Re: [stella] Swordquest EW hacking

[Joseph Thompson <jrt1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Slocum wrote:

> I've always had the theory that the guy that solved EW hacked the ROM 
> to find the solution.  So yesterday I dug around in the ROM a little 
> and it looks like they anticipated this and put in a fake clue and 
> messed with the order.  A copy of my post to Atariage about this is 
> below...
Has it actually been proven that someone really solved it without prior 
knowledge?  i. e. Is/was there a video and confirmation that this person 
didn't have an inside source for the info?


> So you would have to hack a bit deeper to actually find the solution.  
> Probably figure out how it stores which items must be in which rooms.  
> It's feasible that somebody could have done it, but probably would 
> have been pretty difficult, especially with bankswitching and not 
> having the 2600 so well documented as it is today.
Let's see, you are a highly skilled VCS programmer who has made the 
system do things that would make Tod Frye drool . . . And have the 
benefits of emulation, full documentation, and many other things that 
nobody outside Atari really had in 1983. . . And you can't find it via 
hacking . . .

Which leads me to believe that it was impossible for a normal gamer 
without this heavy knowledge of the system to do it that way . . . And 
probably even by a skilled programmer outside of the company (such as, 
say, your core Activision people or Bronstein at CommaVid) with '83 
resources.


> However, I don't really see how anyone could have figured out the 
> solution by trial and error either.  There are way too many 
> combinations of objects and rooms.  Maybe there's some way to figure 
> it out from the comic, but nobody seems to have ever documented this.


My theory is that whoever solved it initially was a student of the 
occult, and perhaps had been reading some of the same things the 
programmers had been when they devised the game . . . IMO, the last two 
would definitely be impossible w/o that background, and I don't see EW 
being that much easier . . .

I can identify some correspondences from my own reading when I look at 
that solution . . . And I do own it on cart (loose), but have never made 
a serious attempt at it . . . Now, I'm wondering how close I could come 
to figuring out FW and WW on hunches.

Just my .02,
Joseph Thompson


> -paul
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Posted to Atariage:
> http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=52889
> -------------------------------------------
> I took a quick look at the ROM and I quickly found the clues, however 
> they are in the wrong order and the last clue is replaced with a 
> different one. It appears they anticipated people trying to hack the 
> ROM! Also, this data is in the upper bank which would be tricky to 
> access.
>
> Here's what I found in the ROM:
>
> 01 0a 02 01 0b 01 03 01 0a 02 02
> 06 08 05 03 0a 07 07 05 05 07 01
> 04 04 06 03 0c 03 05 04 03 02 01
>
> These correspond to the clues, but two are out of order and the last 
> one 21-1 is not a real clue according to the solution. The real last 
> clue is 47-5 which isn't present here. The fake 21-1 points to this 
> page in the comic, where I guess the prominent word is "revenge"?
>
> <http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic_page.html?MagazineID=45&CurrentPage=23>http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic_page.html?MagazineID=45&CurrentPage=23 
>
>
> Here's the solution page:
> <http://www.yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/Swordquest/Earth.htm>http://www.yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/Swordquest/Earth.htm 
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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