Ripping graphics/sprites from Brataccas

[juncmodule]

I am struggling to rip sprites from Brataccas. So far I have attempted two methods.

1. I have succesfully decompiled Brataccas.

The following contains the originals and Assembly versions:
http://www.juncmodule.com/juncAGS/BRATACCAS.zip

With that done, I have one problem. I do not know 68K assembly

2. I have been playing around with ADR Ripper and managed to discover that the sprites are in fact in the file MAIN.

However, I am unable to locate them in a non-distorted state with ADR Ripper.

I have started threads on two other forums I frequent in an attempt to find other options. Initially, I thought learning disassembly was the ONLY way to do this. Then someone recommeded trying to rip the graphics.

So this is my plea to anyone who has the time and willingness to assist me in my little endeavor. I only would like the graphics, I do not actually want to reverse engineer the entire thing. If anyone even has some more information or programs they might recommend, it would be appreciated.

Here are links to the threads in other forums I posted:
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php ... adid=10261

http://www.mega-tokyo.com/forum/index.p ... eadid=5068

Thank you for your time.

later,
-junc

PS: If this is in the wrong forum could a moderator please move it to the correct one. My apologies if it is.

[Perihelion]

I know of a different approach, that will of course be a hassle if you want ALL the graphics and the result is "analoge" rathen than "digital". Just go into an emulator and screengrab the scenes, then edit them in Photoshop or simmilar program
If you want the pictures in atari format that's no problem since there are many picture converter programs out there.

I've ripped graphics for my (two) atari comics this way and it works if it doesen't have to be super exact and if it's not to much.

[juncmodule]

Well, first of all let me say hello and thank you. I am using the tutorials you wrote to learn assembly.

I actually tried the screenshot route. Unfortunately Brataccas contains MANY Non player characters and it would just be near impossible. Also, I do want all of the graphics. I honestly think learning assembly would be easier!

You wouldn't by chance "know" anyone that would be willing to do this for me? I understand the chances of finding someone are pretty slim...but, I've got to ask.

By the time I'm done learning assembly I assume I will have to write some sort of extractor or something and then when that is all done I will be 20 years older and not even have an interest in this...blah.

For the time being I guess I'm just learning 68k ASM to learn it. If you have any recommendations for a way to "con" someone into doing this for me, please let me know.

Oh yeah, I'm not sure how old your tuts are, but just to make sure: is devpac still the best Atari ST assembler? I like it so far.

later,
-junc

[Perihelion]

At least, learning assembly is much more giving than the repetetitive task of just screenshotting everything!

The best way to "con" a hacker into anything is to appeal to his ego or give him a challenge. Bruno once got me working a week straight with the simple line "Try to beat dis Warrior Munk", oh, of course the line was accompanied by some hopping sprites as well

And I don't know of anyone that would have a special interest in ripping graphics for you ... Actually I know very little of this myself, but my guess is that you'll have to try and look in the program for a place where they paint the graphics (accessing memory $7800 for example, or moving data into a area about 32000 bytes big) and then see where that data came from. Besides, they may have packed their graphics in strange ways making it all even harder.

Devpac 3 is a safe bet forever I think, no one'll do something better. Of course, working with various windows program in collaboration with this could work out better in the end but so far, I edit text in windows and compile in Devpac under STEem. You can check the date on the tutorials to find out how old they are, the better part were written in 2002 I think so as atari texts go they're pretty new.
I don't think I'll contine with them though, but I'm not sure, at the moment I'm completely into html/javascript/asp.

Do mail or post any questions though!!

[juncmodule]

The best way to "con" a hacker into anything is to appeal to his ego or give him a challenge.

A challenge...from what I've heard about this game it would be. My understanding is that the people that cracked it had a heck of a time.

Also, there is the game itself.

They didn't make games like this then and they rarely do now. How often in a game can you follow a NPC around during his daily routine? This isn't even done is GTA3, with all it's super freedom, characters appear and disappear from the screen at random. Just understanding how the programmers achieved this in 1984 would be worth the challenge of dismanteling this underappreciated masterpiece. Then there are graphics. The height of the on screen sprites was unheard of at the time. The game was praised for it's great graphics when it only had 4 colors in 1984, even when there were 16 available. My understanding is that the sprites had to be double up, one on top of another in order to achive the height. Also, there is the screen resolution. How many games were 640x400 in 1984? (Granted this was done at 640x200, just stretched, and then there is the pesky 4 color thing). And some of the graphics were done by none other than Roger Dean.

I have a site dedicated to the game here: http://brataccas.juncmodule.com

On the down side a lot of people cursed this game for it's control problems. They were terrible, until you got used to them anyway.

Besides, who wouldn't want the challenge of reverse engineering the first Psygnosis title, the game that brought down Imagine, the legendary Spectrum Mega game, the notorious Bandersnatch...

*cue dramatic music*



Thanks again,
-junc

[lightman83]

The following contains the originals and Assembly versions:
http://www.juncmodule.com/juncAGS/BRATACCAS.zip

With that done, I have one problem. I do not know 68K assembly

Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a big difference between assembly and disassembly. What you have isn't going to be worth much unless you can confirm that it can be RE-assembled into a working program.

[juncmodule]

Well, what I have is readable. The first few lines do in fact initialize the Atari ST graphics. So, while you may be right about it not being able to be assembled into a running program, it wouldn't do much for me to reassemble it. I don't think it works that way does it? My plan is just to attempt to understand how graphics are displayed to the screen within the program. Reassembling it wouldn't tell me that. I believe you should be able to extract enough information from the files in that link to do what needs to be done.

I may be completely wrong here. I've asked around to a lot of skilled people and none of them have said anything about testing it for reassembly. They have all just pushed toward learning how it displays the graphics.

eh,
-junc

[Curieux]

Hi!

Later is better than never.
I suppose that may interest the author even a few years later. Just as Brataccas do interest many people many years after its release.

If really there is only one big file on the disk (I did not check it), the graphics are mixed with the executable.
It may be possible to extract them with a visual tool, especially because the palette of colors does not change along the game. The problem is to know the width of the sprites.

Personally, I'm more interested in understanding all the game structure, including sound & gameplay, as decompiling it and understanding will give the key to all aspects of the game.

Although I know 68000 assembler and game programming techniques (of the era), I must admit it will be a very tough and long work to do that.
An aim could be to build a new version, an adaptation more playable and bug-free of the good old version, under Windows.

As mentioned above, in order to understand this program, it would be an help to be able to re-compile the assembler source (easier than trying to debug the executable code). But I'm not sure it's possible, although I already done that kind of modification for another program (in the past): k-seka, an assembler, decompiler & linker program.

Anybody has more technical informations about Brataccas ?

Bye

[Mug UK]

Unfortunately that link is now dead .. did anyone get the file downloaded and can attach it as local file?

[Curieux]

Unfortunately that link is now dead .. did anyone get the file downloaded and can attach it as local file?

What link ?
The decompiled file is available here (from the author of the first post):
http://brataccas.com/Page28.cfm

Is it the file you are looking for ?

[Mug UK]

The links in the old posts above from 2004 onwards are dead - but these aren't.

http://brataccas.com/downloads/Brataccas.zip - the game

http://brataccas.com/downloads/BratAssembly.zip - the assembly source code file

Cheers for the updated link and welcome aboard.

[juncmodule]

Thank you for the interest. If you are skilled enough to pull this off then I would certainly be willing to financially compensate you for providing me with the extracted graphics. Unfortunately, I still lack the skill to do it myself. I do still have an interest in recreating the game (or a sequel) with the extracted graphics.

If you do go ahead with the project (or if anyone else does) my plans for the extracted graphics would be to host them on the brataccas site for anyone to use and, of course, provide the disassembler/extractor with credit.

I will go ahead and put out a flat offer of $100.00 out right now. If someone decides to take it on however I would ask that you contact me first. Any work done without doing so will not receive compensation from me. Sorry if that sounds rude, just trying to cover my butt

Hopefully someone will do it for fun and love of the game...and money

thanks,
-junc

[Mug UK]

Just tried one ripper tool and couldn't get very far as the game is in medium resolution and this ripper assumes the screens/graphics will all be in low resolution. Could be wrong though - wouldn't be the first time Ripper is attached below - copy the MAIN & RIPPER.TTP into a separate disk or onto a h/drive partition under STEEM to see if you can get any further.

Code: Select all

                                                             tm
       *******   ******  *******   *******   *******  *******
       **    **    **    **    **  **    **  **       **    **
       **    **    **    **    **  **    **  **       **    **
       *******     **    *******   *******   *****    *******
       **    **    **    **        **        **       **    **
       **    **    **    **        **        **       **    **
       **    **  ******  **        **        *******  **    **
                                                              v3.1

      written by Steffen Fischer with improvements by Till Bubeck



Instructions:
-------------

Remember the old times when picture ripping was done by using a screen-
saver and pressing ALT-HELP ? But it became very difficult because every-
body did his own keyboard-routine and that trick didn't work anymore.
Now here's a new way of ripping...

RIPPER just works on from TOS 1.4 (Rainbow tos), but if there's any interest,
there will be a version for all TOS-releases.


"How to install RIPPER?"

Format a disk and copy the file "RIPPER.TTP" in the main-directory of drive A.
Start "INSTALL.TOS" and write the bootsector on the disk.

To start RIPPER just reset your machine and boot from your RIPPER disk.
(There's another way to start it, but that follows later).


"How to rip graphics?"

Load the program you want to rip graphics from. Press RESET (if possible)
and start RIPPER. But some programs clear the whole memory after you've
pressed RESET.
You can also start RIPPER.TTP and type in the file you want to search
through.



Now here's the keyboard control for RIPPER:

HELP     - if you need help...

F1       - search for palette (forward).
SHIFT F1 - the same but backwards.

F2       - set planes (1,2,3,4)

F3       - Add 16 to width of picture
SHIFT F3 - the same but decrease by 16 pixels

F4       - Add 2 to modulo
SHIFT F4 - Sub 2 from modulo

F5       - Set x-Pos +width
SHIFT F5 - Set X-Pos -width

F10      - Save current picture as a NEOchrome file.


Short description:
------------------

SEARCH PALETTE:

This option will try to search for a palette where 16 values are all
valid colors (000-777).


SET PLANES:

Sometimes pictures are in less than 16 colors (1 plane fonts,...)


SET WIDTH:

Some graphics are not 320 pixels wide (like shapes, etc.). Just try it out.


SET MODULO:

Imagine that: There's a shape with 16 pixels width. There are 4 words of
graphics and one word mask. If you don't need the mask, just set modulo at
a value of 2 (bytes) and the last 2 bytes of the scanline will be skipped.


SET X-POS:

If you want to rip shapes or a font and you want some columns in one
picture, just use X-POS and you can work in different columns.


SAVE:

Saves in NEOchrome format. Just enter the filename.

[NiceGuyUK]

Or you could do your ripping in Windows, with Retrospec's ripper which has an Atari bitplane mode http://retrospec.sgn.net/game-links.php?link=gfxrip

Make sure you read the readme for all the key commands. I'm sure Mr Mug will find hundreds of uses for this one...

[Mug UK]

After a 10 minute play around with that ripper, I got this far You can make out some of the lettering for the logo (at least that's what it looks like to me!)

Someone with a bit more patience (and skill!) could probably take those parameters and get a lot further than me!

[juncmodule]

Not sure if this will make things easier or not but I uploaded the actual ST files here:

http://www.brataccas.com/downloads/BrataccasST.zip

This includes both the "MAIN" file and "BRATACCA.PRG" file.

later,
-junc

[NiceGuyUK]

As its a cracked game, I suspect its also been packed. I loaded it up in Steem then dumped out a memoery snapshot to play with. Don't forget to put it in ST mode and play with the various widths, bitplane alignments and pages etc. Like Mug said, takes some patience but may pay off in the longterm

[Curieux]

Hi!

Yesterday, I wrote a small program in order to display graphics of the MSA image (which is not compressed).

As you can see on my screen shot, it is really difficult to extract graphics from this game.
Another difficulty is: there are 2 modes in this game: 640x400 in 2 colors AND 640x200 in 4 colors.

My screen shot shows a rather successful attempt to display some sprites in 2 colors.
But I can assure you there is not much to see in the rest of the file.

I think the only way to extract all artwork, music & gameplay is to understand the decompiled 'source' code. But it's a full-time job!

I tried to contact one of the authors or of Brataccas or director of Psygnosis, Ian Hetherington, at RealTimeWorlds, requiring its help. For the moment, I have no reply.
I suppose an old member of Psygnosis could have kept some sources of Brataccas. It would be the best way to understand and re-build the game.

Any idea of other contacts ?

[juncmodule]

This is the progress that I made with the program mentioned before. You can actually see a few things from the game. The "The End" text that appears when you beat the game and one of the wall hangings. Hopefully something can be done with these numbers and results. I really have no idea what all of that means or it is useful at all. This all comes from the file "MAIN" of course. There are other points where I can see a few characters from the game as well.

screenshot.png

later,
-junc

[Mug UK]

You got further than I did Junc At least you've got a recognisable Psygnosis logo in your screen dump. What needs to happen next is for the dc.b segments inside the source code to be replaced by incbin's when a recognisable bit of data is found (e.g. work out the offices for the Owl logo). Painstaking work

[juncmodule]

What needs to happen next is for the dc.b segments inside the source code to be replaced by incbin's when a recognisable bit of data is found

That doesn't sound bad.

Painstaking work

I could handle this and certainly be willing to do it if I knew how to do it. If someone were to set me up with the process then I could just start working through it. Even if no one is currently willing to take on the larger project of programming an editor I could at least get this tedious portion out of the way. If it is just a matter of programming an editor in C++ I could eventually do that (I know a tiny bit of C++). I imagine having that tedious part out of the way would also intice others to get involved. It might even inspire me enough to follow through with the rest of the extraction process.

I think the only way to extract all artwork, music & gameplay is to understand the decompiled 'source' code. But it's a full-time job!

Just so you know, there is no music to extract. As far as extracting gameplay is concerned I doubt any would be all that useful. Perhaps learning the paths that NPCs take and things such as that would be useful. I believe that I know just about everything there is to know about gameplay. All that really leaves is extracting graphics which involves understanding how the graphics are displayed which, I believe, is the most interesting thing about the "programming" side of Brataccas. The graphics were very much ahead of the times, especially if you consider the duration of development.

I tried to contact one of the authors or of Brataccas or director of Psygnosis, Ian Hetherington, at RealTimeWorlds, requiring its help. For the moment, I have no reply.
I suppose an old member of Psygnosis could have kept some sources of Brataccas. It would be the best way to understand and re-build the game.

I have attempted to contact Mr. Hetherington in the past as well, unsuccessfully. He is one of the few members of Psygnosis that I was able to find contact information about. I believe you will find him of little use on the programming end of things, I believe he is more of a businessman and investor than programmer. David H. Lawson is who you really want to get into contact with, as he was the lead programmer, I think. John Gibson is another person that would be worth contacting. The author of the theme song contacted me on my blog at one point but all he has is a tape backup of the music and he was in no way connected with the programming end of things.

later,
-junc

[Curieux]

I believe there are two possible ways to build a next version:
a. Rip everything from the game, including its gameplay.
Difficult, but respects all aspects of the original game (which can be improved).
b. Rip only graphics, and build a new game.
Easier but more an imitation than a conversion (reproducing A.I. will not offer any guaranty of fidelity).

For the second solution, we can rip graphics:
1. In the binary, but it will be very difficult to identify all sprites.
2. Capturing screens while playing, easier and error-free.

. . .

By the way, I tried gfxrip, but it crashed under Vista.

. . .

Personally, I never ended Brataccas, due to its bugs and to problems with the player movements.
Maybe that's why I see a simple conversion (solution b) as a difficulty.
Somebody already ended it ? (and can display all rooms and players)

[Mug UK]

You tried hacking some kind of cheat into it so you can finish the game?

[juncmodule]

I have completed Brataccas more times than I can count. Mapped it numerous times. I pretty much know the game, gameplay wise, inside and out. There are simply too many NPCs to make ripping it an "easy" solution. It has always been my intention to go back and get the graphics using this method if no one ever picked up creating an editor for it. After 5 years of no replies to this thread I assumed that was the route I would end up taking. Things have been really promising in this thread though. I must admit however, I expect it will lead to no more than my renewed interest in the project. Which may be enough.

As far as recreating the game, I am confident that I can do this in a 1:1 version or as a sequel. I have experience developing adventure games and this game would translate rather easily. The only real challenge might be sword fighting but personally I think that would be a lot of fun to program.

By the way, finishing the game simply involves going to Kol Worpt and Commander Stopps offices, taking the evidence, and walking through the starting transporter. Pretty simple to beat. It is the exploring and interacting that kept me playing this game for years. Once you master the mouse control it is incredibly fluid and natural, but it is quite a challenge to master.

later,
-junc

[SoLo2]

Hello!


This seems a good idea,
Brataccas looked like a
very good game to me.
And had very good graphics
with big sprites.

Are you remaking the game?

Other games graphics are
also interesting for study...
Taito, Bitmap Brothers, are
the most common.


Greetings,
SoLo2 (BITS)