Atari ST to Amiga: Starquake Amiga Conversion

[Galahad/FLT]

Having taken a look at it, i'm confident I can tackle this the same as Where Time Stood Still and I am officially working on it.

That is all

[LieutLaww]

Awesome news good sir ! On a side note how challenging are these conversions ?

[robinsonb5]

Awesome news - I loved the C64 version of Starquake!

[meckert]

Coooool, Galahad, You're The Man !

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by LieutLaww

Awesome news good sir ! On a side note how challenging are these conversions ?

Depends entirely on how the game is written.

The ones Meynaf tackled hardly hardware bang the ST at all, its mostly system friendly games, which for him are easier as he has more experience of the ST than me.

Where Time Stood Still only used the system to load files, other than that, it was logically laid out and progress was constant on it.

Starquake appears to be coded the same way.

[turrican3]

first, thank you galahad,
2nd, do you think it could be possible to use your engine to port games from others platforms than the atari st, i mean others 68k platforms ?
Like arcade 68k games or sharp x68000 ?? even if we should need more cpu power.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by turrican3

first, thank you galahad,
2nd, do you think it could be possible to use your engine to port games from others platforms than the atari st, i mean others 68k platforms ?
Like arcade 68k games or sharp x68000 ?? even if we should need more cpu power.

There is no game engine. Each game is different. Other than me being able to use the same screen conversion routine from game to game, thats the only similarity.

And unlike the ST, both systems you mention have custom hardware in much the same way as the Amiga does, so routines would have to convert Sharp blitter calls and change them to blitter or cpu calls the Amiga understands.

ST conversions are relatively easy dependant on how they are written, because the ST has no proper hardware other than the sound chip and the chip that to get stuff to the screen.

After looking at Starquake in more depth, this will be a bit more difficult as it has lots of TRAP calls in the game that I now need to interpret to get the game to run.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

After looking at Starquake in more depth, this will be a bit more difficult as it has lots of TRAP calls in the game that I now need to interpret to get the game to run.

These are probably just GEMDOS/XBIOS calls, most of them are not too hard to convert/emulate but it's quite a boring task.

[Asman]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

After looking at Starquake in more depth, this will be a bit more difficult as it has lots of TRAP calls in the game that I now need to interpret to get the game to run.

Few days ago (yes, before you post that thread ) I also did look into Starquake. In my opinion this game was written in C or something like that. There are some stupid calls ( points to rts !!!). Also there are link and unlnk.

In the zone you can find package with resourced files: quake.prg, star.one. And If I understand correctly quake.prg just run star.one + other not interesting stuff. But there is still a lot work with both resourced files and probably some labels are named in wrong way.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Asman

Few days ago (yes, before you post that thread ) I also did look into Starquake. In my opinion this game was written in C or something like that. There are some stupid calls ( points to rts !!!). Also there are link and unlnk.

In the zone you can find package with resourced files: quake.prg, star.one. And If I understand correctly quake.prg just run star.one + other not interesting stuff. But there is still a lot work with both resourced files and probably some labels are named in wrong way.

Quake.prg loads up STAR.TWO first, extracts the title screen and displays, then it loads up STAR.ONE up and then executes it.

STAR.TWO is all the graphics for the game, STAR.ONE is the program code plus some graphics

Will check out your files. Cheers

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Asman

In my opinion this game was written in C or something like that. There are some stupid calls ( points to rts !!!). Also there are link and unlnk.

This is not 100% compiled code, looks like 68k asm mixed with a bit of high-level language to me.

[kamelito]

I remember that a french coder hanging here did a disassembly. (not Meynaf)
If you're interested there is a Nintendo DS remake with source code (C based) at http://www.karmatoad.co.uk/wp-conten.../Starquake.zip

Kamelito

@Galahad,
Another thing Paul Hughes was programming Starquake 2 which was never released, as a UK dev you may ask him
He may have the original source code of Starquake.

Kamelito
http://www.pauliehughes.com/

ZX spectrum gfx : http://www.icemark.com/downloads/fil...e_graphics.zip
and it's format :http://www.icemark.com/dataformats/starquake/index.html

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by StingRay

These are probably just GEMDOS/XBIOS calls, most of them are not too hard to convert/emulate but it's quite a boring task.

I'm just wondering if its worth spending a little time doing a basic GEM/XBIOS emulator, just like in the earlier days of WHDLoad when they used a basic DOS call emulator for AmigaDOS loading games?

Would probably be enough to get games that don't directly access ST registers to work.

I suspect just like Amiga, you can call a certain TRAP to get a base address for a screen, and call a TRAP to activate that base address to setup screen and display.

[IFW]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Having taken a look at it, i'm confident I can tackle this the same as Where Time Stood Still and I am officially working on it.

That is all

Awesome is all I can say - that is all

[tomcat666]

Awesome... another classic being converted to Amiga. Soon it will be time to sell all our ST's we have in the attics

[Predseda]

No, this can't be true! One of my greatest amiga wishes would be fulfilled! Galahad, this is just awesome news! Starquake for Amiga!

[s2325]

but do you remember teleport codes?

[Predseda]

I remember all the teleport codes from C64. Never played it on that... eerrm... minor platform

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I'm just wondering if its worth spending a little time doing a basic GEM/XBIOS emulator, just like in the earlier days of WHDLoad when they used a basic DOS call emulator for AmigaDOS loading games?

Would probably be enough to get games that don't directly access ST registers to work.

I suspect just like Amiga, you can call a certain TRAP to get a base address for a screen, and call a TRAP to activate that base address to setup screen and display.

I'm afraid it could be a little bit more complicated than this. Games not only setup the screen but also use a lot of other features. For example OIDS even used the TRAP #2 for some graphic operations.

[Retro1234]

I know ive said many times but games like sundog and stos stuff run quite well at full speed with the ancient Gems emulators

if you guys could put something i would be very appreciative.