Amber-Remix

Resources for decoding Amiga Amberstar data files, including Hippel-CoSo sound modules.

Building and running

Make sure that the Amiga Amberstar data files are in the data/ subdirectory. Their names should be in all-caps (AMBERDEV.UDO etc.). Alternatively, use the --data parameter to specify their location.

To compile and run, the easiest interface is the Rust cargo tool:

• cargo run: Map demo, allows walking through first-person dungeons
• cargo run song $X: Plays the in-game song ${X} (no looping)
• cargo run strings: Dump out all text strings
• cargo run gfx-demo: Shows some graphics
• cargo run list-pixmaps: enumerate most in-game graphics
• cargo run list-palettes: enumerate most in-game palettes, also lists their default palettes
• cargo run extract-pixmap <name> [palette-name]: Extract pixmap to a png; palette-name must be specified for pixmaps that have no default palette

Why?

I wanted a zero-stakes project to learn the basics of Rust, and this seemed fun. No promises as to whether this will or will not go anywhere.

Status

• German/English versions: should work equally well

Very much WIP. The following bits work to some extent:

• Data: Container format decoding is fully supported
• Text: String extraction seems to work
• In-Game Songs: Can play and debug the Hippel-CoSo songs (not the intro/outro ones)
• Graphics: Decoding for most graphics works (fonts, UI icons are missing, but I'm not sure I'll want to add them)
• Maps: Get loaded and can be traversed

The following get partially decoded but don't do anything yet

• Game Scripts
• Items

Decoding status and documentation

• Please check the Ambermoon file formats documentation for details
• The table below lists what this project decodes

File	Supported
AMBERDEV.UDO	songs and some tables
AUTOMAP.AMB
BACKGRND.AMB	yes
CHARDATA.AMB	partially (missing some attributes)
CHESTDAT.AMB
CODETXT.AMB	yes
COL_PALL.AMB	yes
COM_BACK.AMB	yes
EXTRO.UDO
F_T_ANIM.ICN	not incorporated yet
ICON_DAT.AMB	yes
INTRO_P.UDO
INTRO.UDO
LABBLOCK.AMB	yes
LAB_DATA.AMB	yes
MAP_DATA.AMB	mostly
MAPTEXT.AMB	yes
MON_DATA.AMB
MON_GFX.AMB	yes
PARTYDAT.SAV
PICS80.AMB	yes
PUZZLE.ICN
PUZZLE.TXT
SAMPLEDA.IMG	yes
TACTIC.ICN	not incorporated yet
TH_LOGO.UDO
WARESDAT.AMB

Links

• Ambermoon resources and format specification: https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon

Hacking

Check src/util.rs for integration with the Rust logging infrastructure. To enable logging for a specific module, such as datafiles::map, you can set:

RUST_LOG="warn,amber_remix::datafiles::map=info" cargo run demo

Acknowledgements

This work is based by documentation collected from the following sources:

• Pyrdacor's collection of documentation for Ambermoon and Amberstar
• Pyrdacor's collection of AmberMoon documentation: [https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon]
• Heikki Orsila's UADE, specifically m68k assembly implementations of Jochen Hippel's sound formats
• Christian Corti's Flod 4.1 player for Jochen Hippel's 4-voice formats
• Jurie Horneman for the commented Atari ST Ambermoon assembly code