I was browsing this : http://cpccrackers.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4:french-crackers&catid=1:french&Itemid=62 (http://cpccrackers.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4:french-crackers&catid=1:french&Itemid=62) (warning: music is impossible to stop; welcome to '95!) and I was thinking about the first times I saw cracktros on CPC games...
At first I didn't understand what I was seeing, really, since I knew next to nothing about the cracking scene and my ST lay far into the future. But I was mesmerised... Colours! Great tunes! Moving... things! Graphic equalizers! Weird messages in French! This game must be goood! :D
I think CPC cracktros never reached the heights of c64 ones, either in quality or quantity, but still I spent lots of time watching them... now to find some Speccy ones :)
My interpretations of cracktros was somewhat the same.
I never associated them with the fact that it was pirate software. To me it was like the game had been given a stamp of recognition from the elite, saying "This game is approved by us the elite, as an awesome game you definitely has to play!" :)
Don't think I ever saw any CPC cracktros when I was young. All my software was legal. Well...'cept for a few I had copied myself using the dual tape decks of my dad's stereo. I didn't really see cracktros til I got an Amiga. The one I remember most was on my copy of Superfrog and it starts off with the word Crystal in very nice looking pixel art and then a simple 3D spinning cube of pale yellow and green I think, while the chiptune of Comic Bakery played. I liked it so much I often put it in just to watch and listen to it. I did eventually buy the official release of Superfrog (because it was a fave of mine and I like to make sure I give money for games and other software I get a lot of use out of) and while I discarded three of the four disks of the pirated version I kept that disk 1 around just for the cracktro.
I've noticed a few CPC ones when running disk files downloaded off sites through emulators but I haven't yet come across one that seemed massively memorable to me but I'd like to see more.
The JLCS cracktro was pretty cool with its huge hardware scroll and CRTC reflection. Always had me wondering how he coded it when I first saw it.
And if course it introduced me to the "scene" which got me interested in demos.
how do you stop the music ? ???
QuoteDon't think I ever saw any CPC cracktros when I was young. All my software was legal.
cracktro was mostly a disk thing...
You may not waste memory or loading time for a 64K tape game with a fancy cracktro that could render the game not loadable due to the RAM limitation and the long and painfull method of loading.
on disk on the other hand, to load a cracktro was jsut a matter of seconds and then you could switch to the proper game's loading in less than a minute.
Most cracktros weren't memorable, Demo-wise speaking...
Was mostly some scrolltext or starfield or some raster effects... not pure piece of graphical art.
but the remembering of those can activate some retrotears to those who had them on some great games.
QuoteThis game is approved by us the elite, as an awesome game you definitely has to play!
Lolnope... somecracked games were pure shitstains... but of course you wouldn't copy them, or won't keep them...
3" floppies were expensives so you were always choosing wisely how to use them... well sometimes not That wisely. :D
Funnily, the legal compilations had some sort of cracktro : the "menu"... some were fancier than others. :)
Quote from: MacDeath on 03:25, 15 February 14
how do you stop the music ? ???
You can't !
But what you can do is open 3 or 4 tabs on different subpage and enjoy what a badly programed CPC-AY could do :laugh:
Quote from: MacDeath on 03:25, 15 February 14
how do you stop the music ? ???
Press PLAY then any key...
Quote from: MacDeath on 03:25, 15 February 14
how do you stop the music ? ???
cracktro was mostly a disk thing...
You may not waste memory or loading time for a 64K tape game with a fancy cracktro that could render the game not loadable due to the RAM limitation and the long and painfull method of loading.
on disk on the other hand, to load a cracktro was jsut a matter of seconds and then you could switch to the proper game's loading in less than a minute.
Ah, of course. Though I did have a tape that had a custom built menu on it similar to the ones you'd get on an Amstrad Action covertape but fancier looking with scrolling sprite fonts and such. Can't remember what it was about.
Quote from: MacDeath on 03:25, 15 February 14
how do you stop the music ?
cracktro was mostly a disk thing...
You may not waste memory or loading time for a 64K tape game with a fancy cracktro that could render the game not loadable due to the RAM limitation and the long and painfull method of loading.
on disk on the other hand, to load a cracktro was jsut a matter of seconds and then you could switch to the proper game's loading in less than a minute.
Most cracktros weren't memorable, Demo-wise speaking...
Was mostly some scrolltext or starfield or some raster effects... not pure piece of graphical art.
but the remembering of those can activate some retrotears to those who had them on some great games.
Lolnope... somecracked games were pure shitstains... but of course you wouldn't copy them, or won't keep them...
3" floppies were expensives so you were always choosing wisely how to use them... well sometimes not That wisely.
Funnily, the legal compilations had some sort of cracktro : the "menu"... some were fancier than others.
It's obvious, with the loading... rhââa please wait!! :)
I never saw any cracked games yet on my 464. Every softs were commercial and kids in my town simply used a tape desk. Not even a simple text changing in the hi-score/menu or in the pic intro. Back I knew there were cracks on disk, but cracktro never. Just I loved the welcome tape with Amstrad logo and laser ;) It was madness when I saw my fisrt cracktro on the Atari ST... Rasters everywhere ;) I remember the one with David Whittaker's tunes...
Numerous Cracktros are way better than on c64. Sceners of the old days know that. I don't show mine, but couple others...
Don't forget its way more smooth on real CPCs... here we go...
AMSTRAD CPC CRACKERS - JOE BLADE cracktro n° 2 by CHANY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8mSsUCq_xw#)
AMSTRAD CPC CRACKERS cracktro n° 1 by JUPITER (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5IBKcG9Jk#)
Amstrad CPC 6128 - CBS Cracktro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIWi-qbgSqk#)
SPANISH HACKER / STEEL MC KRAKEN - AMSTRAD CPC - cracktro / intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C90Y7QOai1U#)
Amstrad CPC: C.A.C.H Cracktro - [url=http://CPCrulez.free.fr]Changement d'URL du site - http://CPCrulez.fr (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOyLlq_aKN4#)[/url]
AMSTRAD CPC CRACKERS - OPERATION WOLF cracktro n° 1 by STARMAN from ARKOS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS0iKPZepL0#)
Thanks for the lovely examples, TFM!
I think the c64 cracktros were more influenced by the Amiga scene and aesthetics, making them more... modern?
Time to catch up... ;)
So I offer an Atari Flashback IV including 76 (not 75!) games and two controllers for the best cracktro of CyberChicken. Actually there's nothing to crack, so time can be 100% used for a Cracktro ;)
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:16, 16 February 14I think the c64 cracktros were more influenced by the Amiga scene and aesthetics, making them more... modern?
Not really, there was a parallel evolution since the C64 and Amiga scenes were usually "staffed" by the same groups and both took inspiration from each other, with more going 8- to 16-bit than the other way around. The C64 was on of two 8-bits where crack intros first appeared so everything else including the Amiga and Atari ST take ideas from them, although not everything makes it across; C64 intros in particular are usually executing in under 16K including the screen RAM - they're designed to be linked directly to the cracked game rather than load it later, which makes comparison with the CPC ones unfair.
Yeah, you're probably right about the history of it. Interesting tibit in your last sentence, but why did they do it that way?
Quote from: TMR on 09:56, 25 February 14
Not really, there was a parallel evolution since the C64 and Amiga scenes were usually "staffed" by the same groups and both took inspiration from each other, with more going 8- to 16-bit than the other way around. The C64 was on of two 8-bits where crack intros first appeared so everything else including the Amiga and Atari ST take ideas from them, although not everything makes it across; C64 intros in particular are usually executing in under 16K including the screen RAM - they're designed to be linked directly to the cracked game rather than load it later, which makes comparison with the CPC ones unfair.
Yes, right. In addition on CPC people stopped producing Cracktros long before people stopped doing them on c64 etc. Because companies ceased producing games years more early on CPC compared to c64 / st / amiga.
Quote from: TFM on 19:39, 25 February 14
Yes, right. In addition on CPC people stopped producing Cracktros long before people stopped doing them on c64 etc. Because companies ceased producing games years more early on CPC compared to c64 / st / amiga.
Not having new commercial games never stopped people writing C64 intros... =-)
Well, if you don't put it in front of something, then ... it probably isn't an intro any longer. More a small demo.
If I look at some CPC intros on my Discs / DSKs then I must say a lot of them are part of the loader. So no difference to c64.
Quote from: TFM on 19:57, 26 February 14
Well, if you don't put it in front of something, then ... it probably isn't an intro any longer. More a small demo.
When the commercial software ran out the scene simply moved to cracking
anything that came along as PD, shareware, on a covermount, indie developed, whatever. The same applies to this day, every one of the GTW previews that turns up gets introlinked, the recent
Flappy Bird port has been trained by Onslaught, Laxity and fake label Dinasours. There are also jewel cracking groups like Nostalgia who take apart old games and try to optimise them to reduce disk swapping, repair bugs left behind by the original coders, train them to the hilt and usually fix games that have previously only been or PAL or NTSC to run on both; their version of Tony Crowther's
Phobia is a beautiful example with tons of bugs removed and the entire sprite multiplexer ripped out and replaced to make it work quickly enough to run at 60FPS on NTSC.
Quote from: TFM on 19:57, 26 February 14If I look at some CPC intros on my Discs / DSKs then I must say a lot of them are part of the loader. So no difference to c64.
Most C64 games are linked to the main file
and the loader, by the time the intro is running you have a compacted copy of the bulk of the game in memory using the free 48K; for single file games like
Uridium for example, you can take the disk out of the drive once the intro is executing and it should still work fine and for larger games like
Armalyte the main core code is in memory with the intro and just the level data needs to be loaded when the game starts.
Thanks for the examples & explanations.
Quote from: Gryzor on 18:07, 25 February 14
Interesting tibit in your last sentence, but why did they do it that way?
It partly comes from the evolution of intros really; their predecessors were text screens and bitmapped images linked to the file itself so the intros, as the next step on, usually remained linked in the same way. That integration
also stops some lamer recracking your work by simply deleting your intro and perhaps adding their own because the combined files will also have been run length encoded and then sequence compressed. The size difference between single and multiple files can also mean your group's swappers get four new wares on a disk side instead of three and can make uploading the crack to BBSes easier as well.
Your knowledge is suspiciously deep ;)
Quote from: Gryzor on 18:17, 05 March 14
Your knowledge is suspiciously deep ;)
The cracking and demo scenes have always overlapped so, although i was primarily legal because my interest was mostly demos, the group i was in cracked, trained and spread games as well at least until 1989. During that time i mailtraded with some of the bigger names on the C64 scene like Genesis Project, Babygang and Contex, wrote crack intros for a few people, shipped data back and forth with a
ridiculously slow Compunet modem, received and read paper-based scene magazines like Shock or Illegal...
...and now i feel old. =-)