On Wed, 24 Dec 2008, sicklittlemonkey wrote:

> On Dec 24, 3:51 am, lyricalnanoha
>  wrote:
>>>> I wonder if I could shove the image into an unused part of
the memory
>>>> instead...or even, if must be, onto the language card.
>
> I created the Moon Patrol NIB and notes for it.
>
> The data loaded is necessary unless you omit the moon base animation
> (as all file versions do), so as Brendan and Antoine say you'll have
> to find somewhere like the language card or aux mem to put it.
> (Antoine is referring to the aux mem move routine at $C311).
>
> Another option is to store the image data compressed in unused memory
> and decompress it to the hires screen, thus keeping to the game's
> original 48K spec. I was in the process of doing this some time ago,
> but it was pushed on the back burner.
>
> One problem is there isn't enough free memory to do that without
> drawing to the displayed screen (or showing a messy data-filled
> screen) unless you go beyond 48K.
>
> Cheers,
> Nick.

A couple years ago I did a compressed version of "Hard Hat Mack" from the 
cracked copy.  It takes time to decompress during which it garbles the 
text page - then it runs fine.  (The normal version, which has a special 
loader and has its own RWTS down in the screen memory, also garbles the 
screen during load, for a similar reason.)

That was a trick in itself as it used ALL available memory, from $0400 all 
the way up to $BFFF, as I recall.

A somewhat easier stunt was crunching Xevious, which also used the LC, but 
didn't use all of low memory.

-uso.
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