Prince of Persia

Attached is the floppy image of the PC-98 version.
(Mentioned by David here.)
[Edit: A better, working version, is available here.]

I created this thread to point to:
http://www.geocities.jp/zarazala_9/kone ... ersia.html
The pages are in Japanese, but they include very detailed information, including information about the location of files, compression, levels, palettes, fonts, images, music, save files, etc.

I guess it would be time to publish my results in this topic from 2010...

Norbert wrote:Attached is the floppy image of the PC-98 version.
(Mentioned by David here.)

It does not seem to work, I just get a black screen.
A few bytes are different between this PRI1.DAT from the FM Towns and the actual PC-98 disk image.
Perhaps because the FM Towns version had CD music, unlike the PC-98 version.
And this might be what causes it to hang at startup.

The PC-98 version used to be on http://princeofpersia.ppa.pl/ but that site now says "Internal Server Error".
You can find the ZIP in the Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/201603151104 ... prince.zip
Or from PoPUW: http://popuw.com/files/pc98prince.zip

Note that in this ZIP, the DISK_A.FDI disk image has a part zeroed out.
This causes the game to hang in the intro, after Jaffar saw the prince in the crystal ball.
So this part should be copied over from PRI1.DAT using a hex editor.
I attached this fixed DISK_A.FDI to this post.

the download from popuw works fine unmodified.

you need to insert disk b in the second drive.

with both disks inserted, it plays.

there are two known faults in the conversion i'm aware of.
1) player turns around a little too soon. this changes the timing for 2 tile jump so that you start it from where you end up after climb instead of from edge of platform. i believe turnaround is one frame early. It should be possible to patch this, i think.
2) jump up from loose tile trick seems impossible. this makes the extra life extender potion in level 3 impossible to collect an escape with. this IS intended. that potion is a trap. this extra potion is present in pc98, fm towns, and tg-16 versions. it is not present in x68000 or sega cd version. I'm not sure how to fix this.

to the best of my knowledge everything else works as expected.

so this version is NOT mod perfect.

David wrote: ↑October 8th, 2016, 12:55 pm I guess it would be time to publish my results in this topic from 2010...

Sure, go for it. That, plus your English translation, could eventually give us an editor as suggested by Amethyst (and others), for a port liked by LEDStorm (and others).

David wrote: ↑October 8th, 2016, 12:55 pm I guess it would be time to publish my results in this topic from 2010...

Please do, I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm also considering creating a document that lists the differences between the five Japanese ports I noticed while playing them. It won't be technical though, but purely from a player's point of view.

Norbert wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2016, 6:23 pmI created this thread to point to:
http://www.geocities.jp/zarazala_9/kone ... ersia.html
The pages are in Japanese, but they include very detailed information, including information about the location of files, compression, levels, palettes, fonts, images, music, save files, etc.

The new location of that website is:
http://zarala.g2.xrea.com/koneta/persia/persia.html

It also has available for download the attached toolset ZIP file, which includes:
- A level editor (mapedit.exe).
- Programs to take files from the disk image (datacut.exe) and put them back (makeimg.exe).
- A program to (un)compress (compress.exe).
- A program to view character images (patview.exe).
- Programs to convert to and from BMP, for: CHR (chrconv.exe), fonts (fontconv.exe), and pictures (picconv.exe).

Norbert wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2016, 6:23 pmThe pages are in Japanese, but they include very detailed information, including information about the location of files, compression, levels, palettes, fonts, images, music, save files, etc.

Attached all the information in English.
Also available at PoPOT: PDF, ODT

Attached the game + emulator + font + how-to.
For anyone who wants to easily play the PC-98 port.

To enable save states, edit np21w.ini (after starting the application at least once) and add "STATSAVE=true" in the section "[NekoProject21]".

Norbert wrote: ↑December 20th, 2021, 10:57 pm

David wrote: ↑October 8th, 2016, 12:55 pm I guess it would be time to publish my results in this topic from 2010...

Sure, go for it.

I have started it: https://www.princed.org/wiki/PC-98_format

David wrote: ↑December 26th, 2021, 2:12 pm I have started it: https://www.princed.org/wiki/PC-98_format

Thanks a lot!

Norbert wrote: ↑December 21st, 2021, 3:04 pm It also has available for download the attached toolset ZIP file, which includes:
- A level editor (mapedit.exe).
- Programs to take files from the disk image (datacut.exe) and put them back (makeimg.exe).
- A program to (un)compress (compress.exe).
- A program to view character images (patview.exe).
- Programs to convert to and from BMP, for: CHR (chrconv.exe), fonts (fontconv.exe), and pictures (picconv.exe).

Lately I've been playing with this toolset.

The first gotcha I found is that datacut.exe requires a headerless disk image, but the *.FDI files are headered.
To convert a headered disk image to headerless, go to offset 0x1000 and delete everything before it.
You might want to save the new file under a different name.


It would help a lot if we could edit the Japanese texts in the tools to English.
(They don't even display correctly on a non-Japanese system.)
Alas, I haven't found yet where the texts are stored.
They might be in the last section of the EXE files, after "start.ax".

It seems to me that the EXEs might be interpreters, and that last part contains the interpreted program, in an encrypted format.
Compare compress.exe and datacut.exe for example: Only a few bytes differ before "start.ax", but everything is different after that.


Anyway, here is how to open and save a level using these tools.
* Start datacut.exe, browse to a headerless disk image. This extracts the game's files into a data/ folder.
* Start mapedit.exe.
* First, click the MAP button (the second button from left), and choose one of the LEV##.MAP (level data) files.
* After that, click the CHR button (the middle button), and choose the correct LEV##.CHR (level graphics) for the level.
* Now you can edit the level.
* To save, click the other MAP button (the rightmost button), and overwrite the level file.
* Start makeimg.exe. By default it tries to load data from the data/ folder, that's good for us. (I wonder why are there two path textboxes, though.) Just click on the big button at the bottom and save the disk image.

David wrote: ↑December 26th, 2021, 2:12 pmI have started it: https://www.princed.org/wiki/PC-98_format

And improved it since, I see.
Thank you for investing all that time and energy.

Wait, so this means we have a level editor for this version of the game now? That is seriously cool.

Also, I noticed that on level 3, in the section with single-tile platforms leading to a button that opens a gate, you have to step up to the edge on each platform or else you miss and have to cling on. That didn't happen on the DOS version

David, any thoughts on why they included the compression with head bytes 0x44, 0x54, 0x64, 0x74, 0x84, and 0x94?
(And, similarly, 0xA7/8/9/A, 0xB7/8/9/A, 0xC7/8/9/A, and 0xD7/8/9/A.)