Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    > In a disgusting fit of honesty I actually went out yesterday and
    > BOUGHT Marble Madness. Shameful.
    
    You might consider what effecty rampant software piracy will have
    on the future of your machine.
    
    As to the object of the game:  It's a race.  You have to get from
    the start to the finish before the time runs out.  I don't know
    if the Amiga version supports two players at once, but the arcade
    game is LOTS more fun when two players play, then it's really a
    race!
    
    BTW, the arcade game uses a trackball controller.  The direction
    you roll the trackball controls the direction of your marble, while
    the speed you roll it controls your marbles speed.  How could you
    possibly play the game with a joystick?  How do you control your
    marbles speed?

    >You might consider what effecty rampant software piracy will have
    >on the future of your machine.
    
    Maybe I should have put a smiley there... actually I've bought
    practically everything I own for the Amiga, it's just that my other
    machine was an Atari 800 and I had $thousands worth of stuff for
    it which I got from friends in college. It's kind of hard to get
    used to buying the stuff :-).
    
    Back to the topic at hand, yes it allows a 2 player game (question:
    What happens if in the 2 player version one player goes really low
    in the maze and the other one just stays up? Does one of the players
    get shoved off screen? I don't have any other input devices, and
    don't know many people in the area anyway, so I won't be finding
    out for a long time. What does the arcade version do?).
    
    As to speed, the documentation says that by pressing the joystick
    or left mouse button you can give your marble an extra boost of
    speed ("Turbo" they call it. It's also practically the only thing
    the documentation says apart from "Insert disk - boot machine").
    Playing with the mouse, I haven't noticed any significant difference
    between moving it slightly in one direction and zooming it all the
    way across my desk (and knocking over half the junk on it!) in a
    desperate attempt to keep from falling over a cliff. So I guess
    the speed factor isn't really well implemented. Maybe in a future
    release?

    If one player gets way ahead of the other, the program moves up
    the other marble back to the middle of the screen, but subtracts
    from his time to compensate.

    - Re 74.2                  
    
    The "Turbo effect" is well implemented : what you have to do is
    to press left button of the mouse WHILE moving it (fire button for
    the joystick). So the movements will be more precise and quickier.
    
    
    			-< Secret maze ? >-
    
    Does anybody know if there is a secret maze in the game for Amiga
    (a 7th maze) ? I read an advertisment for the C64 talking from a
    secret way to find to have an "extra race". Perhaps this option
    is not implemented on the Amiga version ? I tried to find this way,
    but I didn't succeed in.

    Is it possible to have Marble Madness run from VD0: to speed up
    the loading of the boards? Do I have to do anything besides copy
    all the files to VD0: and run from there?
    
       mitch

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!labrea!jade!ig!uwmcsd1!marque!gryphon!pnet02!hrlaser
Subject: Re: Installing MarbleMadness! in RAM:
Posted: 9 Dec 87 07:31:06 GMT
Organization: People-Net [pnet02], Redondo Beach, CA
 
[email protected] (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>
>I'm not sure quite where to ask about this (can one ask the MarauderII
>folks directly?): what I'm trying to do is get MarbleMadness to run
>out of RAM:.  I have an A2000 with piles of memory, and I _know_ I've
>seen MM run off of a hard disk, so I think it _ought_ to be possible.
>In addition to an honest-to-god store-bought, registered copy of MM,
>I also have MarauderII (again, h-t-g, s-b).  MII _did_ back up MM with
>no problem, so it runs fine off a spare floppy (in fact, I'm not even
>sure right now WHERE I put the original master...sigh...).
>
>
>  /Bernie\
>
 
Okay...dug this file out of the attic... make a backup of your MM
(Marauder II should handle that) and then make the following the
startup-sequence::
 
loadwb
makedir ram:c
copy c:copy ram:c
assign m: MarbleMadness!:
cd ram:
assign c: ram:c
copy m:#? ram:
copy m:c/??? c:
copy m:c/?????? c:
copy m:c/b#? c:
copy m:c/m#? c:
 
Then click on the MM icon as usual to start the game.. everything should run
out of ram.  No more gronking between levels of the game.  
 
By the way, E/A, how come this fine game of yours can be launged from an icon
but one has to reboot when done playing it. C'mon, you can do better than
that!
 
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Harv Laser - Chairman (sysop) The PeopleLink AmigaZone    //    |
|  PeopleLink: CBM*HARV                                    \X/     |
|  UUCP: {ihnp4!crash, hplabs!hp-sdd!crash}!gryphon!pnet02!hrlaser |
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!labrea!rutgers!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!ncr-sd!crash!pnet01!spierce
Subject: Re: Installing MarbleMadness! in RAM:
Posted: 9 Dec 87 08:56:16 GMT
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon, CA
 
Try the decoder again.  I have broken Marble Madness with Marauder II, and it
now runs fine from a RAM disk.
Stuart


    I tried that startup-sequence from .6 and it didn't work. It fails
    on the second command saying that command makedir couldn't be found.
    Is there something missing? I'd really like to run MM from RAM:.
    
       mitch

    If anyone's following this, here's another way to get Marble Madness
    into RAM.
    
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!ucbvax!husc6!bbn!cosell.bbn.com!cosell
Subject: Running MarbleMadness! off of a hard disk or RAM:
Posted: 11 Dec 87 05:44:08 GMT
Organization: BBN Laboratories Incorporated, Cambridge, MA
 
 
Thanks for your replies, but, prompted by trying to merge the various
schemes that came in, I've discovered what is surely the EASIEST technique
that works just fine:
 
  pop your MM disk into a drive.  From a CLI do:
      protect MarbleMadness!:c/sigfile rwed
      delete MarbleMadness!:c/sigfile
 
Done!  Really.  Now your MM disk is sanitized, and you can just do:
      copy MarbleMadness!: <wherever you want> all
      <pop out the disk>
      assign MarbleMadness!: <wherever you put it>
 
and you can now click on the icon and away you go.  Thanks all!
 
   /Bernie\