Catrap (AKA Pitman)

[derboo]

The edits are in now. Had to change up the layout a bit for it all to fit well, then changed it a bit more to make the comparisons more compact.

Also, from Wikipedia:

The game concept was originally created in 1985 on a MZ-700 homecomputer by Yutaka Isokawa, possibly inspired by the PC-88 game "Mole Mole" (1985).

No it wasn't. Mole Mole was released in July, according to Japan's biggest PC-88 database, while Isokawa's code is dated March, and he would have had to submit it well before the August 1st publishing date of the magazine.

[Sketcz-1000]

The bullshit that Wikipedia reports is awesome in a strange bad way.

The funniest is when I see articles of mine used as sources, and they've skewed what I've said, interpreting it differently to how I intended, in order to put across their own agenda.

Good redesign too, nice and compact near the end.

Also, I think it's a good idea to date when additions are made, along with when an article comes out. There will undoubtedly come a time in the future when these will be useful.

[BdR]

Excellent job on the research and scanning of the listing.

I've taken a look at the listing and it seems the program reads the levels from memory between adresses HE000-HF300 (see line 200), and on page 105 it mentions a line SAVEM"PIT", &HE000, &HF300 which, I assume, saves a memory block to file.

You'd think the separate listing (that starts with "check sum hubasic") would be a helper program to input the leveldata into memory. But from what I can figure it seems to be just a memory viewer program, which sole purpose was to print the memory formatted in a way they could print it in the magazine. Only after the levels have been input, the output will look like the pages 109 through 111.

So the question remains, how was the avarage user supposed to input these large datablocks into memory back in 1985? Enter each value individually with a POKE command? There must have been an easier way.. Would be cool if there were someone with proper MZ-700 knowledge to shine a light on this. Also, can someone who can read Japanese translate the loading intructions on page 105?

Edit:
btw I saw that the main PITMAN listing also has a part called "data out/in" through which a user can enter data. But this seems to work with separate password-like codes of 46 characters, which are different from the datablocks after the listing.

[Trickless]

MoleMole was the winner of the '5th Harajuka Computer Software Contest' back in 1984, which was sponsored by Victor Music Industries. Commercially it may have been released on the FM-7 a month before the PC88 version.

Not that it makes any difference, since I think the inspiration for both Pitman and MoleMole can be traced back to earlier games like Boulder Dash and Lode Runner.

[hitchhikr]

It reminds me Sokoban as well.

[derboo]

Aug 14, 2011 19:25:20 GMT -5 Trickless said:

MoleMole was the winner of the '5th Harajuka Computer Software Contest' back in 1984, which was sponsored by Victor Music Industries. Commercially it may have been released on the FM-7 a month before the PC88 version.

Do you know a site with more info on that contest? Were the winner's source codes printed, or did they publish a tape with the contest programs prior to their individual commercialization?

For everyone else's reference, here's the page on the FM-7 version, which also mentions the contest:

www.retropc.net/fm-7/museum/softhouse/victor/510201400.html

[Trickless]

I don't think there really is much on the web. I've only come across this old ad that was on the Mole Mole Mania fansite:



It's got some details about the Harajuku computer soft contest '85, such as the prize money and dates. Other than that, i've not got much else on this. The fansite itself doesn't seem to mention about the game's origins either.

Incidentally, if we're going by the prize list for the '85 contest then it seems Mole Mole didn't 'win' the '84 contest as I originally thought, but instead had gotten the 2nd prize.

[derboo]

Hm, the ad says Cross Media would commercialize outstanding entries. So, since they appear to be the ones who ran the contest to begin with, I doubt they would give the games away in print/compilation beforehand. My money is on the Summer '85 commercial release being the first time the game was available to a wide public.

[Trickless]

Oh, I don't think there was any doubt about that. I just mentioned it because I thought it was just an interesting fact!

[derboo]

Haha, I doubt everything when I get the opportunity.

Aug 15, 2011 12:39:06 GMT -5 hitchhikr said:

It reminds me Sokoban as well.

To be honest, I don't believe in a connection to Sokoban since the games are very different in concept. Whatever elements they share, they also share with Boulderdash, and there's no way Isokawa didn't know Boulderdash when he made Pitman.

And I think I'll just declare typing in the game impossible. The only MZ-700 emulator I could get to run is incapable of loading its own saved files.

[BdR]

derboo: Which Hu-BASIC version do you use? I've tried HU-BASIC V1.3_K.mzf (which says "HU-BASIC V1.3 COPYRIGHT(C) 1980,81 BY HUDSONSOFT.") in the MZ-700 emulator by Michael Franzen. Many commands in the listing either don't exists in HU-BASIC V1.3 or work differently. For example COLOR 7,0 gives syntax error, CONSOLE gives missing operand, MUSIC"EDCR" gives syntax error.

I also tried 1Z-013B.mzf which loads and displays "BASIC INTERPRETER 1Z-013B v1.0A COPYRIGHT (C) 1983 BY SHARP CORP.". Most commands work here but sometimes a little differently. For example instead of COLOR 7,0 you have to use COLOR,,7,0 and instead of LOCATE you have to use CURSOR.

Seriously, how did they do this back in 1985? They either had to have the exact same BASIC version or "translate" it to the version they were working with. But that would require knowledge of both BASIC versions. I think it's a miracle people could get these kinds of listings to work at all.

One thing you can extract from this listing relatively easy are the 50 original levels. Each row of bytes at the end is a column of the level, where 0=empty 1=ladder 2=gold 3=dirt 4=boulder 5=wall 6=pitman (see line 1610 and 2410). As for getting Pitman listing to run, the way I see it there are two options:
1) Find the exact same BASIC version that can handle all the commands in the listing
2) Use a different BASIC version and adapt certain commands (CURSOR instead of LOCATE etc.)

[derboo]

I didn't even get as far to get syntax errors. First thing I try is type 5 or 10 lines, save the program, quit the emulator, and try to reload. At which point the emulator always fails, be it with HuBasic or Sharp S-Basic.

[BdR]

Here's how I load and save files, first type some lines and save it

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 PRINT "TEST 123"
SAVE "TEST123.BAS"

Then press the REC button in the MZxEmu window, it will write a file to your harddisk. To load it just type LOAD without parameters and press enter. It will prompt you with "PLAY", now press Play button in the MZxEmu window and select TEST123.BAS and it will load. This works in both HU-BASIC and SHARP-BASIC.

The .BAS extension is not necessary in SHARP-BASIC because it will always add .BAS by itself. And of course, a listing saved with HU-BASIC can't be loaded by SHARP-BASIC and vice versa (so much for compatibility).

[BdR]

One more thing. Isokawa did not use an array to hold the current level layout but instead he uses the CHARACTER$ command to look at specific characters on screen to determine if there is a ladder or wall etc. which is quite clever. However, I can't get CHARACTER$ to work in HU-BASIC v1.3 and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent in the SHARP-BASIC commands, I've also checked this user manual. I'm not sure but maybe there is some sort of PEEK command that can read the active characters on screen..?

[Deleted]

Sketcz thought I should mention this here, so here we go: Did you know that there's practically 103 rounds in the game instead of 100? The three bonus rounds are accessible with passwords that you need to input in the Edit mode. The passwords were included in the Japanese manual, at least.

All images courtesy of me.

I don't know about you, but I thought this was a nice touch to an already awesome game.