A View to a Kill: the source

Current truth for this game. The workflow lives in kit/skills/; how this understanding developed lives in agent-history.md. Every fact names the routine or table it comes from. Unless marked live, a fact comes from reading the code in the snapshots named in orientation.md.

The game is five programs, and each has its own facts, listing and symbols under parts/<id>/: parts/intro/facts.md, parts/paris/facts.md, parts/city-hall/facts.md, parts/mine/facts.md, parts/finale/facts.md. An address is always an address in the part named with it. This file holds what spans the parts.

Build

Five programs, loaded one at a time from a menu, each unpacked over the whole of memory and started at its own entry (orientation.md):

Nothing is loaded once a part runs, and no part loads the next: the player goes back to the menu for each.

The codes

The three later parts start at a KERNAL "PLEASE ENTER CODE" prompt with the same routine (read_code: City Hall $1088, mine $5707, finale $804C): five characters through CHRIN, compared with a fixed string. A match stores 1 in $1BA0; RETURN before five characters stores 0 and plays on without the code (the finale goes back to its prompt instead); a wrong code is read again, with no limit on tries.

• Every code is fixed text. No part computes one from play: there is no score, no time or result in them (read in each part's end routine).
• $1BA0 is the same address in all three parts, and a part reads it once, at its end:
• City Hall ($7096): with the code, reaching room 76 with Stacey shows DB4CT; without it the game starts again ($8600).
• mine ($25F2): with the code, the right bomb digits show ILVCT; without it the bomb goes off, whatever the digits (game_over, $25D0).
• finale: written, never read. The ending plays only after ILVCT.
• Live, 30 September 2026: CCPHJ, DB4CT and ILVCT were each accepted at their prompts. City Hall's end with and without CCPHJ, and the mine's with and without DB4CT, behaved as above (parts/city-hall/facts.md, parts/mine/facts.md). The finale compared only five characters: ILVCTX was accepted.
• So a part can be played from the menu without its code, but only Paris gives a code without one: City Hall and the mine can be finished only by a player who typed the code that came before.

Code the parts share

Bytes identical at the same addresses, compared in the unpacked images:

All four playable parts read the joystick in port 2 only ($DC00) and stop CIA 1's timer A, so the KERNAL never scans the keyboard during play; the keyboard is used only at the code prompts.

Layers of the copy studied

Each part carries leftovers of earlier work on the game, none of which runs:

• intro: a crack's menu and title ("THE DYNAMIC-DUO PRESENTS"), $8020 onwards, overwritten by a 14-byte patch (parts/intro/facts.md).
• Paris: an earlier crack's BASIC line and depacker at $0800.
• City Hall: an older code prompt (code "QRS21", $967B), an older end screen ("WEBL DONE 007 YOUR CODE IS 111122", $7E5A), and the mine's end screen at $0A00.
• mine: stretches that match City Hall at the same addresses ($0B04-$0FFF).
• finale: memory the part's packer never writes, holding bytes that match Paris's code in part.

Whether the code prompts and end screens are the original game's or the crackers' is open. For the crackers: the older prompt and end screen left in City Hall, and the mine's prompt placed in character-set glyphs the mine's tiles do not use. Against: the memos, which are plainly the game's, also print through the KERNAL. The published game is documented with the three codes (C64-Wiki, features.md).

Live tests

Pokes that change the game within its own parameters. Each one names the variable it changes and whether it has been tested live. Untested pokes are labelled as candidates. Addresses are in the part named.