FIRETRANS --------- (c) GOLDMARK SYSTEMS 1988 51 Comet Road, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England FIRETRANS transfers a large number of FIREBIRD games to disc automatically including most screens. All games saved are STAND-ALONE programs and do not need FIRETRANS as their host. Firebird tapes can be roughly split into EARLY and LATE types. This disc contains two programs, selected from the menu, to cater for both EARLY and LATER type Firebird loaders. Among the EARLY Firebird games tested were: DONT PANIC, HELICOPTER, WILLOW PATTERN, HYBRID (by Starlight), NINJA MASTER, PARABOLA, REALM, STARGLIDER, RUNESTONE, CHIMERA, THE COMET GAME, GUNSTAR, SPIKY HAROLD, BOOTY, ZOLYX and some versions of THRUST, HARVEY HEADBANGER and BOMBSCARE. Among the LATER Firebird games tested were: BEACH BUGGY SIMULATOR, BIOSPHERES, BRAINSTORM, EUROPEAN 5-A-SIDE, GOTHIK, MUGGINS THE SPACE MAN, MYSTERY OF THE NILE, NINJA SCOOTER SIMULATOR, POGOSTICK OLYMPICS, RAGING BULL, STUNT BIKE SIMULATOR, ULTIMA RATIO. To use FIRETRANS simply RUN"FIRETRAN" and Choose option 1 or 2. You will be asked for a name to save the transferred game under. Enter up to eight characters. Any illegal characters entered will not be accepted by the program. Letters may be entered in lower case, the program will alter them to upper case. Place the fully rewound game tape in the recorder and your save disc in the drive and press any key. The game will load as normal and finally save the required files to disc. When the save is complete the game will start. On some games it is possible that a save will be made immediately after the screen has loaded and nothing further happens. If this does occur reset the computer and erase any saved files. FIRETRANS will not copy this type of loader. To run the game simply run the file with the .BIN extension. The file with the .I extension is the screen (if there was one) The file with the .II extension is the game code. The file with the .III extension will also be game code for the long games. In at least one game (BOOTY) the screen colours saved will be wrong owing to the authors using hardware ink settings. To find the correct colours type in and run the following program: 10 LOAD"GAMENAME":MODE PEEK(&BEE1):LOAD"GAMENAME.I" 20 WINDOW#0,1,40,25,25 You will now have the screen displayed in the wrong colours with a text window across the bottom line. You can alter any ink to any colour without destroying the display. When you have the correct colour for a particular part of the picture write it down. Continue until you have either 4 or 16 colours according to mode. (Mode 1 = 4 colours and mode 0 = 16 colours). You can now alter the loader by running the following program: 10 FOR X=&BED0 TO &BEE0:READ C:POKE X,C:NEXT 20 SAVE"GAMENAME",B,&BE80,&6D,&BE80 30 DATA <here list your ink colours in reverse order [15 to 0] followed by the border colour.] 17 data statements in all>. Some games have no loading screen and FIRETRANS-II takes this into account. However FIRETRANS-I will not be aware of this so it will save 17k of nothing. "BOMBSCARE" is one such game. To re-claim your disc space erase the "GAMENAME.I" file then alter the loader as follows: 10 LOAD"GAMENAME.BIN":FOR X=&BEAA TO &BEBB:POKE X,0:NEXT 20 SAVE"GAMENAME",B,&BE80,&6D,&BE80 It is also possible that some games, when transferred to disc, run in the wrong colours. Stunt Bike Simulator is one example. The "fix" for this particular game is to run the following routine: 10 LOAD"STUNT.BIN":POKE &BEF0,&C3:POKE &BEF1,&0:POKE &BEF2,&18 20 SAVE"STUNT.BIN",B,&BE80,&80,&BE80 REMEMBER THAT THIS UTILITY IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR YOUR OWN USE CONVERTING YOUR TAPES TO RUN FROM DISC. IT IS NOT INTENDED, NOR DO WE CONDONE ITS USE FOR ILLEGAL PURPOSES.