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Post by Frank Gasking on Nov 1, 2004 22:05:45 GMT
If anyone's got any questions about the source code, or anything else in relation, then feel free to post here. Hopefully Paul may post here if he has a bit of time from time to time. Cheers. Frank
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Post by Ian Cunningham on Nov 1, 2004 23:21:17 GMT
When you say "editor", is this in the same context as rob hubbards?
ie: music driver in source code format, no actual editor as everything is enterered via an assembler/monitor? or is there an actual editor for the general usage?
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Post by Frank Gasking on Nov 2, 2004 0:10:12 GMT
Hi Ian, It should be a editor in the same context as Rob Hubbard's... I haven't got the binarys yet to check, which Paul will compile soon. Hopefully then i'll be able to confirm for you. Sorry i'm a bit vague at the moment, but Paul will clear things up i'm sure
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Rich
Junior Member
Novice C64 programmer & amateur SID musician
Posts: 92
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Post by Rich on Nov 2, 2004 9:17:45 GMT
I can't wait to get me hands on the Freeload Ocean Loader source. Should be handy for the future Bayliss/Cronosoft releases (RSWN & Sub Hunter)
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Post by merman on Nov 2, 2004 10:10:00 GMT
Just had a look at the source TXT, very interesting.
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Post by Paulie on Nov 2, 2004 13:32:08 GMT
Hi-Ho, Paul H here.
The music data is entered directly into the source and assembled in place. There isn't an editor per-se, but a shell that sits ontop of the driver that shows raster time, notes, bends arpeggios etc - it was an aid to help debugging the music.
To this day I've still no idea how Jon made some of the sounds he got out of the driver! The method for the "a la Hubbard drums" were all his idea - and they worked like a dream.
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Post by Paulie on Nov 2, 2004 13:34:21 GMT
Richard,
I thought the Cronosoft boys would benefit from Freeload - why not have a crack at writing you own loading music as well - once I get 10 minutes infront of my PC I'll convert the source for you all.
- Paulie.
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Rich
Junior Member
Novice C64 programmer & amateur SID musician
Posts: 92
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Post by Rich on Nov 2, 2004 22:18:12 GMT
Richard, I thought the Cronosoft boys would benefit from Freeload - why not have a crack at writing you own loading music as well - once I get 10 minutes infront of my PC I'll convert the source for you all. - Paulie. Cronosoft loading music is now done
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Mason
New Member
Posts: 1
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Post by Mason on Nov 3, 2004 6:55:59 GMT
Theres something I wonder about with the Ocean Cartridge games... I know Paul is here, so I guess its the best place to put it.
When playing around with the cart games from Ocean I remember alot of us talked about it was more/less designed to disk/tape loading. The ones I reckon were Robocop 2, Chase HQ 2, Pang - I know Battle Command were released on disk later on. Did only work on disk/tape versions of the games, but decided to do carts because of the C64GS?
Also a question about loaders - everyone know the famous Freeload which were used on many games. From Adidas Championship Soccer and till the end in 1993 Ocean used 2 different loader - the first were used alot on Sly Spy, Midnight Resistance, Addams Family etc. etc. and the other were used on Simpsons, Lethal Weapon and WWF European Rampage. Did you do these loaders too? and if you did were they modded Freeload too?
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Post by Paulie on Nov 5, 2004 0:22:55 GMT
Sly Spy, Midnight Res and Addams Faily were all Freeload and put together by me - I'm pretty sure Ocean continued using Freeload (or variants) post my departure until the end of the '64's life cycle. Certainly T2 used it after I left.
The 64GS games were pretty arbitrary I just got a list of products that needed compressing and mastering onto cartridge.
In reality the cartridge system was just another storage medium, so any of the cart games could just as easily have been released on tape or disk. In fact the cartridge API simply intercepted the standard ROM load routines \ Freeload Routines and bank switched and copied the data from the rom to ram - that way the developers wrote the multiload game just like a disk/tape game and them it just kinda worked from cartridge "automagically".
- Paulie.
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Post by Frank Gasking on Nov 8, 2004 22:25:22 GMT
Just incase you missed it... Paul has given permission to release the sources to FreeLoad and FreeSave... which are now on the site!
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Pugsy
New Member
Posts: 3
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Post by Pugsy on Nov 9, 2004 11:10:10 GMT
Ooh nice to see the source for freeload/save. The expert cartridge protection gave me a few problems the first time I encountered it, deleting itself was a right pain. Fortunately though the compiled loader used a fairly small range of START locations so it was easy to bypass after with a single poke (lda/sta) without having to search for it everytime for each new game...but very clever indeed. I'm glad the other great loader programmers like Twiddy, Challis and the unknown Bleepload programmer didn't pick up on it though....I loved my Expert cart. Cheers for releasing the source, it makes interesting reading and brings the memories back
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Post by Paulie on Nov 9, 2004 14:10:02 GMT
No worries my friend. Action Replay IV - that was the one that I just couldn't stop; and boy did I try. Freeze Frame and Isepic were a walk in the park. Once John Twiddy took over Expert Cart duties - it got a lot tougher to stop.
In the boot loader I used to set up an interrupt but not acknowledge it - that locked pretty much anything - the problem was, as games got more advanced they required NMI's (my sample player for one), so I had to abandon that once the game had fired up.
The biggest shock for me upon digging all the code out was just how tiny the whole thing was - you forget just how little memory and how few registers you had to play with back then.
Ahhh memories ;D
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Rich
Junior Member
Novice C64 programmer & amateur SID musician
Posts: 92
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Post by Rich on Nov 9, 2004 15:14:46 GMT
Paul, please can you tell us the format for these sources coded in? (Assembler format?) as I don't recognize various commands in the source. (EQU), (DFB), (DFW), etc. Thank you
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Post by Paulie on Nov 9, 2004 15:55:52 GMT
Hi there,
This was all done on "OADS" the in house ST based assembler that we wrote at Ocean. Its very similar to Zeus 64 in the format and operators.
DFB (define byte) is equivalent to DC.B or .byte DFW (defie Word) is equivalent to DC.W or .word EQU (EQUate) is equivalent to = DFL (define Lo byte) - stores the low byte of a given address - equivalent to #< DFH (define Hi byte) - Stores the hig byte of a given address - equivalent to #> or #^
Frank passed on the "assembler de jour" that the scene uses so as I'm off work this week, I'll attempt to get it all assembling again on a more standard assembler.
- Paulie.
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