srt@cos.com (Stan R. Turner) (06/29/88)
I have had emerald mine for about 5 months and have enjoyed it very much
but it has about 90 levels and I am stuck at level 34. This level has a
large number of robots and two wheels to distract them with. I have
found that this level is to difficult for me. It requires a lot of
coordination which I seem to lack. The program will not allow you to
advance to the next level until you have solved the previous one. I
find it very frustrating to be stuck at level 34. What I want is some
way to get past level 34 so I can continue enjoying the game.
The game is self booting and has copy protection which marauder does
not copy. It does have a directory structure but I have not been able
to find the file which contains my level. Somewhere on the disk is the
information containing the level I am at along with my name. I have
tried to look at the disk with sectorama but it does not have the
ability to look for strings (i.e. my name) on the disk. I found a
program called diskzap (or something like that) that can look for
strings but it is very primitive and very, very very slow.
Are there any better disk looking programs (PD) on the Fred Fish
disks? Or will I have to spend the time setting the diskzap program
with the various ways my name might be stored on the disk (Upper case,
lower case, first letter capitalized, etc). This would take hours and
my disks would make a lot of noise. I can only hope that my name is not
encrypted on the disk.
Even better, does anyone know of a trick to get past the level that I
haven't figured out.
Please Email me your response unless you think your answer would be of
interest to the group.
Thanks in advance.
Stan
--
Mail to {decuac,hadron,hqda-ai,uunet}!cos.com!srt (Stanley R. Turner)koster@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (07/01/88)
In article <3188@cos.com> srt@cos.com (Stan R. Turner) writes: > >I have had emerald mine for about 5 months and have enjoyed it very much >but it has about 90 levels and I am stuck at level 34. This level has a >advance to the next level until you have solved the previous one. I >find it very frustrating to be stuck at level 34. What I want is some >way to get past level 34 so I can continue enjoying the game. My version of the game could be different from yours, so the following solution may not work. On my disk there is a nice directory structure. I can get a directory and there are many files like aa0,aa1,aa2,ab0,ab1, etc, and 0,1,2,3,4,5,etc. These are data files. The one you are interested in is the "nam" file (three letters, nam) This file has the information for player names and how high they got on the game. What you should do is try to find this file to type it out. do a "type df1:nam opt h" If your file is like mine, you will see a bunch of names. The file is composed of blocks of 26 bytes with each block representing a name. The first bytes are the name, then following bytes are information about that player. The 13th byte, starting from 0, is the highest level finished. By somehow changing this byte, perhaps with filezap, you will be able to progress beyond 34. Your file may be different, in which case you are on your own. I would have tried to email this response, but I don't know how that works. Every time I try to email beyond the Berkeley system the letter gets returned.
blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) (07/05/88)
From article <3188@cos.com>, by srt@cos.com (Stan R. Turner): > > I have had emerald mine for about 5 months and have enjoyed it very much > but it has about 90 levels and I am stuck at level 34. This level has a > large number of robots and two wheels to distract them with. This level IS beatable, the only tips I can offer you are to try and get a large number of the critters to follow you under a large group of rock that you can drop on their heads. Also make good use of the wheels and rock/dirt formations to bunch them up. I've played up to level 50 or so, but haven't touched it in a month or more, it's just too addiciting! If you do find a way to cheat with disk editor, please let me know! -- Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 540 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 UUCP Addresses: {ihnp4,ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne ihnp4!utah-cs!esunix!blgardne usna!esunix!blgardne "Nobody will ever need more than 64K." "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."
blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) (07/05/88)
From article <4194@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, by koster@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Kevin Oster): > My version of the game could be different from yours, so the following > solution may not work. True enough! [Description of hacking the "nam" file deleted.] On the disk I have the "nam" file is encoded, so it's not easy to figure out what to change. The disk is labeled "Copyright 1987 KINGSOFT" and says it's made in West Germany (of course the floppy itself says "made in Japan :-). It looks like Kingsoft decided to make life tougher for would-be cheaters. It would be nice if you could get a peek at the higher levels, but at least Emerald Mine doesn't make you start from level 0 every time! If you like puzzle-action games like Loderunner, get this one! -- Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 540 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 UUCP Addresses: {ihnp4,ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne ihnp4!utah-cs!esunix!blgardne usna!esunix!blgardne "Nobody will ever need more than 64K." "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."