging the game with ADFFS, I've included the month and year of the game files in the game title. ie "F.R.E.D [Nov 1993]" for this version, "F.R.E.D. [Apr 1993]" for the earlier v1.02 release

In testing we also realised there was an issue with the music pitch, which I tracked down to *PlayInit working slightly differently in later versions of TrackerModule. I've corrected that in the Module source-code and will include it with the next ADFFS release (which will be ADFFS v2.87 at time of writing)