Re-filed cracks of games

[alexh]

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.

Originally Posted by codetapper

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

Yes? I've found it to be more than that if you have a vanilla A500 or A600 with no accelerator and not much RAM, just a hard drive. Ok that is very low spec to be using WHDload and I was amazed it worked at all. Kudos to the WHDload people.

Originally Posted by alexh

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

Originally Posted by codetapper

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.

Oh, ok... so it's down to the programming within the slave as to whether or not Quit works on a CPU without VBR? Cool... gonna go and try that later.

Originally Posted by codetapper

BTW, Turrican 3 works full speed on my A1200

Ah.... But the WHDload version doesnt run at full speed on an A500 or A600! Somehow the internals of WHDload steal too many CPU cycles(?) and the effect is slow motion Whereas the stand alone HD version (by Two Live Crew?) works fine.

Originally Posted by codetapper

You must mean Kickdos not OSEmu

D'oh yeah that's what I meant.

Originally Posted by codetapper

And there is NO way those single file games would run at all on the same config if they are that big!

Yes you are probably right. But some non WHDload HD conversions (that may have more than one file, I dunno) can *sometimes* be better than the WHDload counterpart ONLY for systems with low RAM because they can access the hard drive to load more data and continue to run without stopping playing music and blanking the screen as WHDLoad does.

I love WHDload... registered, use it all the time on my A4k, it's an amazing bit of work if you have enough RAM. The reason I've noticed some of these things is I've been playing with my A600(2mb) / CDTV(1mb) / CD32(2mb) recently with WHDload and started to notice these things.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Sometimes you can compress the files (ProPack, FImp etc) to use up less RAM and play without the O/S swaps.

Interesting, how can you tell if it CAN be packed? Read the WHDload slave Info?

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by alexh

Oh, ok... so it's down to the programming within the slave as to whether or not Quit works on a CPU without VBR? Cool... gonna go and try that later.

Yep. It usually takes about 30 seconds to add proper keyboard support to a game. Find the level 2 interrupt, find where it does move.b $bfec01,d0 and change it to a jsr to a routine like this:

move.b $bfec01,d0
move.l d0,-(sp)
not.b d0
ror.b #1,d0
cmp.b _keyexit(pc),d0
beq _exit
move.l (sp)+,d0
rts

That way it will quit on everybody's Amiga. If the game doesn't use the keyboard, you can include a safe keyboard routine by adding 2 lines of code, then change any intena's in the game from $c020 to $c028 (for example) and you're done! Patchers that make games quit safely are usually the ones that ensure the keyboard acknowledgement delay has been timed correctly. It also means you can add trainers easily as you can test for the Help key to level skip or whatever...

A nice way to test if the keyboard routine works is to load the game, then hit the Caps Lock key about 15 times. On lame installs, it will stop responding (ie. the light will stay on or stay off) and then the entire keyboard is dead

Ah.... But the WHDload version doesnt run at full speed on an A500 or A600! Somehow the internals of WHDload steal too many CPU cycles(?) and the effect is slow motion Whereas the stand alone HD version (by Two Live Crew?) works fine.

That is very strange. On a bog standard Amiga with a 68000 CPU, WHDLoad should be basically invisible to the game because there is no VBR. On 68020+ machines all the standard exceptions that occur are trapped by WHDLoad which adds a small overhead to the execution speed (but is a godsend for developers!). But on a 68000 that does not happen so it shouldn't slow down at all! Wepl might be able to explain this phenomenon...

Interesting, how can you tell if it CAN be packed? Read the WHDload slave Info?

Yep, the readme will generally tell you if you can pack the files and the game still work. The only times it can't is when the game uses files to load, but doesn't load the entire file. ie. loads a small piece of it. In which case, packing them will really stuff up the game!

[MethodGit]

Originally Posted by mr_0rga5m

Where abouts mate ? ... Gis a link pls

http://home.wanadoo.nl/robertoh/

[andreas]

@Andreas What OTT ones ?

Well this is SOOOOOOOO complicated.
All those things are located inside a QuarterBack backup set.
Maybe I can be arsed to dig some of those out again soon.

[MethodGit]

If anyone has any particular rare x-filed versions of games, whether on ADF or in HD-format or whatever, you can up 'em in the Zone (pwetty please!), thanks.

[mr_0rga5m]

Originally Posted by andreas

Well this is SOOOOOOOO complicated.
All those things are located inside a QuarterBack backup set.
Maybe I can be arsed to dig some of those out again soon.

Well i dunno what the SOOOOOOOOO complicated bit was about, But yea if you could be arsed to dig em out i'd be grateful .. *Puts andreas ONTO next years xmas card list*

[andreas]

Well you had asked me about the OTT (Over The Top) one-/two-filers, hadn't you?

What OTT ones?

Hence I assumed that you knew what I mean by OTT...not?

[MethodGit]

While googling I came across this page.

You think they might have all the cracked games on there? It isn't clear whether it's just a demos compilation.

[Chuckles]

It becomes more clear what is on it if you download the list of the CD's contents that appears on that page. Looks to me as if the CD includes as many of the actual cracked games, trainers, etc. as they could manage to locate. 314 MB of Amiga stuff, along with the other goodies. Sounds almost too good to be true, eh?

[Frog]

i've the following old one filed, if someone is interested for some of them.

3d pool
Arkanoid
Army Moves
Bombjack
Buggy Boy
Crystal Hammer
Cybernoid 2
Golden Axe
Green House
Helter Skelter
IK+
Ikari Warriors
Killing Game Show
Krusty
Leatherneck
Manic Miner
Moth
Nebulus
Pandora
Qix
Rampage
Rick Dangerous
RVF Honda
Sphericule
Stunt Car Racer
Tech
Thundercats
Virus
Wizzball
ZT (?)
of course it'd be a pain to play them on an A1200... better used a WHDLoad version.

Hi! I can't believe people are still talking about my dire patches :-) hehehehe

Yes, the patches I did were extremely lame. They worked only on particular cracks, only with particular trainers and only with particular patches. They were, in a word, "lame"! But what people don't seem to realize is that I did them because *I* and people I knew wanted to play games from the HD. I wasn't in Skid Row. I wasn't in Fairlight. I wasn't in Prestige. I was in a local Amiga group :-) No plans for world domination there!!!

As for the patches not working on other machines - of course! I had a 68020 A1200 with 120 Meg hard drive. They worked for me :-) hehe Besides, I couldn't afford anything else, I was 16/17 working on some aweful "YTS" [Young, Thick, Stupid!] training course.

I always released a "patch" which would read the ADF's for you - the patches were anything from 4K to 50K in size. What I found amusing is that people would run the patch, extract the ADF's from the cracked disks and then distribute the "HD Version" along with my loaders. Anything for credits on the BBS's in those days hehehe. Credits were never my intention or I'd have done that myself. Case in point: Bump 'n' Burn. A 10K patch bloated to 6 megs by lame uploaders. hehehe. Given my lameness, I have earned the right to call other people lame too :-)

Had I know about WHDLoad at the time - I'd have used it. Its an awesome piece of kit. Congratulations to Codetapper [I obviously wind you up dood!] and Galahad (among others) for patching so many games with WHDLoad. One of these days I'll get an Amiga and enjoy reliving my youth

I don't take the criticsms personally. I really don't care! I just figured I'd say "hi" to the people still around whose name I remember (Galahad!?)

[mr_0rga5m]

MarsBar - Welcome to the board mate...

Lame? .. nah .. They were (are) excellent for those of us with HD's back in the day. I dont think i was aware of WHD/JST back then and your patches came ready done (like you said on bbs's with the game files all ready added etc..) and they all WORKED perfectly for me and my mates. It even spurred me on to do some of my own, which i wish i still had (distrubuted locally to/for friends).

Anyway .. Thanks for those back then.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by MarsBar

Had I know about WHDLoad at the time - I'd have used it. Its an awesome piece of kit. Congratulations to Codetapper [I obviously wind you up dood!]

Not really! I take it you're talking about the Beach Volley readme? Bear in mind the date of that install, coming up 4 years ago:

http://www.whdload.de/games/BeachVolley.html

I think I wrote that because back in the early 90's I had an A500 with 1Mb chip and 2Mb real fast mem (not $c00000 mem) then a plain A1200 with no fast mem and most of your fixes just crashed on my config.

One of these days I'll get an Amiga and enjoy reliving my youth

It would be very cool to see a WHDLoad installed game come out from you after all these years away - can remember any/all ASM?

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by MarsBar

Hi! I can't believe people are still talking about my dire patches :-) hehehehe

Yes, the patches I did were extremely lame. They worked only on particular cracks, only with particular trainers and only with particular patches. They were, in a word, "lame"! But what people don't seem to realize is that I did them because *I* and people I knew wanted to play games from the HD. I wasn't in Skid Row. I wasn't in Fairlight. I wasn't in Prestige. I was in a local Amiga group :-) No plans for world domination there!!!

As for the patches not working on other machines - of course! I had a 68020 A1200 with 120 Meg hard drive. They worked for me :-) hehe Besides, I couldn't afford anything else, I was 16/17 working on some aweful "YTS" [Young, Thick, Stupid!] training course.

I always released a "patch" which would read the ADF's for you - the patches were anything from 4K to 50K in size. What I found amusing is that people would run the patch, extract the ADF's from the cracked disks and then distribute the "HD Version" along with my loaders. Anything for credits on the BBS's in those days hehehe. Credits were never my intention or I'd have done that myself. Case in point: Bump 'n' Burn. A 10K patch bloated to 6 megs by lame uploaders. hehehe. Given my lameness, I have earned the right to call other people lame too :-)

Had I know about WHDLoad at the time - I'd have used it. Its an awesome piece of kit. Congratulations to Codetapper [I obviously wind you up dood!] and Galahad (among others) for patching so many games with WHDLoad. One of these days I'll get an Amiga and enjoy reliving my youth

I don't take the criticsms personally. I really don't care! I just figured I'd say "hi" to the people still around whose name I remember (Galahad!?)

You were in Tension too for a while... did a couple of cracks IIRC... and Trainers.... oh and TSN wasnt just local.. we had BBS over UK and in Sweden and USA.... but we were small!!!

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

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?

Desert Strike was done by a friend of mine, he was in Pseudo Ops under under real name Robin (unpronouncable Polish surname!!!) and he did a couple of cracks for Quartex for me as well as HD versions of Xenomorph and Deuteros (as personal requests for me which we released to scene anyway).

I'll have a look and see if I have any of them somewhere....

Hi Methanoid - when I said "local", I was referring to Crimewatch UK... Soap City BBS - "The Crimewatch Incident Desk" hehehe.

I was in Tension for a few months I think (few trainers, can't remember what else I did!). I didn't do any cracks tho, just trainers (the easy stuff!). I think I went by the handle "Kong" in Tension You seem to know a lot about this Methanoid... methinks you might have been "DD" in a previous life?! As for Jungle Strike, I remember being up until 4 'o' clock in the morning training that darn thing... November. 1994. Wow! I'm old! Great game - and hand on heart, I can honestly say I bought the original!

Yes Codetapper, I *WAS* referring to the BeachVolley WHD install hehe No hard feelings - I originally read it three years ago! Its ok, I'd have been ticked off too if I owned a 2 Meg A500 and couldn't play my patches [joke dood!] Not much chance of an installer now tho... I sold my three A500's (complete with yellowing and dodgy caps-lock key!) and 300 or so original games just last year... anyone remember Questron II? Or the Faery Tale Adventure?! They all went! It was an eBay give-a-way complete with Issue 1 of Amiga Format with playable demo of New Zealand Story!!!

Oki doke, thats enough nostalgia, I've definitely drifted from the forum thread... tchau!

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by MarsBar

Hi Methanoid - when I said "local", I was referring to Crimewatch UK... Soap City BBS - "The Crimewatch Incident Desk" hehehe.

I was in Tension for a few months I think (few trainers, can't remember what else I did!). I didn't do any cracks tho, just trainers (the easy stuff!). I think I went by the handle "Kong" in Tension You seem to know a lot about this Methanoid... methinks you might have been "DD" in a previous life?! As for Jungle Strike, I remember being up until 4 'o' clock in the morning training that darn thing... November. 1994. Wow! I'm old! Great game - and hand on heart, I can honestly say I bought the original!

Hi, yes I was DD after I got busted (my 2nd handle) but I retired. Now I think about it the cracks were done by Robin and labelled as cracked by TSN UK. No idea what happened to Axel and the others.. I think I was like almost double the age of the average TSN member at that time!!! hehehehehe

TENSiON - Feel the pressure (hahahaha oh dearie me!)

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by MarsBar

As for the patches not working on other machines - of course! I had a 68020 A1200 with 120 Meg hard drive. They worked for me :-) hehe Besides, I couldn't afford anything else, I was 16/17 working on some aweful "YTS" [Young, Thick, Stupid!] training course.

Hehehe.....I guessed as much and did make the argument in your defence I remember importing a Blizzard 1230 in from the UK around 1995 and saving myself $200 on the Aussie prices, even with 26% import tax slapped on it. Wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. It was only when I sold the A1200/030 set-up a few months later (and every other computer bit I had) to buy a secondhand A4000/040, that I found that your patches didn't run on higher CPUs. I was particularly crushed when Aladdin wouldn't work coz it was a 4 disk game!

I always released a "patch" which would read the ADF's for you - the patches were anything from 4K to 50K in size. What I found amusing is that people would run the patch, extract the ADF's from the cracked disks and then distribute the "HD Version" along with my loaders. Anything for credits on the BBS's in those days hehehe. Credits were never my intention or I'd have done that myself. Case in point: Bump 'n' Burn. A 10K patch bloated to 6 megs by lame uploaders. hehehe. Given my lameness, I have earned the right to call other people lame too :-)

Classic stuff!

Had I know about WHDLoad at the time - I'd have used it.

Probably wasn't around in your day. WHDLoad began life in 1995, but it didn't attract any real attention from patchers for a good 2 years.

One of these days I'll get an Amiga and enjoy reliving my youth

When that happens, I look forward to you cranking out some more patches (using WHDLoad of course!)

[andreas]

Took me a HELLUVA time to find this one-filer again, but now it's in the zone:
Incredible Crash Dummies. Can't remember by whom, though.