Ocean Sources

Ocean Software was the biggest UK C64 games company for the, and overall in the 1980's. We saw classics such as Batman, The Untouchables, Rainbow Islands, New Zealand Story, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and many many more real gems...

Paul Hughes (developer of Ocean Games, Freeloader, Freesave and Ocean's Music Editor) kept all his materials from his Ocean days, and this included his ST Development system. As well as a hard drive full of source code, there are many many disks too with code on. After sweating bullets, Paul has now been able to port code over to the PC. And as a result, Paul has kindly agreed to release sources to the public, for people to check out, to learn from, and to preserve and enjoy.

This page has been compiled with colaboration with Paul, and will grow over time as more is uncovered and ported over to PC. There are expected to be much more source code released in the near future... We hope that this is something that you'll find useful. OADS refers to the Ocean ST based assembler used to compile sources, but Paul has kindly converted most sources to DASM compatible sources which can be more easily compiled.

If you wish to discuss anything which is listed here, then feel free to participate in the forum topic here.

Source File

Downloads

Description

'Ocean Music Editor V1.4'

Code - Paul Hughes

OADS Source

Used by Jon Dunn, Pete Clarke, Matt Cannon, Gari Biasillo and Keith Tinman. This is the famous Ocean Music editor package which was used to compose many a famous tune for many a famous Ocean game.

This is an earlier version of the editor, where later editions coming soon included a sampled drum player! Embedded into the editor is actually Jon Dunn's Ocean Loader V4 tune!

'FreeSave'

Code - Paul Hughes

OADS Source

DASM Source

"This was the mastering program that all the duplicators used - this actually loads up all the parts of the game from disk and fast saves them onto tape (this contains the bootstrap turbo load that loads in the FreeLoad core and locks up Freeze Frame)" - Paul

This particular source was used on Rainbow Islands.

TO COMPILE IN DASM - Type "dasm FreeLoad_Saver_dasm.asm -v1" that creates a file call "a.out" load that into an emulator and type "sys 49152"

Should be similiar process for the other two DASM files below.

'FreeLoad'

Code - Paul Hughes

OADS Source

DASM Source

"This is basically the "FreeLoop" part of freeload; the bit that scrolls the messages, turns the bitmaps on and plays the music. It also does some wacky stuff to detect the Expert Cartridge." - Paul

This particular source was used on Rainbow Islands.

'Standalone FreeLoad Turbo Load'

Code - Paul Hughes

OArDS Souce

DASM Source

"This is the "stand alone" freeload turbo load code that is used by all the multiload games (as the initial turbo loader is wiped when the games fire up)" - Paul

'DT Olympic Challenge Music and player'

Code - Paul Hughes
Composed - Jon Dunn

DASM Source

Binary file

"Load the binary prog into an emulator and type 'sys 16384'to fire it up.

Testbed Keys;

a,b,c,d,e,f - Trigger the various tunes.
SPACE - Stops the current tune
+, - - Sets the number of bars to skip in fast forward mode.
F1 - Fast Forwards the music

To assemble the source, get the latest version of DASM and type;

"dasm DT88MusicSrc_dasm.asm -v1 -omusic.prg" - Paul

DISCLAIMER
Sources present on this page are released with full permission from Paul Hughes himself (Music drivers, loaders written prior to joining Ocean). Later possible Ocean source code to be released is subject to permission granting from respective copyright holders. In the long run, negotiations will be made to gain permission for as much material as possible.

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