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

[gggcumming]

Hi,

If the code can be extracted then I'm hoping that looking at it will jog my memory on how it works and fits together as its a long time ago and lots
of brain cells have died between then and now.

I have vague memories of the map editor and the game using different formats for the data and having little tools that converted from one to the other - the background graphics were possibly just a page of 16x16
blocks which the map editor simply referred to on a byte per block basis -
I think that the map editor may have loaded them in as an IFF file but
the game had them stored in a different format (generally everything got
converted from IFF into dc.w statements) - I dunno - I laid in
bed last night racking my brain trying to remember. I remember I encoded the level data using some run-length algorithm because I could not fit all the levels on a single disk otherwise.

It so long ago that it feels a bit like a dream - or possibly a nightmare I'm not sure which.

Glen

[BippyM]

It's amazing isn't it how that little bit of interest has you lying in bed awake at night

Welcome Glen

[gggcumming]

Yes - sad isn't it - proabably helps that my day job is so boring at the moment

[slk486]

Originally Posted by gggcumming

Yes - sad isn't it - proabably helps that my day job is so boring at the moment

No, it's just the way of the Amiga spirit

It's a rare pleasure to read backstories like yours, so here's hoping there'll be more insights and posts from you in the future and thanks for making the sources available!

[Djay]

@Glen
There are some talented coders, designers and tracker music makers here, would you object to them creating Alien Bash 2010 (or suchlike)? this time two disks would the limit

of course, you would have final say on the released product (producer)

played AB2 (for the first time in ages) last night, its awesome, if it wasn't so similar to Chaos Engine it could of easily been a commercial product (i understand the gfx artist was a big fan of the bitmap bros)

--
just throwing this idea out there

[gggcumming]

I have no problem with anything being produced - as I've said its very flattering that people care enough to try and resuce the source - if they make something new with it again that would probably make a grown man shed a tear!

[Heavy Stylus]

You big softy you

[prowler]

Hi All,

I collected a package comprising Glen's 'Amiga Coding History' from his place of work at Bristol on Wednesday afternoon.

There is an Amiga A500XP SupraDisk 50MB SCSI hard drive and 191 3½-inch floppy disks including PD & shareware library disks and Amiga Magazine coverdisks, as well as Glen's own Utilities, Code and Art backup disks.

Glen has also generously included an Amiga external floppy drive with which to carry out some of the floppy disk imaging.

Obviously, it's going to take some time to complete this project, and it's going to generate a lot of data. Today, I got started by hooking up the SupraDisk drive to one of my A500s and running it with my A590 PSU.

The hard drive contains an assortment of developer and system maintenance tools. It is configured as two 25MB partitions, each with approximately 15MB used and 10MB free space.

As far as possible, I intend to preserve the media as hard and floppy disk images for use with emulators and (for the AmigaDOS disks) filesystems containing the disk directory structure for convenient access to the source code and other files from both Amiga and PC machines.

It seems like the hard disk (which I shall backup first) can be preserved without any problems, but the success of the floppy disks preservation will depend almost exclusively on their condition. They look okay, but we shall see...

[Peter]

Three Cheers!

Great Work Prowler - A big Thank You for all your effort!!

[kriz]

Great work man!!

[gggcumming]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for all the hard work!!

Sorry I was not in the office to meet you - the first time in two years that we've gone out for lunch as a company!

I hope there's something useful on the disks - I'm not sure what will be on the hard-disk as I used to develop mainly on my 1200 - but I might have had the presence of mind to at least duplicate some of the code.

[Graham Humphrey]

Great work guys! And well done Prowler

Wonder how old it would make Glen feel if I said I remember playing the original Alien Bash off that The One coverdisk when it came out... when I was six years old? Used to love it then too, but I found it quite hard.

[gggcumming]

LOL - yes that does make me feel old - I was already in full time employment by then!

[TCD]

Well done Glen and Peter Looking forward to hear what treasures lurk on those disks

[deicidal]

Yep want to say thanks to Glen for supplying the stuff and Prowler for taking the time to go through, I look forward to the results

[dlfrsilver]

Yay Goody goody Prowler !

[prowler]

Thanks for all the encouragement, guys!

I've made an Amiga Explorer WB 1.3 boot disk for the A500 this evening, and I'm going to leave it running tonight to create images of the SupraDrive logical disks.

[prowler]

Hi All,

I have successfully preserved the SupraDrive disk contents in two hardfiles, SupraDrive0.hdf (26,105,856 bytes) and HD1.hdf (26,148,864 bytes)!

SupraDrive0.hdf boots to Workbench 1.3.3 when mounted as HD0: in WinUAE.

In case this information gets forgotten, I am recording the UAE mount parameters here (the same information applies to both hardfiles):
Sectors = 42
Surfaces = 2
Reserved = 2
PreAlloc = 0
SectorSize = 512

Originally Posted by gggcumming

I'm not sure what will be on the hard-disk as I used to develop mainly on my 1200 - but I might have had the presence of mind to at least duplicate some of the code.

@Glen,

I am preparing a CD-R to send to you with the SupraDrive contents presented as two hardfiles, together with two filesystems which recreate the directory structure of each logical disk for you to examine with your Windows PC.

In the meantime, I am emailing you two text files which show a full directory listing of each disk. You will see that some of your code is indeed duplicated here, and the filenames might help to remember the details.

Perhaps you could either PM me or reply to my email giving me the address where you would like the CD-R to be sent.

I have decided to send this information before starting the floppy disk recovery, which is likely to be more problematic and will take longer to complete.

[killergorilla]

Nice work, you've done (and are doing) are thorough job.

Good stuff.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by prowler

Hi All,

I have successfully preserved the SupraDrive disk contents in two hardfiles, SupraDrive0.hdf (26,105,856 bytes) and HD1.hdf (26,148,864 bytes)!

SupraDrive0.hdf boots to Workbench 1.3.3 when mounted as HD0: in WinUAE.

In case this information gets forgotten, I am recording the UAE mount parameters here (the same information applies to both hardfiles):
Sectors = 42
Surfaces = 2
Reserved = 2
PreAlloc = 0
SectorSize = 512



@Glen,

I am preparing a CD-R to send to you with the SupraDrive contents presented as two hardfiles, together with two filesystems which recreate the directory structure of each logical disk for you to examine with your Windows PC.

In the meantime, I am emailing you two text files which show a full directory listing of each disk. You will see that some of your code is indeed duplicated here, and the filenames might help to remember the details.

Perhaps you could either PM me or reply to my email giving me the address where you would like the CD-R to be sent.

I have decided to send this information before starting the floppy disk recovery, which is likely to be more problematic and will take longer to complete.

Prowler, DIC from whdload is your friend for disk imaging