There is a similar thread on www.bitfellas.org, but since their forum is only visible through registration, I'll post what I've posted there right here.

Line of fire


Quote:

; Dear ST Cracker.. here's the Amiga startup-sequence, in case ; you want some amusement.. it's amazing how people can waste disk ; space isn't it? Final Fight ; -===========- ; © 1991 U.S. Gold ; ; Written for Creative Materials by Richard Aplin ; (Started 10th January 1991) ; ;Ok. Remember Line Of Fire? Here we go again, crackers! Fill in the blanks: ; type (Loads of pointless ANSI codes and whizzy animated bits) echo "_____ of _____ presents the latest in Hot Warez.." echo "" echo "Final Fight ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 14925%!" echo echo "Cracked, Trained, Nobbed-Up and ½-parted by the amazing _______!!!" echo "" echo "Call our UK HQ on ____-______ for 1.4Tetrabytes of" echo "warez stored on Sinclair Microdrive, on-line 25hrs a minute, 75-19.2Gigabaud." echo "" echo "Hot Greets to Taz,Faz,Gaz,Baz,Haz,Kaz,Waz and Saz!!" echo "Limp Armwavings to HumungousBigPenisSubstitute of The UtterlyInanelyNamedCrew!!" echo "" echo "Look mum! I can use SEKA, TETRAPACK and DMS! (Next week I'm learning bowel control)" echo "" echo "(I've got a mate who can do fantastically dull psuedo house music on NoiseTracker," echo " and another mate is really amazing at doing uninteresting bas-relief metallic logos on Dpaint" echo " - We're going to call ourselves WetDream Design, and do a game for Psygnosis" echo " and they'll pay us £7500000 and we'll get our photos ridiculed in Zero and then" echo " we're going to do Soopa Fannycon games and charge more than the national debt of Brazil" echo " and after that it's virtual reality and I actually SAW Andrew Braybrook at the PC Show" echo " and he actually SPOKE to me and we had this really good conversation and I told him all" echo " about how crap Rainbow Islands is and how he should have written it using Seka and used" echo " hardware sprites for the scrolling background and when I asked him why he left out the" echo " bit on the arcade machine when you first turn it on and some gliched graphics come up for a" echo " thirtieth of a second - which really contributes to the gameplay - he said 'Why don't you shut the f**k" echo " up and leave me alone, you irritating little t*at' and I knew he was just saying that cos" echo " he knew I was right and how much better than him I am and I bet he's never written a" echo " parallax sprite starfield sine scrolly bob demo with soundtracker music in his life" echo " and I bet he wouldn't even know how and he's rubbish anyway you know I actually saw" echo " one BNE in his code that could have been a BNE.S and I nearly wet myself I mean how can" echo " he call himself a programmer when he obviously isn't nearly as good as me.. etc,etc,etc,etc,etc)" echo "" echo "Anyway I must go now as my mum says my rusks are getting soggy... CUL8RAIGWNGIS DUDES!" echo "" echo "Intro by HugeRedPorkSword of The TotulAnihilashunAndDeth2Evreywun(sic) Crew" echo "" echo "P.S. When I grow up I want to be a British Rail guard" echo "" echo "" ; Totally_Naff_Intro_With_Some_Filled_Polygon_Graphics_That_Rotate_Around_Their_Own_Axies_Cos_I_Dont_Have_A_Clue_How_The_Code_Works_As_I_Got_It_Off_My_Mate_In_Sweden ; Pointless_And_Really_Badly_Bugged_Trainer_Options_With_OH_MY_GOD_Not_ANOTHER_Parallax_Starfield_And_Sine_Scrolly_Message_If_I_Ever_See_Another_One_I'm_Going_To_Leave_The_Country_And_Become_A_Trappist_Monk_In_Tibet_Mind_You_That_Wouldn't_Be_A_Very_Good_Idea_Now_The_Chinese_Have_Invaded_Ah_Well_Maybe_Just_Suicide_Or_Even_DemoWriterIcide_Is_The_Answer ; Pitifully_Badly_Cracked_Version_Of_The_Game_That_Only_Runs_With_An_A501_Insider_Ram_Board_On_My_Computer_And_Anyway_The_Fileloader_I_Got_Out_Of_Amiga_Disk_Drives_Inside_And_Out_Has_The_Headstep_Delay_Set_Much_Too_Fast_So_It_Crashes_All_The_Time_And_Even_Then_It_Uses_A_Software_Timing_Loop_So_It_Won't_Work_On_Faster_Processors_Sometimes_I_Really_Don't_Know_Why_You_Lot_Bother_I_Really_Don't ; Oh_Shit_It's_Guru'd_Ah_Well_What_Do_You_Expect_Your_Amiga_Has_The_Wrong_Colour_Fat_Agnus_Chip_And_The_Power_Light_Is_Too_Bright_And_The_Drive_Makes_The_Wrong_Pitched_Clicking_Noise_It_Works_Alright_On_My_T.V._Honest ; Reset Right, that (to quote my Line Of Fire Startup-Sequence) is that over with! ********************************************************************************* *You May Not Read Further If You Are Under 14 or Have A Datel Action Replay Mk.I* *(The Mk.II one's ok cos the software's much better)***************************** ***************************************************** Yes kids, It's *PROGRAMMER'S EGO* time! Other games I've written: (the list gets longer!) Double Dragon I (Amiga,ST,Amstrad CPC) Double Dragon II (Amiga,ST,Amstrad) (Aargh! Endless beat-em-ups!) Shinobi (Amstrad) Block Racer (Amiga,ST) ESWAT (Spectrum!) Line Of Fire (Amiga,ST) Rotox (Amiga,ST) Fly Spy (Amstrad) The Islands of Dr.Destructo (64) U.C.M. (64) (barf) Utilities,etc: Zap (Amiga) Cyclone (Amiga) TimeWarp turbo loader (Amstrad) Invade-a-load (64) +various other bits'n'pieces & in-house stuff. Right, that's the programography over with, now the customary rubbish that I sometimes put in the startup-sequence to amuse you pirates before you get down to the 5-minute job of cracking the game (see also Line of Fire!) Incidentally, I gave up protecting games seriously after I spent a week doing the protection for Shinobi and Double Dragon II on the Amiga, which was (and I say so myself), pretty bloody good.. even if Weetabix did eventually crack DD2 (by the way, I never did find out how long it took you!) The way I look at it, the better the protection, the greater the challenge, and although it would be fun if protection could adapt itself to what the cracker is doing (like a game of chess), as it is the whole game is a bit one-sided. I mean, whatever I do for protection, once I've done it, it's cast in stone, and as it is impossible to cover every one of the bizarre things you lot will try, eventually a game will get cracked, so why bother in the first place? I don't agree with piracy, but as in-game protection is just providing you lot with some amusement over a boring weekend, I don't bother much any more.. I daresay some people still think that it's possible to do 'pirate-proof' protection, but personally, after DD2 (which really did have some bloody neat ideas in it), I don't! Another problem is that when I do a really neat disk format, that, say, gives you 6.5k a track and is well hard to copy, the *$#?**!ing duplicators can't duplicate it! Kind of defeats the object really! Any road up, on this game I'm reasonably pleased with the interrupt-driven disk loader; everyone else did it ages ago - so did I, but that sort of loading is not really suitable for most types of games: you need dynamic memory-allocation and multi-tasking uncrunch routines for a start, and then you run into all sorts of problems with ram fragmentation, and eventually you end up spending more time sorting out the problems caused by the system than it solves, but I thought I might as well use it in Final Fight, just so that Ronald McDonald at the Sales Curve would shut up! (Sorry Ronald!) Oh yeah.. the real-time x/y-flipping and decompressing sprite-routine is alright too.. but a tad slow. Ah well, the Line of Fire real-time scaling sprite routine was slightly neat as well, and look how slow that game was! The main problem with this game is the amount of time & memory used up by all the massive sprites.. I ripped all the graphics out of the arcade board's roms, and I really didn't want to have to shrink them or anything, so we end up with what you see here.. bloody huge sprites! Tum te tum.. what next..? I know! It's.. The arcade machine's specs: (The standard CapCom board- as used on everything from Ghouls'n'Ghosts to Strider and Dynasty Wars) 68000 running at about 10Mhz Z80 driving the sound chip (standard Yamaha 6-voice FM chip) and sample- playback hardware 1.5Mb of program and data roms (aargh!) 2Mb of sprite & character graphic roms (double aargh!) - there's space on the board for 16Mb! 256k of sample/music rom Triple playfield screen, with a rather interesting method of displaying data (see later) Loads of 128x128 hardware sprites with hardware X & Y flipping (bog standard) 64k of video ram 64k of processor ram The screen displays are quite interesting.. the 3 overlayed playfields are made up differently.. but they are all character-mapped, not bitmapped. Naturally they all have independant hardware scroll! There's also no practical limit on the number of characters you can access at any one time with a screen - all the character map screens use 16-bit character numbers! Playfield 1: The back parallax layer consists of 32x32 character blocks, with each block having a selectable pallette (of 16 colours) from a set of 32 different pallettes.. (that's up to 512 colours on this screen alone!) Playfield 2: The main playing area.. Uses 16x16 character blocks, each with a 16 colour pallette selected from another bank of 32! Playfield 3: The top layer for scores, text,etc. Uses 8x8 characters, 16 colours, from yet another bank of 16 pallettes. All characters can be individually X and Y flipped, and the playfield 2 characters can be set to appear in front of or behind (or both) any sprites! Each sprite is up to 128x128 pixels, and is character mapped too! Only 16 colours in any one sprite, but the sprite pallette is selected from yet another set of 32 different ones! Naturally, the sprite can be flipped in either direction by just setting a bit! I don't know how many sprites you get, but I suspect 64! Right, so that give you a grand total of 1280 colours on screen, not counting the sprites, without even using raster-splits! Don't you just want to BURN your amiga? Can you believe what you could do with this board? EVERYTHING is done in hardware, and you've got a 10Mhz 68000 just do change a few registers with! It doesn't even have to drive the sound chip.. the Z80 does that! (This board is considered to be old technology and is not really used by Capcom much any more!!) ...Can I have one for Christmas, Santa? If you think that's good.. you should have seen the hardware on Line Of Fire that I converted before! Two 12Mhz 68000s and a Z80 all co-processing! Oh yeah, if any other companies want to hire me to extract graphics and data from arcade boards they're converting, get in touch.. Ah well, back to the real world.. (Short bit about me, 'cos *I* wrote this game and *I* feel like it!) :-] I'm 21, tall, and with boundless enthusiasm (and far less talent) for music, playing pool and drinking alcohol. .. oh yeah.. I'm half Australian too (not that that helps!) Written in my slum at our Bristol office, on a meagre: A500 with 2.5mb, A590, Cygnus ED, Genim2 and DPaint3 (ArgAsm's bugged to hell!) A500 with 1mb (to download to) Poxy 1040ST in the corner covered in junk Comfy chair (noooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) Loud stereo & millions of albums Video Walkman (+ all of BlackAdder II/III/IV & the Young Ones) GameBoy (with Tetris superglued into it) U.S. Robotics HST 9600 baud modem (for rapping with the artists in Whitby!) Final Fight board (connected to crappy joystick and Commodore monitor!) Some custom rom-reading hardware Filter coffee machine, Microwave and endless copies of The Independant. ..That's it! No PDS, no SNASM, no nothing! C'est la vie! For light relief at my flat, I've wasted huge amounts of money on; Amiga A1000+2mb etc,etc Casio FZ1 sampler Roland D110 synth Korg M1R synth Cheetah MS6 analogue synth (and MkV II keyboard gathering dust) Alesis Quadraverb digital effects processor (hours of fun!) Alesis SR16 drum machine Yamaha TX7 synth Desktech 8-Channel mixer (now redundant) Fender Strat (cheapo clone) guitar CryBaby WahWah pedal (so I can sound like all the other crappy Manchester bands!) A couple of el cheapo distortion/compression pedals Fostex B16 16-track reel-to-reel tape recorder (wooo!) SoundTracks 16:8:16 mixer (double woo!) Yamaha FSK sync converter (crappy - not even SMPTE compatible!) ...and no, you can't come round and burgle me! Actually, the CDTV has just come out, and does look rather sexy (I saw a preview at the Software Developer's Conf. in Bournemouth a while back, and it was well impressive) - maybe that's next on the 'expensive toys' list..? Right, that's that over with! Now.. the Musicography! Music that contributed to the writing of this game... (I've got pretty varied tastes!) KLF - The White Room/Chill Out/Space/1987 What The F*** Is Going On Shag Times/Who Killed The Jams (MU MU!) The Smiths - The World Won't Listen/Hatful of Hollow/Strangeways, here we come/Louder Than Bombs (All absolutely fab) Pink Floyd - The Wall/Wish You Were Here/Dark Side of the Moon/Momentary Lapse Of Reason Roger Waters - Radio KAOS/The Pros and Cons of Hitchiking The Cure - Standing on the beach/Head on the Door/Kiss Me,Kiss Me,Kiss Me/Disintegration Pet Shop Boys - Please/Introspective/Disco/Actually/Behaviour (<-*Beautiful* chord progressions on the last two songs) Public Enemy - Yo! Bum Rush the Show!/Fear of a Black Planet Inxs - Kick/Listen Like Thieves Prince - LoveSexy/Grafitti Bridge/Purple Rain/Sign Of The Times/Round The World In A Day Propaganda - A Secret Wish/1 2 3 4 (Yeaaah! Mucho underrated) Thomas Dolby - The Flat Earth/Aliens Ate My Buick The Shamen - EnTact/In Gorbachev We Trust Tracy Chapman - T.C./Crossroads Thompson Twins - Quick Step and Side Kick/Into The Gap Happy Mondays - Pills, Thrills'n'Bellyaches Cameo - Word Up/She's Strange Heaven 17 - How Men Are/The Luxury Gap/Penthouse and Pavement The Beloved - Happiness/Blissed Out Depeche Mode - Violator (I just rediscovered them!) *The The* - Soul Mining/Infected/Mind Bomb (Totally my favourite! Bloody brilliant!!) James Brown - The Great J.B. (Get on up!) Peter Gabriel - So/Shaking the Tree They Might Be Giants - Flood/T.M.B.G. (Prosthetic Foreheads?) Grace Jones - Island Life (Pull up to the bumper? Obscene!) Jean Michel Jarre - Zoolook/Oxygene/Rendezvous Neneh Cherry - Raw Like Sushi Squeeze - The Singles Genesis - Duke/Invisible Touch/Genesis (Invisible Touch is still totally adult MOR stuff) Motorhead - The Ace Of Spades The HouseMartins - London 0 Hull 4/The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death The Beautiful South - The Beautiful South/Choke The Police - The Singles/Regatta De Blanc/Ghosts in the Machine Talking Heads - Fear of Music/Little Creatures/True Stories/More Songs About Buildings & Food Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden/Natural History/The Party's Over (Love that tortured harmonica!) Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark - The Best of OMD/That other compilation with 'White Trash' on Simple Minds - New Gold Dream/Street Fighting Years/Once Upon a Time (Pretentious, but I'm a sucker for Trevor Horn production) Bassomatic - Set the Controls for the Heart of the Bass (You don't want MY brain!) Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasure Dome Erasure - Wonderland/The Circus (Plinketty plonk, Vince) Alison Moyet - Alf Roachford - Roachford The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's (how many holes in Blackburn, Lancashire?) Bruce Hornsby and the Range - The way it is (Tinkle those ivories!) T'Pau - Bridge of Spies Betty Boo - Boomania ABC - Lexicon of Love/How to be a Zillionaire Father Barabus & The Butcher Monks - Live at the Lightship/F.B.B.M. ('Cos he's Ken, Ken, Ken and he ain't got no mates!) The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld The Proclaimers - Sunshine on Leith New Order - Substance/Technique (Featuring "New Order Standard Guitar Sound(TM)") Electribe 101 - Electribal Memories Bronski Beat - The Age of Consent (Slam your goolies in a drawer and SING!) Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland/Best Of.. Marillion - Clutching at Straws/Misplaced Childhood (Uzis on the street corner? I ASK you!) Mike And The Mechanics - Living Years/M.A.T.M. The Boomtown Rats - Mondo Bongo/The Fine Art Of Surfacing Terence Trent D'Arby - Introducing the hardline.. S'Express - Original Soundtrack Tears For Fears - Songs from the Big Chair/Sowing the Seeds of Love Steve Winwood - Back In The High Life/Arc Of A Diver Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms/Making Movies/Love Over Gold/Alchemy UB40 - The Best Of UB40 (Even if it does all sound the same) B52's - Cosmic Thing/Rock Lobster Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing Massive - Blue Lines (From Bristol - Yeeeeeeah!) Bomb The Bass - Enter The Dragon Seal - Seal (pretty good.. but then I'm a sucker for Trevor Horn's production!) R.E.M. - Out Of Time Electronic - Electronic (BLOODY EXCELLENT!) Don Henley - Building the Perfect Beast/The End of The Innocence Soft Cell - Non Stop Exotic Cabaret (Goooooood!) Hothouse Flowers - People E.M.F. - Schubert Dip (Hmmmm) Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight/Sweet Dreams/We Two Are One/Revenge ....As I said, pretty varied! And also some tapes supplied by my mate Alex (and ratings).. (There you are Alex! Your official mention!) Tackhead - Strange Things (Funky.. but still.. 6/10) Che - Narcotic (Wooo! Pretty sample-y, but melodic.. 8/10) The Shamen - In Gorbachev We Trust (Hmmm.. A bit tiring.. 5/10) P.I.L. - Second Edition (Never really liked P.I.L... 4/10) Anyway, greetings go to: Del at Codemasters, Kris at Argonaut, Charlie, Tim C. and Tim M., Paul D. and Paul 'Hadaway!', Steve H., Nick V.,Andy S. and Andy H., Pat, Maria, Mike H., Alan B., The Bitmaps, J.M.P., Bob, Nadeem, Dan Dan The SineScroll Man, Alex, Spex, Jim, Adrian Stephens, Ricardo Pinto and the rest of the Assembly Line, Joby, James, Cash and Rob, D.M.L., Mike Day .. .. .. ...and thingy (your name's slipped my mind - you know who you are!) .....and finally, all the various crowd I know from parties, shows,etc,etc! Dubious substances (and late-night parties) supplied by JW Inc! Ha ha! Neil Tennant's going GREY! I've just seen an interview in NME, and he is looking a tad oldish - never mind, amazing music nonetheless. I'm seeing the PSBs live at the NEC soon, and if this game is still under development then, I'll give you an update. * (- 11th June - Yep! Saw them last monday in Birmingham! Were they good? - Is the Pope Catholic? The best live show I've ever seen!) Hey! I've just been mugged! (21st May) Some b**tard came up behind me when I was coming home from a club last night and hit me over the head bloody hard with something - I don't know what, I was do busy being knocked unconcious. I woke up in the gutter some time later, in a pool of blood (mine) with some nice police lady calling me an ambulance (I don't know why, my name is Richard, after all - ho ho ho). After about 6 stiches in my head courtesy of the Bristol Royal Infirmary (and a tetanus jab), all I have to show for my night of fun is a small bald patch with blue stiches in on the back of my head, and the most amazingly coloured bruises you have ever seen. Who says you can't have fun in Bristol any more? Anyway, thanks to the nice police woman and the staff of the B.R.I. in casualty that night, and no bloody thanks at all to whoever hit me! Oh yeah - Hi to all the plebs who crowd into the Virgin Games Centre in Bristol every Saturday morning and consistently refuse to recognise me or Tim, even when we talk loudly about all the games we have written!!!! - hellos also to the regulars at the White Hart (+nice student barmaid) and Sportsman pubs in Bristol! Ah well, it looks like I'll be doing some Super Famicon, MegaDrive, or Master System work now, if our SNASM system ever turns up!! By the way, hope you like the cheat mode! (very silly) See you on the next one! Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Luv and Irony, Richard Aplin. P.S. All you young and impressionable people who think programmers make loads of money.. well, most of us don't! (Mind you, the hours are good!) P.P.S. Good Startup-Sequence eh? P.P.P.S. Update: My next game(s) are: 'GodFather III' (U.S. Gold) and 'Creatures' (Thalamus) on 68000!