Authoring CD32 Discs

[mcgeezer]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if there are any decent tools (Windows or Linux) for quickly authoring CD32 discs?

I've had a bit read up on it and some of the information goes way back to 2002, normally Linux tools can nail this sort of stuff pretty quick.

Ideally what I want to do is write a bootable ISO with data partition for loading software and audio tracks, which I would have in WAV/MP3 format.

Obviously I'm dabbling with playing audio tracks during game play on the CD32 platform.



Some articles I've seen are as follows - but don't lend themselves to quickly getting up and running.

http://www.kaiiv.de/servicemanuals/C...er%20Notes.pdf

http://acdldp.emuunlim.com/bootablecdr.shtml

http://www.cd32-allianz.de/entwickler/entwickler

Any help really appreciated.

Cheers,
Geezer

[Cobe]

I never had found reason why not to do it on Amiga side cause its fast and easy. I know you'd like to do it from the other side but if its of any help, try this:
Download cd32developerkit you have in that last link.
Run IsoCD, make bootable cd and then to add cdda just
Make plain txt file yourgame.cue with content like this:
FILE "yourgame.iso" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
INDEX 01 00:00:00
POSTGAP 00:02:00
FILE "Track 02.mp3" MP3
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00

...

[mcgeezer]

Great stuff... Have now got a good handle on this.

All them days making custom Karaoke CD's paid off using CDRWIN

[jotd]

StatMat wrote a Windows CD32 ISO builder that seems to work very well (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...hlight=Win+ISO)

Others (Patrik) can generate a layout file using python, that you can feed to ISOCD on the amiga side.

CD32 TM insertion is also doable from a mkisofs created .ISO file using a python script (but the data isn't very well optimized and the file access is slow on a real machine, good for testing on winuae)

[-Acid-]

Not that i'm a programmer but i've always wondered.... does playing cdda audio on a CD32 use any of paula's channels? or is it possible to have a cd track playing and use all 4 channels for sfx?

[jotd]

@Acid no it doesn't use Paula. So you can have music & 4-channel sfx on CD32 games. A few games make use of that. Oscar is one of them. But most games are just floppy version adapted for CD32, or have a CD title track, but in-game music is the music from floppy (using Paula)

Amazing that there isn't a thread about "list of CD32 games with in-game CD music"

A few people are urging me to adapt CD32load & some slaves to add music+sfx on some games that don't have the feature... not trivial, but the results would be really interesting.
Well, my cD32 laser/motor is dead so I couldn't even test that (at least on real HW)

[alpine9000]

Does anyone know how to use the "Optimize" feature of ISOCD ? Asks for a statistics file.

[jotd]

you'd be better off with Patrik python scripts (he wrote a breadth layout generator for ISOCD). Creates a good layout upfront for ISOCD to use.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by jotd

you'd be better off with Patrik python scripts (he wrote a breadth layout generator for ISOCD). Creates a good layout upfront for ISOCD to use.

Got a link or source for the python scripts ? Apologies if you've already linked them, I looked and couldn't see them