Dungeon Master Forum

All this over 10 kilobytes of RAM? Wow.

Excellent research and question - unfortunately, I lack the technical depth to be able to answer.

There is a lengthy thread on EAB on this:

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=112163

that might be worth dropping into with your latest finding and questions - some of the best of the best reside ...

They may both have to match. The resulting franken-IPF stops booting after the swish logo, hanging on a black screen on track 42. I reverted the version string edit to see what would happen and it still hangs in the same way (with only the BNE.S and reserve memory changes in place).

Interestingly ...

I attempted to test empirically, but I can't find a way to replace either executable in the 2.1 ADF without touching track 0.1, thus spoiling the copy protection (or more correctly the protection plowing over part of the binary). Suggestions welcomed.

EDIT: I realized protection isn't a likely ...

IT'S A BUG (in v2.1 only)!!!

If you format first, with only one drive, DM will never recognize the save or master disk again. If you don't format (and have an already-formatted-and-working DM save disk), it still won't be recognized, nor will the master disk. Just attempting to save is enough to ...

Multiple drives are not supported on Amiga, despite the game clearly recognizing the difference between unformatted disks, save disks and master disks.

Are you sure? Back in the day, I played DM on an Amiga 1000 with an external 3.5 inch drive: the DM disk went in DF0:, the internal drive ...

This automatic track seek after disk insertion is a standard Amiga feature, it is not at all specific to DM and its copy protection.


If using trackdisk, yes. Especially given observed behavior, it seems more likely they aren't using OS calls for floppy management at all (and thus behavior is ...

Multiple drives are not supported on Amiga, despite the game clearly recognizing the difference between unformatted disks, save disks and master disks.

Are you sure? Back in the day, I played DM on an Amiga 1000 with an external 3.5 inch drive: the DM disk went in DF0:, the internal drive ...

For some reason, it won't let me quote you.

Does that happen only right after formatting while the game is still running, or also after rebooting the game from scratch ?
Both. (I really thought you were on to something here!)

If you format a save disk floppy with v2.1, is it recognized by ...

OK - I thoroughly tested all three, and behavior (in terms of auto disk recognition, clicking, etc.) are identical between the three releases except that 2.1 will format the save disk, however it will not *recognize* either the save disk or master disk after. Completely bizarre.

I'm going to retest all three 2.x versions, but my vague recollection is that at least under emulation, all three behaved the same (with respect to diskchange and idle click at least).

For me, this is the 'holy grail' release, as it's the version I bought and played many, many, MANY years ago (and thus no longer have).

IPF preservations of all other versions exist...but 2.1 is notably missing.

I've attempted to reconstruct it from an untouched ADF dump of 2.1 merged with the ...