AlienBash I & II - Original Coder Contacted - Help Needed in Rescuing 68000 Source!!

[Higgy]

Good news.

It was only a 80mb HD, and as it did not boot I thought I would not bother as I was going CF-IDE route.

After a few days nagging in the back of my mind, I thought I would have a go. Luckily I had an old 2.5" IDE-to-USB caddy laying around, so I connected it up to my PC and just left it spinning for quite a few hours. Cleaning off the dust from the platters

At bit of excercise and volts she was back to life, but still sounding like a sanding disc!!!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Higgy

At bit of excercise and volts she was back to life, but still sounding like a sanding disc!!!

...and just in the nick of time I would say.

Thanks again. You can reformat it now.

[prowler]

Yesterday evening, I sent Glen an email copy of the hard drive directory listings.

On the basis of those lists, it seems that everything is present.

I will prepare a CD-R over the weekend containing the disk images to send to Glen on Monday, but the word is that he will be happy for all the code to be shared and to try to provide an insight into what does what.

[prowler]

Glen has received the CD-R and has confirmed that he is happy to share the relevant files and will contribute to the thread if there is interest.

So I shall be uploading hardfile images of the Tools, Code, Scratch and maybe Games partitions of the hard drive tomorrow for the coders to play around with, while I return to the task of trying to repair the remaining virus-damaged floppy disks...

[prowler]

Okay, I have extracted hardfile images of the Tools, Code, Scratch and Games partitions of the RDB image of Glen's A1200 hard drive dumped by Higgy to the EAB File Server in the /~Uploads/prowler/Glen's_A1200HD_Partitions/ folder.

Mounting the hardfiles correctly in emulation will require the geometry to be provided. The appropriate values are:

Tools
Cyl: 2,500, Hd 1, Sec 17
Size: 21,760,000 bytes ($14C0800)
Blocks: 42,500 ($A604), Root Block: 21,250 ($5302)

Code
Cyl: 2,460, Hd 1, Sec 17
Size: 21,411,840 bytes ($146B800)
Blocks: 41,820 ($A35C), Root Block: 20,910 ($51AE)

Games
Cyl: 2,510, Hd 1, Sec 17
Size: 21,847,040 bytes ($14D5C00)
Blocks: 42,670 ($A6AE), Root Block: 21,335 ($5357)

Scratch
Cyl: 1,340, Hd 1, Sec 17
Size: 11,663,360 bytes ($B1F800)
Blocks: 22,780 ($58FC), Root Block: 11,390 ($2C7E)

The minimum hardfile geometry parameters required to mount the hardfiles are:
Heads (Surfaces): 1, Sectors per track: 17, Bytes per sector: 512, Reserved sectors: 2

[gggcumming]

Hi all,

First thanks to Prowler for sorting all this out - a very dedicated Amiga enthusiast indeed!

Just some quick notes from what I can remember after looking at the code.

1) I started mucking around with linking before I finished - the code that gets linked can be brought back into the main assemble but for now to build the code you need to :

i) Assemble main.s as a linkable file
ii) Asemble the four files in glens_code/link_code seperately (as linkable)
iii) You will then have five files which can be linked - see the scratch:link directory - that's where the bits went and there is a link.bat file to create the final executable - that can be run as is (picks ups data from scratch:game_files)

2) The maps are all in scratch:ABII_MAPS - you can load the prj/level1.prj into the map editor which loads level1 and the graphics block pages. There is some documentation on the map editor in the code:newmaptool/docs directory - note the overview function is useful as it shows the entire map - a point on the overview can then be clicked to centre there - once the functions are understood maps can be chucked together really quickly

An alienbashII map is two parts - a 16-bit word map for the blocks and an additional 8-bit map (of the same size) for aliens - these are editable in the tool - the aliens appear as numbers over the map.

The only bit missing at the moment is the special versions of the block pages which indicate specific blocks for walking over which trigger scripts in the code - however the code could be examined and the numbers added back in.

So the code assembles (note need 2mb extra ram for stock 1200), the maps are editable - final bit is compressing (not looked at that yet but code is on there) and modifying the in-game data to support the map - and trying to make the game more interesting to play!

Happy hacking

[gggcumming]

ps. play squizdemo - much more fun (quite hard with keyboard - need to get speed up before jumping over things, pull down for crushing enemies and second fire button will throw balls when picked up)

[prowler]

Hi Glen, and thanks for rejoining the thread!

Originally Posted by gggcumming

The only bit missing at the moment is the special versions of the block pages which indicate specific blocks for walking over which trigger scripts in the code - however the code could be examined and the numbers added back in.

You mentioned to me in email that these might be on the floppy disks.

I'm in the process of copying all the floppy disk images back onto my newly-restored emulation workstation, so I will be in a position to resume work on those over the weekend.

If you can let me know what kind of filenames to look for, I'll run a quick search on them and see what turns up.

[Ultron]

This is great

I wonder if there's tutorials on how to Tilemap and Move map in 8 way in an Amiga? Or scrolling routines etc?

[ravard]

I just read all of this thread in one go. Amazing! A great detective story. Intrigue. Drama. Perseverance. And the lost hard drive being found! This whole story is just crazy. Thanks to all involved for preserving part of Amiga history. Prowler deserves special mention for the incredible work. Clap clap clap clap!

ravard

[Ultron]

You know what's funny i had read the begining a long time ago and didn't read the last ones and thought the floppies had simply been recovered... how in the heck the Hardrive get found by somebody else? Miracle?

I notice the workbench partition isn't at the FTP, i say this because some of the files are linked to tools installed in it.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Ultron

I notice the workbench partition isn't at the FTP, i say this because some of the files are linked to tools installed in it.

The Workbench partition is not available on the EAB File Server because it contains Commodore copyrighted Workbench files.

If there is sufficient interest, I may be persuaded to upload a Hardfile with all traces of the copyrighted Workbench files removed. All that will then be required to restore it is to copy the missing files from an existing Workbench 3.x setup.

[Mr B]

Make a script that copies it from our floppies to? Well, i say ours, but i'd never be a candidate for it anyway.

[Korodny]

I'd like to have a closer look and prepare an Aminet upload of the sources if possible. Unfortunately, I can't access the HDF files as is - I'm on Linux, and while FS-UAE can use hardfiles, it can only use a single standard geometry. Custom set ups - which would be required to read the HDF files provided here - are not possible.

Could somebody provide all these files in a different format? Simply lha'ing the four partitions should do.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Unfortunately, I can't access the HDF files as is - I'm on Linux

From what I've heard, WinUAE on Linux should work pretty well when using WINE, maybe it's worth a shot

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Korodny

I'd like to have a closer look and prepare an Aminet upload of the sources if possible. Unfortunately, I can't access the HDF files as is - I'm on Linux, and while FS-UAE can use hardfiles, it can only use a single standard geometry. Custom set ups - which would be required to read the HDF files provided here - are not possible.

Could somebody provide all these files in a different format? Simply lha'ing the four partitions should do.

I would prefer to convert the hardfiles to standard geometry. Please post details of the requirement.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by prowler

I would prefer to convert the hardfiles to standard geometry.

Why? Does it have links or something else that could not be handled by LhA?

Please post details of the requirement.

From the FS-UAE docs:

Currently, FS-UAE assumes – and only supports – the default geometry (sectors = 32, surfaces = 1, reserved = 2, block_size = 512). There is no option to override this yet. This is compatible with most HDF partition files < 512 MB.

I'll try the WINE/WinUAE approach later on, didn't think of that. Wouldn't help an OS X user though (or do they have WINE? No idea).

[Korodny]

Allright, WINE + WinUAE did the trick (thanks, jbenam!). Copied all four partitions into directories with the same name, then archived those dirs. Haven't looked at any of it yet:

http://gutjahr.free.fr/temp/AlienBash_src.lha

If you're going to try running/assembling this stuff, you might want to assign volume names to each directory (Code: for Code/, Games: for Games/ etc.).

[Korodny]

Allright, I finally managed to upload this to Aminet:

http://aminet.net/package/game/shoot/AlienBash_src

(I left out the "Games" and "Tools" partitions, since they contained lots of 3rd party applications)

The archive is still a complete mess though. Has anybody ever tried to assemble this, cleaned up the directory structure, identified the superflous bits or stuff that doesn't belong to Alien Bash II?

[dlfrsilver]

in the mess, there are assassin, ProjectX, Zout graphics screens. Those should be removed