Ancient ys vanish omen format option

Paragon (1238)

13-06-2013, 19:19

Hello everyone,

I stumbled on something weird (for me it was ).

I tried to play ancient ys vanish omen on openmsx and it seems my diskimage was bad because it didn't work. Even the english translation failed to load.

So the first thing I did was start the game again with the CTRL button pressed. After bootup a screen appeared saying

- ys - disk format tool ??

Does anybody know what it's purpose is ? As far as I know ys doesn't save data to a disk, so why the format tool ?

O yeah, It is isn't translated in the english version

By Randam

Paragon (1431)

13-06-2013, 20:44

Nice find!! Great job on finding that! The tool is used to format a userdisk. You could do that in basic but apparently they made a tool for it as well. Don't remember seeing that in the manual. But you can save to a disk: IIRC load and save functions are f2 and f3.

The format disk option is also present in the pc88 version but I didn't think it was in the MSX version.
In case you were wondering what the texts say:

PLease insert new disk and push [return].

Please select Double/ 2 sided, 9 sectors
1 - 1 side, double track
2 - 2 sides, double track

? 2
Strike a key when ready
format complete

Please push the reset button.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6561)

13-06-2013, 21:11

Randam wrote:

But you can save to a disk: IIRC load and save functions are f2 and f3.

No, it's F1 for loading and F4 for saving. On an emulator, save states are the best way.

Btw, don't play the English translation, something is corrupted and you can't enter the Tower. A similar problem happens also with the English translation of Ys 2.

Review on MSX blue : http://www.msxblue.com/?page_id=722

By Randam

Paragon (1431)

13-06-2013, 22:01

Thanks for correcting me on the load and save buttons, Mars2000...

But regarding the corruptions in the translated versions: though there are bugs in the translated versions of Oasis for Ys 1 and 2 both could be completed. I have finished them way back so perhaps the corruption to the point of crashing probably is in some particular version(s).

By Akiguchi

Hero (623)

13-06-2013, 22:09

The trick is to insert the japanese disk when you are entering the tower and then insert the english translation again.

By Randam

Paragon (1431)

13-06-2013, 22:12

Seriously, there is such a buggy version out there you need to do that?

By Manuel

Ascended (19683)

13-06-2013, 22:31

I also remember finishing both translated versions without any tricks. But then again, that was probably 15 years ago.

By TheKid

Paragon (1238)

14-06-2013, 00:48

Hi randam (and others) , thanks for clearing this up. Question remains, why this option. Does it format a disk differntly then the standard way of formatting a disk ? i cant imagine they made this tool so a user wont have to type call format manually ?

By Vampier

Prophet (2415)

14-06-2013, 06:23

the YS save works with any disk and will write in the first few sectors of a disk (where the FAT is supposed to be). I made the mistake a few times overwriting the game disc (copy) with a save. YS won't work after that.

By Turrebo

Expert (84)

24-06-2013, 07:28

I used to have a version in which I fixed that. I don't have it anymore (threw all my disks away years ago, stupid, stupid), but it is (relatively) easy to make.

If you take a look at the first few sectors of the disk, you'll see short names for different parts of the game, followed by some variables about where that 'file' is located on the disk. I remember it is really very straightforward and simple.

What I did was: make a copy of the disk, play a bit, save my game, and then see which sector was overwritten.
Then, on the 'original' disk, I copied that sector to the end of the disk and adjusted the sector location information.

Done! Now you can play and save on the same disk.

Originally I wanted to convert Ys (vanished omen) into separate files, just to see if I could, but that would result in more files than FAT could handle (more than 112 files, or something of the like). But hey, a play/save disk was not a bad by-product of my research (ahem!)

By Randam

Paragon (1431)

24-06-2013, 08:28

TheKid: Like Vampier already said the disk format for a user disk is the same as for a regular empty disk. In the PC88 version you can format a new user disk from the actual game. So on the off chance that you don't have an empty disk ready to save on you can do that from within the game. Perhaps they started on that and then decided against it, leaving you with the tool there is now. But the use of it is pretty limited.