Prince of Persia

Hi community,
the crack for Prince of Persia V1.3 works, because it lets you avoid the copy protection screen. But it is pretty unuseful, because you can not reload (Ctrl L) a saved game.
Does exist a crack for Prince of Persia V1.3 that loads correctly the saved games?
The cracks for PoP V1.0 and V1.4 work fine.

Did you check if you actually had a prince.sav in the folder? Also, you do know you can only save from Level 3 onwards?

mk1995 wrote:Did you check if you actually had a prince.sav in the folder? Also, you do know you can only save from Level 3 onwards?

Of course I have a prince.sav of the last level of the game, I can load it with the normal (uncracked) prince.exe and fight against Jaffar.
But if I use princec1.exe (the cracked version) I avoid the copy protection screen, but the saved game can not be load.
If I try in DOS 6.22 nothing happen, if I try in DOSBOX, the DOSBOX crash.

I looked on google for another version of the crack, but I found only the one that can not load.

You say you were using a prince.sav from another prince.exe entirely...

I know this sounds stupid now, but try saving a game when playing your cracked PoP 1.3 and then try to reload it. If that doesn't help, I'm clueless.

The cracked version creates a valid PRINCE.SAV, but it can not load it.
I know it is valid because the normal (uncracked) version CAN load it.

Which version do you use? Cracked or not?

Me? I'm afraid I don't even use version 1.3...

Confirmed.

The only available crack for v1.3 does indeed make loading saves impossible, yet it has nothing to do with the save file itself. Even DosBox's debugger throws a bunch of nasty warnings when you ctrl+l during the intro screen, and that it does not when you're running vanilla prince.exe, which's also perfectly capable of loading saves generated by the cracked version.

There's a couple reasons why you'd want to stick to good ole' v1.3 (the one that actually plays back FX samples, not the other with the broken config which does everything through OPL) for real DOS rigs: greater legacy hardware compatibility as well as the fact that joystick support in v1.4 is bogus (joysticks trigger an annoying debug screen) not to mention you can't even disable it from the setup tool so you're forced to see a garbled screen at the very least once before you hit ctrl-k.

Just a couple cents from this fresh POP member.

There is a way to patch v1.3 without the bug: viewtopic.php?p=13476#p13476 (inside the quote)

KJV wrote:joystick support in v1.4 is bogus (joysticks trigger an annoying debug screen)

Yes, I have seen that: viewtopic.php?p=14273#p14273

KJV wrote:you can't even disable it from the setup tool so you're forced to see a garbled screen at the very least once before you hit ctrl-k.

If you're using DOSBox, you can disable joystick emulation in dosbox.conf.

David wrote:There is a way to patch v1.3 without the bug: viewtopic.php?p=13476#p13476 (inside the quote)

Thank you David! works like a charm. Somehow I managed to miss that thread. I'm also taking the liberty to share an exe with your fix hexed in for those in need of a drag-and-drop kind of way out of the problem.

David wrote:If you're using DOSBox, you can disable joystick emulation in dosbox.conf.

Yep, that's why I specifically said "for real DOS rigs". In DosBox it's as easy as disabling joystick emulation and re-mapping the actual joystick to keyboard keys.

There is yet another way to get rid of the joystick messages: start the game with prince > nul.
(I mentioned this here: viewtopic.php?p=14273#p14273 )
This should work both in DOSBox and in real DOS.

Thanks again David, very neat trick!

Now I'm pondering on something I read the other day; is it true that v1.4 somehow runs better (more stably?) on newer computers (well, late 90's tech anyways) with faster cpu's? just asking, seeing as you seem to be familiar with the inner works of the exe's.

Never had a problem with either version, though, and I'm on a P4 3.8ghz.

KJV wrote: is it true that v1.4 somehow runs better (more stably?) on newer computers (well, late 90's tech anyways) with faster cpu's?

I don't know about that.
However, it seems to me that in DOSBox, if the cycles value is high, v1.4 detects the sound card reliably, while v1.3 and v1.0 don't.

Another: The install.exe of certain versions (1.0 and 1.1) may crash if there is too much free space on the disk: viewtopic.php?p=14201#p14201

Hmm, I don't think I have experience the sound detection issue myself, unless you're talking the alternative v1.3 setup tool that I mentioned in my first post, but now that you bring it up, I do have some vague recollection regarding a broken installation problem, yet from centuries ago, so it could have very well been something entirely different.

Still, if there's any truth to the alleged v1.4 enhancement, the free disk space thing does indeed look like a perfectly good candidate.

Thank you David for sharing that piece information.

Sound detection: I mean that v1.0 might start in speaker mode if the cycles value is high. v1.4 doesn't seem to do that.
v1.3 might do a strange thing in this case: The music is played normally, but the sound effects are different from both digi and speaker.

The disk space bug was fixed in the installer of v1.3, not of v1.4. (Does v1.4 even have an installer? I mean an install.exe, not setup.exe.)

KJV wrote:There's a couple reasons why you'd want to stick to good ole' v1.3 (the one that actually plays back FX samples, not the other with the broken config which does everything through OPL) for real DOS rigs

Say, what are these two separate versions of 1.3 you're talking about? All I've seen so far are 5.25" and 3.5" versions, as well as I think the 3.5" version included as-is on a CD collection.