[AmigaCD] The Big Red Adventure - .HDF & .LHA (for real Amiga users)

[DamienD]

Heya Amigos,

Yesterday I was looking through my WinUAE collection of games and noticed that I'm missing the sequel to Nippon Safes Inc. i.e. The Big Red Adventure...

...as I'm sure some of you may have guessed already given a recent thread of mine; this was to be my next "[AmigaCD] --> .LHA" project

All complete now and of course the CD-ROM is not needed anymore, plus you can extract anywhere you like (requires roughly 31MB of space)

It was a bit difficult, a few things really but mainly I needed custom scripts to:

a) Set the required Assign.
b) Allow you to select the desired language; English, German, French or Italian (and then copy the relevant files to the correct location).



c) Set a directory for save games; "BigRed:saves".

Grab this new file on the EAB File Server under the directory "~Uploads/DamienD/LHAs"

Regarding a .HDF, I will try and see if it's possible to create a bare bones one for emulator users shortly...

[PortuguesePilot]

Thanks, DamienD!

[DamienD]

No problem my friend

...shame there's no Portuguese or Spanish language included but your English is top notch anyway so you'll be fine

[DamienD]

Success!!!

...for emulator users, a bare bones .HDF for this game has now been uploaded to the EAB File Server under the directory "~Uploads/DamienD/HDFs"

[AmigaBill]

Great work Damien! I have to get Genetic Species loaded up then give this one a go. So much fun - thanks a million for your hard work!

[Neil79]

Nice!

All done, and I've added your name to the site http://www.indieretronews.com/search/label/DamienD

[Kitty]

Great stuff DamienD

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Neil79

Nice!

All done, and I've added your name to the site http://www.indieretronews.com/search/label/DamienD

Cheers Neil

...not that it really matters but you're missing the onEscapee and possibly Karateka articles

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Cheers Neil

...not that it really matters but you're missing the onEscapee and possibly Karateka articles

Easy fix that, already done

[ransom1122]

Woo Hoo Another awesome release. Great Job

[DamienD]

I do love reading the comments on "Indie Retro News" for these...

A great one from "RealAmigaFan".

RealAmigaFan • a day ago

Exactly what does the "LHA file for real Amiga owners" offer over the hard drive version released by crackers back in 1997? Over the hard drive version that's automated by simply using the HD installer contained on the game CD?? None of the Amiga CD games released from the mid-90s onwards have any copy protection, so there's no cracking needed to HD install the games. At the time of release, crackers released hard drive versions of all the Amiga CD games so that people without a CDROM drive could play the games from HD. You make it sound like the Amiga was total crap coz people were shit out of luck if they didn't have a CDROM drive to play CD games released back then. Good lord! <sigh>

Not that I need to defend myself but...

Didn't realise there was already a "20 disk [HD, CD rip]" in TOSEC. It's not like I check all the time, I'm just adding games to my WinUAE collection that I don't already have and sharing with everyone afterwards... I have a bunch of "AmigaCD" ISOs so...

The hard drive version isn't just "automated by simply using the HD installer contained on the game CD". If this guy actually checked the CD-ROM he would see that:

a) firstly that the installer says the following:



b) and only these files are copied to hard drive (after you've selected language / savedir options):

... BigRedAdventureOpts --> ENV:
... BigRedAdventureOpts --> ENVARC:

Anyway, I installed the floppy disk "HD, CD rips" tonight. Takes significantly longer to do than extract my .LHA file. This is due to it having to:

a) join all files to a temp location.
b) then extract.
c) then delete the single / joined files.

You also need double the space for this operation and have to run the installer again if you decide to change languages. Pffft

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by DamienD

I do love reading the comments on "Indie Retro News" for these...

A great one from "RealAmigaFan".

The question remains......

What's the difference between an Amiga fan and a REAL Amiga fan?

[Seiya]

nothing

[zoopster]

Thanks for your work on these hard disk conversions DamienD.

I've tried out Big Red and Genetic Species on my Amiga A1200 (040) system connected to a Sony Monitor and a Sony TV. The weird thing is both titles jump into what the monitor detects as a 1080i mode and the TV cannot show. Any idea what might be happening?

Thanks,
John

[DamienD]

Heya zoopster,

Welcome to EAB

Originally Posted by zoopster

The weird thing is both titles jump into what the monitor detects as a 1080i mode and the TV cannot show. Any idea what might be happening?

Sorry for the delayed response, been a bit manic and missed your post...

To be honest I don't really have any suggestions off the top of my head. These packages were made from the original CD-ROM files, only things that I changed would have been:

... Adding assigns if required.
... Changing the icons to run the scripts for the above.
... Applied the latest patches (well, at least with Genetic Species).

Nothing has been set in terms of video / resolution in either game...

Have you tried using SnoopDOS to see if it sheds any light on why these issues are occurring on your system?

[zoopster]

Hi DamienD,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. It looks like it must be something in my ClassicWB startup sequence. I managed to get both Genetic Species and Big Red Adventure loading from CLI without any video mode issues. Time to start commenting out commands! Will report back when / if I find the offering command.

Cheers,
John

[DamienD]

No problem at all John, do let us know how you get on and if you need further assistance... there are many knowledgeable Amiga gurus on EAB (I'm definitely not one of them)

Must say that I've installed both of these on my "Classic WB Lite 3.1" .HDF in WinUAE and all good.

I usually test on the above .HDF and also a plain, standard "Workbench 3.1" .HDF before releasing.

[zoopster]

Worked out the problem. MagicTV, which reduces flickering on a CRT, was the offending item. With that turned off both Genetic Species and Big Red Adventure use compatible video modes. Worth knowing for anyone using real hardware and ClassicWB ADVSP. I added a command option to the Scalos tools menu to enable / disable MagicTV. Hard to beat the feeling of successfully troubleshooting the Start Up Sequence!

[DamienD]

Oh nice one John; glad that you got it working

I'm sure you've probably seen these already, but just in case, here are other "AmigaCD" games packages:

... [AmigaCD] Final Odyssey: Theseus Verses the Minotaur - .HDF & .LHA
... [AmigaCD] Foundation & Foundation Gold - .LHAs (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] Land of Genesis - .HDF & .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] onEscapee - .HDF & .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] The Strangers - .HDF & .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] Turbo Racer 3D - .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] T-zer0 - .HDF & .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] Ultimate XTreme Racing - .LHA (for real Amiga users)
... [AmigaCD] Uropa²: The Ulterior Colony - .LHA (for real Amiga users)

[mk1]

Man, this game is a hard one to install!

I don't know what's wrong with my setup, but I can't get the LHA version to work on either real A1200 or WinUAE. I've also tried the AmigaFuture package, but the results are the same - the screen just flashes to black and back to Workbench and then it stops there.

The AmigaFuture package worked when booting w/o startup on my A1200, but it crashes in the third part (background swipes to a single colour, sprites remain but the game hangs).

The HDF file works fine, but I'd like to play this on a real system.