Help With Time Bandits; Level Hack, Video, Thought


skeezix

Internal Development
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Mar 11, 2003
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www.codejedi.com
Just checking if anhyone has a huge brain on ;)

You know, I really liked Time Bandits (most popular on the Atari ST, but there were other versions.) Of of the goals of Zot originally was to support a Time Bandits like game, which resulted in BombZ being created as sort of a cross between Time Bandits and Bomberman. Anyway..

Zot could easily produce most of Time Bandits these days, but the hard part for me is simply putting it (the levels) all together. (Writing engines is my thing, doing artwork etc, less so ;)

So I'm trying to dream up a way of capturing the levels from that game. I haven't much free time of course with the hours I work, but I'm trying to come up with some creative cool way to find the level details.

For those who don't know, its a top down run and shoot game, old school:
http://www.codejedi.com//castaway/screenshots/screen83.png

The obvious attack is to disassemble the 68000 ST code and look for the data contained therein; its a bit of work due to it all being compressed in evil ways by packers, and really I'd just prefer to avoid this approach for now, but I may resort to it.

The second thought that pops into my head is finding an ST emu with a movie making funciton, or add a movie recording function to CaSTaway myself. Walk arond a level recording it, and then follow the movie and script up the level in Zot. Thats a tedious approach. Then again, I suppose not so bad in a way.. may not even need to video it, since some versions of the game have trainer modes hacked in.. so could likely just stand there forever being attacked and draw the level down on paper. Thats an idea. (Though there are a good 64 different levels in the game, rotated and flipped around to be 256..)

But I wonder.. anyone else have some totally out of the blue idea that woudl be cooler than me hacking the 68k code up and readin ghtrough it, or drawing the level down on paper?

jeff
 
What about making screenshots instead of movies and then putting the several screens together (don`t know how big the levels are, never played the game) ?


Here is another low-chance idea: Try finding a faq (google?), maybe someone made a faq/walkthrough containing the maps of the game. I know there are nearly always nerds who are "drawing" ansii maps...
 
Both good ideas; using a trainer it could be possible to stitch maps together from screeners. Tedious, but very workable at least for a few levels, and would make getting the tiles easier.

I wonder, could even try and make a pixel analyzer app to figure out the tiles for me. Oooh baby, that'd be something ;)

I've checked for FAQs before, but I'll try again. Good idea :)

jeff
 
How about running the game through an ST emulator on a PC? Most emus these days have a screen shot grabber. So just grab screens and nick the tiles sprites etc from that, perfect. They would all be actual pixels, colors etc. Getting the levels would be harder as you say, but does the layout sof the levels need to be exact? They could be made up too.

Capturing from blurry video would be quite difficult and give poor results..
 
skeezix posted on Mar 2 2005 at 01:16 AM said:
I wonder, could even try and make a pixel analyzer app to figure out the tiles for me. Oooh baby, that'd be something ;)

coders... :rolleyes: ;) :p

mapping 64 levels is a bitch, mind... any idea how big they are?
 
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*g* See, avoiding the tedious work is always the pursuit of the coder ;)

(I've already ripped most of the artwork out of the original binry of course, so its just making up levels thats work ;)

I suppose its actually 256 levels .. 64 difrferent levels, each rotated a direction with a few extra walls added. (ie: You o level 1A, then 1B then 1C then 1D then 2A; the 1 series is all alike, but rotated around with extra obstacles. There are 1a-4d for each of 16 areas, so 16*16 or 256 levels with 64 distinct areas.)

Actually, theres multiple floors for each level in some cases, with warps and such, so mapping would be tougher, but still doable or estimatable.

Each floor could be say 25x25 tiles maybe, with a few floors. Maybe 30x30.

It only shows I think 11xsome tiles (11x11, 11x16, something like that) so you'd need at leats 4 or 6 screenshots per floor. I guess not so bad, just take a few days :)

I need to get some folks to help out ;)

jeff

I also need to do the same for Gauntlet ;) I shoudl look into decoding gauntlet levels..
 
Actuslly, maybe if I/we do a good job it can be entered into remakes.org

Anyone want to help out?

Maybe I'll go to atariage and ask there :p

jeff
 
i'll lend a hand... just supply links to an emulator that takes screenshots, and tell me which disc image you're using, and an idea of what the map should look like*, and i'll have a go. :)

*i'm assuming a text file...
 
GAU 056 diks image has a Time Bandits that works in all emus (CaSTaway included), and offers up a trainer option.

Hmm, I imagine most of them do screenshots; moron, steem etc should do it.

Hmm, how to describe .. yeah. I imagine the easiest way to do it is..

take a screenshot and identify tiles (not hard, and I have most of them I could pre-label for you if you like); ie: I'm thinkink you could show the screenshot and circle the elboew-corner tile and write 'A' beside it on the shot, then do a few others.

Then to make a map, just draw it out like:

A.......BBBBBBBBB......
A........BCCCCCCCB....
A........BBBBBBBB........

That sort of thing. (. being background, A being wall, B being wall..etc..)

This is how Zot actually likes it, but it also seams conveniant (which is not by accident.. Imade Zot read things like that since it seams easy to me.. :)

jeff

Does that make it easier or too much work? Any idea?
 
How about playing to a level then doing a save-state.

The data for that level *should* be uncompressed and viewable with a gfx-ripper or a hex editor.
A disassembling hex viewer would be nice, eh? :D

Try this link for a ripp--*cough*! retro-gaming help ;) .. http://retrospec.sgn.net
 
Save files for most games don't include level details.. they'd include a level name so it knows which level to look up, plus any sprites on the level etc. But good idea ;)

Man, I used to hack save files in games back in the day :p

jeff
 
Ah! Not an in-game save.

An emulator save-state.
Something that saves memory info to a file.
And the decompression will be done for you :p

Although I don't *know* that ST emulators save a whole state. (WinUAE does ;) )
But that gfx ripper I linked will make sense of any ST mode gfx if you manage to get them to disk.
And the source is provided for it so you can hack it around if it doesn't :)


Were you working from a real ST?
Are there no memory hunters available for it?


And you might notice the level data in there too, as an added bonus :lol:



Edit: Google is my friend!
The Steem emulator saves memory.
And the graphics are definately there and quite rippable and with a little knowledge and experimenting the levels might reveal themselves to a hex editor :)
 
nobody map the first 'level select map' screen, please... i've spent an hour on it so far... i'll post it up soon (and it might help with the hex decyphering thingy, too.)
 
Wow, you guys totally rock :)

Mattmagoo -- so far I'm using ripped artwork; see BombZ main level for the desert tileset from the original Time Bandits:
http://www.codejedi.com/zot/screenshots/tbscr.jpg

gp32rich -- ahh, great idea; I'd not thought of raiding through the savestates; most emus can do savestates, and certainly my emus can ;) (CaSTaway and my own TOSemu), so thats an interesting idea. Ther hard part woudl be locating them map in all that mess (being tile based, sayh its uses 32x32 tiles, thats still only 1k of data out of the megabyte of RAM on the machine. But it is an interesting idea, to raid through it, and also to rip tiles from. Great avenue of attack there :)

I also have a couple real STs of course, and you can run monitors/debuggers/rippers there; of course, most of the old ST software is long gone and missing, and most of it wasn't all that shit hot anyway when it came to doing that sort of thing (being a single tasking OS). Back then when it came to cracking into things I just did ASM or GFA Basic and used hex editors and such; there was awhole other world of crackers out there using all sorts of slick tool,s but I don't know much about that.

Toxibunny -- way cool and thanks :)

jeff
 
toxibunny posted on Mar 2 2005 at 05:20 PM said:
nobody map the first 'level select map' screen, please... i've spent an hour on it so far... i'll post it up soon (and it might help with the hex decyphering thingy, too.)


OK sorted. had to use a couple of symbols as well as alphanumerics. plus i just filled my own in for the bottom 2 corners...


basemap3.png


26x19

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaabccececeecceececcdaaaa
aabc123421430234214312edaa
ab143123f2143123g2143123da
ahii5i5i55ii5i5ii55i55i5ja
akllmllmnlnllmlnmlmlnlnloa
pspqqsvpqstvvvtprsvprrsprs
vpspsvvvwpsvuprsxvvvyprrsv
prrszvvvvprrqqrsvvvvvvpqsv
vpqsvvvvvvps8psvvvvvvvpsps
pspqs*vvvvvvvvvvvvvv9pqqrs
pqrrspsvvpqs#prqsvvpspqrrs
prspqrrsvvprrqsvvvprqqspqs
vprqqspqsvvvvvvvprqsprqqrs
vpqspqqrsvvvvvv^psprqqrrsv
vvprrsprrs67vvvprrqqspsvvv
vvvprrqsprqsv@prqsprsvvvvv
vvvvpspqqrspqspqqrrsvvvvvv
vvvvvpqrspqrspqrspqrsvvvvv


ANOTHER EDIT: it looks as if stuff like the sphinx and the pacman are sprites on top of the map. .. which would make the new one-

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaabccececeecceececcdaaaa
aabc123421431234214312edaa
ab1431232214312342143123da
ahii5i5i55ii5i5ii55i55i5ja
akllmllmnlnllmlnmlmlnlnloa
pspqqsvpqsvvvvvprsvprrsprs
vpspsvvvvpsvvprsvvvvvprrsv
prrsvvvvvprrqqrsvvvvvvpqsv
vpqsvvvvvvpsvpsvvvvvvvpsps
pspqsvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvpqqrs
pqrrspsvvpqsvprqsvvpspqrrs
prspqrrsvvprrqsvvvprqqspqs
vprqqspqsvvvvvvvprqsprqqrs
vpqspqqrsvvvvvvvpsprqqrrsv
vvprrsprrsvvvvvprrqqspsvvv
vvvprrqsprqsvvprqsprsvvvvv
vvvvpspqqrspqspqqrrsvvvvvv
vvvvvpqrspqrspqrspqrsvvvvv
 

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skeezix posted on Mar 2 2005 at 05:41 PM said:
toxibunny -- I hope you at least like the game ;)

jeff

heh. i don't think i've played it. i'll give it a shot now... :p

edit: oh... it's an arcade-adventure :) quite a bit more than gauntlet style 'run for the exit'. cool.
 
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