SCUMM: FOA (Amiga): Copy protection screen bug

[gabberhead]

when u start the game with copyprotection enabled, when the game starts then it appears the: please press the enter key.... on top of the screen. thats ok. when u now press the enter key, then it appears the "find...." on top of the screen. but the previous "please press enter..." is not cleared, and the "find..." is shown on top of the "please press...". normaly, the please press must be cleared, and only find... must be shown. now like it is, it is hard to read the find.. message, because it overlaps the previous message.
testet with the newest daily build and with the german and english amiga version of the game. german and english dos version, is not affected by this bug.

[tag2015]

Attached a screenshot.
The "PLEASE PRESS THE ENTER KEY TO BEGIN THE GAME" message is not cleared.

[dwatteau]

Thanks for reporting this.

It would be nice to see whether the original game was meant to have copy protection on, back then (i.e. have someone running the original game on original hardware or Amiga emulator).

I looked at some YouTube videos, and so far I haven't seen any Amiga Let's Play where the copy protection screen shows up. (But maybe YouTube players cut it from their video, or play a modified game...).

My hypothesis is that it's maybe an original bug, because it wasn't meant to be played with the copy protection screen turned on, and so the issue never showed up there. But I have no knowledge of whether LucasArts used copy protection for Amiga releases or not, back then.

Or maybe it truly is a ScummVM bug, as I see that the Amiga release of Indy4 appears to run some very specialized code, here and there.

Anyway, if any Amiga fan can show up to tell us how things behaved on original hardware... maybe some folks on the Mixnmojo forums know... otherwise it's going to take some time/motivation to investigate this.

[tag2015]

@dwa I can confirm (from experience :) ) that the Amiga version had the copy protection (the "codewheel").

Same thing for MI1 and MI2

[gabberhead]

At ca. 11min

​https://youtu.be/7blbJBGuQLQ?si=Kmu84zjsZz0lbKYF

[GermanTribun]

@tag2025 You are confusing that with the action game of the same name. The action game did have a code wheel, while the adventure game did not have one.

I find this interesting.
​https://www.mocagh.org/lucasfilm/indyatlantisuk-alt-manual.pdf

On page 5, when talking about the copy protection, it states "PC only". That is a very strong hint that the copy protection was disabled in the Amiga version for some reason. Perhaps due to the issues stated here?

[gabberhead]

Did u See the Video from my link? They are playing the amiga version. And there is A Code wheel protection also :)

[GermanTribun]

OK, but that is NOT a codewheel. A codewheel is a physical cardboard wheel you use for copy protection. This is just referencing stuff in the manual. A little confusion of terms, since you referenced the stone discs as a code wheel.

Interestingly, this is the German version they are playing. Could there be a difference between the English and German Amiga versions? (after all, the English manual said the copy protection is PC only)

[tag2015]

You are correct about the codewheel, it was only in the Action game, not in the adventure game. But I can assure you that the European english version has the copy protection enabled. If you want, I can run it in WinUAE and do a recording.

The manual you linked is from the Kixx version, which I think is the budget re-release. It may be possibile that it was actually disabled in that Amiga version.

[GermanTribun]

No need to, I believe you. Of course that still leaves the question of what is going on. This is all very mysterious.

The Kixx version... That needs to be tested, though I don't have that one.

[tag2015]

Well anyway since it may be interesting to some, here you go
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9rbflpl14c

After the loading you can see the copyprotection at about 2:10