Bonus text: Final Fight hidden message in the main executable!
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_Ow
n_Axies_Cos_I_Dont_Have_A_Clue_How_The_Code_Works_As_I_Got_It_Off_My_Mate_In_Swe
den
;
Pointless_And_Really_Badly_Bugged_Trainer_Options_With_OH_MY_GOD_Not_ANOTHER_Par
allax_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_Drive
s_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_Pro
cessors_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_F
at_Agnus_Chip_And_The_Power_Light_Is_Too_Bright_And_The_Drive_Makes_The_Wrong_Pi
tched_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!
Pages: 1
The Advent 08 thread! (Read 1713 times)
