Fire & Ice HD

[MethodGit]

Okay, I need help as to why I cannot play Fire & Ice from harddisk properly. I extracted Jeff's patch to harddisk, and decided to move the Fusion-cracked ADFs to the directory and rename them (since ADFs and DIC/disk2file/DiskRipper/Readdisk/whatever created disk images are one and the same in every aspect), and I ran the loader, and it actually managed to load the game up fine, except for one thing. The moment Cool Coyote loses his first life, the whole thing will bomb out to Workbench/CLI in an instant after Cool disappears from the screen. I believe it may have something to do with the fact that I'm using cracked ADFs, however if it managed to load up the game easily at all, then I'm convinced it is something else. Anyone want to help me on this?

[CodyJarrett]

You are right, the problem is due to the cracked ADFs!

[andreas]

Seems someone missed this in the readme:

--- Fire & Ice HD install V1.2

This installer requires the ORIGINAL Fire and Ice disks (2), whdload.

The supported versions of Fire and Ice are 1.00 and 1.05

Besides, it's interesting that this excerpt speaks of TWO *versions* of the game. Hopefully the game will tell me which version *I* have got. Frankly, I've never ever kept an eye on this by now.

[MethodGit]

Damn! Don't suppose anyone has the originals by any chance? (Looks sheepish)

[Twistin'Ghost]

I have to disagree with this comment:

...DIC/disk2file/DiskRipper/Readdisk/whatever created disk images are one and the same in every aspect...

If you are to do a bit by bit comparison of the game from the cracked image to the non-cracked image, the image is clearly NOT the same. Usually, the WHD and/or JST versions do a better job or deprotecting the games or will leave data in the game that was removed by the crackers.

I started to go into the process of how crackers use their breakpoints and do things in increments, but it's all explained much better by someone who really understands this stuff, and that is Codetapper. If you visit his site...

Action Headquarters

...there's loads of great info on all of this stuff.

A cracked version of the game can do things like executing bad code that is specific to one machine (ie, OCS A500 512C) on anything from the recompiled loader to their silly cracktro. The fixes these installers put on the games expect the original game, which typically uses a totally different loader.

But my point is that they are anything but identical even if the image size is the same.

[MethodGit]

Umm, well, thanks for the information Twistin', but that wasn't really what I meant when I said that. I meant that disk-imaging utils like the ones I mentioned in that post merely clone or duplicate the ADF in all aspects - it recreates the same checksum, the same data layout, just about everything about it. Hence both the ADF and the newly created disk image will have the same file size of 880k (901120 bytes). I've even noticed a util called "DiskMirror" which just about explains it really (by it's title alone).

Of course DIC also allows you to make disk images in smaller sizes too, therefore if an HD patch requires a differently-sized disk image I will use DIC to make it.

Disk-imaging utils are programmed and created mainly for owners of real Amigas who have their games on real disks rather than ADFs. But I bet some Amiga Internet users who download Amiga games onto their harddisk would do the same thing as me too, and merely move the ADFs into a HD-game directory and rename them.