# MegaBall Open-Source Release

## June 12, 2012 - by Ed Mackey - Mercurial repository on BitBucket

I've decided to re-release MegaBall 3 and 4 as open source software, under the Apache 2.0 License. (read details)

I wrote MegaBall in the early 1990's, for the Commodore Amiga line of computers, using 680x0 assembly language. My brother Al Mackey designed the graphics and wrote the music for it. The original name was just Ball, and later it became MegaBall and went through several versions. MegaBall versions through 3 were shareware, and MegaBall 4 was a commercial release in partnership with IAM.

### What's Here

- `Boards` - A collection of released and un-released MegaBall boards for various versions. Some are from my old hard drive, others from the Internet or mailed to me on 3.5" floppy disks. If you have some to contribute, send me a pull request, it's better than floppy mailers.
- `Graphics` - Assorted graphics by Al Mackey, in original IFF (ILBM) format as well as some recent conversions to less antique formats like GIF and PNG.
- `MB_Music` - Assorted game music by Al Mackey, plus the freeware `OctaMED_Win32_Player` to play MED files under Windows (for me this actually works under Win7 64-bit, but your mileage may vary.)
- `SoundEffects/Amiga_IFF` - The original sound effects from the game, in the IFF 8SVX format which was used to create and edit the sounds.
- `SoundEffects/Amiga_Raw` - These raw dump files were actually named in the assembly source file as binary includes, embedded into the executable image directly.
- `SoundEffects/Windows_WAV` - This is a "recent" (Jan 1999) effort to convert the sounds to a PC-compatible format.
- `Source/C_Board_Loader` - A utility for loading MegaBall boards. Read about it, and check the brick list.
- `Source/MegaBall*` - The file you're ultimately looking for is called `BALL.ASM`. Ball was the original name, and the source code was never renamed from that, so the assembled binaries were produced with that name and then renamed to MegaBall, right through to the last version. It's 234 KB of pure 68k assembler. Good luck!

### How to assemble it

Don't. I haven't tried, I can't distribute Assempro itself, and that's not the point of this distribution anyway. The point, beyond a little nostalgia, is to release the core game logic itself, which along with the graphics and music helped create so many fans. Someday, perhaps I or someone else will take the time to port the interesting parts of the source to a more modern platform. In the meantime, I just thought the world should have a copy of all this. A lot of registered users helped pay for its development!

### How to play it in an emulator

My brother Al has a page describing how to play MegaBall in an Amiga emulator.

### Contact Information

Many of the included files and programs offer addresses, phone numbers, even website URLs that are no longer valid. If you'd like to know "Where are they now?" I'll attempt to compile some information here.

#### Somerton Telecomm BBS

Somerton was online from 1987 through 1996. For the shareware releases of MegaBall, it was the official release and support BBS. It was run by one Eric Parkin, who in 2005 married Judy Elinow and changed his name to Eric Elinow, which is where you'll find him on Google+.

Fellow former Somerton users (and MegaBall players) Joe Campbell and JD Thomas are now on Twitter.

#### Intangible Assets Manufacturing (IAM)

IAM was the official distributor for MegaBall 4, the only commercial release of MegaBall. IAM also licensed MegaBall 4 to various international partners. After the fall of Commodore Amiga, eventually IAM had to close shop as well, and sold its domain name, so the old web address, email, and even postal address are no longer valid. These days you can get in touch with IAM's founder and CEO, former Amiga engineer Dale Larson on Twitter. Dale gave my brother and I two tours of Commodore while he was still employed there, offering first a facinating glimpse into the development of then-high tech, and later a more somber view of a company losing its footing. These days, Dale is in a much happier place in San Francisco, CA.

#### Blitwise Productions

After all these years, Blitwise is still going strong! Its founder and president, Michael P. Welch, is the game developer who created Scorched Tanks for the Amiga, and later DX-Ball and Super DX-Ball for the PC and Mac. In May 2000, at Mike's request, I translated some old 68k assembler code from MegaBall's board editor, just the board-loading function by itself, into the slightly-more-modern C programming language. That code is included in this repository under the `Source/C_Board_Loader` folder.

### MegaBall License Details

This is full-size, 320 x 200!
Intangible Assets Manufacturing (IAM)
AGA graphics, page 1 of 2
Non-AGA graphics, page 1 of 2
AGA graphics, page 2 of 2
Non-AGA graphics, page 2 of 2