Gateway to Apshai - level bug confirmed

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Gateway to Apshai - level bug confirmed

Postby xot » 04 Oct 2006, 01:32

I can confirm that there is indeed a bug in Gateway to Apshai, as Kroah points out in the readme file of his nifty utility.

I have the cartridge version of Gateway to Apshai, and I have tried it out on an Atari 400 and an Atari XEGS. Incredibly, on both new and old hardware, the game locks up at the moment before Level 7 of Dungeon 8 is supposed to begin (during the dungeon generation).

For kicks, I examined a Commodore 64 ROM of the game in a hex editor and found the same dungeon "seed" table, with all of the same seeds as the Atari version. I tried it in an emulator and it locks up in the exact same location.

How do obvious bugs like this slip through?
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Postby Kroah » 04 Oct 2006, 01:44

Well done xot !

The algorithm loops infinitely with some seeds, trying to had the last rooms (A check is done in the utility preventing it to hang and an alert is shown).

Sure, it's not so easy to go to this level (7), and even less frequent to try dungeon 8, but very strange the developer and nobody i know have noticed this. I remember the game locking up, but dunno if it was there...
And the better, the bug is ported to C64... excellent!

Thanks for this information,
Pascal
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Postby stonic » 02 Jan 2009, 05:53

I had a question regarding the Atari 8-bit game Gateway to Apshai info. Are the staff and key items that can be found in the game, and if so, on what dungeon/level? I see the staff has an attribute of "wand power = 3" so I'm wondering if it can actually be found, or if the program simply assigns that "value" to it.

Also, regarding the level bug, I verified this happens in an emulator (Atari800win - save state attached). Do you know if the following C-64 bug exists in either the Atari or Colecovision versions?

"Whenever you see a treasure chest, use the Locate Trap spell. If the chest is trapped, walk repeatedly over the chest while the trap symbol is still flashing. You will now collect the same chest multiple times! The downside is that you will also set the trap off. This doesn't work for "real" items such as weapons or armor, as they will merely become "ghost" items that can't be picked up."
Attachments
gateway_lockup.zip
Atari800win save state for Gateway to Apshai
(22.77 KiB) Downloaded 376 times
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Postby Kroah » 15 Jan 2009, 00:36

Hi Stonic, welcome to the board.
I was busy on the GPM2 track editor, sorry.

stonic wrote:I had a question regarding the Atari 8-bit game Gateway to Apshai info. Are the staff and key items that can be found in the game, and if so, on what dungeon/level? I see the staff has an attribute of "wand power = 3" so I'm wondering if it can actually be found, or if the program simply assigns that "value" to it.

As far as i know, keys and staffs can't be found even if they are implemented in the engine... Too bad.

stonic wrote:Also, regarding the level bug, I verified this happens in an emulator (Atari800win - save state attached).

Thank you.

stonic wrote:Do you know if the following C-64 bug exists in either the Atari or Colecovision versions?
"Whenever you see a treasure chest, use the Locate Trap spell. If the chest is trapped, walk repeatedly over the chest while the trap symbol is still flashing. You will now collect the same chest multiple times! The downside is that you will also set the trap off. This doesn't work for "real" items such as weapons or armor, as they will merely become "ghost" items that can't be picked up."

Interesting and fun :). I never saw that on Atari, but it's such a strange behavior that i would have certainly never triggered it (if it ever exists).

I'll check that when i'll have some free time. Thank you.
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