xxl Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 8 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said: I've never seen the XBIOS menu come up. hold OPTION when xBIOS starts, a menu will appear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) 4 minutes ago, xxl said: hold OPTION when xBIOS starts, a menu will appear Got it. It's just a case of holding down OPTION longer than it needs to be, which in turns drops to XBIOS before booting. Confirmed this on my 800XL just now. Appreciate the clarification. Edited June 14, 2021 by x=usr(1536) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Out of curiosity, I set my FujiNet's HSIO index to 9 (55Kb, slowest setting) and tried booting the DD image again. I still get the dancing girl crash, but this time the animation sticks at her left hip (i.e., to the viewer's right) rather than her right, which is what I was seeing with the HSIO index set to 6 (67Kb; default). It also happens a few seconds sooner in the boot process, though I didn't measure by how much. Going to run through all the HSIO settings and see what happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 34 minutes ago, 8bitguy1 said: My general adoption of updates for the firmware is to wait until the community has tested it a bit better. Fair enough. Sounds like a plan! ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Okay, I've observed something weird. So far the DD version of PoP is the only image I've seen this happen with, so I'm totally sure of what to make of it. NTSC 800XL, 256K RAM, FujiNet. I cranked the FujiNet's HSIO settings all the way down to its slowest speed (setting 9, 55Kb). The loader crashed, but sooner than it did at the default setting (6, 67Kb). Going back through settings 8, 7, and 6 with a reboot between each change gradually increased the HSIO speed but the dancing girl crash remained for each one. The only differences were how long it took for each setting to achieve the crash, and which hip was the one that the animation was stopped on. Realising that I hadn't actually timed the results to figure out approximately how long it took for the crashes to appear, I set HSIO back to 9, rebooted, and started the boot again. This time it worked. WTF? I'm now looking at the game going through the demo mode whereas the DD image would not complete boot previously. The mouse animation appears correctly during loads, and it's basically working as I'd expect it to. Anyone else's guess is as good as mine. FWIW, both the FujiNet and 800XL have been powered on for a couple of hours. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) AAfter leaving the attract mode running for about 20 minutes or so, the game has crashed on a loading screen. This time it's the mouse, and the animation is with the mouse looking left (viewer right). Edited June 14, 2021 by x=usr(1536) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chevymad Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 DD version loaded fine via fujinet on my 1088xel/vbxe/pal machine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MARIO130XE Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Oooookayyy..... Maybe it helps... RastaConverter isn't the very best solution to create dynamic title-screens ... Anyway... I have started to pixelize a combination of the AMIGA, C64, DOS title screen an the PoP font styled text. After all the pixeling I'm also have running RC, but unfortunately my 16 core PC is busy so I have to render on a shitty, lame browser PC. Afer conversion it's possible to load the stuff into the g2f tools and make some more optimizing. Maybe someone could help rendering the pics or even help to optimize the png's with some cool artistic skillz and some more color reduktion. And maybe someone could check out the NTSC palette... I'm rendering only in pal olivier.... 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) @MARIO130XE Looking great already. Yeah - I was thinking about the NTSC version as I only convert PAL. Whoa, 16 cores - you must tear through conversions if you run a couple at a time? I run anything from 3-6 on my 6 core I7-8750H lappy. (I run RC conversions with 9 threads so it's not totally locked up for other use). I tend to stick to 8000-10000 solutions and up until recently used the Altirra Pallette with Yuv for my conversions. However last 10 or so images I have switched to Atari800winplus with Ceide and am enjoying the results. Will be great to see your results and especially interested in what you do using Graph2font with them afterwards. Edited June 14, 2021 by Beeblebrox typos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 13 hours ago, xxl said: you need to check DLI and VBI, it is very important that the runtime of these procedures during I / O (pooling) was as short as possible, I suspect there may be a problem. I changed the anim speed to refresh every 127 frames instead of every 15, hopefully that'll help 13 hours ago, xxl said: a good effect can be achieved with simultaneous sector loading and decompression - gaps between sectors will be anyway and the amount of data transferred will increase significantly - this effect can be seen in my last appendices with music on GTIA. yes but I'm using APL now so the decompression time is probably just a fraction of the overall loading time 13 hours ago, xxl said: check it out: xIRQEN equ xBIOS+$3e8 ; User IRQ (1 byte) I forgot to disable it in the xbios.cfg, it's should be ok now 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 11 hours ago, Beeblebrox said: @rensoup Also, when I first heard about the project a month+ back I started a RastaConversion of the classic PoP title screen just to see what it would look like. I ended up doing a few, (early ones failed), and then I started this one, a 320*200 format so there was space at the bottom for your credits if desired/technically possible. I'd popped it on the back burner but just resumed it yesterday alongside some other RC conversions. I guess you didn't read all 50 pages ( not blaming you ? ) where this was discussed at length... I was never a fan of that picture so I decided not to have it. That said the ST palette is better but RC tends to produce better results with images that are quite fuzzy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 10 hours ago, Jacques said: Wouldn't switching of xB into using OS SIO procedures instead of own ones (if possible) allow for using not only 1xSIO but anything the drives and OS allow (turbo, including 3xSIO)? Maybe it's sensible to ask if these tiny animations really worth such limitation of 1xSIO? In the end the intro would only gain fluency with shorter loading breaks, that cause the intro tu suffer a lot in perception. ? This has been explained many times but obviously you know things I don't. 10 hours ago, Jacques said: On the other hand, as for intro itself, after very long initial loading, the music starts and "Broderbund That's why there's a cart version... unbelievably, you're still complaining. Yeah just ignore the fact that I spend weeks optimizing for space and fixing the bugs it caused? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 9 minutes ago, rensoup said: I guess you didn't read all 50 pages ( not blaming you ? ) where this was discussed at length... I was never a fan of that picture so I decided not to have it. That said the ST palette is better but RC tends to produce better results with images that are quite fuzzy. @rensoup no worries - Must have missed that. Yeah, generally lots more experimenting to do with the images I am converting - just enjoying the process and the outputs tbh. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 8 hours ago, flashjazzcat said: But I don't. It's just a little unfortunate that one receives relentless notifications for an ignored thread in which one's interest was re-awakened long enough to make two (now three) comments. Damn... Thanks for your great contribution! If you desperately want to avoid useless content, put yourself on your own ignore list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 2 minutes ago, rensoup said: fixing the bugs it caused Conversely that can also find bugs you didn't find in the non-cart version and allows you to fix them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 6 hours ago, tschak909 said: It keeps trying to re-read sector 360, and really doesn't like something, but there aren't any obvious errors coming from my firmware... I use myatr to generate the DD disk (mydos format), not sure if I can view where the files are placed on the disk ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 57 minutes ago, MARIO130XE said: After all the pixeling I'm also have running RC, but unfortunately my 16 core PC is busy so I have to render on a shitty, lame browser PC. Afer conversion it's possible to load the stuff into the g2f tools and make some more optimizing. btw that mouse picture is not in G2F format, I used my own piccolo tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 12 minutes ago, Wrathchild said: Conversely that can also find bugs you didn't find in the non-cart version and allows you to fix them unlikely but yeah that can happen ? Now I'm worried about those 2 gameplay issues reported earlier though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted June 14, 2021 Author Share Posted June 14, 2021 Moving on! Here's a zip with all the builds and a bunch of fixes. This is a test version, it will only loop the attract mode and not go into the game. I just want to make sure that all bugs are fixed before releasing a new version. -fixed DLI misfiring at boot time -fixed tune not stopping when aborting cutscene -disabled break key IRQ -slowed down loading icon anim for disk versions -added red screen of death for DLI misfiring (instead of black screen) -added blueish screen of death for file not found (may help diagnosing Fujinet) Let me know how it goes, even if the game already works for you! pop_dlitest210614.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxl Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 here is advice for anyone who does not understand how turbo US works on real hardware not FDD emulators, and proposes to use it in this particular case to bring benefits: 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 5 minutes ago, xxl said: here is advice for anyone who does not understand how turbo US works on real hardware not FDD emulators, and proposes to use it in this particular case to bring benefits: Here's a thought: Why don't we all use our collective expertise to try and figure out: (a) what's broken where (b) how to ask each other the bits of info we are lacking in order to fix it? It just might work. -Thom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zbyti Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 3 minutes ago, tschak909 said: Here's a thought: Why don't we all use our collective expertise to try and figure out: (a) what's broken where (b) how to ask each other the bits of info we are lacking in order to fix it? It just might work. -Thom it can be a refreshingly new experience 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 11 minutes ago, rensoup said: Moving on! Here's a zip with all the builds and a bunch of fixes. This is a test version, it will only loop the attract mode and not go into the game. I just want to make sure that all bugs are fixed before releasing a new version. -fixed DLI misfiring at boot time -fixed tune not stopping when aborting cutscene -disabled break key IRQ -slowed down loading icon anim for disk versions -added red screen of death for DLI misfiring (instead of black screen) -added blueish screen of death for file not found (may help diagnosing Fujinet) Let me know how it goes, even if the game already works for you! pop_dlitest210614.zip 728.38 kB · 6 downloads Here's what I've seen so far: Double-Density: Booted successfully once from FujiNet, BSOD on next boot (though dancing girl was still dancing for a time after the BSOD before freezing), third boot was successful. Power-cycled computer between all attempts. Dancing girl and mouse loading animations are slower than in previous releases (not sure if intentional or not) No response to fire button / console keys / keyboard during demo mode, so can't start game Single-Density: Booted fine from FujiNet 3 times in a row Dancing girl and mouse animations are at same speed as previous release (i.e., faster than the DD version) Fire button is read correctly, so disk swap and game start proceed as normal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zbyti Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) 9 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said: No response to fire button / console keys / keyboard during demo mode, so can't start game Dancing girl and mouse loading animations are slower than in previous releases (not sure if intentional or not) it will only loop the attract mode and not go into the game I changed the anim speed to refresh every 127 frames instead of every 15, hopefully that'll help Edited June 14, 2021 by zbyti 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxl Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) 36 minutes ago, tschak909 said: Here's a thought well. do not stop the processor in loops for more than 4 scan lines in a row every 7 lines, use DLI instead, approximately thanks to this you can have a lot of time throughout the frame for various types of calculations much more complicated than animation and stable transmission. currently the limits are exceeded ... --- example: DLI: Edited June 14, 2021 by xxl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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