games that use data compression (before 2K)

[xxl]

what games released before 2000 used data compression?

 

1. Technus (PowerPacker Amiga)
2. Conan (RLE)

3. The Goonies (RLE)

4. The Institute (RLE) - Koala?

5. Lucifer’s Realm (RLE) - it is probably some graphics program format

6. The Dallas Quest (RLE) - same here

7. Gorf (CART) - what is this compression method?

8. Hardball - verification

9. numbers of Infocom text adventure games

10. Megablast (PowerPacker Torsten Kerwoth)

11. Oxygene (RLE)

12. Infocom's adventures

Edited February 4, 2021 by xxl

[Rybags]

I can't think of any to add, not that I've extensively browsed through the code on lots of games looking for such.

 

Sort of strange given the typical high memory catered for was 48K and only SD disks for virtually all commercial releases which makes it seem a logical method to get more content in.

Not sure if C64 fared any better though it was fairly common practice for cracked games and I think some of the snapshot cartridges like Isepick and Freeze Frame could do it also (probably just RLE though)

[+slx]

I can't recall ever coming across any discussion/article on compression before the ST era, when Zoo ruled to get more warez on a floppy.

[+gnusto]

There was RLE compression - my friends and I actually wrote a utility that some use on A8, called 'BLOC' (for binary load compression). The first version just skipped zero byte segments but the second would do straight RLE. We only used it after the fact for sending A8 data around though, not in any of our little games we wrote.

[Schnurrikowski]

6 hours ago, xxl said:

what games released before 2000 used data compression?

 

1. Technus (PowerPacker)
2. Conan (RLE)

Not exactly a game but the Chaos system to be used with modified tape drives (up to 6000 Bit/s) uses compression.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Schnurrikowski

[xxl]

I do not mean games that have been modified by crackers in any way - I mean only the games that originally had a decompressor.

For example, in Beach Head version of the file (among many different cracks you can see only two sources of crack) just after the compression method which was replaced by calling SIO while reading data from disk. And I certainly don't mean to compress binary files by crackers without modifying the game code.

[Wilheim]

Well, I can remember:

 

1. The Goonies

2. The Institute 

3. Lucifer’s Realm

4. The Dallas Quest

 

IIRC, they used a RLE decompression routine for the images they load.

[Wrathchild]

Hardball too

[xxl]

3. The Goonies (RLE)

 

 

Goonies too  both versions of RLE

 

 

4. The Institute (RLE) - Koala?

5. Lucifer’s Realm (RLE) - it is probably some graphics program format

6. The Dallas Quest (RLE) - same here

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by xxl

[xxl]

1 hour ago, Wrathchild said:

Hardball

can you identify the type?

[Wilheim]

4&5. Very Koala-like. Using 160 rows instead of 192. Using interlaced drawing, useful for crossed-colors patterns.

[Wrathchild]

Another RLE I'd say, e.g. for the screen backgrounds (pitcher view, left/right field).

I think it is handled in calls to this, which might vary location depending on the release so searching for the hex bytes should find it.

Quite an interesting one as it will decode and draw a column (byte) at a time.

sub_0_42D8:
A9 B8                LDA    <unk_0_9500
85 FE                STA    off_0_FE
A9 08                LDA    >unk_0_9500
85 FF                STA    off_0_FE+1 

 

[Wilheim]

Gorf (cartridge version). It’s compressed to fit into a 8kb rom.

[xxl]

7. Gorf (CART) - what is this compression method?

 

8. Hardball - verification

Edited January 29, 2021 by xxl

[drpeter]

Infocom games used a rudimentary from of text compression:

 

https://inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/z1point1/sect03.html

[IndusGT]

8 hours ago, Rybags said:

I can't think of any to add, not that I've extensively browsed through the code on lots of games looking for such.

 

Sort of strange given the typical high memory catered for was 48K and only SD disks for virtually all commercial releases which makes it seem a logical method to get more content in.

Not sure if C64 fared any better though it was fairly common practice for cracked games and I think some of the snapshot cartridges like Isepick and Freeze Frame could do it also (probably just RLE though)

Pretty sure Rockman from Mirage did as well

[jaybird3rd]

@xxl: You should now be able to edit the first post in this thread.

[+DjayBee]

Sonix used a decrunching loader.

So far I have found these titles using it:

 

Deimos, Humanoid, Tactic

[xxl]

I don't mean packaged binaries by the publisher / crackers, but depackers used by the game developer.

I would also like to avoid adding titles where a specific decompression method for level formats is used

[xxl]

I am also interested in which tools and common procedures were used by developers associated with publishers - because you can easily notice many common features, or even identical procedures, contained in games from the same publisher but different programmers.

 

but here I'm only interested in decompression procedures.

Edited January 29, 2021 by xxl

[+CharlieChaplin]

Oxygene by TAT 1988 (Lars Langhans and others), think it used a packer/depacker similar or equal to a type-in listing in german Atari magazine (afair, the listing was also by TAT). Depacking took 10-15 seconds while you were staring at a blank screen, not nice. In 1988 packers/depackers were quite uncommon on the A8 and so you thought the game does not work or had crashed...  (later I packed this game with Code3 Cruncher, so you can see when it is unpacking).

 

Most "packers" back then simply removed the zeros in A8 game files and therefore created dozens or hundreds of segments. Besides, last year a new version was released under the name Oxygene Be.

 

The german Atari magazine announced in 1988 that most (if not all) forthcoming type-in listings would use this packer/depacker then to save space, but afaik, no type-in listing ever did. The german magazine Home Computer Aktiv also released a packer and a depacker (in 1987 or 1988), but afaik no program that used it.

 

[abbotkinneydude]

David Lubar mentionned using text compression for the A8 version of ULTIMA IV.

 

Antic Podcast Interview - David Lubar

 

The Ultima IV discussion starts at 10:27.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Megablast by Torsten Karwoth uses the Power Packer, also by T.Karwoth. (The game works on 64k and 128k machines, the 64k version features simple Pokey music, the 128k version features short samples from various Genesis songs e.g. Tonight Tonight Tonight, No son of mine and others.)

 

Alas, the Power Packer has a very low packing efficiency, it is not really worth packing files with it (in the 90s I prefered F-Pack by SRU, DjPacker and Code3 Cruncher, but nowadays I mostly use Exomizer).

 

[xxl]

Megablast added... PowerPacker by Torsten Kerwoth (poor indeed)

[xxl]

2 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Oxygene by TAT 1988 (Lars Langhans and others), think it used a packer/depacker similar or equal to a type-in listing in german Atari magazine

Oxygene (RLE) - same in Beach Head to load gfx ... (the code words are different there are BF and CF and here 58 and 59)