Heyley Software Games

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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dave
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Heyley Software Games

#1 Post by dave » Fri Aug 24, 2012 12:21 pm

The Heyley software games for the BBC Micro have been though lost for years (with the exception of Stranded!). These have recently been recovered from the master disks at one of the companies that published them. As part of the recovery copy protection was removed, but we can't be guaranteed that all of the protection was removed and that there isn't some hidden traps.

There's one easy was to find this out: play the games through. I've only played Stranded! through, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, so was wondering if anybody was willing to attempt to play them through with me. The games can be found on the stardot thread.

I'm currently playing through Dreamtime.

As they're ADFS disks, they can be played in Elkulator or on BeebEm or B-Em in Master mode. Though you'll need to issue a *ADFS command before booting the disks.

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Gunness
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Re: Heyley Software Games

#2 Post by Gunness » Fri Aug 24, 2012 12:25 pm

How far have you made it into Dreamtime? I'd like to join this one or a different one.

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#3 Post by Gunness » Fri Aug 24, 2012 12:27 pm

And while we're at it... our Heyley page links to a website with a contact page. I'd like to contact Howard Roberts, but the contact page fails?

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#4 Post by dave » Fri Aug 24, 2012 1:34 pm

I'm mainly mapping at the moment. The game consists of 4 sub games, so I've been trying to map these out. As a hint, the command in the lift is the floor number by itself, i.e. "1", "2", "3", "4", "5".

In terms of getting hold of Howard, I believe Dave Edwards of acornelectron.co.uk has contact details from him and is trying to contact him at the moment, so I'll wait to see what Dave says.

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#5 Post by Gunness » Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:56 am

Well, I ran into a nasty bout of work, so I haven't had the time for these games until now :)
I guess I'm not well enough versed in the ways of protected BBC software. I've downloaded the intermediate discs as posted by billcarr2005 - he wrote something about "A quick one byte bypass of the protection routine / error message", so I thought his repost of the discs would work. Not so. Same problem with "Disc fault 18 at 00/00".

I'm lost here - help me :oops:

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#6 Post by dave » Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:13 pm

That's not the protection - that's because they're using ADFS (Advanced Disc Filing System) rather than the usual DFS (Disc Filing System). If you're using BeebEm, then you want to put it in Master mode (Hardware->BBC Model->BBC Master 128) which I find is the easiest to leave it on.

Then load your disk image, type

Code: Select all

*ADFS
and do the normal SHIFT+F12 to boot it.

I've tried to transfer it across to DFS, but it didn't work easily and I haven't had the time to look into why.

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#7 Post by Gunness » Thu Aug 30, 2012 3:09 pm

Terrific - I've been using B-em for a long time, but the steps are the same. Gracias!

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#8 Post by pippa » Sat Sep 08, 2012 6:12 pm

I thought I'd give these a go. But this is my first ever experience with a BBC, and I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm using BeebEm, which I've installed specially.

I can do the "Hardware->BBC Model->BBC Master 128" bit OK (I think). But I'm not sure how to "load your disk image".

I'm using the "Load Disc 0" option on BeebEm's File menu, is that right? And then I select "PRES_HeyleySoftware_DreamTime-IntermediateDisc.adf" (or whatever) as the disc to load. Is that the right file, or have I downloaded the wrong ones?

But when I type *AFDS I get that "Disc fault 18 at 00/00" error message that Gunness mentioned. Is that bad? I've never heard of "the normal SHIFT+F12", whatever that is. But when I just press SHIFT+F12, the screen resets, and I get another "Disc fault 18 at 00/00" message, and the > prompt is replaced by a * one.

What am I doing wrong?
[b]~~[i] Pippa [/i]~~[/b]

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#9 Post by Keetie » Sun Sep 09, 2012 5:08 pm

pippa wrote: What am I doing wrong?
First type *ADFS then load the disc. Because the standard is DFS you got the error of a Wrong Disc (disc fault).

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#10 Post by pippa » Sun Sep 09, 2012 8:22 pm

Thanks. I'll give that a try and see what happens.
[b]~~[i] Pippa [/i]~~[/b]

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#11 Post by dave » Sun Sep 09, 2012 11:01 pm

The other thing you can try is to Use File->Load Disc 0 (and supply the intermediate.adf file), then press SHIFT+A+F12. If the SHIFT+F12 isn't working you can also try

Code: Select all

*ADFS
*RUN !BOOT
A "Disc Error 18" basically means that it doesn't understand the format on the disc, which usually means that you're trying to load a DFS disc into ADFS or vice versa (or the disc image is corrupt). If you still having problems, if you could provide a screenshot or something similar it'd be helpful.

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#12 Post by Keetie » Wed Sep 12, 2012 6:47 pm

pippa wrote:Thanks. I'll give that a try and see what happens.
It works like that. For a better understanding you can do a *. or *CAT after having loaded the disc, then the disc is a sort of mounted and you can type *RUN !Boot.

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#13 Post by dave » Thu Jun 27, 2013 9:53 pm

One of the guys who use to work for some of Heyley's distributors has turned up some old master disks with a selection of Heyley's games and supporting information. He describes it in this thread (with a link to the .ssd files for downloading): http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 446#p67446

Be warned there are pictures of dirty, naked 5.25" disks on the thread!

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#14 Post by Gunness » Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:58 am

Avert my eyes from this horrid sight!

(and nice find, btw ;))

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Re: Heyley Software Games

#15 Post by lordroberts » Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:06 pm

HI, guys.

Just to let you know that as well as all Electron versions of the Heyley games, the instructions and hintsheets have also been retrieved. I made them up into PDF files and you can find them at this post for now:
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 201#p68200

Sometime soon, I'll get around to updating my Heyley pages where I have the Archimedes games. What I'd like to do now is find the BBC versions of the first four games but I guess they're gone forever.

Cheers, Howard
http://heyley.vocks.org.uk/

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