Dangerous dave in the haunted mansion dos

#Dangerous dave in the haunted mansion dos code#
#Dangerous dave in the haunted mansion dos Pc#

#Dangerous dave in the haunted mansion dos code#

I consider rewriting obscure code a game on its own. The variable names were named after the registers arrays were just prefixed вЂdummyвЂ™. The initial code that was written and actually ran, looked completely horrible. When I get to a decompression code, I just copy-paste the assembly code into a clean C file. Even if you know how it is supposed to work, you can never be sure the original coders havenвЂ™t tweaked it for one reason or another. Rewriting deflate algorithms is always tricky. There was only one location that had anything to do with the signature string, and that very same function also prints out Tried to expand a file that isnвЂ™t HUFF! when it fails. Figuring that this is the actually unhuff code was quite easy: each compressed file has a nice HUFF signature, I looked up the string and from there I just checked cross-reference. Decompression code starts at seg000:7936h, and was quite clean to follow. All of these images were compressed using some flavor of Huffman Compression. Here are the background bitmaps (or title screens,) taken from dave2 floppy.

I was amazed to find out such a simple compression saved ~50%, which is the difference between a game on two floppies and on one.Д«ut letвЂ™s take this one step at a timeвЂ¦ Part 3: Title screens Soon enough, I had this neat 90 lines Huffman decompressor and it unpacked all HUFF. c file, and started working out some sense in those nasty loops.

I copy-pasted the assembly code onto a clean. Locating the code that checks for that magic signature was quite simple. Firing up my favorite disassembler, I got down to work. So, the first step was figuring out what is this HUFF mambo-jambo. Furthermore, they are the smallest files on disk. The level%02d, egatiles.dd2 and intro.dd2 are the only files on disk that are not compressed with HUFF. The game executable is dave2.exe, game logic is not spanned over other files (neither code nor script.) Hexediting the files, I noticed that most files start with a nice HUFF signature. Your 360KB floppy has the following files on it: I have split the article into several sections and I wish you a pleasant reading. Before long, I was sucked into it, and ended up reverse-engineering the entire game. With that idea in mind, I thought that it would be nice to start with the sprites of the original dave2, since I canвЂ™t do any pixelart. I started the project when I woke up one day with a vision for a new episode of Dangerous Dave. I strongly recommend the Planet RomeroвЂ™s The Saga of Dangerous Dave article, and the awesome book Masters of Doom.Дave has always been one of my most favorite characters. The same game engine that runs dave2 was used to make Shadow Knights just before that, so I figure that whatever is said here also applies there. Nevertheless, id had to cramp their game to fit in a 360k floppy, and run on 286/386 computers with EGA displays. Heck, itвЂ™s the year that Another World and Monkey Island 2 were released. ItвЂ™s true that the year 1991 has seen games with better graphics than dave2. With Adrian Carmack on the graphics, the game featured so much gore (for pixelated graphics, of course) that some of it had to be removed. Master designer, Tom Hall worked on this game for SoftdiskвЂ™s GamerвЂ™s Edge disk right after leaving Softdisk and founding id. If you have never played dave2, you may think that this is yet another platformer in the favor of Command Keen well, if you have played it, you know itвЂ™s closer to the Doom frenchise.

#Dangerous dave in the haunted mansion dos Pc#

Programmed by the two Johns at id software, Dangerous Dave in The Haunted Mansion was released for IBM PC in 1991.