Action Cat

[BippyM]

Had a look at this,

Although I can find the tiles, the sizes are a bit iffy, which I think is an Amos Icon limitation.

Basically the tiles are 24 x 16, but internally they are stored as 32x16 (Amos icon images can only be multiples of 16 wide (longword I assume). So the map i guess plonks down a tile, moves 24px plonks the next one down etc.

What I have done is to create the icons vertically (attached) and then search the map. It matches the tiles, but never finds a map, or a suitably real map.

Any ideas?

[Codetapper]

Here you go. I'll let you rip the rest. I used the savestate to find the map in case the map file was post-processed by the game. (If you prefer to use the included map file (especially if you have maps for all levels), load the map file, tick "use loaded map" and set the address to 2 to get the same result).

A couple of problems in this one. The game used tile 0 as a blank tile, but the graphics for the first tile in memory are garbage. It must have code that says "if tile index is 0, erase the tile" rather than "draw tile 0".

I always try and pick tiles that are unique for the search and not contain any blank cells in, and that allowed me to find the map with the search. Also because the adjust value is set to -1 (ie. the first tile is missing), then it draws a completely blank tile which is exactly what's required.

A feature to clear tile 0 is probably not a bad idea and allow for that when searching. Onto the huge to do list...


BTW another trick is to search for a small area (say 4x4) and see if the tiles turn out to be a block of 2x2 sequential numbers:

12, 13, 48, 49
14, 15, 50, 51
20, 21, 16, 17
22, 23, 18, 19

If those numbers had come up in the match, I would guess the game is using 2x2 blocks internally. Not needed in this case but that's what I would have tried next. At some point I will make a deep search option that tries to find stuff like that.

(In cased that's not clear, the top left block is 12, 13, 14, 15 when read as a 2x2 block across then down. Then 48, 49, 50, 51 follows. That's a dead giveaway that it's using bigger blocks or a double map).

[BippyM]

Well I ripped the tiles directly as they are Amos Icons and there was no tile 0, so I am guessing it reloads them into a different set of banks, or if it's a blank the game just says box x,y,col or similar..

Thanks for looking. I'll rip this tonight if I get time (Work stuff to do also!)