Super Sprint - Atari ST Conversion

[Frog]

i would like to see it too It's a pity you start some good stuff and often left them after some time... hum... i could say this for me too

Another Atari game never ported on Amiga is Crack'ed, i remember having some good time with this "simple" game.
I think it shouldn't be too difficult to port for a good programmer
here is a link from Atari Legend site : http://www.atarilegend.com/interview...interview_id=6

[alexh]

Some famous Atari ST titles never ported to the Amiga that I remember are:

Where Time Stood Still
Oids
Sundog
Colonial Conquest

[Galahad/FLT]

What other decent ST titles where there that didn't get an Amiga release?

[gizmomelb]

just wondering if something like IRA disassembler could be modified to handle/recognise the Atari ST ROM calls and hardware registers? It'd make cross compiling a lot easier I imagine.

[gizmomelb]

how about:

Alternate Reality 1 - The Dungeon (RPG, no fancy sprites or bobs)

Droid (cybernoid style shoot'em up/explore)

Droid II (cybernoid style shoot'em up/explore)

HeroQuest - Courts of the Witch Lord (expansion disk for Hero Quest - is this the same as 'Return of the Witch Lord' on the Amiga?)

Moon Patrol (this was an official port from Atari)

The Shoe People (educational title, which is incidentally M.I.A on the Amiga )

Sheer Agony (darkseed lookalike horror adventure - http://logitron.atari.online.fr/sheer_english.htm)

The Short Grey (the Atari ST has an ENGLISH version! and is hopefully not as buggy as the Amiga version)

Skate Ball

Star Raiders (classic Atari space combat game)

Substation (3D Doom clone - http://www.atarilegend.com/games/gam...p?game_id=3396)

Sundog - Frozen Legacy (great scifi adventure/sim)

Xor - great Boulderdash/Emerald Mine style of game, was also on the BBC and Archimedes (and possibly C64)

Battlezone - classic 3D tank combat from Atarisoft.

actually.. all of the Atarisoft catalogue is not available on the Amiga.

Asteroids Deluxe
Battlezone
Crack'ed
Crystal Castles
Enterprise
Final Legacy
Joust
Millipede
Missile Command
Moon Patrol
Moonbase
Robotron
Star Raiders
Super Breakout
Super Sprint
Tempest
Whitewater Madness
XOR

(list from: http://www.atari.st/list.php?publish...tion=publisher)

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

What other decent ST titles where there that didn't get an Amiga release?

Where Time Stood Still
Oids
Sundog
Colonial Conquest
Gauntlet
F-15 Strike Eagle
Night Raider
NorthStar
Arkanoid III
Asteroids Deluxe
Crystal Castles
Enduro Racer
Missile Command
Moon Patrol
Trantor: The last StormTrooper
Robotron: 2048
Joust
Game Over 2
TNT

Found about 20 others but they look naff or no-one has heard of them.

[alexh]

My favourite game on any other platform that never made it to the Amiga has to be Deviants on the Spectrum and C=64. Made by the author of Joe Blade.

Great puzzles(de-fuse bombs), shooting, teleporters to different "zones", each zone having different gfx. The fore-runner of Metroid.

[StarEye]

This is a very good super sprint clone on the amiga:

http://hol.abime.net/2187

...and it's got different vehicles.

[stainy]

A tank and a dragster on the same screen ? aahh come on!

[woody57]

Quite clearly stainy you forget all about, the classic wacky races

With Dick Dastardly In his drag racer, who lost against even slower racers, including an army surplus special tank

[StarEye]

Originally Posted by stainy

A tank and a dragster on the same screen ? aahh come on!

I don't recommend either of them though. The dragster is impossible to turn, and the tank is simply way too slow.

Anyway, that's from the mixed races. There's ordinary races with superbikes or formula 1s too. The superbikes moves FAST.

[stainy]

My vote goes to concentrating on Oids, Where Time Stood Still and Super Sprint

[Duke]

An advanced version of Xor is on the Amiga: Prospector In The Mazes of Xor

[Methanoid]

Sundog - Frozen Legacy (great scifi adventure/sim) - gets my vote... predecessor to DungeonMaster....

But more importantly.. who will be cracking this release

[gizmomelb]

the Atari ST version is already cracked.. so you could just port the crack as well.

I wonder about the probability of using something like IRA to disassenble the code, then go through it and document the Atari ST hardware registers and ROM calls (so it's easier to know when trying to re-code it for Amiga), then trying to recompile it afterwards. After all, if you do a straight 68000 re-assembly, but change all the hardware registers/ROM calls etc. to what the Amiga hardware uses - surely the code should work? It won't be as fast as an optimised Amiga version using the Blitter etc. but it should still work (in theory). Hence attempting some relatively simple game (like an RPG) would have to be better as a first attempt, as you shouldn't be worrying too much about timing, interrupts etc. as you would be with an arcade game.

At the very worst I'm guessing you could use an IBM and an Atari ST emulator with breakpoints/disassembler et. built in to aide in the cross-compiling.

I'm not saying it'd be a quick process, but it sure should be a heck of a lot easier propostion now with emulators and virtual machines etc.etc.

I'm sure I found somewhere on the 'net where someone had disassembled the original BBC 6502 'ELITE' and had cross compiled it to another CPU. I'll go looking..


EDIT: not quite what I was looking for, but it's a start - disassembled a BBC game named 'Dare Devil Dennis' to 'C', then recompiled to run under the Archimedes OS.

http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact236.html

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

the Atari ST version is already cracked.. so you could just port the crack as well.

I wonder about the probability of using something like IRA to disassenble the code, then go through it and document the Atari ST hardware registers and ROM calls (so it's easier to know when trying to re-code it for Amiga), then trying to recompile it afterwards. After all, if you do a straight 68000 re-assembly, but change all the hardware registers/ROM calls etc. to what the Amiga hardware uses - surely the code should work? It won't be as fast as an optimised Amiga version using the Blitter etc. but it should still work (in theory). Hence attempting some relatively simple game (like an RPG) would have to be better as a first attempt, as you shouldn't be worrying too much about timing, interrupts etc. as you would be with an arcade game.

It wouldn';t work like that!

Large portions of the game will need to be recoded as the amiga handles the display/sprites/sound etc differently to the ST!!

It is actually a difficult job converting to the amiga from st... Main game would work okay as the ST will use the same cpu registers as the amiga etc.. but rom calls and system specific stuff will definately need recoding.

[tomcat666]

Well from some discussion I had with some ST coders I had a feeling that the display of the ST could be 100% "simulated" with amiga cooper lists (apart from interrupt driven palette changes in the middle of the screen) - thats the reason why I named one of the "rip" modes in my graphics ripper "ST". You would just need to adjust where the screen resides (either on the amiga or in the st memory). And since ST didn't have hardware sprites that would rule those out. The sound is another matter ofcourse...

[Galahad/FLT]

Depending on who wrote the game on the ST decides if its easy to translate to Amiga without much fucking about.

If its ST only, then its harder because it was solely coded for that machine.

If it was a conversion that was done for ST and Amiga, the code for the most part is structured the same in both versions, with different subroutines for graphics and sounds.

Its not impossible, but is there an ST hardware reference manual on the net?

Or, does anyone want to try and contact the programmer of Sundog..... never know, might still have his code!

[gizmomelb]

Originally Posted by bippym

It wouldn';t work like that!

Large portions of the game will need to be recoded as the amiga handles the display/sprites/sound etc differently to the ST!!

It is actually a difficult job converting to the amiga from st... Main game would work okay as the ST will use the same cpu registers as the amiga etc.. but rom calls and system specific stuff will definately need recoding.

Hi Bippym,

yes, I know that - sorry for not explaining it more throughly.

The majority of the Atari ST code should be straight portable to the Amiga, but of course anything that hits the hardware registers on the ST will need to be changed for the equivalent register on the Amiga. The same goes for ROM calls (if there is an equivalent ROM call on the Amiga).

eg:
$FF8240 = Atari ST palette 0 hardware register

$dff180 = Amiga colour 0 hardware register


Possibly doing a trial run on something like a demo, or a 1 file executable (no loading etc.) conversion would be a good idea. Even if the conversion initially has no music, but it runs - then that is a success. The music can be rewritten for the Amiga hardware and added later. The Atari ST has no sprites but it does have a blitter, so the blit routines will have to be rewritten as well.

Some hardware reference info for the ST is available here, though a lot of files are now 404.
http://www.atari-st.lovely.net/atari-st-docs/


ahh lots of stuff here:
http://hysteria.sk/~mikro/docs.htm

and where you can download all the games (and emulators, for easy dissassembly, setting breakpoints in code etc.)
http://www.atari.st/


hmm, looking on Aminet reveals a couple of Atari ST to Amiga convertors and emulators such as Hatari etc. which may be useful.

Short: Convert Atari ST exe's to Amiga exe's. V1.1
Author: David Campbell
Version: 1.1
Architecture: m68k-amigaos
Source: Fish collection

A program to convert Atari ST format relocatable executables to Amiga
format relocatable executables, for subsequent loading into the ReSource
disassembler and conversion to Amiga. ST2Amiga should also compile and run
on an ST. Includes C source.



Short: Lists Atari .ST diskimage content
Author: lanch@tiscali.it (Fabrizio Bartoloni)
Uploader: lanch tiscali it (Fabrizio Bartoloni)
Type: misc/emu
Version: 1.6
Replaces: misc/emu/stlist.lha
Architecture: m68k-amigaos;ppc-warpos;ppc-morphos;

Tested with STFormat diskimages and some game.
If you have source/docs for ST diskimage creation or handling mail them to me!

Changes for this release:

1.6 Now it supports more ST formats previously detected as NDOS thanks to
Stefan Haubenthal, Morphos version compiled with GCC now, set a variable
that grants compatibility with future Morphos update thanks to Antibike;

This tool makes more sense now that we have Hatari and StOnAmiga to emulate an Atari ST than
at the time it was released back in 2000.

I've provided executables for 68k, WarpOs and Morphos inside the archive.
It should compile without changes on Os4 and AROS, if you do please just tell me
before you spread it, because i'd like to keep anything in one archive.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Is underway.

I will simply port the Atari ST version directly, I'm not interested in making it Amiga enhanced, as there are better clones of this game already on Amiga (Nitro as a for instance).

All graphics are ripped, and work has begun on conversion of the music. Sound effects will be replaced.

Galahad: Are you still planning on completing this project? Have you looked at the executable to estimate how hard to convert it? The graphics you have ripped - were they taken from screens on the ST version or actually pulled apart the ST files to get them?