This is intended to be a quick and dirty beginners guide on how to rip resources from Atari ST cracktros using an emulator called Steem.
The techniques can also be used on games to get sprites etc. It's far from being complete and all things can usually be done in a lot of different ways.
If you got any questions or get stuck, feel free to ask!
In this little guide you'll learn how to rip a fontsheet with the Ultimate Ripper Cartridge and how to rip text with Adrenaline Ripper.
Tools used:
Steem Emulator [Configuartion: Tos 1.02UK, 1MB Ram]
Ultimate Cartridge
Adrenaline Ripper
Target:
DELTA_1.PRG
The cracktro to In 80 Days Around the World, done by Delta Force in 1988.
It's an easy target executable, which contains only a scroller and music and is packed with a common packer no ripper has problems to unpack.
You can find all the files except for the emulator in the attached zip file.
I won't go into details on how to download and setup Steem. Go to
http://steem.atari.st/beginners.htm for that and just follow the steps. It's really simple.
Ok, you've setup Steem correctly and can see the TOS screen. Let's start:
Unzip the attached zipfile to a folder of your choice. There should be 2 files in that folder after you have done so:
1. Ultimate Cartridge.stc
2. tutorial.st
Now in Steem click on the small monkey wrench icon to open up the options dialog. Under Machine/Cartridge click on Choose and then browse to the location where you have unzipped the Ultimate Ripper.stc to. After you have done that click on the disk folder icon to open up the Disk Manager. Again find the folder were tutorial.st is in and insert it into Drive A.
Good, now click on the Reset button. You'll see that nothing happens. Only a white screen. That's because of the cartridge you just inserted.
Press F10 to tell Steem to continue. You'll end up on the TOS screen again. Now click on the Disk A Icon and the click on "DELTA_1.PRG". The cracktro will start. Press Pause/Break on your keyboard to release the mouse, because we need to reset Steem. RIGHT-click (!) on the reset button, the screen will freeze, press F1 to continue, some funny things will happen on the screen and you'll end up in the UI of the Ultimate Ripper Cartridge.
Press F1 again to enter the picture ripping screen. Ok, a lot of stuff written there, we don't care about that (yet), so Press F1 again. You should see your cracktro screen again.
Damn, so where's the font? Press HOME a couple of times until you see this:
Looks like our font, but it's somehow not looking right. Press Cursor Right over and over again until your screen looks like this:
A couple of PAGE DOWN's later it should look like this:
Ok, now you got two options: you either make a screenshot and cut and edit the pic in your favorite Windows program or you press F1 and then save
the pic to an Atari Disk with F3. I usually just take a screenshot. It's just more comfy.
Good so we now got the font, but where's the text!? We could do this with our Cartridge again, but since we haven't used Adrenaline Ripper yet I'll show you how to do this with it.
Reset Steem (don't forget to press F10 if you haven't unloaded the cartridge yet) and fire up RIPPER.PRG in the RIPP-ADR folder.
Once it's loaded press 1 to load our target. Now press 8 for the memory editor. It'll look something like that:
Press S. And since we want to search for ASCII press A afterwards. Enter "DELT" to search and you'll end up here:
Write down the Start address (in my case 2BCA5, most likely another one for you) and press cursor down until you reach the end of the text. Now write down the end address (in my case 2C105). Press ESC. In the main screen press 9 for options and then M to save the memory contents. Enter the start address, the end address and then choose where to save the file to. Congrats. You have successfully ripped the scrolltext. In this context you should consider setting up a harddisk folder for Steem. Why? Because you can then easily access your ripped files and copy ripped text with your favorite windows hex editor for example.
Anyway, all that's left now is the music. Now, before reinventing the wheel let me tell you this. Most music has already been ripped and can be for example downloaded at
http://sndh.atari.org/. The music used here is from Leathernecks and done by David Whittaker.
Ofcourse you can rip music on your own, but like in this case often the music isn't recognised by the ripper and even if it is, you can't easily convert all files into SNDH files for playback on Windows systems. There's a tool around called SNDHEd, which works with some ripped files. I'd always go the easy way and just get the ready to use SNDH file.
Ok, hope this is clear enough to get you started with ripping stuff from the Atari ST.
And no more excuses for you Amiga fanboys to not make an ST remake!
Padman, March 2011
