Dark Bit Factory & Gravity
GENERAL => General chat => Topic started by: Shockwave on August 17, 2011
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Just a question about ST cracktro remakes.. The ones I've seen here and on RR mostly seem to follow the same kind of theme. Copperbars, scrollers and logos.
On the Amiga they started off the same way too but eventually some groups got really good at designing them with more interesting effects.
Did they evolve on the ST the same way or did they still stay the same? I've seen some kickass vectors on the ST so surely it was capable of using them in cracktros?
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Ok, I'm no Atari scene expert ( nor an Amiga or any other scene to be honest ;D), but to me it appears on the Atari the cracked games were more important than the cracktro in front of it. What you've seen remade here lately are cracktros from groups who mainly made pack disks. Automation (later D-Bug), Medway Boys, Pompey Pirates for example were and still are well-known UK based groups. Automation alone released 512 (!) pack disks. And these disks mostly had a scroller and a pic with some more or less interesting effects regarding the scroller (different sine types) or the way the pic was shown. It was cool to pack 7 Zak McKracken disks onto 2 disks, single filing whatever them. No need for a fancy cracktro then, you know. ;) Click here (http://atari.h2nob.de/) for a great collection of screenshots from these pack disks.
But even single releases sometimes only had a static text stating who cracked it. For example I can't think of any cracktro featuring glenz cubes or dot balls. Such stuff exists in demos on the Atari (there are some pretty brilliant ones), but not in cracktros.
Then there are of course some more elaborate cracktros, which are (especially for me, since I never coded on the ST) hard to remake. An example is an MCA one (Click (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObA1GdR_jX0)), where the text is encrypted and the font is software rendered. Without the knowledge of 68k assembler you are pretty screwed to rip anything from it. Jace is damn good at such things, I'm not. In general you can say, there are some really cool cracktros on the ST, even if it's way less than on the Amiga, but a lot of them I'm simply not able to remake since I don't know how it was done originally. Take some text writers for example, it's easier to remake them if you understand the disassembled source than trying to mimic them just by looking at them. Leave alone to guess the distortion of a scroller or the curves of some sprites...
Anyway, a good place to check out is dhs.nu (http://dhs.nu/video.php?list=yes), there you'll find a nice video database showing Atari cracktros and demos. And you're definitely gonna find some vectors, plasma etc. there too. ;)
To summarize it, it seems Atari guys just weren't such show-offs when it came to cracktros! ;) :P
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Some great things there and looking at this;
http://dhs.nu/video.php?ID=278
This would be an easy and cool one to remake, the colourlist is static and the sine pattern is simple AND Slippy is a member here, he used to be a moderator - it would be a cool tribute :D
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Nice one, yup... But the music hasn't been ripped and converted yet by a pro and sounds horrid as a YM dump I just made. Anyway, in the zipfile you'll find the font, the logo, the text and the music plus an Atari disk image with the intro.
Anyone feel free to remake it. (Shockwave? What about the first Atari remake of your life? ;D) I'll see if I find a way to get proper SNDH music file for this... Or maybe someone knows someone who can convert any stuff to SNDH? Or maybe slippy knows what format it was in? So many questions left. Oh boy. ;D
Anyway, happy remaking. ;)
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Hehe, ok.
If you can get me a proper rip of the music I'll remake it :)
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Okidoke here you go. ;D I ripped and converted the tune myself. Yay! ( Thank god it was only a Sid Sound Designer tune after a closer look... ) Zipfile updated with SNDH tune. Looking forward to the final remake! If you need andy help (which I doubt) feel free to ask! :)
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Thanks Pad :)
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I can't wait to see this remake guys :updance:
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Ditto that! :goodpost: