DIntent: I have occasionally heard references to people de compiling these games to look at he source code. Or maybe that was Wizardry?
Is there any way to de-compile Might & Magic 1? How would I go about it?
I have lots of questions that I would love to look at the code to figure out:
* Is there a list of every Bartender Tip and Rumor you can get from the taverns?
* How does the game track spells that last until you rest?
* How does the game keep track of quests?
* If I have two Sorcerers and they both cast 2-6 on someone, does it stack?
* I have noticed that sometimes an event does not activate unless I have done something first, how is it tracking that?
* I just had my alignment slip when I was ambushed, why did that happen? Am I fighting Good monsters? How am I supposed to know they are good monsters? What was I supposed to do?
etc...
I can answer some of these questions for Might and Magic 2, which has a similar engine to that of MM1 (but note that there will be differences):
* Spells that last until you rest are most likely tracked with flags for binary effects, like Walk on Water. For effects like Protection from Energy/Magic, there's an 8-bit value that stores the magnitude of the effect. (It has to be an 8-bit value because MM2 allows you to see it, and at level 236+ or 246+, the effect of the spell overflows and becomes small.)
* You can only have one quest at a time; hence the game only needs to store information about that one quest. Once you complete the quest (or have it removed (via quest removal elixir in MM2; MM1 appears to have the Remove Quest spell), the game no longer keeps track of it (which means you can get the quest again). (Note that, from what I have read, there's one impossible quest that will replace any other quest you have if you get it.)
* Each attribute has both a base value and a current value. Casting Sorcerer 2-6 likely increases the current value, and in MM2 (which doesn't have this specific spell) you can check your stats during battle. In MM2, the effects most similar to this spell (like Heroism) do stack. Also worth noting that, at least in MM2, Bless does not appear to stack (it appears to be a binary state), but Holy Bonus (think that's what the spell's called) stacks (but watch out for integer overflow at high levels). (In MM2, any changes to the current value last until you rest or you finish a combat (except that, if a character individually runs away, the stats aren't returned to normal. If MM1 has this loophole, try casting 2-6 on a character, having them run away, then checking to see if the Might stat in the status screen has changed.)
advowson: * Sorcerers: it depends on how the game remembers you have cast the spell at all. Given the extreme memory limits in effect on games of that era, I doubt the spell would be stackable unless the manual specifically promises that it is. You would need to find the code that the game runs when the spell is cast once, and inspect what it does to the game's tracking of your party's progress.
In games of its era (including Wizardry 1-5, Bard's Tale 1-3, and even Final Fantasy 1-3), spells of this sort tend to stack more often than not.
One approach is to use a memory viewer, either in the emulator (either a debug version of DOSBox or some other emulator with cheat/debug tools), and search for the Might stat of the target. Then, after each cast, look for a value that's higher than the previous value. Repeat until you narrow it down to one location (in which case you can see the spell stacking), or to no locations (in which case it likely doesn't stack). Also, it might help to look for all of the character's stats in order rather than just Might; that string is more likely to be unique (though expect there to still be at least 2 copies, as both the base and the current scores need to be stored somewhere).
