American Laser Games (Mad Dog McCree and others)

[Fiery Phoenix]

Never mind. Cheers for looking at though, always appreciated

Next time I can visit a mates house, (Tier 3 Bury lockdown, grrrrrr,) I'll probably bring a memory stick and give it a go there. Just the bloody annoyance of it.

[Toni Wilen]

Include winuaelog.txt (tick logging option in misc panel before starting emulation, if you can't find it, check winuaebootlog.txt last line that is usually in winuae root directory) and config file as usual

[Fiery Phoenix]

Many thanks'

Hopefully attached as requested. I have attached 2 x logs - one for main configuration running WinUAE 4.4.0 (before and after game loaded - was not sure which needed) and another running 3.6.1 (named as such) where I attempted to start again - this second one I removed all ROMS from the folder bar the one's needed for Gallagher's Gallery but the same exact problem (didn't attach config for this)

Attached the winuaebootlog for 3.6.1 - could not find the winuaelog - stated held in C:\Program Files\WinUAE\winuaelog.txt - but not there (even tried showing hidden files)

So problem for all the ALG games with none of them running, but just included the config. for Gallagher's Gallery and main WinUAE

Made sure I exported Arabuusimiehet from the registry - although maybe an error here. I didn't not delete it, just right clicked and selected export

Very strange but I apologise in advance if plainly done something stupid / been an idiot (not unusual)

Hopefully uploaded / attached what is needed - if made a mistake happy to do again - not really done this before - long time Amiga user, noob with technical issues!

[Toni Wilen]

This is the problem:

SetTimeFormat format 80004005

WinUAE tries to use frame based seeking (can seek to any frame which is required to play correct video pieces) but codec returns "Unspecified error".

-> bad codec, probably from some codec pack.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Many thanks for taking a look at this. Very much appreciated.

Was the only thing I could think of and you have confirmed it.

May be something to do with the Tex Murphy game Overseer (love the Tex Murphy games) I remember last year or so I had a problem running the game and a fix was installing what I think is the codec ffdshow

Too much of a coincidence

Least I have something to go on now

Thanks again

[Fiery Phoenix]

Update....downloaded and installed the K-Lite codec pack 1575

Pleased to confirm Mad Dog and Mad Dog 2 (need to brush up my Italian - pity no English version available?) load and run fine and both look really good, so much better than other versions.

For some reason Gallagher's Gallery had the same problem as it did before. But happy that I can play Mad Dog!

Will prob try a different codec pack as well going forward to see if that helps with GG

[Toni Wilen]

There should not be any need for codec packs, at least with later Windows versions to run these games.

I guess Gallagher's uses different codec than Mad dog.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Cheers for the reply.

I'll just concentrate on going after Mad Dogs gang!

[DamienD]

I tried to complete Mad Dog McCree a few months back.

I had issues with one part though, and no matter how much I tried I couldn't get past.

It's when the old man is tied up to dynamite; I couldn't seem to shoot the lantern or fuse wire (forgot which it was now) so always lost.

I'd be interested if you can get past this; or it's a possible bug.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Just got past that part, shot the fuse on the floor when he is tied up, then he tells you about the booby trapped mine

You then shoot a map on a table outside to find out the direction to the hideout and use the posts to say which direction you want to follow

[jwallace]

Interesting to see people talking about LDIMG, on it's basic level, it's a fancy container for an MJPEG video stream so it should be convertible. I have one in my possession, I'll see whether I can do anything with it.

As for different videos and different codecs. It seems to me that anything that Video For Windows can play on your machine works, but I'd be concerned that the likes of MPEG-4 won't be frame accurate, and some of these games will want that for still text etc.

If there was a good, free MJPEG codec for VFW that might be the best way, but I'll experiment and see.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Fingers crossed pal

[jwallace]

Progress so far: I've got something what looks like the right colour images out of this, it uses a weird picture format where it's JPEG, but the quantisation tables are removed from each file with one common copy stored near the beginning of the container to be added in where it's needed.

Given that the audio is literally raw PCM data, I'm presuming nothing fancy will have been done to this.

Note that each JPEG is half height, it looks like to run on the DEXTER board they do line doubling to minimise the data throughput. Unless I have some deliberately compressed file. It does have a little bit of metadata at the start of the file that says what the dimensions should be, as well as whether its PAL or NTSC.

The only ALG file I have is Gallagher's Gallery - one we have, but is missing video and is not the best quality. In theory this should be a good upgrade. In any case it might be good to compare against.


UPDATE: I started getting some frames that weren't JPG format at all - but I have to take my hat off to whoever invented this compression format. Basically, there's a section in the middle of the disc that is pure black level, with some sound, but no discernable picture info. Where that happens in this, the header magic number is changed, and the file just contains some YUV data, basically saying "Fill the screen with this colour" - compressing a whole frame into 3 bytes. Nice. Naturally, just fixed my decoding chain to include that for however many frames it needs.

[jwallace]

Just bumping this to say that I finally realised what was going on with these half height frames - as this was designed to be on NTSC laserdisc, and it was basically TV output once it came out of the Amiga, naturally this is interlaced video. Each JPG is in fact one 'field' of the interlaced output, and run and merged together like that it all looks right. I just need to put the audio together, and I might have an avi that people will be able to test by the weekend, barring incident.

[DamienD]

Very interesting jwallace

If you can work out how to build the full video from these multiple image files, then perhaps this can be applied to the missing ALG games

[jwallace]

In theory, I should be able to load these into something like VirtualDub and add the sound to spit out a video. Haven't tried it yet but I think it's meant to have an image sequence mode.

My worry is that ALG games need frame exact timing for some menus, so it's making sure the keyframes are in the right places. I might end up making two videos for people to try, one with more regular keyframes that's a bit bigger.

I think it should be OK though, and since we've sort of got one to compare against with this, we'll know pretty quickly. It's finding the images though - I've been searching for the best part of a year, and only found this one.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by jwallace

My worry is that ALG games need frame exact timing for some menus, so it's making sure the keyframes are in the right places. I might end up making two videos for people to try, one with more regular keyframes that's a bit bigger.

Don't worry about size

Originally Posted by jwallace

I think it should be OK though, and since we've sort of got one to compare against with this, we'll know pretty quickly. It's finding the images though - I've been searching for the best part of a year, and only found this one.

The ROMs for the following games are available here: ALG.zip

• Crime Patrol [1993]
• Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars [1994]
• Fast Draw Showdown [1994]
• Gallagher's Gallery [1992]
• Mad Dog McCree [1990]
• Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold [1992]
• Platoon [1995]
• Space Pirates [1992]
• The Last Bounty Hunter [1994]
• Who Shot Johnny Rock? [1991]
• Zorton Brothers (Los Justicieros) [1993]

As for the game files; most were uploaded / linked to in this thread, and can be again.

The issue has always been; how to put these multiple files back into a single video file.

If you can figure that out then

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by jwallace

My worry is that ALG games need frame exact timing for some menus, so it's making sure the keyframes are in the right places. I might end up making two videos for people to try, one with more regular keyframes that's a bit bigger.

Game expects frame perfect positioning, not just for menus but every existing video position game directly jumps to. It also continuously polls for current frame counter value.

Some (most?) codecs can always jump to any frame position, they internally jump to last key frame position and then "fast forwards" until exact frame was found.

Game also obviously does not expect instant response because real LD player has slow seeks.

[jwallace]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Don't worry about size


The ROMs for the following games are available here: ALG.zip

• Crime Patrol [1993]
• Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars [1994]
• Fast Draw Showdown [1994]
• Gallagher's Gallery [1992]
• Mad Dog McCree [1990]
• Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold [1992]
• Platoon [1995]
• Space Pirates [1992]
• The Last Bounty Hunter [1994]
• Who Shot Johnny Rock? [1991]
• Zorton Brothers (Los Justicieros) [1993]

As for the game files; most were uploaded / linked to in this thread, and can be again.

The issue has always been; how to put these multiple files back into a single video file.

If you can figure that out then

If you're talking about the DVDs and CD-ROMs for 'home' use, that things like SINGE use, then they edit and manipulate the video to the point that they no longer line up framewise at all. This DEXTER image is a dump of the actual laserdisc as it was in the arcade, so no additional editing is needed.

On that note, I've actually made some laserdisc images for people to work with, I think sometimes it still seeks a frame off every now and then, but I can't see how to resolve this since the frame numbers are right, it just seems to run over. On a real disc there'd be an encoded frame number to let the player know, but this is better than the old video (in my opinion).

There's two there, both Gallagher's Gallery - the MJPEG is a better quality and should be more seekable, the XVID is a standard H264 encoded video like the original.
The link is broken here, but the missing bit is 'media_fire' without the _ and the quotes

http://www..com/file/w1var6ede3vigpy/ggMJPEG.avi/file

http://www..com/file/vsynqdic73xiqbn/ggXVID.avi/file

[LanceT]

Originally Posted by jwallace

I think sometimes it still seeks a frame off every now and then, but I can't see how to resolve this since the frame numbers are right, it just seems to run over. On a real disc there'd be an encoded frame number to let the player know

It seems in comparing with the one that worked okay in WinUAE. Your one starts about 2 1/2 seconds in front of it(1) the inserts are an example of some missing frames.. And matches it virtually to the end(2). The great thing about your one is it has a good two minutes of extra video(3).

I hope this helps...

The second link seem to have been removed?