jg@hpldola.HP.COM (Joe Gilray) (11/17/89)
I recently purchased a used version of the original version of BALANCE OF POWER (Thanks, peter!). I'm very impressed with the game but a have a few questions which are not dealt with in the manual: 1) The game appears to be copy protected, at least none of the copys I made ran, they all bombed. It runs fine from the original disk. Has anyone made a backup or do I have to run from the original? 2) If I have to run from the original, then I should probably keep the original physically write protected, right? If this is true, then I have a few questions: a) When the game starts, it tries to write a file to the disk, since the disk is write protected, I get the "cancel retry" dialog. At this point I can either cancel at which point the game seems to proceed normally, or I can switch disks at which point the game writes a "SAVEDGAM" file and continues. Which method do you use? b) How can I replay a saved game if it is on a different disk than the game itself? I've tried choosing "load game" in the BOP startup screen, but if I switch disks before pressing "load game" or after, the system seems to lock up, any suggestions? So far I cannot replay a game as there is not enough room on the original disk to save a game (even if I did feel safe removing the write protection on the disk). c) There is a a:\a\savedgam file on the game disk, is this somehow involved in saving games (if so, what a poor name for the file!). 3) Often, when I try to get "history" on a country, the system will crash with three bombs (address error). Does this happen to everyone or is it my configuration (1040STf, TOS 1.0, fatspeed.prg, foldr080.prg)? As I said the game itself is great, it's just the outer shell (copy protection, no way to replay a saved game, no documentation on how to replay a game, etc.) that is a bother. Thanks for any help Joe Gilray
silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert) (11/21/89)
In article <11830064@hpldola.HP.COM> jg@hpldola.HP.COM (Joe Gilray) writes: > >I recently purchased a used version of the original version of >BALANCE OF POWER (Thanks, peter!). I'm very impressed with the >game but a have a few questions which are not dealt with in the >manual: > >1) The game appears to be copy protected, at least none of the > copys I made ran, they all bombed. It runs fine from the > original disk. Has anyone made a backup or do I have to run > from the original? I haven't run it for a while, but my experience was that it only checked the original disk when first booted. After that I could swap in a duplicate disk and it ran fine. This solves your questions about saving the game, etc. -- Bill Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division. Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2 UUCP: ...!{uunet,watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill Internet: biomel@cs.dal.CA BITNET: bs%dalcs@dalac.BITNET