Amiga Warez Scene Vs Atari ST(e) Warez Scene

[redblade]

Hi.

First of please don't start this thread in to a flame war.

I've been looking at some of the Atari STe instros on youtube and been playing some games on the emulator and have two questions:

1. BBS Numbers. I don't see many or any BBS numbers advertised on the cracktros like on the Amiga. Even on the cracktro for the chaos engine I did not see a BBS Number, I saw PO Boxes but no numbers.

2. Files, Everything seems to be crunched to files, Rainbow Islands. Also saw some of the one disk games on the amiga would be crunched to files thrown on a disk and another game would be thrown on the disk. Did the Atari TOS use less memory then the Amiga so they could access TOS routines to read the files, or was it so the games could run of a hard drive.

Thanks

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by redblade

Hi.

First of please don't start this thread in to a flame war.

I've been looking at some of the Atari STe instros on youtube and been playing some games on the emulator and have two questions:

1. BBS Numbers. I don't see many or any BBS numbers advertised on the cracktros like on the Amiga. Even on the cracktro for the chaos engine I did not see a BBS Number, I saw PO Boxes but no numbers.

2. Files, Everything seems to be crunched to files, Rainbow Islands. Also saw some of the one disk games on the amiga would be crunched to files thrown on a disk and another game would be thrown on the disk. Did the Atari TOS use less memory then the Amiga so they could access TOS routines to read the files, or was it so the games could run of a hard drive.

Thanks

In reference to number 2.

Firstly, the ST only used 16 colours not 32, so that was 1 bitplane less of data. Also, the ST wasn't brilliant at playing samples, so most of the music on the ST was chip music and not sample based, so right from the word go, the average piece of music on ST was TINY in comparison to something on Amiga using a Protracker module full of samples.

A typical mod for a titlescreen could be between 45-130k, I doubt very few ST titlescreen musics were much bigger than 10k.

So games typically compressed much smaller than the Amiga version and hence the insistence on cracking to files for inclusion onto a compilation.

The ST could also use a non system DMA fileloader like the Amiga could, but the ST had the benefit of not needing any memory for track decoding as it was all done by the WD Controller on the floppy drive.

These file compilation disks could not be installed on Hard Drive unless they were single files, they used the DMA fileloader, not GEMDOS which is the system friendly way.

The ST scene has something similar to WHDLoad called ULS

[chip]

What about the size ...... is bigger the Amiga scene ?

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by redblade

1. BBS Numbers. I don't see many or any BBS numbers advertised on the cracktros like on the Amiga. Even on the cracktro for the chaos engine I did not see a BBS Number, I saw PO Boxes but no numbers.

On quite a few older Amiga demos from the early 1990s, I saw reference to something called "POSTE RESTANTE" in many of the contact addresses, which apparently refers to the Post Office holding your mail for you until you come to collect it. Previous to this, I'd never heard of this term, and to be honest, I haven't seen it used often at all since, although I've been in a situation when the postman couldn't deliver and I had to come and collect it from the local depot.

Of course, to my naive young 18-yo mind, when I first saw the term, I thought a restaurant was involved.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by chip

What about the size ...... is bigger the Amiga scene ?

Nope, Amiga scene was far bigger than the ST scene.

But they operated at their own pace. On the Amiga, the speed to get stuff out and released wasn't quite as big a priority on the ST scene, on the ST it was released when it was released.

[chip]

Good to know

[Hewitson]

The scene on the Amiga was second to none. The speed and efficiency that those groups got their cracks out is still to this day absolutely mindblowing.

[WayneK]

In some ways the ST scene was ahead of the Amiga, eg:-

1) Multiple games on 1 disk (all throughout the ST's life, this died in the early days of Amiga).
2) RAM disks to decrease loading times, highscore savers included (hiscore table 'write' was often just NOP'ed on Amiga).

...and when I started my list I thought I would have 10 or so points to make, but that's all I can think of

Amiga was a far more organised scene (a lot more boards/PO Boxes, original supply/cracker availability etc.), but some ST groups were run in a similar fashion to their Amiga counterparts (eg: Replicants, Elite, Cynix).

There is no question that for some reason the Amiga BBS scene completely dwarfed the ST's, anyone who can explain that to me - please do!

[Phantasm]

Surely there can't have been many games that would fit alongside other games on a single disk in the later years?

Were there any tools on the ST for creating images of disks (like DMS)?

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by WayneK

In some ways the ST scene was ahead of the Amiga, eg:-

1) Multiple games on 1 disk (all throughout the ST's life, this died in the early days of Amiga).

What about the point Galahad made that data was smaller for ST (less gfx depth and samples) so it could put more different games on a disk? I wouldn't call that ahead.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

What about the point Galahad made that data was smaller for ST (less gfx depth and samples) so it could put more different games on a disk? I wouldn't call that ahead.

I second, third and fourth that.

[WayneK]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

What about the point Galahad made that data was smaller for ST (less gfx depth and samples) so it could put more different games on a disk? I wouldn't call that ahead.

Offset by the fact Amiga disks hold 880k, and ST disks hold 720k...

[britelite]

Originally Posted by WayneK

Offset by the fact Amiga disks hold 880k, and ST disks hold 720k...

And a lot of games were made to fit on a single sided 360k disk on the ST...

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by WayneK

Offset by the fact Amiga disks hold 880k, and ST disks hold 720k...

Yeah but the music size really was a massive factor in the differences between the 2.

Sure, you got the odd Jochen Hippel conversion of a Chris Huelsbeck tune that would have been similarly Amiga sized, but so many ST games were simply chip music and chip sound effects instead of samples which as you know, traditionally didn't compress very well.

Take for instance Wolfchild, the total music size for that, not including sample FX is a few bytes short of 300k

https://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Wolfchild


The ST version is....... 4K!!

http://sndh.atari.org/sndh/browser/i...eson_Martin%2F

And one other thing whilst we're here, I remembered this back in the day, check the box cover of Wolfchild



And this Kouros aftershave advert

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by WayneK

There is no question that for some reason the Amiga BBS scene completely dwarfed the ST's, anyone who can explain that to me - please do!

You didn't buy an ST for games or demos after having surveyed the market and deciding it was the best — you bought it after having surveyed the market and deciding that it was the most affordable.

There is a class aspect to this – Amiga owners were slightly more well-off and could perhaps afford a modem (and associated bills) in addition to their more expensive computer — just like kids with PCs were upper-middle-class.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

And one other thing whilst we're here, I remembered this back in the day, check the box cover of Wolfchild

I'm assuming the Wolfchild was based on that person from the advert? If not, that is an incredible resemblance!

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by WayneK

Offset by the fact Amiga disks hold 880k, and ST disks hold 720k...

For 9 sectors yes. 10 was far more common and 11 was also possible.

[Crown]

@Galahad, I had never made the parallel with the Kouros advert. Great finding mate.

[lilalurl]

@Galahad: You might want to post that in Cody's Amiga Look-A-Likes thread. Wolfchild does not seem to be mentioned there already:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=7102

@lesta: I have shortened your quote. For many users, especially those using mobile devices, you are not making them a favor in terms of ease of browsing by quoting a post with larges pictures.

[WayneK]

Originally Posted by britelite

And a lot of games were made to fit on a single sided 360k disk on the ST...

Only in the very early days, by 199x this wasn't the case.


It was a 'choice', as idrougge said it may have been related to money - Amiga owners didn't care about a few extra disks, ST owners did


eg: 99% of Amiga releases were cracked from a custom format disk (or simply the 'badtrack' check removed and the other 79 DOS tracks copied), and released as a trackloading game (no files).


This happened occasionally on ST (as a 'first release'), and then many other groups would take the track-loaded crack and make a file-copyable version of it for their compact disks. Sometimes the original cracking group would re-visit the game and make a 2nd 'file' version days after releasing the track-loaded crack - I can't think of this EVER happening on Amiga.


Oh + Galahad, nice spot on the Wolfchild art The real question is, did Kouros make you smell like DanScott?