Hi all !

I'm planning to rewrite, with SDL, some of the old Amiga classic games and I'm looking for a way to get/rip ressources (gfx, sound....) from a ".adf" file.

I've already try ADFOpus but it is only able to read "DOS" disk. I know that games disks are protected against reading from Workbench utilities.

Does someone can explain me how to remove this protection and access to game's data ? I'm using UAE but my A1200 is still waiting to serve if necessary !

I hope, I won't be obliged to use an hex editor ! ;-)

Thansk !

Julien

Non-DOS disks typically don't have a standard filesystem, so first of all you'll have to disassemble the game to find out how it lays out data on the disk, and what data is where.

Once you know where the data is, the other problem you'll face is that A) it won't be in a standard format like IFF, and B) it'll probably be compressed to fit more on the floppy, probably again using a non-standard compression scheme.

So, you'll have to rip out the decompression code from the game, and use it to decompress the RAW data, and examine the game code to see what format its actually in.

Then you'll have to write a converter to convert the custom data into a standard fileformat.

Or you could just load the games into UAE, take screenshots and carefully rip the graphics out of the screenshots with a paint program.

I'm planning to rewrite, with SDL, some of the old Amiga classic games and I'm looking for a way to get/rip ressources (gfx, sound....) from a ".adf" file.

You must contact the artwork copyright owner for permission first. You can't reuse artwork even if the game is released for community.

Does someone can explain me how to remove this protection and access to game's data ?

There are no free rides here.

It's painstaking reverse engineering of the game loaders, decrypters and decoders. You need to be able to interpret m68k assembly code and write your own loaders/decoders to load the data. If you want to use music, you need SDL audio modplayer that is able to play the moduleformat used in the game.

I hope, I won't be obliged to use an hex editor !

Hex editor won't help you.

The game's editor doesn't exist anymore, and no one has bought game's rights so I think it will be OK...

No, probably not. Copyrights usually stay in place until 25 years after the death of the author. Assuming the "game's editor" as you call him hasn't died, he indeed still exists and you have to wait a long time until you are allowed to use his work without asking.

Bye,
Thomas

Piru wrote:

Quote

I'm planning to rewrite, with SDL, some of the old Amiga classic games and I'm looking for a way to get/rip ressources (gfx, sound....) from a ".adf" file.

You must contact the artwork copyright owner for permission first. You can't reuse artwork even if the game is released for community.

It most likely depends on where he is doing it.
In Sweden(and probably many other parts of the world) he may do allmost whatever he wants with the game as long as he's paid for it. Whipe his butt with the disk, modify the code to include a red smurf serial killer, print out the code and show to anyone he likes, make 300 duplicates of the disk, etc. Only exception is that he is not allowed to distribute copys of the game, or parts of it.

So as long as he doesn't give the graphicans&co individual copys of the work he wouldn't have to ask anyone for permission what so ever. Just as if he had bought a book and decided to cut out a few pages and show a publisher as an example of what kind of book he would like to write and publish in the future.

Something else which may assist you is WRip.

It will read files and disks, and can recognise quite alot of different packer formats.

Kotka.