Re-filed cracks of games

[MethodGit]

I'm aware that groups like Fairlight released versions of some games in new compiled formats like one executable or three-filed editions etc. However I'm also aware that they're quite hard to find across the net. I remember a website which used to have some such-cracked games available but I can neither remember the URL nor believe it's still around anymore (GAGE used to provide a link to it long ago).

I remember having a 1-filed Pang, 1-filed Desert Strike, 1-filed Huckleberry Hound and reading about a 1-filed Stunt Car Racer (Galahad one, not the recent TNT build) in the past. But how many are there out there? This could be an interesting treasure hunt, Amigans!

[Amiga1992]

1-filed Desert Strike soudns interesting, since it is THREE BLOODY DISKS

Yes, but MethodGit didn't specify how big the files could be. Don't presume they came on ADF's

[Amiga1992]

Who talked ADFs? I don't lameulate.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

I remember having a 1-filed Pang, 1-filed Desert Strike, 1-filed Huckleberry Hound and reading about a 1-filed Stunt Car Racer (Galahad one, not the recent TNT build) in the past. But how many are there out there? This could be an interesting treasure hunt, Amigans!

There are hundreds of these - all the early games tended to be one-filed (Il Scuro/Defjam being the main culprit!) and there are lots of other AGA fixed single file games. Lots of the packers used in these single filed games were useless so crash on a lot of configurations.

In the mid 1990's, several people made single file "HD versions" of multi-disk games which basically load the entire game into RAM then patching the loader to read from the RAM buffer rather than from disk. There is no advantage in using these over WHDLoad versions.

As for collecting them, I'm not really sure why you'd want to!

The WHDLoad versions are much safer and more stable for actually playing the games on real Amigas (and don't have loading screens removed!) and if you are using an emulator then the whole "squeeze a game down as small as possible so it takes less time when transferring over your 2400 baud modem" doesn't really matter with gigabyte hard drives and fast internet these days.

[Galahad/FLT]

When I did these versions, WHDLoad was a pathetic waste of time (times change though!). My filed version of Supremacy worked fine on o6o, quit to dos and saved games to hard drive, as with many other games I did.

Its all well and good 'slagging' them off now, but they served a purpose back then when JST and WHDLoad were in their infancy, and I note with humoured interest, that some of my AGA fixes that I did back then, some of my code crept into subsequent WHDLoad fixes by other authors.

Ian, as you are well aware, if it wasn't for the pre-work done by people like me and N.O.M.A.D., it would have made your job a lot harder:

And I quote from Action Website: Greetings must go to Legionary, N.O.M.A.D, Jean François Fabre, Bert Jahn, Galahad/Fairlight and numerous others for their help in this area. Thanks a lot guys!

Just a thought

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

When I did these versions, WHDLoad was a pathetic waste of time (times change though!).

I quote from your guestbook entry: "Nice site, nice util, and if it had been around when I started AGA fixes all those years ago, I dare say I might have used it."

So it can't have been too bad

My filed version of Supremacy worked fine on o6o, quit to dos and saved games to hard drive, as with many other games I did.

Actually I found very few games that could quit back to dos before JST/WHDLoad - looking down your fixes on Beavis 5 for example:

Battle Squadron - intro removed
Chase HQ - turbo mode added
Chips Challenge
Fire and Brimstone - nfo file says nobody wants quit to dos games!
Ikari Warriors - claims to be quittable, but can't quit (keyboard routine has not been fixed though, perhaps that is why?)
Infestation - intro removed, but can quit (hoorah!)
Laser Squad - does quit but music removed from game!
Mighty Bombjack
Nitro - intro removed, quit ability is limited to particular screens
Outrun - quit routine takes 5 steps, extremely limited
Quartz
Voyager

Supremacy isn't actually a single file game, but I'll let you off

Its all well and good 'slagging' them off now, but they served a purpose back then when JST and WHDLoad were in their infancy, and I note with humoured interest, that some of my AGA fixes that I did back then, some of my code crept into subsequent WHDLoad fixes by other authors.

I was more saying that Mars (sorry MethodGit's) request of collecting these single file versions was pretty pointless now. Probably 95% of the single file versions were not fixes at all, just those old "frozen" games like Mach, Frostbyte etc which were on all those Defjam compacts and which only work on a base A500.

And the fixes that were around were of varying quality and features.

Ian, as you are well aware, if it wasn't for the pre-work done by people like me and N.O.M.A.D., it would have made your job a lot harder:

In some cases sure, which is why you guys are credited in some installs!

Wepl wrote WHDLoad because of Cannon Fodder 2 being unplayable on floppy and analysed some other HD fixes to see how they worked.

But before JST/WHDLoad, nobody had thought through how HD games SHOULD run - small slaves, standard way to quit games, load from HD, run large games in small memory by swapping the O/S in and out etc - if you didn't have a large chunk of continuous RAM, you were screwed.

And I quote from Action Website: Greetings must go to Legionary, N.O.M.A.D, Jean François Fabre, Bert Jahn, Galahad/Fairlight and numerous others for their help in this area. Thanks a lot guys!

Just a thought

That just proves I credit people when credit is due!

I still think that collecting the single file games is pointless except to people that collect for the hell of it. If you want to actually play the games, WHDLoad versions which can quit at any time, running fully from HD with tonnes of features beat a single file game with intro removed any day of the week!

[alexh]

If you have an unaccelerated A600 or A500(+) with a hard drive then sometimes the single file cracks are *SOMETIMES* better than WHDLoad because of a few things. Vanilla A1200 users with 2Mb or CD32 users also have a hard time with WHDLoad.

1) Quit doesnt work at all in WHDLoad if you only have a 68000 CPU.
2) WHDload sometimes prevents games from running at full speed (see Turrican 3)
3) WHDload slaves that require OSEmu require additional RAM and games that only required 512k refuse to load even if you have upto 2mb (from workbench)
4) WHDload games that cannot be loaded into RAM all in one go stutter, stop and start etc. as WHDload stops and quits back to OS to load in more data


If you have more than 2mb RAM and an 020+ CPU then WHDload is the better solution.... if not then it's a case of try and see.

[MethodGit]

Originally Posted by Akira

1-filed Desert Strike soudns interesting, since it is THREE BLOODY DISKS

Yis, I know it sounds weird, but I deffo remember playing around with such a thing! I recall it being one big 2Mb+ executable in the most basic sense. I forget who cracked it though.

And 'Tapper, as much as I love WHDLoad and its fantasticoness, I'm keen to experiment with cracks where the game data was provided in a wholly interesting new form altogether rather than diskimages or original DOS data files or what have you.

Anyone know if any of the FTPs carry them?

[BippyM]

There are 74 in Tosec

[mr_0rga5m]

@MethodGit - Pyrodex maybe ? ... Take a peek at this thread (my screenie)

Also i have some 1 filed games like Aladdin etc. and i'm pretty sure they are done by a 'MARs' (?) .. I'll have to fire up the miggy in a bit to see.

[MethodGit]

Oh maaaaaaan, I remember Pyrodex. I always seem to recall how difficult it was to download anything from that site however....

Unfortunately, Web Archive can't resurrect that site now, since some lamer fuckers are still holding onto the emuclassics.com domain with a robots.txt file (what is the point of that thing?) blocking services like WA out.

[MethodGit]

Ooooooh, a small googling session brought about this intriguing page.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by mr_0rga5m

Also i have some 1 filed games like Aladdin etc. and i'm pretty sure they are done by a 'MARs' (?) .. I'll have to fire up the miggy in a bit to see.

That'd be Mars Bar of Crimewatch UK, but I think disks as opposed to whole games were one-filed (possibly as ADFs). Anyway, all the HD installers Mars Bar did had to be used with specific cracks, sometimes quite obscure ones, which gave the HD installers an element of lameness, even back then. Additionally, they only ever worked on Amigas with particular configurations (i.e. min. 1+Mb chip and 1-4Mb fast; ideally 4Mb fast if the fix included a quit back to WB option, otherwise you'd get a nice black screen and have to reset). IIRC they didn't work on anything above 020 or 030 either and probably were made to run, for the most part, on unaccelerated A1200s (030 cards were still quite expensive around 1993-94). They weren't the best fixes, but at least they were better than the crap pumped out by the likes of Bodycount and Il Scuro. Mind you, there are at least a couple of modern day patchers who have had far less flattering things to say about Mars Bar! Early JST docs seem to spring to mind here along with one or two old WHD installer readmes

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

Ooooooh, a small googling session brought about this intriguing page.

I cant catch most of that except the very basic bits, but it is a very interesting link indeed, right on marz-O-git

[Frog]

if you really want some one filed game, i think i've few of them store somewhere such as Nebulus, Army Moves or things like this.
Useful only for collector i think.

[MethodGit]

Originally Posted by DrBong

That'd be Mars Bar of Crimewatch UK, but I think disks as opposed to whole games were one-filed (possibly as ADFs). Anyway, all the HD installers Mars Bar did had to be used with specific cracks, sometimes quite obscure ones, which gave the HD installers an element of lameness, even back then. Additionally, they only ever worked on Amigas with particular configurations (i.e. min. 1+Mb chip and 1-4Mb fast; ideally 4Mb fast if the fix included a quit back to WB option, otherwise you'd get a nice black screen and have to reset). IIRC they didn't work on anything above 020 or 030 either and probably were made to run, for the most part, on unaccelerated A1200s (030 cards were still quite expensive around 1993-94). They weren't the best fixes, but at least they were better than the crap pumped out by the likes of Bodycount and Il Scuro. Mind you, there are at least a couple of modern day patchers who have had far less flattering things to say about Mars Bar! Early JST docs seem to spring to mind here along with one or two old WHD installer readmes

Dr. Zarkov still has many Mars Bar HD patches on his website, one seems to recall.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by alexh

If you have an unaccelerated A600 or A500(+) with a hard drive then sometimes the single file cracks are *SOMETIMES* better than WHDLoad because of a few things. Vanilla A1200 users with 2Mb or CD32 users also have a hard time with WHDLoad.

I would say SOMETIMES would apply about 5% of the time, if that!

1) Quit doesnt work at all in WHDLoad if you only have a 68000 CPU.

That's due to lazy WHDLoad patchers, not WHDLoad itself. I intercept the keyboard routine on EVERY game, not relying on a quick test in the level 3 interrupt to detect quit keys. The only exception is that some versions of KickDos games do not quit because I was under the impression the keyboard interrupt checked for the quit key already so didn't bother checking it. The WHDLoad team are now aware of this and are working on a fix.

2) WHDload sometimes prevents games from running at full speed (see Turrican 3)

Some games do very odd things to gain every bit of speed - and games that do masses of blits and work on an A500 at full speed will not on an A1200. Very little you can do about that. (BTW, Turrican 3 works full speed on my A1200).

3) WHDload slaves that require OSEmu require additional RAM and games that only required 512k refuse to load even if you have upto 2mb (from workbench)

You must mean Kickdos not OSEmu. OSEmu only wastes about 60k of your memory, but the game would have used more than that originally anyway. KickDos games require at least another 256k to buffer the 1.3 operating system in RAM.

4) WHDload games that cannot be loaded into RAM all in one go stutter, stop and start etc. as WHDload stops and quits back to OS to load in more data

And there is NO way those single file games would run at all on the same config if they are that big! Sometimes you can compress the files (ProPack, FImp etc) to use up less RAM and play without the O/S swaps. I remember the Mortal Kombat 2 HD version required 2 Mb chip + 4 Mb fast, WHDLoad one needs much less.

[andreas]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

I would say SOMETIMES would apply about 5% of the time, if that!

Depends on WHO does the one-filer!!

I've tested some of the OTT (Over the Top) ones on various configurations (low-end => high-end), and they worked well!
You sometimes needed to copy MemRun into C: but that was all you had to do.

[mr_0rga5m]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

Dr. Zarkov still has many Mars Bar HD patches on his website, one seems to recall.

Where abouts mate ? ... Gis a link pls

@Andreas What OTT ones ?