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Credits :
Intro used in this crack:
Scrolltext and other text in this release : ()
Download :
Look for downloads on external sites:
Pokefinder.org
Production Info
Submitted by Pitcher on 25 May 2018
# Background on the original used
Ok, this game was cracked from a real, original disk, brought from e-bay. Most of the preparatory work was done from a random d64, found on a dark corner on the web, but all data you see is extracted from the real thing. We hope this shuts up a few previous critics.
# Cracking
Let's be honest - this was a bitch! It might not look like much, but it was quite a feat to do it.
A) It's loader uses $80 byte sized "sectors" with a two byte index. Also the consecutive indexes jump over track 18, thereby invalidating any easy mapping between index and track+sector over index 2cb or thereabout.
B) The same data could go to different places in memory, depending on where in the game it is accessed. This as the data has no load address. Sometimes the load address is set for a file, and sometimes it merely continues filling data where the last file left off. So it's imperative to use the games own pointers before load and updating it after load. So using backward depacking is not really an option.
C) The same sector could be part of different files. Sometimes it loaded index x, with the length of 2, and sometimes index x+1, length 5. I needed to make that into two files, as there is no convenient way to handle crunched files properly given the context unless each permutation was handled as a separate file.
D) The first file of a game section was called with different length for the respective calls. I presume the last sector is init data. For example loading sector x with the length of 0a for init, and length 09 for no init. I needed to make that into two files.
E) The total number of unique combinations of index + length is well over 200 for Side 1 (Level 1,2 and 3). A 1541 can only fit 144 files. So we needed to find a structure to join files or get rid of files. We have found a reasonably smart way to do this. Having said this, loading the files referenced in the last few sectors will be slow given the time it scans the directory to find them before the load. Multidisk IFFL, with over 128 files. We skipped that effort and went for filebased.
F) This one also is stored on two disk sides.
We have to be honest; the original was bootable from both disksides - that is a feature we removed. Size wise it's fully possible to fit both disk sides on one side. We'd need to add disk side to the addressing, which isn't there today but would be doable. However it's just that there is no way to fit that many files on a side, without some serious tricks. Moving files to RAM has been done, but that trick will not take you all the way to fitting everything else on one disk side.
# Complete
Given that a previous crack in the series sparked a CSDB discussion over missing loading graphics, I have added that ugly piece of picture. We call that repugnant bad excuse for graphics "Ode to Groepaz". I hope you feel the game got a lot better by this.
# We hereby conclude our releases of the Tink! series of games. There are no more known to us. |
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