creichen/amberstar

Information and resources for the Amiga classic Amberstar

Amberstar

Information and resources for the Amiga classic Amberstar

File specs

Contain information about decoded game data formats.

• FileSpecs
  • Background Music (In-game music)
  • Containers (Container file formats, which encode the resources below)
  • CharData (NPCs, monsters and party members)
  • Compressed Text (In-game text)
  • IconData (Tilesets)
  • LabBlock (Labyrinth, i.e. first-person map, graphics)
  • Maps (Maps, both for top-down views and for Labyrinths)
  • Palettes (Color palettes)
  • Pixmaps (In-game graphics)
• Graphics
  • Indoor (Indoor 2D tile graphics)
  • Worldmap (Worldmap tile graphics)

Container files overview

File	Container	Elements	Format	Explanation	Decoded
AMBERDEV.UDO	LOB	1	Various	Assortment of data	only very partially
Amberload
AUTOMAP.AMB	AMBR	152
BACKGRND.AMB	AMPC	10	Pixmap List 144x144, 4bpp	Town (+dungeon) backgrounds	yes (outdoors sunrise/sunset gradients missing)
CHARDATA.AMB	AMBR	78	Character Data
CHESTDAT.AMB	AMPC	163
CODETXT.AMB	AMBR	2	Compressed Text		yes
COL_PALL.AMB	AMBR	10	Palettes		yes
COM_BACK.AMB	AMPC	14	Raw Pixmaps 176x112, 4bpp	Combat background images	yes
EXTRO.UDO			(incl. Hippel-7V)	Extro + music
F_T_ANIM.ICN			Raw Pixmaps (16x16, 4bpp)	Combat grid magic animations	yes (missing association between animations and spells)
ICON_DAT.AMB	AMPC	2	IconData	Map tilesets	mostly
INTRO_P.UDO	LOB	1	(incl. Hippel-7V)	Intro music
INTRO.UDO	LOB	1
LABBLOCK.AMB	AMPC	68	LabBlock	First-person map graphics	yes
LAB_DATA.AMB	AMBR	23	LabData	First-person map resource index	yes
MAP_DATA.AMB	AMPC	152	Maps	Maps	mostly
MAPTEXT.AMB	AMBC	152	Compressed Text	Map-specific text	yes
MON_DATA.AMB	AMBR	67	Combat Layout		yes
MON_GFX.AMB	AMPC	21	Pixmap List of first-person in-combat monster animations		yes (missing exact rules for animation)
PARTYDAT.SAV
PICS80.AMB	AMPC	52	Raw Pixmaps (80x80, 4bpp) + Palettes (alternating)	Pixmap followed by palette	yes
PUZZLE.ICN
PUZZLE.TXT
SAMPLEDA.IMG			Background Music	Sample data for in-game songs	yes
TACTIC.ICN			Raw Pixmaps (16x16, 4bpp)	Combat grid creature animations	yes
TH_LOGO.UDO	LOB	1
WARESDAT.AMB	AMPC	16

Practical Notes and Notation

• Unless noted otherwise, all numbers are encoded in big-endian two's complement format (e.g., a 16 bit representation of the number 1000 is encoded as the two bytes 03e8).
• Numbers need not be aligned to word boundaries. Trying to read unaligned numbers with a 16 bit or 32 bit memory read may produce unexpected results on some CPUs. (In C and C++, unaligned loads depend on parts of the language semantics that are explicitly undefined, so if in doubt, make use to read each byte individually and reassemble later.)
• The types "u8", "u16", "u32` and "i8", "i16", "i32" refer to unsigned 8/16/32 bit numbers, and to signed 8/16/32 bit numbers (respectively).