The patches


It is pitch black... Uh, I mean... TRILLIAN.COM / PHOBOS.COM allows you to play HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY or LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS games under MSX-DOS without the problem of the system cleaning the screen after every text is written.
This happens cause the games are made for CP/M Plus (aka CP/M 3), while our beloved MSX-DOS is only compatible with CP/M up to version 2.2. CP/M Plus has some escape sequence that doesn't work the same way on MSX-DOS and deletes the screen. Funny, isn't it?

Of course you can play with the original files if you use the already existing CP/M Plus for MSX. But it's not that handy, specially when on MSX-DOS2 you can have the files on a directory on your SD/MMC/CF card easily. So, those patches solves this. They doesn't patch the games in any way, but the DOS hook itself. This way it avoids the escape sequence when the DOS text printing routine is called from the game.

They also allow configure some extras, like screen colors, font or function key text. More info on the README texts inside the package.

IMPORTANT NOTES!

The patch doesn't changes the original files in any way. It only patches the MSX-DOS hook to jump to the patching routine when needed.
To play HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY game or LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS game, you will need the original files from these games, as they're not provided.

For HHGTTG those files (original CP/M game) are:
HITCH.COM
HITCHHIK.DAT

for LGOP, those files (original CP/M game) are:
LEAT128.COM
LEATHER.DAT
 
I found some more files (taken from an Amstrad CPC disk), called:
LEAT256.COM
LEAT64.COM
LEATHERG.COM
 
but they're not necessary, it seems.

Below you can see some screens running the game WITHOUT the patch and WITH the patch.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!


by Paxanga staff

HHGTTG without patch

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This is how the games looks without any patch. It clears the screen after every text printing, which is not very convenient.

The prompt cursor is also located on a wrong place. As I said, this won't happen on other games like Zork, as they're for older versions of CP/M, and then they're totally compatible with MSX-DOS.

HHGTTG without patch

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All the messages will show on the top of screen but they're deleted quickly.

You can use CP/M plus on MSX, and then the game will work OK. But MSX-DOS is more MSX friendly, specially if you use MSX-DOS2, where you can have subdirectories and mass storage devices. It's your choice.

LGOP without patch

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Leather Goddesses of Phobos, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy share the same problem, as they were made for CP/M Plus.

Here you can see that, without patch, the screen is quite ugly. You type on the top and every text the machine prints is deleted quickly.

Frak!

HHGTTG ASCII Logo add-on

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This little thing wasn't necessary, but I felt like a bit of ASCII art wouldn't hurt.

Also, added several color schemes to make the screen looks like old phosphor monitors. Or any other colors you like, as you can edit the color files with any text editor. The patch can also load custom fonts.

HHGTTG after patching MSX-DOS hook

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Here's the original HHGTTG game working properly.

Now the text displays as it should, the inverse text upper bar is added (on MSX2), you have fancy colors (also MSX2) and the most important, you can read the text as it won't be deleted (unless it really has to).

LGOP after patching MSX-DOS hook

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Leather Goddesses of Phobos works too. In fact it's the same patch.

In this case it uses the orange phosphor scheme, even more exotic. You can customize 4 colors: text, background, inverse text and inverse background. It's so cool to be a geek, huh?