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As promised last month, here's a bit of info about Chuckie Egg which (by the way) is probably the best game A'n'F has ever produced. It's quite old now and doesn't work with the Kempston joystick. Other joysticks (for example, Interface 2) are OK as it uses definable keys; it can, however, be suitably modified. But before that, let's reveal the most important POKE ... for infinite lives. When I originally hacked Chuckie Egg (actually before it was released) I didn't even look for infinite lives - which goes to show how long ago it must have been! Luckily I kept my notes and recently had another go at it, with the help of a letter from Graham Hutton. The first thing to do is to load the bytes, which is not very straightforward because of the protection method it uses. I don't want to step on anyone's |
toes, so I'm not going to supply
a special loader; I'll use instead
a modified version of the
loader in the game. To begin
with, enter the multiple line (do
a NEW first if you have
Interface 1 attached):
MERGE "": POKE 24501,195: GO TO 1Then play the tape. It'll load as normal, but will return to Basic when finished. At this stage, if any error occurs, the machine will fall over - so be careful what you type. For infinite lives enter:POKE 42837,0: RANDOMIZE USR 42000And the game should start. It's not the most efficient way of doing the job, but it does work. Instead of removing a DEC(HL) or DEC(IX+n), it changes a jump instruction, and this has the effect of printing the 'Game Over' message a couple of times during the game ... but don't let that put you off.Now for the joystick mod. Having reset the Speccy, enter the listing given and save it on tape with LINE 1000 (don't save it to Microdrive or you'll get into all sorts of problems). Then load Chuckie Egg in the way described above and do the POKE on its own if you want it. Next, load the joystick mod and, hey presto - a joystick Chuckie Egg! As before, if any error occurs during the loading of the second listing, the machine will fall over and you'll have to start from scratch. I also got a letter from someone who wishes to be known as 'ITR', who said that they knew the infinite lives |
POKE for Chuckie Egg but
wouldn't condescend to tell me
what it was - we don't need
your type round here!
Actually, ITR did come up
with some interesting stuff on
the way the screens are stored.
Apparently they're stored from
46000 to 51372, each taking
672 bytes. The letter went on
to supply a neat little program
that fills in all the holes at the
bottom of the screens:
500 FOR f=46000 TO 51372 STEP 672
Enter this in the same way as
the joystick patch, by saving it
to tape. In fact, I think these
POKEs are better than infinite
lives; the game still remains
difficult, though easier than the
standard version. | |
1000 DATA 39277, 103, 39321, 71, 40311, 71, 40893, 71, 39341, 79, 40254, 79, 40850, 79, 40655, 95, 40713, 40713, 87
The Basic listing providing a joystick mode for Chuckie Egg.... including the mandatory mistake, of course. The DATA statement has 19 values but the FOR...NEXT only reads 18, probably because the 40713 near the end has been entered twice. |
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