Was there another version of PoP1 Mac?

[David]

There is this "Prince of Persia Editor", a savegame editor for PoP1 Mac, here.

There is something on this screenshot of the editor that I wanted to ask for some time now.
The radio buttons suggest that it can edit saved games of two versions for PoP1 on the Mac: 1.0 and 0.15ß.

The readme says:

PoPE allows you to edit and create saved-game files for Br0derbund's "Prince of Persia" game, versions 0.15b and 1.0.

Does someone know anything about this "0.15 beta" version of PoP?

[Norbert]

0.15ß

Hm. Maybe the programmer remembers.
But which Scott Shumway on the web worked at/for Presage Software...
I've e-mailed this one ("Sr. Programmer").

[David]

I found a site where you can download this beta version: http://macintoshgarden.org/games/prince-of-persia
It's the file called Prince-of-Persia-0-15Beta.sit (756.30 KB).

6th DL is the 0.15 beta version (for historical purpose)
Warning: The beta version will crash or freeze the whole system if the screen depth is not set to 256 colors (8-bit mode).

I have seen this page before, on the day when I started this topic, but either this download wasn't there yet, or I didn't notice it then.

I made some screenshots about the differences from version 1.0:

The about dialog indeed says that this is version "0.15B", from 1991.

The copyright notice in the intro also says 1991. (Version 1.0 says 1992.)
It seems that the intro stops at this point, there is no story.

You get this message if you want to quit or return to the intro. Version 1.0 quits without asking.

The game also comes with a readme and a saved game of level 1 ("niveau 1").
I wonder who is this "Mac Exchange" who signed the readme.

If you load the saved game, you will get to the potions level.
As the readme says, the correct potion is the top left one. (I'm wondering if the Mac manual even existed at this point.)
Oddly, the "level complete" music is played if you enter the exit on the potions level. Version 1.0 does not play music here.

That's all for now. If I find more interesting things in this version, I will post them here.

[realXCV]

I have a few partly-interesting things but no screenshots. You'll have to use your imagination.

- The "Current Level" menu item is missing.
- The following musical cues are different:
-- When you meet Jaffar.
-- End level music (including the one on lvl 4).
-- Victory against Jaffar.
-- The music that usually plays in the story and princess part of the intro has a few missing notes.

[David]

As the readme says, the correct potion is the top left one.

Only when you load a saved game. If you get the potions level after level 1 then the correct potion will be at a random location.

You can use the load game function to collect all the possible codes, which I did:

Code: Select all

 1, 1, 6 - D - DARKNESS
 1, 2, 5 - V - Vizier
 1, 2, 8 - S - seized
 1, 3, 4 - L - land
 1, 4, 2 - T - tyranny
 1, 5, 5 - O - obstacle
 1, 6, 6 - P - palace
 1, 6,12 - H - heart
 1, 7,11 - U - unwittingly
 2, 3, 9 - J - joystick
 2,10, 8 - N - need
 3, 1, 1 - A - Apple
 3, 3, 5 - C - connected
 3, 3,11 - M - monitor
 3, 4, 4 - B - begin
 3, 5, 1 - W - When
 3, 5, 2 - Y - you
 3, 5, 4 - R - ready
 4, 1, 2 - J - Jumping
 4, 2, 4 - T - Tap
 4, 2, 9 - L - left
 4, 3, 2 - R - run
 4, 5, 3 - C - careful
 4, 6, 9 - C - careful
 4, 7, 6 - S - suspicious-looking
 5, 2, 4 - F - face
 5, 2, 9 - A - armed
 5, 3, 3 - D - draw
 5,13, 5 - R - run
 6, 2, 2 - K - keyboard
 7, 2, 4 - M - maximum
 7, 5, 6 - B - but
 7, 6, 4 - O - opposite
 8, 2,13 - I - indicates
 8, 5, 7 - U - units
 8, 6, 1 - I - increase
10, 4, 2 - G - game
10, 5, 1 - P - program
10, 6, 4 - Y - you
11, 2, 3 - F - frame

The letters match the words from the manual of PoP1 DOS v1.0: http://www.popuw.com/files/pop1manual.pdf
In fact, the codes match PoP1 DOS v1.0 except for two of them. See here: viewtopic.php?p=16179#p16179
Instead of 2,6,5 and 12,7,4 this beta has 4,6,9 and 5,13,5.
The two codes that were changed are exactly those that had the incorrect letter (or incorrect numbers, depending on how you look at it) in DOS v1.0.

Other differences from v1.0 that I found:
* A bug: When you complete level 6, you get a glimpse of the prince falling into the room to the right from the shadow, before level 7 appears.
* To un-pause, you must press Esc again. In v1.0, you can use Esc or Space.
* The "Game -> Current Level" menu item appears only in v1.0. (As realXCV wrote above.)
* The graphics data file is called "Persian data(Color)" instead of "Persia(COLOR)".
* The executable contains some function names, like "SYSTEMCH", "MAKEMENU", or "BREAKLOO". It seems that they are clipped to 8 characters.
There are no separators between the names and the machine code, so the two might seem to blend together, especially since the functions' code frequently begins with "NV" and ends with "Nu".

[realXCV]

More differences:
- Not tested but high scores are apparently stored in a 'SCOR' resource instead of a 'HIGH' resource.
- All sounds are stored in 'snd ' resources while v1.0 has a few in 'csnd' resources.
- There are a two extra 'clut' resources: 4001 - 16 colors and 4002 - 16 sepia.
- The high quality / low quality concept for the music is missing.