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Gameplay is good now in V1.04, but i found a little hardware compatibility problem. Alot of users have a FC3 modul on their C64, especially in combination with a SD2IEC this works great because of the modul-fastloader that also works with the SD2IEC.

I found out, when Galaga is played while a FC3 is activ and then the player makes a score, that is enough for the highscore-table, then there is a graphic-problem, after the highscore is saved. The graphics are destroyed then and the player must make a reset, before he can play again.

The only thing to prevent this problem when a FC3 is plugged on the C64 is, that the player uses the "kill" command in the BASIC screen to turn the FC3 off, before starting the game. Bad thing is, that then the game can not be loaded directly over the filebrowser on the SD2IEC, but must be loaded from BASIC instead.

Maybe this incompatibility of the score-saving to the FC3 modul can be fixed? This thing is a known problem, because Galaga is not the first game i had, that has this problem with the score-saving when a FC3 is activ. I can remember that the game "Freaky Fish DX" had a similar problem in the original version. The FC3 is a part of the problem here, but i also know, that this can be fixed. So if you can not locate this problem, i would know, which person i could ask, that knows this problem and how to fix it without much effort. Then i could give this information to you, if you want.

Would be great if you could find that out, one of my testers had the same issue but I don't have that hardware to test with so have no idea where to start. I'll put a note for now that people with the Final Cartridge 3 need to disable it.

I ask this person, how to fix this and then come back to you. By the way, if you have no real FC3, you can also recreate this in one of the known C64 emulators, by inserting an FC3 image there. Then the same problem occurs.

Okay, i have the answer now, how to fix this FC3-incompatibility. He wrote, it should actually be quite simple. The saver routine in the FC3 modul causes this error here in the game. To fix it, you have to set the save-address in the extended zeropage to default.

LDA#<$F5ED


STA$0332

LDA#>$F5ED

STA$0333

The code can be anywhere in the game, but it must be before JSR$FFD8.

That's all he wrote. To check, whether the fix works, you don't need a real FC3. You can also take an emulator and insert an image of the FC3 there, the behaviour will be the same. That's a good way to check, even if you don't own a real fc3 yourself.