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Menus or Original Disks Pros and Cons


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For Atari ST games, the only option to find many of them is to search for the game on menu disks. Menu disks are pirated distributions of games, but they also have menus that utilize more advanced graphics and sound capabilities. They also have their drawbacks.

 

Menus Pros

Often more than one game on each disk

No disk copy protection

Cracked games

Advanced graphics and music on demo

Docs and codes available on many disks

 

Menus Cons

Improperly cracked games

Decompression artifacts (flashing colors on screen)

Difficulty of finding particular game

Features removed to save space

Non-working menus

Always seeing the menu before loading

Maybe some disks have trainers that are always on

 

There is a real need for images of original disks of commercial games, lest they are lost forever. The TOSEC category of Atari ST games needs a real boost. The Pros and Cons of original disks are:

 

Original Pros

Load game as originally intended

Most require little more than a 520ST

All features present

Some games do not require demo hack level of emulation

Disk images usually not compressed, always 360 or 720KB

No hacked title screens, intrusive trainers, etc.

 

Original Cons

Need to crack disk protection

Many games require documents to play game

How to play game w/t docs

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I should incorporate all the cons they say about cracked games into my own list. I hope they start ST preservation soon and that many rise to the occassion. Perhaps more important is to start attempts at 8-bit preservation, as those Apple, Commodore, and Atari disks are fading fast.

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I should incorporate all the cons they say about cracked games into my own list.  I hope they start ST preservation soon and that many rise to the occassion.  Perhaps more important is to start attempts at 8-bit preservation, as those Apple, Commodore, and Atari disks are fading fast.

 

Can't disagree with that at all, perhaps someone needs to start similar projects for those systems too.

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There's the Orphaned Projects Page that is dedicated to obtaining old programs for the Atari TOS machines and releasing the sources so that anyone can update these old programs. As usual, I'd like to see more programmers take over some of the projects.

 

The Orphaned Projects Page - http://topp.atari-users.net/

 

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The solution is not the CAPS project in my opinion but the creation of a 'Patch' Database.

 

I believe it would be far better if people in the community with the know-how started such a database. This database would simply contain game patches which you would apply to a disk image taken from an original in order to neutralize the copy protection and allow the game to run. You would then be left with a clean version of the game (no scrollers, crew 'tagging' menus etc.; just the original game minus the copy protection) which would run on emulators. Perhaps patches could be reverse engineered from cracked game versions on menus, but I don't really no about these things so cannot comment further. If the game was on a disk with an exotic disk format then of course you would have to create the disk image on your Atari ST, but the patch could be applied to the image on your PC just the same.

 

An example of the kind of thing I'm talking about can be seen on the Atari ST program Disector v5. This contains 80 patches for popular games. Using a disk image of this in an emulator you can actually patch a protected disk image so it runs. It works as I've done it numerous times. Like turning water into wine it turns a non working game into one that runs.

 

Also, there was an Amiga project of this kind, but I don't know what happened to it - check the link

 

http://ee.tut.fi/~heikki/amiga-cracking/Am...atchList.readme

 

CAPS is an admirable project but for me patchings the way to go. This would also allow the Atari ST emulation community to be masters of their own destiny and grow at a speed which is determined from within. Going this way would also see the number of disk images available grow exponentially as most people would create images from their disks.

 

I don't know why this idea has never been mooted before, yes its a lot of work, but in the end it would be worth it.

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Most people who are interested in ST emulation will already have a stack of original software. The reason no one dumps disk images from them is that they are continually told that the copy protection stops the image running, and this in most cases is true. If there was a patch database then I guarantee you there would be clean dumps of virtually every game inside a year on the net. This is important as when I bought my games I though they were for life not a 20 year rental ! (yes bitrot will soon render them all useless).

 

At the time cracked software menus appeared in the 90's of course it made sense just to pass around cracked copies. But we're in the internet age now and if it was done again then it would be done with patches. Also, I don't regard the copyprotection as being part of the game as it is usually added by others at a later date (also consider that full price games re-released on budget never usually had the protection put back on and games re-released as part of a compilation always had their protection removed).

 

So if you know anyway with the skills to start such a project give then a nudge.

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I think the main goal with patches would have to be to make the broken copy protection as unobtrusive as possible. This means no menus, custom loaders, or the like. Especially no compression flashing, unless the game itself compresses data. It should be, for example, that if the game requires me to type in a certain word found on page X, paragraph y of the manual, then I should be able to type any word to get past it and the game should continue as if I typed the right word in.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah I've noticed the lack of original copies in the ST community. The Amiga community seems to be pretty well off. The atari 8-bit is haphazard at best. Search hard enough you can find a title in it's original form (cart, cass, or disk). Although I noticed alot of the tosec .ATR files are not full size which implies they are binaries converted to .ATR.

 

What a mess...

 

There needs to be a way to identify a disc outside of any extraneous data that is on it (like user saves, etc).

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  • 1 month later...
You should have a look at the CAPS project http://www.caps-project.org/ As you'll note within a few seconds it is mainly an Amiga site' date=' however they do want to start supporting the st as well but they need help. Check out the wanted page there.[/quote']

 

Is that the page where you can't download any games, but yet they want you to contribute with games of your own?

 

I have quite the collection of original, still boxed ST games (say... around 30, I think), but there is also many that I don't own any more.

 

Since getting them via Ebay takes a long time, I do whatever I have to in order to experience those old games again.

 

So I think menu disks and original games are equally important.

 

Menus contain graphics and the showcase of skills and opportunities of a golden age. Original disks, while needing to be preserved, aren't as interesting, imo. However, the manuals, and box extras which came with them are.

 

I'm all for contributing to a place which preserves original games, but anyone should be able to download them, including full graphical scans of manuals, put into pdf format.

 

If a copyright holder objects to this, they should be bloody forced to proove that they themselves have preserved their product.

 

Regarding the source code thing, that is interesting. Has anyone ever contacted authors or copyright holders to ask them if they still have the source code to their old products? I've been in contact with one or two authors, and in those cases, all resources wasn't in one place, and not very well kept either (ie. garage).

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Hello,

 

I am a member of CAPS, and I would just like to add my 0.02 EUR to the conversation.

 

Firstly, about CAPS.

 

Yes, it is currently very Amiga focused, but it not intended to always be this way. The founder of CAPS (who actually comes from the games industry) is actually very much a C64 guy (and wrote a couple of books for the system). The point being that we plan to support a large range of systems in the future - and when the first non-Amiga disk image is produced we will rename the organisation appropriately.

 

It is very important to stress that what we do has really nothing to do with the system being preserved. The technology is generic. We work on the level of disk formats and protection, and these are "described" in a process very similar to the original Trace duplication machines that were use to master Amiga, ST, PC and other formats. It is about magnetic recording, not about any specific system. Employing theses techniques has given us the ability to do what we are doing in the first place.

 

It actually turns out that the Amiga was the best place to start with all this, purely because of the diversity of disk formats and protection used. That fact that many of us had Amiga's at the time is really irrelevant. We fully expect to see similar (and already supported) protection mechanisms on the ST and PC (weak/flakey bits, bitcell density variation, etc.), and the great thing about the ST is that when we have supported the basic formats, virtually every (it is possible there are types of protection we have not yet encountered) disk will be supported automatically (otherwise of course the system itself would not be able to read the disks either).

 

Were are currently working towards Atari ST and PC format support (also used for many other minority systems like Sam Coupe), which we actually call "Generic Hardware MFM". This takes time because like everything we do, we believe it should be done properly, and completely. To support this research, we need dumps of the games using our dumping tool (and yes, it does unfortunately require an Amiga, but see here: http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=remaster for a DIY hardware dumping and remastering we will eventually produce, just don't wait up for it). In case you didn't realise, you cannot use an Atari ST to dump these games. The reason is that the Atari ST (as well as the PC, etc.) has a fully fledged floppy disk controller (not a cheap software-driven solution like the Amiga's) and we cannot get what we need from the disks using it, since it controls disk access for you. Also, for various technical reasons, what you normally read through a floppy controller (even the Amiga's bare-bones FDC) is actually not what is stored on the disk. We need bit-for-bit what is on the disk, not what is read - the trick here is that on the Amiga we can get round this issue by using techniques such as digital signal processing.

 

We currently have 100 Atari ST games dumped, and under 10 PC games. When we started looking at the Amiga disk formats we had around 400 games dumped, but we would really like 200 Atari ST games dumped to form a solid basis for our research.

 

It is worth noting that we preserved 125 game last month alone. This include many diverse formats and protections, but since they were already supported, it is relatively easy to confirm that they were "correct".

 

That actually leads me onto another subject which we believe is crucially important to game preservation. Authenticity and integrity. Both checks are done for every single game we preserve.

 

Authenticity. If a game has been altered by a 3rd party somehow (for example, the user, a virus, by hiscore and save games) - how will you know? Certainly, a game that has been modified is not suitable for preservation. We want only those that are 100% identical to how they were mastered. This makes it very hard to find some games, but nothing less is good enough if we are going to do this properly, and that is why we spent a long time ensuring we could do that. To read more about this, see the link below on "How could my disk have become modified or copied? What determines if it has?".

 

Integrity. Virtually all games (with a few notable exceptions which we check in other ways) have some sort of integrity information. This is described (complete with any necessary algorithms) as part of the disk format, and checked as part of the preservation process. Fortunately Atari ST format comes with a very good 16-bit checksum mechanism as part of the format. With the rapid ageing of the media it becomes increasingly important to ensure there are no errors on the disk caused by bitrot (see http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=g_bitrot ) or various other sources of corruption.

 

Only when we have checked the disks are genuine, and that they have no errors can we preserve it how it was meant to be.

 

 

Other links of interest:

 

Are you planning to do other platforms, such as the Atari ST and PC?

http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=otherplat

 

How easy is it to use your technology for other floppy-based systems?

http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=othersys

 

How could my disk have become modified or copied? What determines if it has?

http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=modified

 

 

If there are any questions on what we do, feel free to post them here, and I will do my best to address them. Alternatively you can come and have a chat with us at CGE-UK ( http://www.cgexpo-uk.com ) near London, UK in July.

 

I'll make a separate post on various points people have made.

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Cracks, menu disks and patching.

 

Although these are useful techniques (at least patching certainly is for today) there is a fundamental problem that you cannot get away from using them. Suppose you take an image a the game, patch it so that it runs without the original and assume that it works. In a few years time, when all the disks are dead (and the will be, it really is not an "if" but a "when") somebody plays the game and it crashes at a certain point. After the issue is investigated it is discovered that the original disk of the game was slightly corrupted (very common!) and thus a properly working copy of the game is lost forever.

 

This is just an example, but working from a bad image, or not patching a game properly in the first place can and does happen, fortunately we have been able to help with ensuring the original material is available. It is pretty much impossible to play test every "path" for most games - not even in the life of the universe (since the possible combinations are so huge they may as well be infinate) so therefore you cannot play test a game to confirm it is correct. Fortunately, we don't need to.

 

You can liken all this in the Amiga world with two projects: CAPS and WHDLoad. CAPS obviously preserving the original material, and WHDLoad patching the games to run from hard disk, fix game development bugs (since we are preserving the original, any game bugs obviously remain intact), allow old games to work on upgraded machines, allow hiscores to be persisted that were otherwise lost on reboot, and remove annoying manual protection. The two projects complement each other perfectly, one ensures the original games exists, and the other provides an improved way to play them.

 

So basically, we do not regard patching as an alternative to preservation - they are both tools in the armoury of a community who really cares about getting this thing done. Of course, once the original material is preserved - you can spend the rest of your life patching at your leisure without worrying about disks going bad.

 

 

Atari ST emulators

 

We have spoken to the "big three" and all seem very interested in providing support for CAPS images (IPF's - Interchangeable Preservation Format). This is almost certainly to involve improving the emulation of the floppy system, but we fully intend to help with that.

 

 

8-bit System's Disks

 

We agree 100%. These systems will almost certainly be supported in the future.

 

 

Copy Protection

 

It is certainly true to say that protection was often added around the time the game was sent to the duplicators. However, sometimes it was written by the developers themselves, and some times it was heavily integrated into the development process. How can you differentiate them? Well, you can't with any degree of surety.

 

I would disagree about it "not being part of the game", since it cannot be separated and be sure the separation was done correctly and nothing was missed. If you describe the protection, then the game will always work as intended, however if you miss removing a protection check, the game may crash, or even make itself unplayable (like only being able to play the first few levels, becoming very difficult, removing collision detection - these are all things we have seen in the past). Aside from that, some copy protections are so inventive, they should be considered an art form along with the game. :)

 

You may be interested to know that in many cases, by the time the budget version of a game was produced, the master was no longer available. There are many cases of games we have seen that have been "commercially cracked" since they no longer had access to an unprotected master. You may wonder why they bothered with this for most budget games (very nearly all, though not completely all). It was because they could not produce the protection anymore - mostly due to the duplicator scripts (that describe the protection/format) being lost and the fact that the later duplicating machines were not as capable, and could not write most types of protection.

 

 

About Contributing to CAPS & "No Downloads"

 

Contributing does not mean sending us physical copies of your games. It just means dumping them with our tools.

 

It is very true to say that you cannot download any of the games listed on the CAPS site. We are a technical project, not a download site. We also do not have permission to distribute most of the games listed. *However*, and this is very important: If you contribute to CAPS, you get returned 100% verified and authentic disk images of your games once they have been preserved. Since you dumped a game, we know you own the original, and therefore you are fully entitled to a digitally preserved copy.

 

We are working with academia, the games industry and other formal organisations, so as you can imagine, illegally providing games for download is something we absolutely cannot (and will not) do.

 

Aside from copyright issues, do you know how much money it would cost to provide the games? (currently standing at around 2 Gb for just the disk images, let alone manuals and boxes as well) Saying "they should be available" is fine in theory, but in the real world it is not really in the realms of possibility for a non-profit organisation such as CAPS. That is just the way it has to be.

 

 

Menu's/Cracks more interesting than originals?

 

This may be true to many people who feel nostalgically attached to that kind of thing, but the original developers and copyright holders do not see it that way. This is the exact reason why some games developers refuse to let their games be distributed, because, arguably it is nothing more than graffiti (it certainly is from the developers point of view). If we want old games to become more available, we need to do it by showing these companies/individuals that their original work exists. A company providing their old games for download is likely to create a lot of respect for the company from the retro community, and new gamers who now have free games to try. These people are therefore more likely to buy their current games. We just need to get the companies involved to realise this!

 

It would certainly be nice to go and explorer a companies history like this. You can already do this with film, books, music. Why is it the exception rather than the rule for games?

 

Rest assured, we are doing what we can to make this a reality.

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Quite an answer!

 

So, if I dump my game, and send in the disk image... I get the disk image back? Or did I read that wrong?

 

Anyway, I understand the legal problems, but the thing is that a majority of people with old games don't have a way of dumping them, and thus have to use "illegal" channels in order to obtain them in a usable format. I say "illegal" within quotes, because they themselves aren't doing anything illegal.

 

On the matter of inventive copy protection, I have to let you know about the copy protection for the Atari 8-bit games Alternate Reality (which will undoubtedly become a hurdle, when trying to preserve): When it is triggered in The City, you become immensly evil in the game, and get thrown out of shops and attacked by city guards. When it is triggered in The Dungeon, you get ambushed by two FBI agents (even though it is a fantasy game). Really golden.

 

I believe you can find more information about the copy protection (it included custom encryption and custom OS) in the mailing list archives at:

 

http://www.avatardesign.net/alternatereality/

 

If not, get in touch with me and I will dig through my own mail, since I used to be in contact with all of the authors (though I've lost contact with the two original authos, sadly).

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Quite an answer!

 

So' date=' if I dump my game, and send in the disk image... I get the disk image back? Or did I read that wrong?

[/quote']

 

Exactly. :)

 

But I should have explained that better. What you submit is a file which contains raw signal information from the disk. A "raw dump". This needs to be analysed, checked and converted into a usable disk image that also contains information about the format - an IPF.

 

See here for more info:

RAW files, IPF files, what is the difference?

http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=rawipf

 

Basically we have to recreate the original "format description" that was used when the disks were mastered in the first place. This format description is embedded into the IPF along with the actual data.

 

Why do we need to do this? Good question, see here for a good answer:

http://www.caps-project.org/articles.php?id=describing

 

One of the reasons for this is that an IPF can store any format and any protection - however you need to describe how these things behave.

 

Lets take one example, flakey bit ("weak bits") protection since you guys know about this already. If you read these bits, they will read as 0 or 1, but if you store just that, you loose the "meaning" of the data (and the game will fail its protection check). What the data is, is irrelevent, the fact that the data changes is what you really need to store. When we describe the format, we specify these sections of data as being flakey, and the game will get what it expects - different data on multiple reads.

 

In fact it is more complicated than this, because some games expect the flakey data to behave in different ways... But you get the idea...

 

Of course there is some time lapse between a game submitted and a game preserved. And if the game has errors or is modified then we will have to look for another copy. Once another copy is found and preserved, we do of course send the original contributor an image of the good copy.

 

Anyway, I understand the legal problems, but the thing is that a majority of people with old games don't have a way of dumping them, and thus have to use "illegal" channels in order to obtain them in a usable format. I say "illegal" within quotes, because they themselves aren't doing anything illegal.

 

Absolutely. Hopefully people in this situation can get hold of the IPF's of their games somewhere. The point it is that we ourselves cannot distribute them.

 

On the matter of inventive copy protection, I have to let you know about the copy protection for the Atari 8-bit games Alternate Reality (which will undoubtedly become a hurdle, when trying to preserve): When it is triggered in The City, you become immensly evil in the game, and get thrown out of shops and attacked by city guards. When it is triggered in The Dungeon, you get ambushed by two FBI agents (even though it is a fantasy game). Really golden.

 

Hahaha. :D I like it.

 

We did want to start a site detailing this kind of thing at one point. Unfortunately we just don't have time. Actually - any body can do this using IPF's. You just copy the IPF in an emulator and try to run the copied disk image. :)

 

I believe you can find more information about the copy protection (it included custom encryption and custom OS) in the mailing list archives at:

 

http://www.avatardesign.net/alternatereality/

 

If not, get in touch with me and I will dig through my own mail, since I used to be in contact with all of the authors (though I've lost contact with the two original authos, sadly).

 

Thanks, we will keep it in mind. Actually, our technology lets us look at the disk in quite a unique way (both visually, and logically) and the copy protection is usually very easy to see.

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