Heaven/TQA #1 Posted February 17, 2002 http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html just for those who do not read the "MIDI" thread... there you have the 2 most used packers in the atari demo scene... Flashpack 2.1 & Superpacker Use them in Atari800 win 2.x papa, hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlanD #2 Posted February 17, 2002 Heaven, Thanks for posting those up. Once I finish up figuring out my taxes today I'll play around with them. Much appreciated. AlanD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #3 Posted February 18, 2002 it seems not so easy as i 1st thought... but i have the depack routine in 6502 here for flashpack. but flashpack needs binary files to pack. unfortunatly the packed data is crunshed & saved with the depack routine...test with random chararctes on screen (960 bytes) showed a pack ration down to 350 bytes in average (inkl. 128 bytes depacker). superpacker crunshed a screen down to 192 bytes... but again add to this the depacker... unfortunatly i have no depack routine in ass. but i will have a close look into the print out with atari 800win console... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlanD #4 Posted February 18, 2002 Well I played with the ASM for fastpack and definitely think I can use it in the rom without a problem. Once I figure out how to actually compress a file I can strip off the decoder in the compressed file (I hope). Only one minor problem: I can't figure out how to use the fastpacker program When I load it in an emulator I can move around the file selector but it doesn't select a different file. It just wants to compress the first file on the disk. I'm going to try and make a disk with only one file on it and see what happens but wondering if you could let me know what emulator and such you are running it under? I got the doc file that was with the archive but unfortunately I can't read Polish. Thanks, AlanD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlanD #5 Posted February 18, 2002 ok well making it the only file on the disk let me select it and try and pack it. It errors out telling me it is not a binary file so I think I need to figure out how to make fastpack think it is a binary file so it'll work. Not sure how to go about that but definite progress of a sort AlanD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #6 Posted February 18, 2002 just few tips alan: flashpack: you have to have real binary files which means with $ff,$ff,start_lo,start_hi,end_lo-1,end_hi at the beginning (so a standard com,exe file...) so...i will write today or tomorrow an example with 4 sample screens... stay tuned... i give you the source... superpack... this is easy... you can load directly data files into it an add the adress for it later... but becarefull. you have to change the buffer for the depacker because default is screen ram $bc40 etc... so...here you could load all your screens into it and pack it. all with same destination adress, f.e. $bc40... as an example... please download ultra2preview from http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~Marek.Tomczyk...ari8/demos.html and load the file via "H:" handler directly into superpack..."L" "filename: H:ULTR2PRE.TQA" make sure that "H:" points to the correct harddisc folder on your PC with Atari 800win... when you succeded you see which segments are packed and which not... take a close look into the $4000 segments...you see several of them... they are all depacked into the XE rambanks... but the concept would be the same... i hope you got it... stay tuned for my example source... heaven ps. all others download this preview to see BUMPMAPPING...and OVERSCAN High resolution 192x240x30 picture rendered on amiga computer... be sure that your emulated machine is an 130xe at least... pss. i use atari 800 win 3.0 beta... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #7 Posted February 18, 2002 i havent seen this baby of mine since 1997... hmmm...excellent... 4x bumpmaps 1x 192x160x30 hip-picture rendered by me 1x fine flashing text...with nice wordings 1x ultra fast fire routine in 50fps and done in an unconventional way (combined with HSCROL... jet boot jack...esp. for you... figure it out how it works... ;=)) hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #8 Posted February 18, 2002 ok... finally here it is... (my girlfriend kicks my butt but i am back in coding business... ) i have made esp for alanD a tutorial how to use flashpack to crunch screens. the pack ration is >70% so very usefull for adventure 2 i guess... download the "flashpack demo.zip" from http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html as usual scroll down to the file section and search for "how to use flashpack & theta..." sorry...read the readme file...i am tired and have to work today... (oops 5 hours to get up...) greetx, hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlanD #9 Posted February 19, 2002 Heaven, Nice work there. Thanks for spending the time to work on it. I did manage to get flashpack to crunch the files by using the header info for bin files you sent - I just put the $ff,$ff,$00,$10,$bf,$13 at the beginning to fake it. It compressed the two screens and now I am going thru and comparing the similarities between the two compressed screens to see how it is stored and how to strip off the compression code. Thanks again for the work on the compression. I'm definitely going to have to spend some time with the music player too. Looks very nice and flexible. AlanD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #10 Posted February 19, 2002 sorry...i forgot maybe one important information... when you start the demo.atr and the music starts playing press SELECT or START to switch between 2 screens... they are depacked in realtime...everytime you press the console keys... i asked fox for advice how to pack data on pc for flashpack and to get off the depacker... otherwise it will be a pain in the a.. to do this manually for 80 screens... the destination adress where the data is depacked is not stored directly in the depack routine...it is somewhere in the crunched data... i'll wait for fox' answer and post it here... papa, nice working... hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #11 Posted February 19, 2002 i promissed you answer from fox... here we go: On Mon, 18 Feb 2002 [email protected] wrote: > a) do you have PC version of flashpack? so we can pack directly on PC? No. Although it wouldn't be hard to write one in java or C. > b) how can i save packed data in flashpack WITHOUT the depacker? No. The depacker is very small and I've seen a Polish disk magazine with all the articles packed with flashpack. Every file contained the depacker. > c) and is the included depackroutine for xasm several time usable? > do i just have to add/update the adress where the packed data is? I think so... (I wrote it in 1996 ). > the routine finds the end of packed data for itself? Yes, that's for sure. > and where to set the destination adress??? Flashpack is designed for Atari executables, so there may be many blocks in different memory areas. The destination addresses are written in the compressed data. > the idea is for a game with 80 different rooms and the room data is > depacked on the fly in screen ram.... If there's lot of data, maybe you should try a better compression? I have an unzip decompression - just use any WinZip/PKZIP/whatever to check how good it is. The decompression routine is ~1 KB and needs another ~1 KB for tables. Of course it's much slower than flashpack (~5 KB/s I think). I use it for Vector and Numen. Best is to pack using a simple Java program. --- the unzipp routine is requested... hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #12 Posted February 21, 2002 i recieved today the unzipp routine and the java pc pack routine...i'll check them @ weekend and give more infos l8ter... papa, hve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AlanD #13 Posted March 5, 2002 Hi Heaven/TQA, Was wondering if you had had a chance to take a look at these files yet. Would be very interested in looking at them. Thanks, AlanD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Heaven/TQA #14 Posted March 6, 2002 alan, i am sorry... i had a quick look into it... but i can not use it because fox has send me the JAVA source code... (he seems to love JAVA) and i am not familiar (except "hello world") with my SDK. drop me a line [email protected] and i can forward all mails i got from him to you. maybe you are more able to make something out of it... hey, i am product manager , not a c++ coder... i am oldschool, object orientated languages i have never understood... sorry...but i have too many private things going on here in germany that's why i am not heavy sticked to the packing at the mo... Heaven Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
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