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Re: new DOS ports

Newsgroups comp.sys.apple2
Date 2015-11-03 20:38 -0800
References (12 earlier) <5af1e0eb-32e7-452e-8c31-9219fefc9caf@googlegroups.com> <ed4ba36a-cbd7-4dd3-85c9-34515f65a506@googlegroups.com> <84167619-1bba-47f1-b39a-ed3e8db9b4bb@googlegroups.com> <58c1e595-bda5-40f9-aef0-47bd60de3abf@googlegroups.com> <47e82294-9ec0-4445-9d5c-bdc60c517ca8@googlegroups.com>
Message-ID <e3e060e9-3aa2-4448-bb57-ddb4e413fda1@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject Re: new DOS ports
From qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com>

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> Wow, that's impressive! I'm curious what methods you used to got a 140k disk to fit in a 32k file if you don't mind sharing.

All of my file versions follow the same procedure - isolate the loaded regions and save them as files, compress the files with aPLib (hybrid LZ+RLE packer on the PC with good ratio - Bolo's title screen went from 8kb to ~900 bytes), and then write a wrapper that reads from the regular file system and unpacks the files on demand.  My aPLib unpacker and DOS filesystem parser are freely available from my website.

Depending on how much memory is available for the wrapper usually determines which OSes I can support - DOS needs around 5 pages, ProDOS needs around 3 pages, unless I get very creative about how consecutive the pages have to be.  So, Karateka will probably only ever be a ProDOS version; Goonies might get a DOS version eventually.  If there's a need for write support (e.g. Swashbuckler, Aquatron), then ProDOS is the way to go, because it doesn't need more pages, but DOS would require another 3.

In the case of Mr. Do, my original file version used 7 individual files.  For the single-file version, I just appended them and changed the wrapper to put them directly into aux memory.  Start-up is really slow now because it's loading so much before it displays anything, but after that it runs fairly well.  There is a very unattractive transition between the demo and the title which I don't have space to fix, but otherwise it plays like the original.

I don't keep the wrapper sources around, since they are specific to one game each, and once I think that I'm done, I discard them.  The difficulty arises when I get a special request after that point, as in this case, which requires me to reverse-engineer my own stuff. :-)

I have detailed descriptions of some other conversions (The Toy Shop, Prince of Persia, and Conan) on my website (see the Apple II section), which might be of interest to you.

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Thread

Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-08-21 19:23 -0700
  Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-08-22 05:08 +0200
    Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-08-21 22:26 -0700
      Re: new DOS ports Antoine Vignau <antoine.vignau@laposte.net> - 2015-08-21 23:51 -0700
      Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-08-29 21:19 -0700
        Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-08-30 00:22 -0700
          Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-08-30 06:41 -0700
            Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-08-30 09:31 -0700
              Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-08-31 14:58 -0700
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-02 13:11 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-11-02 23:01 +0100
                Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-11-03 10:03 +0100
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-03 16:20 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports bpiltz@gmail.com - 2015-11-02 15:16 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-03 16:23 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2015-11-03 16:40 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-03 16:59 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2015-11-03 18:15 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-03 20:38 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2015-11-04 00:05 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-04 08:29 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports sicklittlemonkey <nick.westgate@gmail.com> - 2015-11-04 13:31 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-11-05 03:14 +0100
                Re: new DOS ports gids.rs@sasktel.net - 2015-11-05 16:55 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-11-06 02:00 +0100
                Re: new DOS ports gids.rs@sasktel.net - 2015-11-06 14:34 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2015-11-07 02:19 +0100
                Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 21:24 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-11-18 01:34 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-18 08:22 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-18 10:08 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports J. Random Hacker <jrh@fake.com> - 2015-11-18 12:34 -0700
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-18 22:49 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-11-19 09:45 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports Jorma Honkanen <jormahonkanen@gmail.com> - 2015-11-20 02:12 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2015-12-13 07:57 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2016-01-01 08:49 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2016-01-05 20:29 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com> - 2016-01-06 07:15 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports "Michael 'AppleWin Debugger Dev'" <michael.pohoreski@gmail.com> - 2016-01-07 15:39 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2016-01-08 08:29 -0800
                Re: new DOS ports bpiltz@gmail.com - 2015-11-03 18:04 -0800

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