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Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!


rensoup

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18 hours ago, rensoup said:

you could try moving the mouse outside the screen so it stops being refreshed, which would make the VBi very fast (but possibly still not fix your issue)

 

XXL suggested that I add infinite retries too... so maybe I'll go with that.

Moving the mouse out didn't help, but I've located the issue. The loading problem on FujiNet appears when I have connected SIO2SD to FujiNet's SIO socket, even despite power to SIO2SD was cut off (other lines stay connected ). 

Unplugged it completely and here we go properly. Damn. 

Edited by Jacques
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As for what could be coming next, it's a  though choice...

 

Most arcades are hires (256 pixels) so may be tricky to do a straight port plus a lot of them use z80(s) (yes I know about the z80 translation).

NES ports can be pretty good and less demanding and share the 6502 but again use 256 pixels.

 

C64 ports aren't that exciting usually...

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6 hours ago, Jacques said:

Moving the mouse out didn't help, but I've located the issue. The loading problem on FujiNet appears when I have connected SIO2SD to FujiNet's SIO socket, even despite power to SIO2SD was cut off (other lines stay connected ). 

Unplugged it completely and here we go properly. Damn. 

At least from all that scrutiny, it's pretty clear that XBIOS has not been at fault so far

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12 minutes ago, rensoup said:

At least from all that scrutiny, it's pretty clear that XBIOS has not been at fault so far

Well, it's maybe not "at fault" but given how it limits loading to standard SIO speeds and has caused the only known case of widespread FujiNet compatibility that I know of in a year of widespread FujiNet adoption by thousands of users, it's certainly not ... shall we say ... the most compatible or user-friendly loader around. 

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22 minutes ago, rensoup said:

it's pretty clear that XBIOS has not been at fault so far

Absolutely, at least has not been a "disrupting factor", regardless of other possible improvements that could be brought to it (just like any other piece of SW...)

 

The good thing here is we have seen or learned about the embedded nuances and differences that can surface with different SIO-chain implementations, especially when compared to legacy ones. 

 

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If it wasn't for working .CAR images I wouldn't have played this game beyond the initial beta releases. I'm not interested in a pure SIO 1x experience no matter what the game, and this is where xbios is definitely a limiting factor.

Edited by Mazzspeed
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3 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Well, it's maybe not "at fault" but given how it limits loading to standard SIO speeds and has caused the only known case of widespread FujiNet compatibility that I know of in a year of widespread FujiNet adoption by thousands of users, it's certainly not ... shall we say ... the most compatible or user-friendly loader around.

From what XXL told me it has a retry count of 64, yet it seems to somehow exhaust that with Fujinet... but not with real drives even with the initial slow dancer loading icon. 

 

To me that seems to expose an issue with Fujinet, not the other way around. 

 

Here's another example:

10 hours ago, Jacques said:

The loading problem on FujiNet appears when I have connected SIO2SD to FujiNet's SIO socket, even despite power to SIO2SD was cut off (other lines stay connected ). 

Unplugged it completely and here we go properly. Damn. 

This is somehow delaying transfers... The only reason that it works with most other software is because they use the OS for loading and it apparently has insanely long delays before failing... which means they may not be loading at advertised speed because this problem would still occur.

 

2 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

If it wasn't for working .CAR images I wouldn't have played this game beyond the initial beta releases. I'm not interested in a pure SIO 1x experience no matter what the game, and this is where xbios is definitely a limiting factor.

There would be no disk version without XBIOS because the OS steals too much memory

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Really?

I like the fact it will play on more machines across the line without requiring add on dma memory/processing devices and or pcb palooza's inside the cases of the Atari. While on AtariAge it might seem everyone has all kinds of goodies in their machines... there are hundreds of thousands of folks who don't have an extra bit of anything done to or added to their machines.

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22 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Really?

I like the fact it will play on more machines across the line without requiring add on dma memory/processing devices and or pcb palooza's inside the cases of the Atari. While on AtariAge it might seem everyone has all kinds of goodies in their machines... there are hundreds of thousands of folks who don't have an extra bit of anything done to or added to their machines.

And likewise there are many that obviously do have expanded machines and would like to load the game at a pace faster than waiting for Frogger to load from cassette - I know I'm not the only one on these forums that would have chosen not to play the game had a workable .CAR not been made available.

 

It's obvious that one way or another you're alienating certain users no matter what direction you go, xbios isn't really an ideal solution. As it is, the only 'stock' machine the game will run on even using xbios is a 130XE.

Edited by Mazzspeed
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16 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

Yippieh, we're back on track of off-topic-ness and telling the developer how to do his job

Yeah, the classical "living in Narnia" syndrome.

 

...without mentioning the fact that, when porting games, not only "code" needs to be ported... but MEMORY MAPS, too...

 

For example, any code that was originally written to sparsely run in $C000-$FFFF space of ANOTHER machine, may not be fully relocatable or modifiable, therefore needing the exact same address-space on the target port-platform (our own)... hence, our native OS (and its footprint) may have to go (almost entirely) and with it also go our native I/O routines, etc... which will need to be replaced with something else, and relocated somewhere else, and all of this with a minimal footprint in RAM in order to secure such memory-map portability.

 

 

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45 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Really?

I like the fact it will play on more machines across the line without requiring add on dma memory/processing devices and or pcb palooza's inside the cases of the Atari. While on AtariAge it might seem everyone has all kinds of goodies in their machines... there are hundreds of thousands of folks who don't have an extra bit of anything done to or added to their machines.

When I was doing Atari projects in the past I limited myself to “stock” hardware (not counting my VBXE stuff) but 64kb/130xe machines (and even using separate mem access of ANTIC/CPU) just for the sake of me liking that approach. I even like the idea of doing some stuff for

my 48kb 800 or even 600xl… ;) 

 

 

or hence I was lazy to have a testing park… HDD, Hispeed loaders, RAM expansions, CPU boards, Dual Pokey, PAL/NTSC, Sparta dos, side loader, cart loaders etc etc etc

Edited by Heaven/TQA
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therefore xB has the option of relocatable and does not use ZP - OS procedures are not only C000- but also ZP, $0200, $0300.

And this is without access to FS, which you will get access to after loading DOS hehehe, while the DOS themselves are not 100% compatible with each other and it would lead to a situation that it works on one configuration and not on another ;-)

 

Edited by xxl
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1 hour ago, DjayBee said:

Yippieh, we're back on track of off-topic-ness and telling the developer how to do his job.

?

It's just a suggestion, as far as I'm aware his job's mostly done. The game won't run on most stock A8's, that's a fact.

 

55 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Yeah, the classical "living in Narnia" syndrome.

 

...without mentioning the fact that, when porting games, not only "code" needs to be ported... but MEMORY MAPS, too...

 

For example, any code that was originally written to sparsely run in $C000-$FFFF space of ANOTHER machine, may not be fully relocatable or modifiable, therefore needing the exact same address-space on the target port-platform (our own)... hence, our native OS (and its footprint) may have to go (almost entirely) and with it also go our native I/O routines, etc... which will need to be replaced with something else, and relocated somewhere else, and all of this with a minimal footprint in RAM in order to secure such memory-map portability.

 

 

Word salad, yummy yummy.

 

32 minutes ago, xxl said:

therefore xB has the option of relocatable and does not use ZP - OS procedures are not only C000- but also ZP, $0200, $0300.

And this is without access to FS, which you will get access to after loading DOS hehehe, while the DOS themselves are not 100% compatible with each other and it would lead to a situation that it works on one configuration and not on another ;-)

 

Yes, obviously there exists the possibility that differing DOS's can introduce compatibility issues. That still doesn't change the fact that your xbios doesn't totally eliminate them and runs slow as molasses.

 

My point stands, had xbios been the only option, my interests would have veered elsewhere. Thankfully there's a working .CRT variant.

Edited by Mazzspeed
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2 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

I've already watched all your videos, no need to post links.

so despite the obvious facts, you keep telling crap? so you are a troll ?

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I'm sorry, so not a troll but a naive troll like a child with infantile views, as if you were saying this hammer is bad because it does not hammer a nail ... a little pet but a hammer is a tool and it will not hammer a nail on its own ?

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1 minute ago, xxl said:

I'm sorry, so not a troll but a naive troll like a child with infantile views, as if you were saying this hammer is bad because it does not hammer a nail ... a little pet but a hammer is a tool and it will not hammer a nail on its own ?

I see. I'm the troll and apparently the naive child, while you dedicate posts to immature personal insults as soon as you're backed into a corner?

 

Odd post is odd.

 

The speed offered by this variant of xbios is like using a tack hammer to drive a railway stake home. Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with a little criticism, consider it a learning experience.

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5 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

The speed offered by this variant of xbios is like using a tack hammer to drive a railway stake home.

This variant of xB offers nothing more than the US device can handle ? maybe a little more - devices cannot handle more than one US speed and xB can ;-) I know your comparison is as usual ... infantile ?

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4 hours ago, rensoup said:

This is somehow delaying transfers... The only reason that it works with most other software is because they use the OS for loading and it apparently has insanely long delays before failing... which means they may not be loading at advertised speed because this problem would still occur.

 

You wrote it like it's disadvantage that something else is loading fine ?

Real life shows, that everything else loads without any problem with no noticable delays, 1xSIO, 3xSIO, no problem, you can tell by the ear where SIO sound is enabled that it's all fine. No clue why PoP has to hang everytime at the very same moment (with mouse or without - moved out) during loading 1xSIO when SIO2SD is attached to my FujiNet. If you could add these repeating attempts, so be it.

Edited by Jacques
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