Help topic for would-be remakers!

[Shockwave]

You've been to Retro-Remakes and seen that there are some very high quality remakes but you are worried that your own skill level is not high enough to compete in this challenge?

Please don't be! Here's why..

The comp Judges are here only to Gauge an entry to see if it is accurate enough to be entered into the library at retro-remakes and also to provide a difficulty rating that will be used as a guideline only for people who vote.

It is the whole community at dbf interactive who will decide the outcome... NOT Stormbringer and I voters will be instructed to take the coders ability into account.

The reason that it's like this is that we intend to convert every single cracktro ever made eventually, so they all need doing, even if it is a text screen with no music!
We want them all!!

We've decided to give you a little more help.

I have uploaded my entire collection of Amiga Cracktros, there are well over 1,000 of them, there are no duplicates, all are alphabetically listed, all have screen shots.

You can find them here;

AMIGA CRACKTROS

They can all be run with Winuae.

Also we know that maybe even ripping the things out of the original intros may be traumatic.

PLEASE ASK for help if you don't know how to do it.

Below I have resourced several intros, ready for remaking.
If you choose any of them, please reserve the prod in the challenge thread so that no two people are working on the same one

Thanks.

Please note, I will resource more cractros than are here at the moment, please be patient as they can take time to rip! Just keep checking back

[Shockwave]

Legend and Masters Castlevania + 4 Trainer

Notes:

This trainer has a 2D starfield, pulsating red lines, several fading plain text screens and a couple of logos, no music in this one.

Archive contains:

Font
Logos
amiga exe file

If you are going to remake this, please reserve it

[Shockwave]

Legend Trainer

This intro has a basic "saw tooth" kind of sine scroller, a simple menu, logo and nice song.

It's pretty cute.

Not sure if Ghost is remaking this as I sent him this archive, perhaps he found something he likes better though.

In the archive:

amiga exe
font
logo
song

[Shockwave]

Worms by fairlight


This one has a fading logo and a text screen and thats it!

zip contains:

amiga exe
logo
font

[Shockwave]

Prodigy Cedric cracktro.

This one is a little more challenging, it has an imaginative text writer, scroller, two logos, nice little font and a good tune by Elwood.

archive contains:

font
logo(s)
music
amiga exe

[Shockwave]

One for people who are either learning or are in a rush

Setrox
Exolon +++ Trainer
Just a mouse controlled menu with no music.

Archive has;

amiga exe
font
logo

[spitfire]

I found this http://www.b3dgs.com/GfxRipTutorial/

Do you guys knwo of other rpogram like this? For sound etc?

oh sorry only saw the other thread abotu it now:
http://dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=3532.0

[stormbringer]

@spitfire: (Amiga) I use "3rd day" and HRTMOn to rip graphics (just as Shockwave explained it in his ripping tutorial). In the worst case I simply screenshot graphics directly from WinUAE (I'm remaking Mental Hangover now and since graphics are loaded on the fly from the disk, I have to use either HRTMon or taking screenshots from WinUAE). The most important thing to know here, is how the Amiga graphics get displayed (bitplanes, modulos, etc)

Regarding sound/music, it's a different story. Most of the musics are available in their original format along with the original replay source code. There are mainly 3 categories of sound/music to consider:

1) audio samples. In this case, the easiest is to steal them from memory as all the replay information is in the hardware registers. Then you can either replay the sound using WaveOut or a rimilar technique, or write a custom routine using assembler on the Amiga and use SC68 emulation to replay it. That's what I do. Anyone needs a tutorial for this? just let me know

2) Soundtracker/Noisetracker/Protracker/etc .. these are the most common music formats on Amiga and pretty much all the songs ever made are available here: ftp://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/ (other formats are also available there). Then you can simply convert the modules to XM format using Milkytracker or a similar tool and replay them with uFMOD or another library available on PC

3) custom formats .... the not so easy ones!! but probably the most remembered tunes will fall in this category. These songs usually use a mix of digitized samples and real-time generated synth sound using the MC680x0 and the Amiga hardware. If you know 68000 assembler and have experience with Amiga programming, then you may consider using SC68 as a PC emulator to replay these. As Shockwave said, we have already a growing collection of already ripped tunes, packed with their replay routine, ready for SC68. If you want to get into the details of this, let me know, I can provide a tutorial with original routines, etc. However I'd consider this as an advanced topic, so if you do not have any experience here, just let us know and we'll rip the tune for you (if it's not already available)

So to make the long story short, just let us know your Amiga programming understanding/level and we'll help!

[stormbringer]

@all remakers: please also consider visiting Hell's Angel's website: http://cyberpingui.free.fr/

He has tons of resourced Amiga cracktros and tutorials to learn Amiga assembler programming and of course hardware access.. Great resource!

Hell's Angel is also a member of DBF here, just get in touch with him

[hellsangel]

yep, you can find sources+ressources from 125 cracktros/intros here.
if a remake of an intro is already done, it's noted "win32 remake" with a link to the remakes page (who link to retro-remakes).
graphics are provided in IFF format. Use Amiga prog or win32 program like PaintShopPro, Acdsee, Xnview to convert them, or Ask.
(Some Fonts are not yet in IFF/PNG format because in a special raw format. Ask if you want one of these fonts)

I could also rip-on-demand Gfx, Musics, sources (copperlist colors, sinus tab, vectors coords...) and make in Sc68 exotics modules.

To rip gfx I use 3rd day since many years now!, and for music, WinUae ProWizard and Amiga ExoticRipper.

[Shockwave]

Thats very kind of you to offer your services Hellsangel, thank you

I can vouch for Hells Angels ripping skills, I don't know anyone at all who can do a better job actually.

[Hotshot]

i would love to make Prodigy Cedric cracktro but how can I see in actions?
Do I need Amiga Emulator to see it?

[stormbringer]

@Hotshot: yes, you need either a real Amiga, or an emulator (WinUAE is available for free) or you can visit: http://www.flashtro.com . Some of these intros have been ported to Flash by Musashi9. Although most of the time you only get a preview there as it's quite difficult to reproduce everything in Flash.. So I suggest either a real Amiga or an emulator