Loom TG16 Extract

Kirben · Post by **Kirben** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:44 pm

Kaminari wrote:As SanguineHearts noted, DumpCD only seems to work on a real DOS config (which I can't verify). For some reason, running the program through NTVDM or DOSBox won't produce a valid ISO.

DumpCD works fine under DOSBox, if CD/DVD drive is set to ASPI mode, at least under Windows XP.

Kaminari wrote:Besides, I should let you know that DumpCD is now considered deprecated in the PCE community since the recent release of TurboRip, which will produce perfect rips of PC Engine mixed mode CDs even under NT systems. Someone might want to have a look at it and adapt extract_loom_tg16 accordingly.

Switching to a Windows specific utility wouldn't be a good idea, it would make extraction more difficult on other systems.

ssdsa wrote:However, when I try to extract the *.LFL files from the Japanese "CODE_02.ISO" file, all I get is this error message:
D:\>extract_loom_tg16.exe CODE_02.ISO
ERROR: ISO contents not recognized!!

No support for the Japanese release so far.

ssdsa wrote:Anyway, ScummVM detects the English *.LFL files as "Loom (PC-Engine/English)". When I start the game in ScummVM, I get the difficulty selection screen (just plain white text on black background), and after that the game intro starts. All I see is some white text on black background, no other graphics, and no sound. The game seems to hang after that, but maybe it's just running fine and you just can't see any graphics, items or characters. So it's clearly a work in progress.

Can only explore the first room, but isn't anything to see. As only the subtitles are shown at this point.

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 2:45 pm

Kirben wrote:DumpCD works fine under DOSBox, if CD/DVD drive is set to ASPI mode, at least under Windows XP.

Ah, thanks for the heads-up. I've been using DOSBox in IOCTL mode for ages. Switching the cdrom flag to ASPI did the trick. I don't want to be the guy who will have to write the PCE ripping tutorial in the ReadMe :)

Indeed, the game is stuck to the first room without any graphics nor music (soundtrack ripped in Ogg). But moving the cursor with the mouse for the first time ever in this version of the game was very touching. God, how I hated the sluggish pad!

noize · Post by **noize** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:51 pm

For anyone wanting to dump under Vista.
I got dumpcd to work under dosbox with cdrom set to aspi.
Frogaspi installed as aspi layer.

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 5:51 pm

What is the current status of the Loom PCE support?
I've never played loom through completely, and cant wait to play this 'directors cut' version

is the current issue something to do with how the resources are packed?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 6:54 pm

sanguinehearts wrote:What is the current status of the Loom PCE support?

It starts, but there is no sound and - apart from the text - no graphics.

Kirben · Post by **Kirben** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:53 am

sanguinehearts wrote:is the current issue something to do with how the resources are packed?

The current issue is the exact image format of the backgrounds, costumes and objects are unknown.

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:19 pm

Thanks for responding,
Im really looking forward to this to be supported fully,
is there anything that other users with a copy of this game and a bit of spare time can do to help out?

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:17 pm

David Shadoff, Charles McDonald or Neill Corlett might be of some help in cracking the picture format.

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:56 pm

Hey,
Just thought I would revive this thread, Ive just purchased a Japanese PC-Engine version of this game, and as such revived my interest in seeing this game running.
I re-read the thread and saw that there are graphics issues stopping this game from progressing,
I also noticed I was able to view tiles from my dumped ISO in a program called tmod2,it comes with some source code however i think this may just be plugins of some type.
http://pages.interlog.com/~daves/pce_dev/plugin.html
I assume this helps in no way as to discovering the way that the TG16 SCUMM engine reads this data?
Perhaps Im wrong. is this Graphics data already separated into the lfl files accordingly using the extract tool?

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:10 pm

More interesting than my previous post Ive just found out about an emulator called Mednafen which contains support for PCE games, it runs loom with a few glitches, however it contains a debugger, with the ability to set breakpoints,
Now im just playing around with this, and dont really have a massive insight into what I should be doing but It seems to me that this debugger could be used to find the interpretor

Ive noticed that the PC engine loads a screen which asks the user to press run, I assume this is its OS, now when run is pressed the game is booted, would it be sensible to assume that a breakpoint could be set to acknowledge when the run button has been pressed? thus leading to the start location of the interpretor? or maybe a breakpoint on some of the characters(tiles) on Loom's difficulty selection screen? such as the first character printed 'S', Its easy enough to view the contents of the graphics memory at the time as well which conveniently gives addresses for the tiles. Ive just done a quick test on the 'S' and the breakpoint halts the execution right after the run button has been pressed.

am I on the right lines?
Im just assuming that a proper disassembly can be done to work out the differences once the interpretor has been found because of an old message I have from Kirben.
Thanks
Rob

Might I add, theres a ton of documentation on the following site, Im yet to see whether I understand it, theres stuff about the pce background format and the picture format though
http://pages.interlog.com/~daves/pce_info/info.html
meh.. might be useful

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:55 pm

I already mentioned Dave's site about a year ago. He's obviously a very knowledgeable developer about PC Engine hacking (he helped a lot in the translation of Ys 4, Xak 3, Maison Ikkoku, etc -- including graphic modifications).

The starting screen you see when powering the console is the BIOS (System Card 3). It's not part of the game, but I believe it manages the font system (at least the kanji and kana characters on both Japanese and US machines).

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:47 pm

I actually discussed this with Kirben, He's reccomended that I look directly into the scumm resource files, particularly the backgrounds and object images, I have a few isolated smap and oi dumps I know the PC Engine uses a 4BPP planar format, Its just a process of trying to replicate how the format is interpreted by the original PCE Loom interpretor.

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:07 pm

Bumping this thread due to the huge amounts of progress made on this game by Tobias and Kirben. Anybody who is interested will be thrilled to find that the game is almost playable.

Missing elements are the graphical display of the distaff and sound effects.

anybody looking at the current commits to the ScummVM engine would be incredibly excited about the work on this game. Its the last bastion of the Lucasarts Scumm engine based games.

Here is a massive thank you to Tobias and Kirben for their work on this game.

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:12 pm

Wow! It's been around five years since I sent my US copy to Ender. I'm sure looking forward to it. Will it also support the Japanese version?

I'm also wondering about ripping the CD soundtrack. How is the track layout handled by ScummVM? The CD is a custom mixed mode, with the first track being an audio warning, the second track being the data track, and the following track being audio (except for the last track which is essentially a data dupe).

Does ScummVM expect the warning track to be named "track01.xxx" and the third track "track02.xxx"?

sanguinehearts · Post by **sanguinehearts** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:20 pm

The Japanese version plays, however the charset is not supported yet.

Does ScummVM expect the warning track to be named "track01.xxx" and the third track "track02.xxx"?

that worked for me.