New application to find files

[Devilmarkus]

Yesterday arnoldemu and me had a crazy idea:
Why not search a folder full of files for every file which contains a special binary code (or string)
So I coded a little tool which does this.
You can use it for example to find all cpc+ games in a folder or in it's subfolders.
Just search for the ASIC unlock code:
ff 77 b3 51 a8 d4 62 39 9c 46 2b 15 8a

It will list all DSK, CPR or other files (BIN etc...) which contain this code sequence.

You can of course also search for a string. Just select "As String" and enter your search string (case sensitive here!)

You at least need the first search field filled.
When you also fill out the 2nd search field, all files are listed, which contain data from searchfield A and from B
When you fill the 3rd search field, too, all results are shown which contain data from A, B and C.

The tool also crawls through ZIP files and lists the sip entries, too...

When you click then on "Export" a txt file is stored in the FileCrawler's directory containing the result list.

Screenshot and download:

[Devilmarkus]

Funny result:
I tested the CPCGamesCD for all games which contain the ASIC unlock mechanism.

Then I found this one: "Bumpy's Arcade Fantasy"

Well, it dont use any visible + effect, but it unlocks ASIC... Crazy.
Perhaps someone could find out, why and if it does use + features?

You find the game here: http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=dsk&num=500

[fano]

Well, it dont use any visible + effect, but it unlocks ASIC... Crazy.
Perhaps someone could find out, why and if it does use + features?

Maybe because it was planned on + first and some code has not been removed (we can find sometimes some unexpected things in binaries like parts of source code for example)

BTW nice app 

[arnoldemu]

Funny result:
I tested the CPCGamesCD for all games which contain the ASIC unlock mechanism.

Then I found this one: "Bumpy's Arcade Fantasy"

Well, it dont use any visible + effect, but it unlocks ASIC... Crazy.
Perhaps someone could find out, why and if it does use + features?

You find the game here: http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=dsk&num=500

Nice find.

Yes it does unlock the features, but it doesn't seem to use anything.
I haven't looked at the code in detail just looked at the values in the debugger.
Nice find though.

[arnoldemu]

There is code in there to write to the plus palette, I don't see where it's used yet.
Is there an original version out there?

[Kris]

Nice tool !! Very easy to use and funny results as you mention above 

[Devilmarkus]

Nice tool !! Very easy to use and funny results as you mention above 

Thankyou. Yes the results are funny sometimes.

Our idea was to find in all CPC games the code to control the Amstrad SSA-1 speech synthesizer.
We wanted to find all games which use hardware speech.
But we did not find the proper code signature we should search for.
01 EE FB 49 exist in MANY games!!! 

[arnoldemu]

Thankyou. Yes the results are funny sometimes.

Our idea was to find in all CPC games the code to control the Amstrad SSA-1 speech synthesizer.
We wanted to find all games which use hardware speech.
But we did not find the proper code signature we should search for.
01 EE FB 49 exist in MANY games!!! 

We discovered the problem. The port is also shared by the PDS system, and it seems it's this code it finds mostly.
But also interesting to know the games developed with such a system.

However, i think the tool is still useful.

[arnoldemu]

I looked at Bumpy's Arcade Fantasy.
I found the unlock sequence.
there seems to be some code for checking if it's plus, and then it sets location 0037 to 1, but it has been removed it seems
But if you run the game, poke 0037, then you'll get plus colours. You may have to stop it just after it does the unlock sequence.
@273a should do it.
I don't know if it's a bad crack, or it was deliberately modified.
I see other parts of code which have lots of nops like some code has been removed after the game was built.
the check comes before the unlock sequence, so it must be doing something else to detect plus... (there are other ways without unlocking the features)

[arnoldemu]

Ok I think I found the patch:

271b should be: cd d4 bc
or also known as "KL FIND COMMAND".
Well I am sure this is what was in original.

before this is a LD HL,&2ABE which points to the text "GAM","E"+&80
so the code searches for the |GAME RSX (to be found in system rom), then if it's found, it then sets the flag and + mode will work.

[Devilmarkus]

Thanks to Kevin I tested the game with CPC+ palettes.
Sadly JavaCPC cannot show the hall of fame, but I used WinApe here for the last screenshot.

Well, a possibility is, that CHANY disabled the Plus-Features of this nice game, because his CRAPPY intro does not work on CRTC type 3.
We cannot approve this until we don't find a original dump of the game...

But here are my screenshots:

[Devilmarkus]

The titlescreen looks almost like the DOS version:
http://retropower.eu/dos.php?file=bumpy&boot=b
Cool...

[CPCLER]

Great find 

/CPCLER

[Devilmarkus]

Indeed!
Chany fucked up the game!
We managed to get a working dump of the original disk! (GAP protection)
This disk also has the + features!!! 

The original game uses 2 sides.

Edit: Attachments removed. The original dump is bad...
Dlfrsilver is working on it...

[redbox]

That's a seriously cool discovery, well done Devilmarkus and arnoldemu.


So I take it you have all the software images available on your HDD?  And that there are no further hidden Plus finds...?

[Devilmarkus]

Well I just checked all games on the CPCGamesCD.
Perhaps there exist more games and maybe 1 or 2 of them use + code...
Don't know...

[Kukulcan]

Sadly for  Bumpy's Arcade Fantasy don't work fine.
Title screen, menu, hi-score is perfect, but only start game = black screen.
I hope than other original dumped and run correctly    is funny to see CPC+ version.

[Kukulcan]

Bumpy's - Arcade Fantasy [CPC CPC+]


With the original dump, the memory is bad after choice of Platform Number


Need to poke this value for playing :


poke &8000, &C3
poke &8001, &03
poke &8002, &81
poke &8015, &42
poke &8016, &4A
poke &8018, &2F
poke &8029, &2F


but surely a problem of read protection ?

[RockRiver]

Do you think that this application could help us to find and extract z80 code for AY to make (and later play) *.AY files easer way than CPCSNIP or AYMakeR ?Sadly I'm a "traditional" score musician (only MIDI user) not coder... I want to compose on MIDI and then go to YM and AY to 8bit computers. I have to learn Z80 assembler??

[AMSDOS]

Sounds useful for looking up which games use firmware (not that very many would  ). Does this application support wildcards or will there be any plans to incorporate wildcards?

[Devilmarkus]

Edit: Attachments removed. The original dump is bad...
Dlfrsilver is working on it...

Any news here?