Found and fixed a bug in Phantasie III

[MazinKaesar]

Originally Posted by Nogg

@Mazin

Interesting. I know a little japanese, might have try it out.

...

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by Nogg

@demoniac
I can probably help out for sure, I'm more interested in P3 though. I have to play through P2 soon.

I kind of started investigating this. I only got Saint to work properly and not STeem on the first try. TOSEC lists like 3 versions of PII. I got Disk 1 to work w/ some combo of Disk 2, but I'm not sure which one it is anymore as it didn't seem to load a second time.

I also got a bunch of disk tools in hopes that one of them can be used to transfer the files from Atari ST floppy to XP. (Any recommendation for a tool to do this? Some software that's like CrossDOS for the Amiga.)

I first have to play PI all the way thru on the Amiga to see if the engine is worth using for PII.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by demoniac

I also got a bunch of disk tools in hopes that one of them can be used to transfer the files from Atari ST floppy to XP. (Any recommendation for a tool to do this? Some software that's like CrossDOS for the Amiga.)

Yup, the same awesome program that I use to transfer FM-Towns floppy disks / image

... OmniFlop

It recognises loads of formats, it even specifically lists Atari ST:

OmniFlop will give you the raw data off floppy disks of the formats listed above plus other formats it can work out. However, it can't work out the filing system (data format) of the disk - such as FAT12, FAT16, NTFS, DFS, ADFS, Atari ST, RS-DOS - to give you access to the logical files on the disk! Once you've got the data onto your PC in an image file, though, it should be easy to extract the data from the disk image, either manually or with software. Many utilities already exist out there on the Internet to interpret your disk image as files of a whole variety of formats - see Compatible Programs below.

Read and write Atari ST disk image files (‘.st’).

41. Read, write, and format Atari ST DSDD and [new for v2.01m] Atari ST SS (320kB, 360kB) formats.
43. Read, write, and format Atari STE formats (738kB, 800kB, 810kB).
44. Read, write, and format Atari ST 820kB format

[MazinKaesar]

@DamienD
WOW!!!!! This tool, OmniFlop, it's really cool!! I really was searching for a similar stuff!!!! Thank you!!!!

[Kroah]

Sorry to dig up this thread, but Nogg pointed me to it by email.

If you see no objection, i post here your question:

Originally Posted by Nogg

I stumbled upon your reverse engineering site and was excited to discover that you have an entry for Phantasie III: The wrath of Nikademus. However, there was no further info as to how and what you had reversed about the game. As someone who as played the game fanatically and investigated much of the program and binaries myself, albeit on Amiga, it would be interesting to see what you have found.

My work on Phantasie III has been done with the Atari ST version some years ago. I'm a huge fan of the serie and i feel a little alone, until now. Everyone talk about Dungeon Master, EOB, Bard's Tale and other ADD games (Krynn...). They are good indeed, but what about the Phantasie serie (the third settlement especialy)?

There were so many things i wanted to know about this game (items, monsters, dungeons and scripts), i couldn't stand to reverse engineer some parts of the engine. The monster.dat file was not enough to file my curiosity.

So i begun decompiling it. I wrote a C# tool to read dungeons map data and to parse dungeons script. The user can simulate the moves of the party in the dungeon (to trigger events) and when the script needs some information (if the party owns an item for example), it asks the user.

I want to add more features like showing the whole script as a text file or even edit dungeon files, but it's not on my priority list right now (working on my Colonial Conquest remake).

Concerning the game engine itself, i was pleased to understand the combat rules (damage, body hit location) and spells effects. I better understood the monster.dat file too and how monsters were randomly chosen.

I wrote a world map viewer too, but found nothing new about them (Scandor, plane of light, plane of darkness, underworld) .

Finally, i wrote a little sprite viewer for monsters (no hidden monsters too ).

If more people are interested in these information, i'll put up everything online on my website as i did for Alternate Reality.

You can contact me here or at my reverse engineering forum.

Cheers

[jmmijo]

Nice work there, I was wondering why I noticed this old thread being resurrected and I see why

I think the reason you see more talk of other titles vs. the Phantasie series is pretty simple, popularity, this doesn't mean these titles aren't worth playing however.

Have you done work like this on any other titles besides the Phantasie series ???

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by Kroah

If more people are interested in those information, i'll put up everything online on my website as i did for Alternate Reality.

You can contact me here or at my reverse engineering forum.

Cheers

I think it would help, if the link to your page is added...
http://bringerp.free.fr/RE/index.php5

Ah, Alternative Reality: The Dungeon is another port I wish they did for the Amiga along with Might & Magic 1.

[Kroah]

Originally Posted by demoniac

I think it would help, if the link to your page is added...
http://bringerp.free.fr/RE/index.php5

Oh thank you.

I'm distracted, i've just realized i had no signature in my profile.

Originally Posted by demoniac

Ah, Alternative Reality: The Dungeon is another port I wish they did for the Amiga along with Might & Magic 1.

Yep, too bad AR: The Dungeon was never ported on 16bit computers . The game had almost everything to allow add-on. Even if the Atari 8bit is still the best version imho (and the original one), they did good ports.

Concerning Phantasie 3, i played it on both computers (atari and amiga) but sound samples for this game were terrible on amiga comparing to the atari, the style was really different. What do you think about it?

[Kroah]

Originally Posted by jmmijo

Nice work there, I was wondering why I noticed this old thread being resurrected and I see why

Thank you

Originally Posted by jmmijo

Have you done work like this on any other titles besides the Phantasie series ???

You can see the games i worked on at my website.
Systems are 6502 (Atari 8bit), Motorola (Atari 16bit and Amiga) and x86.
Some of them are really old but they are still highly entertaining.

Here's the full list:
Atari 8bit: MULE, Dragonriders of Pern, Gateway to Apshai, Return of Heracles, 7 cities of gold and Archon.
Atari ST: Time Bandit, Alternate Reality, Colonial Conquest, Phantasie 3, Axel's Magic Hammer, Pandora and Rana Rama.
Amiga: Chaos Engine
Windows: Grand Prix Manager 2

All these games (beside GPM2) are games i played during my childhood. I really like them.

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by Kroah

I'm distracted, i've just realized i had no signature in my profile.

No worries.

Originally Posted by Kroah

Concerning Phantasie 3, i played it on both computers (atari and amiga) but sound samples for this game were terrible on amiga comparing to the atari, the style was really different. What do you think about it?

I don't remember the speech on the Amiga version as it has been years since I finished it. (I've been waiting to decide if the Phantasie II Atari ST to Amiga conversion project is worth it, prior to restarting Phantasie III.) I have never played the Atari ST version either. I searched YouTube, but there's no posted video for either platforms. Thus, I can't give you much feedback on the speech.

I'll be glad to fire up the Amiga game, if you tell me how to hear the speech quickly.

I thought about playing Temple of Asphai Trilogy (as you have Gateway to Apshai listed) on the Amiga, but I think I won't enjoy it that much in the long run anymore. Better to play Alternate Reality first me thinks.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by demoniac

I'll be glad to fire up the Amiga game, if you tell me how to hear the speech quickly.

I don't think there's any speech in the Amiga version, but that Kroah means the music and sfx. I have never played the ST version, so I can't tell how much better the sound is, but the Amiga version has... er... 'suboptimal' sound

Originally Posted by demoniac

(I've been waiting to decide if the Phantasie II Atari ST to Amiga conversion project is worth it, prior to restarting Phantasie III.)

Would be cool to have this conversion

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

I don't think there's any speech in the Amiga version, but that Kroah means the music and sfx. I have never played the ST version, so I can't tell how much better the sound is, but the Amiga version has... er... 'suboptimal' sound

Ah, I see. I vaguely remember about that.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Would be cool to have this conversion

Wanna help reverse engineer Phantasie II? I don't have the time to do everything myself.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by demoniac

Wanna help reverse engineer Phantasie II? I don't have the time to do everything myself.

Don't know if I can be of much help, but I will have a look. Guess that means I have to set up ST emulation... *shivers*

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Don't know if I can be of much help, but I will have a look. Guess that means I have to set up ST emulation... *shivers*

Yep. Let me know how that goes.

I did boot up SainT and STeem for Phantasie II last year. Not sure which P2 images are working, but here are the ones I tried:

Phantasie II v1.0 (1987)(SSI)(Disk 1 of 2).zip
Phantasie II v1.0 (1987)(SSI)(Disk 2 of 2).zip
Phantasie II v1.0 (1987)(SSI).zip
Phantasie v2.0 (1985)(SSI)(Disk 1 of 2).zip
Phantasie v2.0 (1985)(SSI)(Disk 2 of 2).zip

[TCD]

I will I have almost none expierence with the ST, but I hope I can save the files to a PC file system without too much hassle and work from there Guess I will have a look at the files and try to make a doc about their structure. How does that sound?

[demoniac]

Very good! Let me know what emulator and version you ended up using.

I originally planned on using Amiga P1's engine for P2 as they seem very similar. Nogg mentioned that he was working on reverse engineering P3's engine back then. I still think P1 will be less work, but can be persuaded.

I think after figuring out the ST emulation task, we have to figure out how to transfer the files from ST to Amiga and if the ST files can be used raw.

[TCD]

Once I got the emu working and have the files, I'll let you know

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Don't know if I can be of much help, but I will have a look.

You do know that this requires 68k knowledge, don't you? ;D

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Guess I will have a look at the files and try to make a doc about their structure.

That part too?

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

That part too?

Yes, if they are packed/encrypted.