freewheel Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 I just went ahead and patched my Bliss and Nostalgia, and they both have 100% compatibility with everything. Something something ln something something. It's weird. I never realized how sketchy compatibility was with the older emulators. Guess I was more forgiving back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 27, 2015 Author Share Posted October 27, 2015 Eh? What'd you do to get Motocross working? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted October 27, 2015 Share Posted October 27, 2015 Eh? What'd you do to get Motocross working? Sorry. I'm being a combination ass/troll. "ln" was a joke reference to using Unix symlinking. I just point bliss.exe/nostalgia.exe (more correctly, their linux equivalents) to jzintv.exe. I mean I don't, really - I just run jzintv. Bad attempt at a joke about "patching". I'm just kinda surprised. I always found Intellivision emulator compatibility to be "very good" way back when. But I'm realizing that I must not have tested very much until jzintv was mature. There must some outstanding issues with the older emus that I just never stumbled upon. A lot of platforms had these kinds of issues for many years (heck, some still do), but with the Intellivision library being so small it always felt like emulation was pretty strong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 27, 2015 Author Share Posted October 27, 2015 (edited) Ahh... well you fooled me! No problem. Silly me was thinking you grabbed the source, updated it, and recompiled. @Intvnut... thanks for that program. I'll take a looksie when I get chance and report the results. Edited October 27, 2015 by Shannon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 28, 2015 Author Share Posted October 28, 2015 On a side note... I was reading the manual for "Boxing" and noticed this line... "Important: Use ONE control at a time. Pressing two keys together, or a key and the Disc may cause the TV screen to go BLANK. Should that happen, press any key. Picture returns, fight continues." I presume the 'ol "Press 1 and 3 or 7 and 9" to pause game instructions are actually EXEC functions. Hence the "It's a feature, not a bug" comment in the Boxing manual. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intvsteve Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 On a side note... I was reading the manual for "Boxing" and noticed this line... "Important: Use ONE control at a time. Pressing two keys together, or a key and the Disc may cause the TV screen to go BLANK. Should that happen, press any key. Picture returns, fight continues." I presume the 'ol "Press 1 and 3 or 7 and 9" to pause game instructions are actually EXEC functions. Hence the "It's a feature, not a bug" comment in the Boxing manual. Hehe … Yep. Keypad-mashing game that's gonna happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 I presume the 'ol "Press 1 and 3 or 7 and 9" to pause game instructions are actually EXEC functions. Hence the "It's a feature, not a bug" comment in the Boxing manual. Yepperoonios. Games that use the EXEC get that feature "automatically," even if their input control scheme would rather they not. There's ways a program can bypass it and still use the EXEC, but... documentation is easier and doesn't take up precious ROM space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 28, 2015 Author Share Posted October 28, 2015 I have to say... the Intellivision is an interesting creature... Just the whole way the thing is built and all the odd little quirks because of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted October 29, 2015 Share Posted October 29, 2015 I have to say... the Intellivision is an interesting creature... Just the whole way the thing is built and all the odd little quirks because of it. Yup Every platform has its quirks, but I find the Intellivision an endlessly fascinating creature to work with. Its quirks are more charm than frustration, which helps. If we were forced to use the EXEC, I might sing a different tune. It was very innovative in 1980, but not so much now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 29, 2015 Author Share Posted October 29, 2015 (edited) Here are screenies from running the irq_per rom file provided in Bliss 2.05.. Edited October 29, 2015 by Shannon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted October 29, 2015 Share Posted October 29, 2015 (edited) It looks like it's running slightly faster than jzIntv, but also stealing more cycles during active display. It manages to get one or two more iterations in in the screen-off mode, but fewer iterations with the screen on. We're matched in terms of how long the System RAM stays in bus copy mode. EDIT: Actually Bliss stays in bus-copy longer. If you look closely at the first screen, IRQ Per manages to get about 4 more writes over to the GRAM on Bliss as compared to jzIntv. I should run this on the Intellivision again. It's been awhile. Man... Motocross is very sensitive to something in the timing. But what? Edited October 29, 2015 by intvnut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 30, 2015 Author Share Posted October 30, 2015 What your saying about the first screen I think may be the more useful information. If I slow the processor speed down (yeah I know technically incorrect) Motocross will eventually run. However if I bump up the speed in increments from that "magic" point I noticed that on IRQ Per it gets in less writes over GRAM and that on Motocross the point it messes up less of the screen is messing up. Almost like it is overwriting the GRAM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted October 30, 2015 Share Posted October 30, 2015 I think I'm going to have to look at a disassembly and a trace. Obviously there's a race condition. (In a racing game? No, that's not ironic!) Dreadnaught Factor had a similar race condition crash in its initialization code that prevents it from operating on PAL systems without a patch. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted November 3, 2015 Share Posted November 3, 2015 I think I'm going to have to look at a disassembly and a trace. Obviously there's a race condition. (In a racing game? No, that's not ironic!) Dreadnaught Factor had a similar race condition crash in its initialization code that prevents it from operating on PAL systems without a patch. I recall we found a similar problem in Christmas Carol, where the first release crashed on PAL consoles. It led us to notice that the PAL speed in jzIntv was not accurate, which is why it never manifested in emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 (edited) I recall we found a similar problem in Christmas Carol, where the first release crashed on PAL consoles. It led us to notice that the PAL speed in jzIntv was not accurate, which is why it never manifested in emulation. IIRC, once we fixed jzIntv, didn't we see it fail there too? I forget. Even if we did, I seem to recall (and this is hazy now) we decided to test on real PAL systems anyway, because we were paranoid. I remember we both ended up going out and trying to find PAL hardware. The bigger punch line: Race conditions suck. Edited November 4, 2015 by intvnut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 IIRC, once we fixed jzIntv, didn't we see it fail there too? I forget. Even if we did, I seem to recall (and this is hazy now) we decided to test on real PAL systems anyway, because we were paranoid. I remember we both ended up going out and trying to find PAL hardware. The bigger punch line: Race conditions suck. You didn't fix it then, we acknowledged that there was a timing issue and you said that you should "revisit the PAL implementation" in jzIntv at some point. I think you eventually fixed it, but that was much later, perhaps for Kroz or BD. By then we had already done the PAL-recall of carts to European customers. I know I had to rush out and purchase a PAL console, a voltage converter, and a video signal decoder in order to test the game fix on real hardware. Damn, yes. Race conditions such. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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