Armageddon - Revision history

Elliogle: /* Disc Archaeology */

2026-08-14T05:44:22Z

Disc Archaeology

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:44, 14 August 2026
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	=== Unallocated space ===		=== Unallocated space ===
	36,954 blocks (~72 MB, 12% of the disc) belong to no file. Every byte was checked: the region is 100% the standard <code>iamaduck</code> mastering filler, with nothing hidden inside. One small oddity: the disc's volume label is lowercase <code>cd-rom</code>, where pressings normally use <code>CD-ROM</code>.		36,954 blocks (~72 MB, 12% of the disc) belong to no file. Every byte was checked: the region is 100% the standard <code>iamaduck</code> mastering filler, with nothing hidden inside. One small oddity: the disc's volume label is lowercase <code>cd-rom</code>, where pressings normally use <code>CD-ROM</code>.
			=== Speculation ===
			''The following connects on-disc evidence across LG's two 1996 Korean releases, Armageddon and Battle Blues. It is informed guesswork, not established fact, and would need confirmation from Korean development-scene sources.''
			* '''A shared engine programmer?''' Battle Blues' embedded credits list '''Lee Jihong''' as "Game Engine Developer" — initials L.J.H. Armageddon's disc contains a math lookup table named <code>ijh-tan.tab</code>, its filename carrying the initials of whoever built it. If "ijh" is Lee Jihong (이지홍 — Korean surnames are romanized inconsistently, and the same person could initial themselves either way), the same engine programmer may have worked on both games, or engine/math code from one was reused in the other. Armageddon offers no text credits to check against, which is exactly why this stays speculation.
			* '''A shared production pipeline.''' The two discs are near-twins below the game data: identical image sizes (608,485,376 bytes), and an identical "mastering desynchronization" fingerprint — the same five system directories carrying one stale older copy (down to the same uppercase <code>FMVVIDEODEVICE.PRIVDEVICE</code> in the stale generation) and mismatched <code>rom_tags</code> copies. Whatever workstation and disc-layout template LG's production chain used, both titles clearly went through it, and its system-folder image had been rebuilt at some point without regenerating the redundant copies.
			* '''Different hands on the games themselves.''' The two teams don't look identical: Armageddon's code cheers for a "Choi Il Hoon", who appears nowhere in Battle Blues' credits, and the two games' asset pipelines differ sharply (Armageddon mastered straight from a messy working directory with DOS batch files and backups; Battle Blues mastered clean, with Macintosh-sourced movie conversion). A plausible reading: separate development teams — possibly separate studios — feeding one shared LG publishing/mastering operation, with at least one engine programmer or code library in common.

	== Media ==		== Media ==

Elliogle at 05:33, 14 August 2026

2026-08-14T05:33:31Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:33, 14 August 2026
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	The game is a pseudo-3d space shooter like Wing Commander, though its production values are nowhere near Origin's series.		The game is a pseudo-3d space shooter like Wing Commander, though its production values are nowhere near Origin's series.

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			== Disc Archaeology ==
			''Findings from a byte-level analysis of the Korean retail disc image (608,485,376 bytes / 296,960 blocks).''
			=== The developers' working directory, pressed to disc ===
			The disc was mastered directly from the team's working asset folder, backups and all — roughly 40 development files that were never meant to ship, preserving a snapshot of the studio's build environment and even the revision history of individual assets:
			* '''Nine MS-DOS batch files''' containing the complete asset build pipeline, using the 3DO SDK's command-line tools: <code>bgm.bat</code> and <code>sound.bat</code> run <code>SFtoStream</code> and <code>weaver</code> to build every music/voice stream on the disc; <code>bgm1.bat</code> preserves a debugging session (<code>MovieToStream</code>, <code>DumpStream -stats</code>); and <code>map.bat</code>, <code>map2.bat</code> and <code>temp.bat</code> show every stage's sprite bundle being assembled with <code>catenate</code>, weapon by weapon. Also present: a Finder-style duplicate <code>map.bat copy</code> and a zero-byte <code>map2.bat</code> in the graphics folder.
			* '''Four different backup naming conventions''' — files suffixed <code> bak</code>, <code> copy</code>, <code> ori</code> and <code> old</code> — plus an entire backup directory, <code>/Resource/table/table back/</code>, holding superseded slideshow timing tables.
			* '''Asset revision history''': the cockpit art exists in ''three'' versions (<code>cockpit.shape</code> 273,268 bytes, <code>cockpit.shape ori</code> 260,916, <code>cockpit.shape copy</code> 256,420); five stage backgrounds keep their <code> old</code> predecessors; three map ground files and several weapon sprites keep <code> bak</code> versions that differ from the shipping files.
			* '''~16 MB of superseded narration audio''': <code>slide1.snd bak</code> (9,443,334 bytes) and <code>slide7.snd bak</code> (6,530,530 bytes) are earlier takes of the story-slideshow soundtracks — each almost exactly half the size of its final version, consistent with a mono-to-stereo re-render.
			* '''<code>BannerScreen bak</code>''' is not a backup of the game's banner at all: its checksum matches the stock sample BannerScreen from the 3DO SDK. The team saved the SDK's placeholder before overwriting it with their own — and shipped both.
			=== Developer voices in the code ===
			The executable (<code>launchme</code>, 367,768 bytes) carries its development scaffolding and some personality:
			* Among the boss AI state names (<code>CATCHHERO</code>, <code>STOPATTACK</code>, <code>ZIGZAG1</code>–<code>ZIGZAG4</code>, <code>NEARHERO</code>) sits the string ''"CHOI IL HOON MANSE!"'' — Korean for "Long live Choi Il-hoon!", a programmer cheering themselves (or a colleague) inside the AI table. A math table named <code>ijh-tan.tab</code> carries another developer's initials.
			* AI and debug quips in English: ''"I'm dying"'', ''"Hope!"'', ''"Back Hope!"'', ''"Too close!!"'', ''"Give me another shot, man!"'', ''"Get a life"''.
			* The NVRAM save file is named <code>amargeddon</code> — a misspelling of the game's own title, shipped in the retail build.
			* Verbose debug logging remains compiled in: ''"Avail Memory : DRAM = %d, VRAM = %d"'', per-stage resource-loading traces, and memory accounting (''"******* Total Stage Memory *******"'').
			* The game's UI font is literally the 3DO SDK's <code>example.font</code>, shipped under that name.
			=== How the Korean text is stored ===
			No plain-text Korean exists anywhere on the disc — every piece of in-game Hangul text is pre-rendered into CEL/shape graphics. The only readable text files are the <code>slide''N''.txt</code> cue sheets in <code>/Resource/table/</code>, which hold timecode lists synchronizing the story-slideshow narration to its images.
			=== Mastering desynchronization in the filesystem itself ===
			The Opera filesystem stores every directory as multiple redundant copies ("avatars") at different disc locations. On this disc, the copies '''disagree with each other''' — proof the disc image was rebuilt in multiple passes without regenerating all the redundant structures:
			* For five system directories (<code>Devices</code>, <code>Drivers</code>, <code>Folios</code>, <code>Programs</code>, <code>Scripts</code>), the first copy is a stale, older generation while the second and third copies agree with each other. The clearest example: the first copy of <code>/System/Devices</code> lists <code>FMVVIDEODEVICE.PRIVDEVICE</code> in uppercase, while the other two copies list <code>fmvvideodevice.privdevice</code> in lowercase — a filename-casing change frozen mid-transition in the pressing.
			* The two copies of <code>rom_tags</code> (the boot metadata table) are likewise different generations, disagreeing in several structured 32-bit fields.
			These mismatches are coherent alternate versions, not read errors, so they are pressed into every copy of the disc. Everything else verifies clean: the root directory copies are hash-identical, all 660 file extents fall inside the disc, and nothing is truncated.
			=== Unallocated space ===
			36,954 blocks (~72 MB, 12% of the disc) belong to no file. Every byte was checked: the region is 100% the standard <code>iamaduck</code> mastering filler, with nothing hidden inside. One small oddity: the disc's volume label is lowercase <code>cd-rom</code>, where pressings normally use <code>CD-ROM</code>.


	== Media ==		== Media ==

Elliogle at 16:40, 13 June 2021

2021-06-13T16:40:39Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:40, 13 June 2021
Line 21:		Line 21:

	The game is a pseudo-3d space shooter like Wing Commander, though its production values are nowhere near Origin's series.		The game is a pseudo-3d space shooter like Wing Commander, though its production values are nowhere near Origin's series.

			== Media ==

	<gallery>		<gallery>

Elliogle: /* Summary */

2021-06-13T16:38:29Z

Summary

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:38, 13 June 2021
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	Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_1.jpg\|Booklet		Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_1.jpg\|Booklet
	Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_2.jpg\|Booklet		Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_2.jpg\|Booklet
	~~Aquaworld_Screenshot_1~~.png\|Screenshot		Armageddon_Screenshot_1.png\|Screenshot
	~~Aquaworld_Screenshot_2~~.png\|Screenshot		Armageddon_Screenshot_2.png\|Screenshot
	~~Aquaworld_Screenshot_3~~.png\|Screenshot		Armageddon_Screenshot_3.jpg\|Screenshot
			Armageddon_Screenshot_4.png\|Screenshot
			Armageddon_Screenshot_5.jpg\|Screenshot
	</gallery>		</gallery>

Elliogle: Created page with "right| = Overview = '''Full Name:''' Armageddon '''Code:''' GDT-GA401 '''Type:''' Action '''Developer:''' Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG..."

2021-06-13T16:36:57Z

Created page with "thumb|right| = Overview = *'''Full Name:''' Armageddon *'''Code:''' GDT-GA401 *'''Type:''' Action *'''Developer:''' Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG..."

New page

[[Image:Armageddon_Front.jpg|thumb|right|]]

= Overview =

*'''Full Name:''' Armageddon
*'''Code:''' GDT-GA401
*'''Type:''' Action
*'''Developer:''' [[Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG)]]
*'''Publisher:''' [[Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG)]]
*'''Language:''' Korean
*'''Release Date:''' 1996
*'''Region:''' KR
*'''Barcode:'''
*'''Local Title:''' 아마게돈
*'''Rarity:''' 1
*'''Notes:'''

== Summary ==

This was a Korean exclusive (One of the so called "Muskteers" - Battle Blues and Eye of the Typhoon).

The game is a pseudo-3d space shooter like Wing Commander, though its production values are nowhere near Origin's series.

<gallery>
Armageddon_Back.jpg|Back of the box
Armageddon_CD_Case_Front.jpg|CD Case Front
Armageddon_CD_Case_Back.jpg|CD Case Back
Armageddon_CD.jpg|CD
Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_1.jpg|Booklet
Armageddon_CD_Case_Booklet_2.jpg|Booklet
Aquaworld_Screenshot_1.png|Screenshot
Aquaworld_Screenshot_2.png|Screenshot
Aquaworld_Screenshot_3.png|Screenshot
</gallery>

Armageddon - Revision history

Elliogle: /* Disc Archaeology */

Elliogle at 05:33, 14 August 2026

Elliogle at 16:40, 13 June 2021

Elliogle: /* Summary */

Elliogle: Created page with "right| = Overview = *'''Full Name:''' Armageddon *'''Code:''' GDT-GA401 *'''Type:''' Action *'''Developer:''' Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG..."

Elliogle: Created page with "right| = Overview = '''Full Name:''' Armageddon '''Code:''' GDT-GA401 '''Type:''' Action '''Developer:''' Goldstar(LG)|Goldstar(LG..."