Looking at Spectrum Analyser for inspiration

[copse]

I was looking at ports of ZX Spectrum games to cross-platform C, and stumbled across Spectrum Analyser. This seems like good inspiration for a similar Amiga tool.

Spectrum Analyser is a tool that is designed to help reverse engineer ZX Spectrum games & programs.

It is a combination of an emulator, debugger & interactive disassembler. Programs are loaded and run in the emulator and their state can be inspected using the tools provided.

If you envisioned a version of this for Amiga, how would it work? How would it be better than WinUAE / WinUAE debugger and ira, Ghidra or Resource? Could reassembling be integrated into a tool like this almost like a form of CI, with visual binary diffing?

[hitchhikr]

Didn't know that emulator.

I'm working on such tool but for the NES (https://github.com/hitchhikr/crudNES), it's only on early developments & the disassembler isn't interactive, tho.

I thought about doing that for the Amiga but it's executable files are much easier to disassemble (except track loading stuff) compared to the ZXSpectrum or other 8 bit ones which are basically raw binary files and concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle.

However, such tool could be valuable for MegaDrive ROMs (for eventual conversions to Amiga ) as they are a pita to disassemble, or MS-DOS executables (especially to track the memory segments usage).

Also that kind of disassembling emulators could be made to generate some sort of virtual "über-processor" mnemonics that could be then translated into any other real processor code to ease eventual conversions processes.

[zenox98]

Thanks for the heads-up on Spectrum Analyser.

It's great for my own remake projects.

[freehand]

I think the Spectrum Analyser is awesome by the looks of it:
My friend made it to the end of star quake and it crashed lol so never see the ending.

[copse]

Originally Posted by zenox98

Thanks for the heads-up on Spectrum Analyser.

It's great for my own remake projects.

FYI there's a c64 analyser and maybe others in progress, but not at this level.

[lmimmfn]

Work is ongoing to port this to the CPC - https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/program...ineering-tool/

Its an awesome tool, i took a look at CPC Buggy Boy a year or so ago, just finding the main loops from an emulator and where the road is drawn, then the sprites etc. Was horribly cumbersome and wondered why there were no tools to address reverse engineering

[zenox98]

Struggling a little with this - even though it's the easiest way i've found to trace program flow - but that's down to my own limitations I reckon ;/

My 2 ongoing projects are Splat! and Moon Cresta.

The plan is to create html 5 versions.

[zenox98]

Been using this for a while now and find it very useful.

I agree with copse 'op' and think this would be perfect fo the amiga. I know there are many ways to disassemble amiga games but this prog allows you to easily drill into the logic and mechanics of any part of the game, and document what is happening. Makes remakes or updates much easier. Just my 2 cents.

[copse]

CPC, c64 and spectrum are a lot simpler. It's very unlikely we'll see something similar for Amiga. The best current options are using winuae and it's tools, like the debugger. And also using ghidra either for disassembled assembly or decompiled C (it gets pretty close).

No-one has the time for this. Best just to crack on and work using what we have for the Amiga :-)