Running Centauri Alliance (C64 version) under VICE

[CryptRat]

- You may stumble upon .d64 version of the game files on abandonware sites. Don't use these, the game seems to work at first glance but you'll face crashes and bugs when entering some dungeons. The good way is to look for .nbi files and convert them to .g64 using nibtools.

Note : I am not familiar with c64 emulation, it may or may not be a recurring issue not specific to this game (according to nibtools which gives a warning message when you choose the d64 format it probably is).

The following steps are basic stuff you can probably skip (but don't forget the game supports mouse control).








- My disks work these way :
disk 1 = boot
disk 2 = roster disk (to copy)
disk 3 to 6 = scenario disk 1 to 4

- Attach the disk 1 (Drive 8), then type LOAD“*“,8,1 like specified in the manual.

- First thing to do is to copy the roster disk (you have to). In the beginning of the game choose to copy the roster disk.
Under Attach disk image menu choose a name for your disk, choose the g64 format and "create image". Don't worry, you have to swap the roster disc (disk 2?) and the copy disc a couple of times.

- Then activate the mouse. Under Control Port settings :

Then you probably have to press ² (command menu = ESC on your C64 keyboard) and choose mouse (m) in the game.
Then you must press alt+q to switch between in-game and out-game cursor (thanks to cicero63bc).

- I'm playing at (custom) 300% speed.

- There's a map of the first town/planet in the manual. The shop especially is the room in front of you.
Buy combat armors or something (don't forget to equip them), my 4 second row chars are using shurikens. Be careful, don't buy any weapon, you need some level in melee/sidearms/throw for some if not most weapons (see the manual).
You can buy a robot, they're strong, even the first one costing 1500, but the beginning of the game is easy so it's not essential. Besides don't fear travelling to the different planets.

- When you'll eventually enter the dungeon in Omikron VII and walk one step further you should get this (it's where the game crashed with the wrong files) :

Enjoy.

 

[Rincewind]

Nice informative post CryptRat. I'm planning to (re-)play lots of classic games on the C64 (on a real one equipped with an 1541 Ultimate-II+), and my conclusion is that playing cracks of any long multi-load RPG or adventure game is risky and just not worth it.

It's particularly noteworthy that often the savegames themselves get corrupted too because the games need to save the "state of the world" into them, meaning you can't always just swap the buggy cracked version out with another cracked version or the original when you encounter a game-breaking bug a few hours in. Often, the best thing is to restart.

Same goes for cartridge conversions; they might work, or not, but you will only know potentially 5-10-20 hours later... Exceptions to this are conversions that have been 100% completed repeatedly by several people, such as these glorious cartridge versions:

Ultima IV Remastered
https://csdb.dk/release/?id=137331

Legacy of the Ancients / The Legend of Blacksilver +4D
https://csdb.dk/release/?id=137331

So barring these few notable exceptions (there might be more, but you need to research each one individually), my recommendation is to stick with the original G64 dumps from the "C64 Preservation Project 10th Anniversary Collection". The verified good dumps have "[!]" in their filenames.

https://archive.org/details/C64_Preservation_Project_10th_Anniversary_Collection

These tend to be dumps of NTSC originals, which is generally a good thing for complex American-made adventures and RPGs (European games were usually much simpler action/platformer affairs; most of the good stuff for the C64 was American-made). In the minority of cases, you need to emulate an NTSC C64, otherwise the game will crash on a PAL C64 (Neuromancer comes to mind; it crashes right at the start using the NTSC G64 dump). Of course, NTSC vs PAL timing differences apply in some cases (e.g. LucasArts adventures play the music ~17% slower on a PAL machine), so NTSC is always preferable when it's an option (not for hardware PAL users like me, though).

And yeah, using JiffyDOS is recommended; probably that's the best and most compatible way to help with loading times somewhat.