Ancient Art of War Atari ST to Amiga conversion?

[jotd]

got hold of EGA version. Will try do adapt.

[BarryB]

Just Zoned it as you replied, lol

[jotd]

The format of most "Ox" files on amiga is pretty straigthforward. Offset as a short then messages. The number of messages is hardcoded somewhere but who cares.

So it's possible to extract the messages from french version to JSON and extract the english text heuristically and match them. Then a python tool can rebuild the english version of the amiga formatted Ox files.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Seems the English ST version is very difficult to find on the web, it doesn't appear to be in TOSEC or other Atari download sites!!

That's because there is none! The Atari ST only had a French version released, and the Amiga somehow had a Spanish version released on top of the French version (all around 1990 in Europe). English versions only appeared from Brøderbund out of the U.S. for the Apple II/Mac/PC in 1984-85 when the Amiga/ST were the new kids on the block, with the only other coming much later in 1989 for the short-lived Apple IIGS.....by which time, the Amiga/ST were just about dead and buried in the U.S. market.

Hopefully, Jeff won't have too many problems extracting the English text from the PC version for insertion into the foreign-language Amiga version! The Ancient Art of War really is an underrated game and pioneered the genre of RTS games, so an English conversion for the Amiga alongside the French/Spanish releases would only be right IMHO.

[jotd]

I've extracted all french text already in Ox files. Now I'm mixing up with english text (no need to be 1:1 size) and rebuild english files for amiga.

PC format seems more complex, but none of the data is compressed so a simple "strings" command on the files will extract them all right.

Text conversion shouldn't be too long. Whdload slave shouldn't be an issue either

Now translating the pics will be slightly more difficult. But probably doable too.

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by DrBong

That's because there is none! The Atari ST only had a French version released, and the Amiga somehow had a Spanish version released on top of the French version (all around 1990 in Europe). English versions only appeared from Brøderbund out of the U.S. for the PC/Mac in 1984/85 when the Amiga/ST were the new kids on the block, with the only other coming much later in 1989 for the short-lived Apple IIGS.....by which time, the Amiga/ST were just about dead and buried in the U.S. market.

Hopefully, Jeff won't have too many problems extracting the English text from the PC version for insertion into the foreign-language Amiga version! The Ancient Art of War really is an underrated game and pioneered the genre of RTS games, so an English conversion for the Amiga alongside the French/Spanish releases would only be right IMHO.

I was going by THIS post on Atari Mania that implies an English ST version exists, strange to create an entry for it if it never existed!

[psoma]

I find it incredible this never had an English release on the 68k home machines. As DrBong mentioned - it pioneered the RTS genre (*long* before anything else claiming to do so) and was very popular on PC.

Massive kudos on the efforts jotd!

I think it goes without saying, but I'm happy to beta test

[jotd]

Texts are translated using texts from english version and some python code to extract/rebuild amiga 'O' and 'T' files (we can only take "TITLES" file as is else it crashes), more finalization to do. But some control texts are in bitmap mode...

Anyone can zone the Amiga spanish version?

[BarryB]

There's a Spanish ADF already in The Zone, I uploaded one!

[jotd]

thanks for the spanish version.

Check the zone for a beta english version (whdload).

What's missing is the translation of the text contained in images. I saw that they're located in ICONES.MSG and INFOS.MSG, gfxrip shows something with x=192 but I'm not able to display them properly to be able to easily fix the text & re-create the files as needed.
Same thing for title screen

[psoma]

Nice jotd - fired it up and played a quick game. A few of the menu screens (including the title screen) flashed several times before stabilising... not sure if you're experiencing the same?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by psoma

Nice jotd - fired it up and played a quick game. A few of the menu screens (including the title screen) flashed several times before stabilising... not sure if you're experiencing the same?

Are you using the "Preload" switch and have enouh RAM?

[psoma]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Are you using the "Preload" switch and have enouh RAM?

Thanks DamienD - had plenty of RAM but wasn't using the PRELOAD switch (embarrassingly, I've never run whdload from the command line before)... all good now!

Cheers,

Tom

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by DrBong

That's because there is none! The Atari ST only had a French version released, and the Amiga somehow had a Spanish version released on top of the French version (all around 1990 in Europe). English versions only appeared from Brøderbund out of the U.S. for the PC/Mac in 1984/85 when the Amiga/ST were the new kids on the block, with the only other coming much later in 1989 for the short-lived Apple IIGS.....by which time, the Amiga/ST were just about dead and buried in the U.S. market.

Originally Posted by BarryB

I was going by THIS post on Atari Mania that implies an English ST version exists, strange to create an entry for it if it never existed!

Strange?? Not really if the AtariMania game entry was created some years ago before info. about these sort of things became more plentiful on the net. Every game database - and I do mean EVERY game database, even comprehensive ones like HOL - has at least a few game entries that are bullshit! Most, if not all, of the ones that are lying dormant still in HOL were created in the early 2000s of HOL or even earlier (prior to Dec 2002 when HOL first went live).

As much respect as I have for AtariMania, I can't remember any bullshit entries actually being removed in all the many years I've used it. I can personally attest to the fact that we've actively tried to sift out the rubbish entries in HOL over the years and continue to do so. I'm not sure I can say the same for any of the major game databases except for probably MobyGames.

Anyway, if you look beyond AtariMania it becomes fairly clear that there was no English release of "Ancient Art of War" for the ST (unless it's been doing one helluva David Copperfield trick for all these years in obscurity ala Avalanche - extremely unlikely given it was hardly a no-name game!). Hopefully Jeff can rectify the sins of the past made by Brøderbund/Microids with a 100% English version of the game for the Amiga!

[psoma]

Anyway, if you look beyond AtariMania it becomes fairly clear that there was no English release of "Ancient Art of War" for the ST (unless it's been doing one helluva David Copperfield trick for all these years in obscurity ala Avalanche - extremely unlikely given it was hardly a no-name game!). Hopefully Jeff can rectify the sins of the past made by Brøderbund/Microids with a 100% English version of the game for the Amiga!

Hear hear!

I'm happy to do the graphic work on the assets if they can be extracted... I just lack the ability and know-how to extract them!

[jotd]

Another option would be to rip the screens, rework & paste to memory when needed. The format of the files is rather obscure. I suspect that there is no width & height but a bunch of data joined together with obscure inside headers and maybe constants in the code to tell the offsets.

I've ripped the first image from bitplanes (winuae!) and reworked the buttons using some gfx tools. The "problem" will be to save bitplanes in the proper order in order not to change the colors. Well there are 16 colors so only 4x3x2 = 24 combinations

Unless someone knows a good tool to preserve bitplane order in a raw image and allow to edit it... like a gfx rip with edition capabilities...

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by psoma

Thanks DamienD - had plenty of RAM but wasn't using the PRELOAD switch (embarrassingly, I've never run whdload from the command line before)... all good now!

Cheers,

Tom

You don't need to use command line, You can add PRELOAD to icon tooltypes.

[psoma]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

You don't need to use command line, You can add PRELOAD to icon tooltypes.

Didn't have the option to do so on the .slave file ("New" was greyed out) so I just double clicked the icon, added whdload to the start and PRELOAD to the end.

Is there an easy way to create .info files, because it seems to be far harder than it should be...

[jotd]

copy a .info file from another whdload file, change the "SLAVE=" tooltype

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by jotd

Another option would be to rip the screens, rework & paste to memory when needed. The format of the files is rather obscure. I suspect that there is no width & height but a bunch of data joined together with obscure inside headers and maybe constants in the code to tell the offsets.

I've ripped the first image from bitplanes (winuae!) and reworked the buttons using some gfx tools. The "problem" will be to save bitplanes in the proper order in order not to change the colors. Well there are 16 colors so only 4x3x2 = 24 combinations

Unless someone knows a good tool to preserve bitplane order in a raw image and allow to edit it... like a gfx rip with edition capabilities...

The image is in a standard Raw format? you know the Address? cut out and paste into new file, use ArtPro to convert it to IFF edit it in Dpaint and then convert back to RAW with ArtPro - using ArtPro will keep the colour depth the same.