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Altirra 3.00 released


phaeron

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I get a feeling that there's only screen shots of the initial load screen because no one ever saw the main real screen due to the tape being duff.

 

What do you mean? There are two screenshots of the game itself on our site.

 

Atari Frog, have you been supplying broken stuff!!!

 

Not saying the game is 100% but it did work under certain conditions at the time. Otherwise, how would you explain the screenshots I made back in the day or the loading instructions I added? IIRC, it was Atari800Win PLus V3.1 I was using (or a beta of V4.0?).

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

 

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Well, sometimes things work in emulation which don't work on actual hardware... until the emulators become more faithful to the hardware. :)

 

Anyway: checksum error here too.

 

BTW: Both screenshots on your site are from sections viewable prior to the error occurring.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Well, sometimes things work in emulation which don't work on actual hardware... until the emulators become more faithful to the hardware. :)

 

Probably what happened then.

 

BTW: Both screenshots on your site are from sections viewable prior to the error occurring.

 

After the game has loaded... or am I missing something?

 

post-4740-0-28286700-1520538701.gifpost-4740-0-84625100-1520538715.gif

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

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What do you mean? There are two screenshots of the game itself on our site.

 

 

Not saying the game is 100% but it did work under certain conditions at the time. Otherwise, how would you explain the screenshots I made back in the day or the loading instructions I added? IIRC, it was Atari800Win PLus V3.1 I was using (or a beta of V4.0?).

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

 

 

 

Why does no one see a smiley....

 

As confirmed the screen shots are prior to where it stops working, hence I made a joke of you supplying broken stuff with a smiley after.

 

Just saw your posts with different screen shots..Which begs how it was booted..

 

And back to my original post..

 

I don't expect you to personally check every inch of a game rip for it working, I suspect it worked up to a long way in and was deemed ok, a simple mistake..

 

When I have beta tested stuff I can't play each and every game to the end, its an impossible task. I've thrown that tape image in to altirra numerous ways, tried different basics, OS versions , memory sizes and the result is always the same, error 143 after the second big load (or 3rd if you boot from the machine code loader.

 

I just suspect its a dud tape right at the end...Not the end of the world though..

 

Paul.

 

Perhaps as FJC said, it could be that it works (not that I could make it) on Atari800win plus, I did try but its missing a lot of the compatibility that Altirra has so could be an emulator reason as FJC says.

 

I'll go back to trying other ways to make it work..

Edited by Mclaneinc
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Basically, each version tries to read settings from older versions and tries not to write settings that would crash older versions. When reasonable, newer versions will migrate older settings, but if things have changed they may not read correctly in older versions. For instance, if you add VBXE in 3.00 and try to run 2.90, it won't be there because in 3.00 VBXE was moved from a specific setting to a device. I don't try to write compatible settings on settings changes as that way lies madness. This unfortunately means that running newer versions can "break" profiles in older versions by removing the items that were changed.

 

A bit of debris can accumulate when newer versions save settings differently than older versions -- the old and new settings will exist side by side. All profiles do end up in the one INI file, if you are in portable mode.

 

I discovered I had a 30K byte .ini file from a previous version, I loaded it into the latest 3.1x test, set the settings the way I wanted, then exited out. It was still 30K bytes.

 

So I restarted the emulator, deleted the .ini file, then exited out. And it worked like I guessed. Altirra made a new .ini file. This time, 19K bytes. In effect it re-wrote or compacted & optimized the .ini wminus the previous baggage. Kinda how I thought it'd work.

 

I've also found it helpful to make a given .ini read-only once I've got it configured and running exactly like I want. This allows for experimentation without the frustration involved in re-setting stuff manually. Or simply specify a different .ini file in portable mode. It works for me.

 

---

 

I'll continue to work with settings/configs/profiles in this manner going forward. Something I've been doing more or less since the 2.90 days. Unless someone sees a major issue that I'm missing?

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For completeness, here's the problem with the tape:

00003740: 02 00 00 00 00 12 AC 25-0E 40 07 8E 64 61 74 61  |.......%.@..data|
00003750: 84 00 0C 01 55 55 FC 00-00 00 00 12 0E 40 10 00  |....UU.......@..|
00003760: 00 00 00 12 0E 40 12 00-00 00 00 16 4E 07 2E 17  |.....@......N...|
00003770: 2D 0E 40 09 00 00 00 00-12 0E 40 06 00 00 00 00  |-.@.......@.....|
00003780: 25 AC 14 2E 28 1C 0E 40-06 00 00 00 00 15 3E 3A  |%...(..@......>
00003790:[1E]40 32 00 00 00 00 2C-15 16 58 07 11 11 36 AC  |.@2....,..X...6.|
000037a0: 2D AC 25 0E 40 01 00 00-00 00 16 62 07 39 17 2D  |-.%.@......b.9.-|
000037b0: 0E 40 01 00 00 00 00 12-0E 40 05 00 00 00 00 25  |.@.......@.....%|
000037c0: 8D 14 39 28 1C 0E 40 06-00 00 00 00 15 3E 3A 0E  |..9(..@......>:.|
000037d0: 41 01 36 00 00 00 2C 85-64 61 74 61 84 00 0A 01  |A.6...,.data....|

The byte at $3790 in the tape image is corrupted -- it is $1E when it should be $0E, for the BASIC token for a float constant. Fixing that makes the checksum agree. This is consistent with a tape decode error, from bit 3 bleeding into bit 4. Probably not too useful to speculate as to how it got into the archive, things happen.

 

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Another one guys

 

Knossos......Yeah, that famous game ;)

 

Tape loads via a Basic CLOAD, there seems to be data it does not load right at the end?

 

Game starts after a RUN and appears to work but crashes after a wanted key press and shows an Error 3 at line 7040

 

Is this a corrupt tape again?

 

Tried one I had, the same, its from 1981 so I tried all the usual settings..Same...

Knossos.zip

Edited by Mclaneinc
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Works with Atari800Win PLus V4.1 under which the cassette file was generated about nine years ago so pre-Altirra.

 

The tape was recreated virtually from a cracked BASIC file then CSAVEd to mimic the original, that's all I can say...

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

Edited by www.atarimania.com
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Since I have no desire to reinstall Atari800WinPlus on my PC, a dump of the (intact) BASIC listing would be interesting for the purpose of comparison with what Altirra ends up loading.

 

Should be it, , just use the Altirra explorer to get the file off in DOS 2.5 format..

 

Edit: forgot if you could attach BASIC files...Just checked it in Memopad and its all good...Dumped from Winplus obviously...

FJC.atr

Edited by Mclaneinc
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Bug in the game, specifically a USR() routine reading uninitialized memory:

0600: 25 00             AND $00
0602: 85 D5             STA $D5
0604: 68                PLA
0605: 68                PLA
0606: 68                PLA
0607: 85 CC             STA $CC
0609: 68                PLA
060A: 68                PLA
060B: 25 CC             AND $CC
060D: 85 D4             STA FR0
060F: 60                RTS

Change the memory init mode to Cleared and it'll work. On a real machine, this'll depend on the type of RAM chips you have and whether you boot a DOS/loader that uses location 0.

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Thanks all...Another working game...

 

Small request if possible, a command line switch for memory init mode...Just to help the gamebase folks?

 

No problem if its a pain, a note can be added to the gamebase per game instructions..

 

Paul.

Edited by Mclaneinc
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I think fixing the game would be preferable to obfuscating bugs via behaviour which doesn't reflect real hardware.

 

EDIT: Here's an ATR with some basic fixes:

 

knossos.atr

 

Of course I don't even know how the game is supposed to be played, but aside from the uninitialised RAM issue (I assume "AND $00" at the start of the assembly language section - whose purpose is to simply AND together the two arguments - was supposed to be "LDA #$00" in order to zero the MSB of the result), CH was being poked with zero instead of 255 in order to clear the most recent keystroke, and this was causing a rather sudden end to the proceedings.

 

Edited by flashjazzcat
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