Cannon Fodder (D-Bug)

[sut]

I have a couple of questions regarding this game purely through my lack familarity with the ST version.

I've played the Amiga/Archimedes versions quite a bit and I have noticed some differences and really want to know if these were missing from the original also (Although I am fairly sure D-Bug never cut from their hacks).

The digitised photos of the staff in the intro
The helicopter landing scene is missing
The hill scene between missions (where you recruits queue) also seems to be missing.

Like I mentioned previous I am 90% sure that this is how the ST version was released, but I would just like some confirmation to be 100% .

On a slightly different note - What the hell is it with the scrolling ?

[ggn]

Well, you can make that 100% now

These items you mention are in fact limitations of the ST version - I think I like to see them missing rather than look crappy implementations of them

Re: the scolling. Well, that's what you get when you don't have hardware scrolling as standard (no, don't get me started on STE features )

[Mug UK]

Yep .. all chopped out of the ST version

[sut]

Seems like as it was a late ST release it was a lazy port, although still a good game if you can cope with the scrolling without sickness and nausea.

Ahh the digitised photo's are in there

[MiggyMog]

I was gutted when I first 1st seen the ST port, it would indeed appear to be a 'lazy port'.

The scrolling technique is just unforgivable and makes it pretty unplayable without the Sickness & Nausea Sut mentioned. Especially when you consider that the sprites are (mostly) tiny

If there is a game that should be re-done on ST this is it!


The game concept & intro music are fantastic however.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4068062904

[christos]

I remember playing cannon fodder on my falcon and I never had that nautia effect you mention. Maybe it was the svga monitor or the faster processor but I am sure it played ok. Allthough I wasn't good at it.

[bod/STAX]

I've never played this on the ST so I thought I'd check it out. I've downloaded the .msa files from the D-Bug website, but I cannon get it to work. It starts loading and then I get a message that says "Insert disk with the the file:cyranoj.cf2 and press a key". I've done this with both disk images, but nothing works. Where am I going wrong?

(I'm using Saint BTW.)

[aktiv8]

I would try using Steem instead of saint - probably an emulation issue with Saint.

I've played the release version and beta test version on Steem v3.2 and it runs fine....

[bod/STAX]

Hmm... Still get the same problem with STEem.

[ggn]

Try steem with any decent tos (I use 1.62uk myself), and 4mb of ram. The ram bit is kind of essential

[aktiv8]

Try steem with any decent tos (I use 1.62uk myself), and 4mb of ram. The ram bit is kind of essential

Oops!

Forgot to mention you need 4meg in steem!

Can also confirm it works fine with all TOS versions from 1.0 through to 1.62

[bod/STAX]

The TOS I'm using is 1.62 U.K. and is from my real STE, also STEem is set to 4MB (I'm not that stupid) It's just as if it refuses point blank to recognize the file from the second .msa image (I.E. not forcing a media change).

[ggn]

Hmm, try copying all the files from the msa images to a virtual hard drive and run it off that?

George

[bod/STAX]

Ah, that's done it, thanks George.

Well, what can I say about this conversion? Shoddy, pure and simple.

There is really no excuse not to have the "recruitment" screen
and helecopter effect in-between stages as the ST could easily
do it as it'd just sounchip music playing in the background.

And the intro, what's happened there? Surely they could have written
a dma-loader to work with the soundtracker player as all they do is
load each picture from disk when needed and why reduce the colours
of the pictures down to 3?

Then there's the scrolling why vertically scroll the screen and screen
flip horizontally?

If they had spent a little more time on this these things could easily
have been included in the game, after all it's just a 68000 port and
then iron-out the glitches.

[ggn]

Well, just for the record, could you try to boot the images with tos 1.04 or even 1.02? My real ste (tos 1.06) sometimes had troubles identifying the correct disk when I changed them (indeed many of my disks had the fat trashed due to that).

As for the conversion: for the time I played it (when I had NO amiga and nothing else for that matter) it was very nice. Although I reckognised the scrolling shortcomings (and, being an ste user I always cried when developers refused to use its features) they weren't too bad actually.

If they wanted to include the missing stuff on sts they either had to spend lots of time trying to figure out how democoders (for example) managed to do amiga stuff on the st, or they had to hire an extra experienced st programmer for that.

Now, given the decaying sales figures of that era, I don't think either was a viable solution. Plus they wanted to cash in the amiga success as fast as they could.

One thing that sucks for sure is the intro pics. That's purely awful.

Anyway, in my eyes it's still good and "better than nothing"

George

[ijor]

Well, just for the record, could you try to boot the images with tos 1.04 or even 1.02? My real ste (tos 1.06) sometimes had troubles identifying the correct disk when I changed them (indeed many of my disks had the fat trashed due to that).

Media change detection is broken on all 1.X TOS versions. Atari changed the code on each version but never made it correctly until TOS 2.

Under emulation could be even worse. Try enabling Pasti and try write protecting the images.

[ggn]

Under emulation could be even worse. Try enabling Pasti and try write protecting the images.

No thanks ijor, I'll pass

[ggn]

BTW: for those who still having problems with our version of cannon fodder try this archive. Just unpack it anywhere and run steem.exe

[dsp56001]

Hi all,

A couple of years ago i could put my hands on Cannon Fooder for Atari ST.
My original disks came from a well-known french Store called "LA FNAC MULTIMEDIA" located in Paris.

The first Thing i noticed by reversing the game was something shocking:

Most of the sequences you see on The Amiga version are coded in the game but are never called.

At that time i showed this to the leader of our group and we decided to not release this game.
It would be pretty pointless to release that game now since it has been done many years ago but for anyone with decent skills regarding reverse-engineering it can be done.

So technically speaking the game is nearly identical to the Amiga Version, but many sequences are simply not called and never executed.

Corpo from Supremacy has done a 1 disk version but i don't know he was able to unlock the game.


Hope this helps.

[_KrISS_]

Hi all,

I extracted all files from Cannon Fodder disk images (Cynix release) and noticed that colours in the intro are too dark.

They look like following:

grab0001.png

And should look like this:

grab0005.png

It seems that following code which is located at offset $76e18 on the disk image, is causing issues with the colour palette:

Code: Select all

L033B:LSR.W     #1,D0 
      LSR.W     #1,D1 
      LSR.W     #1,D2 

There is also an image for the hill scene:

HILLS_result.png

Kris

[AtariZoll]

Hi all,
I extracted all files from Cannon Fodder disk images (Cynix release) and noticed that colours in the intro are too dark.

You should look original game first, Available at Atarimania.
As I remember, it is same too dark in original too. Maybe intentionally.

Interesting thread. Game is from 1993, and is made targeting 512KB ST only. Some said here 'lazy port' . That may be - nothing from using STE features, blitter.

"Most of the sequences you see on The Amiga version are coded in the game but are never called.
...
So technically speaking the game is nearly identical to the Amiga Version, but many sequences are simply not called and never executed. "

Looked YT video. There is lot of animated sequences there. That would be answer why is game on 3 DS floppies. I guess that there was some problem with playback, and they just skipped it. As skipped utilizing STE extra features

[_KrISS_]

You should look original game first, Available at Atarimania.
As I remember, it is same too dark in original too. Maybe intentionally.

I tried the original game from Atarimania.
It has the same issue. All the images in the intro are too dark.

[AtariZoll]

I tried the original game from Atarimania.
It has the same issue. All the images in the intro are too dark.

That's exactly what I said. But your post talked about some crack, so people may think that error is in crack self.

[AtariZoll]

OK. The real question here is, almost 10 full years from post of dsp56001: anyone knows more about those never played animated sequences in Atari ST version of Cannon Fodder ? Someone who could contact some of programmers ? Really interesting issue. But jumping in "reverse engineering" of something what works not is really not something what promises good chances for success without some extra huge work. At least some info about used animation format, what was the reason that playback is missing ...
Maybe stupid idea: they took sequences from Amiga version, but never finished playback code. Deadline was more important. And so Atari died

[EvilFranky]

I would like to see the scrolling sorted out as it's horrible in the ST version.