Resourcing media from Amiga Demos

[Shockwave]

These are NOT the rules for the remake comp, just a simple set of notes to help remakers!

Please DO NOT post questions about the competition rules in here, those posts will have to be deleted. There will be a proper competition thread soon.


Simple tips on resourcing fonts, logos, scrollers, music from intros using Winuae in order that you can make an Amiga remake..



Establishing a platform to rip from:

First of all you'll need Winuae.

You can get the latest version of it here:

http://www.winuae.net/

Find out how to set it up here:

http://www.arabuusimiehet.com/break/index.php?page=blog&id=75

In order that you can run Winuae, you need to have at least one of the Kickstart  ROM images. It would be illegal for me to post the roms on this forum because they are copyrighted, however...

If you own an Amiga then you are allowed to have a rom for backup purposes, these kickstart roms are available all over the internet, you might try typing something like

kickstart rom amiga download

into google, these rom files are available if you look around for them.

You might even find a page like this which maybe has several Amiga Bios versions;

http://www.theoldcomputer.com/Libarary%27s/Emulation/BIOS_Roms/BIOS_roms_summary.htm


Finding Something to remake;

Now you have a working platform, the next thing to do is to get hold of original amiga demos to rip from. There are two very good sources for these, go here first;

http://arabuusimiehet.com/break/amiga/index.php?mode=alpha&l=200&a=T

All the groups are listed, most demos and intros have screen shots of them.

When you have found the one you want to remake, you can now search for the binary here;

ftp://ftp.amigascne.org/old/groups/

There are thousands of files to be had from here.


Archive:

We have put an archive together that contains a lot of poular fonts that were used in Amiga cracktros, as well as a lot of exotic songs which can all be played with the SC68 library.

It also has a copy of 3RD day which is a fairly good graphics ripper.

You can find it here ;

www.retro-remakes.net/archive/rrforumarchive.zip


Music replaying:

If you want to play exotic sounds (not protracker or soundtracker stuff), you'll need SC68;

(freebasic version);

http://dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=3030.0

Please ask over at retro-remakes.net on the bbs or on the dbf messageboard if you require the C version.

Slippy made an oldschool music engine called OSME that plays a few formats, it works well but it is a little on the large side (perfectly ok to use though);

http://dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=2063.0

If you want to play C64 SIDS;

http://dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=2333.60

Statmat made a nice SID replayer too;

http://dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=3359.0

If you want to play tracker music then you should use ufmod, minifmod, fmod, bass or something like that... You might find that bass and fmod make big file sizes.

Or pick an intro that has no music


Ripping tracker music with Winuae.
Run the demo in Winuae.

Press F12
Click OUTPUT (left column)
Click Pro-Wizard
If it finds anything you will be allowed to save it in whatever directory has been configured for saving ripped stuff.


Ripping Scrolltext with Winuae.

Make a note of the fist few words typed in the scroller.
Press Shift and F12
type;
s "your text here"
(Important! Use Small s)
If it finds it you should get a memory address back like;
00061fb2
or something like that
to do a memory dump type;
m 00061fb2
replacing that number with whatever memory address you got.. Or..

m 00061fb2 111

Where 111 is the amount of lines to dump.

You can also save off a memory block with S command (capital S)

That will ensure that you get the scroll text accurate


Using HRTmon in Winuae to steal graphics;


Run the demo and press Page Up;
type;
cop
It should give you a memory address of where it found a copper list.
Make a note of that in case you need to use 3rd day.
type;
P1
if you see nothing press escape
try;
P2 ... Etc.

When you see something you can use arrow keys to move around
use shift at the same time to move fast
Also you can use;

N+M to adjust modulo
1-8 unlock bitplanes
R : Align bitplanes to same address.
, clear modulo
Q+W  Change picture width
A+S Change picture height
F10 exit ripper.
X = exit HRT mon

You can of course use F12 and the output tab to save a screen shot of Winuae.

Using 3RD day to rip graphics..

There is in fact an executable tutorial on using 3RD day, find it in the archive along with the fonts and music etc.


If you have questions, please make sure that they are not answered above before you post them.

If there is something you really want to rip but can't, then we may be able to rip it for you but you should not expect us to do so, we might not have time so it's best to try for yourself first... Some exotic sound formats take a long time to rip, it's usually easier to leave those things to people who know what they are doing ie. Not me

Also if it's a font or exotic song, please make sure that it is not in the archive already!

[Jim]

Got my scrolltext and my mod

I'm trying to use HRTMon to get the graphics.  I've got a couple of problems there, some of which I solved.

First, 'cos I'm on Vista, I needed to go into the options and set a few things
I had to F12, Paths and set WinUAE default (new) option.  Under Vista the standard file locations are under Program Files which aren't writable except by Administrator users.

Second, to enable HRTMon you need to go into Hardware/ROM and pick HRTMon in the Cartridge ROM file section.  You need to restart the emulation to enable it.

So I'm in HRTMon and I tried P0, P1 but they don't show anything much.  I scrolled around and found the logos, fonts, etc but it only has 3 bitplanes enabled and the colours are all washed out greys.  Is it possible to get it to use the proper palette registers?  And enable the extra bitplanes?  Can't seem to do that.  The help menu (Page Down) is all garbled.

I'm thinking of trying 3rd Day, but I can't find it in the zip you posted and can't find much about it via Google.

I'm going to persevere with HRTMon for now

<edit> I think part of the problem is that it is using the copper list palette, which is grey scale for the logo, and then the res/colours are changed later in the copper list.

<edit2>gave up and used the Action Replay III rom instead - very much the same commands except it works properly.  I had to write the images out to a blank floppy image, extract the disk, load it in to ProMotion, set the palette and save it all as bmp.  Now I have everything except the spaceship, which is done as a huge slab of hardware sprites.  So it's chopped up into hundreds of 16 pixel wide and doubled up chunks.  Nasty!

Jim

[stormbringer]

Hi Jim,

here is 3rd Day GFX ripper. It has a simple UI that will give you less headaches when trying to rip graphics.

Also with HRTMon, you may first want to type the "cop" command, to find the copper list (if available). Doing this will help you with setting the palette colors and a few other things like modulos, etc. But I agree with you, it's not that easy all the time. Somtimes you have to dig in the copper list to find the bitplane adresses, etc. That's why I like remaking these intros... brings back old memories of hacking stuff

[Jim]

Yeah, the only way I could identify the ship graphics was to disassemble the copper list and find out where spr0pt was pointing, I couldn't eyeball them at all!  Good old days, yup!  Thanks for the ripper

Jim

[spitfire]

Gfxripper.doc.exe doesnt run in windows so I assume its a amiga program.
Doesnt run in amigasys 3 either (just plays the music).
Loaded it as a floppy in winduae and set cpu speed to a500 and graphics to full ECS and then i saw intro screen and music, but after that it just shows these weird blue lines.

Ok nm I see I must set graphics chipset to OCS. Works now.

[stormbringer]

of course it's an Amiga program!

run it with WinUAE, works with OCS/ECS chipsets. There is no AGA support (this tool is quite old..) .. so it may work or it may not work.

the interface is pretty simple to understand even without reading the manual. Once you have found your image, just press LEFT+RIGHT mouse buttons together on the circular icon (sort of face/head) on the far right of the ripper controls, then you will get an AmigaDOS screen with a selection to save the image currently displayed IFF or RAW, then you are asked for a file name. Do not forget to add manually a ".iff" file extension to the name you type. The Amiga programs do not care about file extensions, PC programs do. Then get XnView and load your file, convert it to GIF, BMP whatever you need for your prod.

As with other similar tools, these rippers look for what display the bitmap planes as they come in memory (CHIP memory only!). You may turn on and off the locking of the bitplanes in order to align them together. Logos, charsets, etc using multiple bitplanes (number of colors = 2^number of bpls) have their data stored as separate bitplanes, usually at consecutive addresses. You may need to align them manually as the ripper does not know how to do that. Sometimes is finds the bitplane registers properly, some other times it does not. It all depends on what has been left in memory by the intro/demo and of course in the hardware registers. Don't dream, it's a time consuming process

Let me know if you understand the concept of bitplanes or not and if I shall explain it..

[stormbringer]

oh! and BTW, the ripper itself is the file GFXRipper (AmigaDOS executable).

[AnimalMother]

A tool for pc can be found here -> http://retrospec.sgn.net/game-links.php?link=gfxrip
And a tutorial using it -> http://www.b3dgs.com/GfxRipTutorial/

[Shockwave]

Thanks and thanks for posting the ripper Animalmother.

There's really no shame in asking for help in ripping if anyone is having trouble, hellsangel, stormbringer and to a smaller extent, myself are ripping these things all the time and we're really happy to help and get more people involved in the comp!

[stormbringer]

@spitfire & others: please bear in mind that we have already ripped graphics (mostly fonts) and music for soon almost 200 cracktros. If you already have made your choice for a remake, please post your reservation in the appropriate thread (the challenge thread) and see if some resources are already available. You may also check the remakes already available on http://www.retro-remakes.net to see if the font/music you are looking for has been used already. If you find one that is using the resources you want, let us know and we'll provide them to you ASAP.