Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!

[xxl]

what his next production will be, he said something about arcade titles, but started with such a high level with PoP that it will be difficult to beat it and surprise. hehe

[Heaven/TQA]

17 hours ago, Stephen said:

I was going to ask if we could have a tape version.  I'd love to wait at least an hour before being able to play a game where you die in 2 minutes.  Once the tape version is released, we can all bitch because version 1 of 200 of unknown turbo tape loaders is not implemented.  Some people just need their 600 baud game to load at 750 baud!

Haha... When suggesting tape drive release I refused to point to myrriads of own tape loaders and all those issues of none aligned tape heads..... ?

[Heaven/TQA]

7 hours ago, zbyti said:

I think that: After two years of my humble attempts to write something for that platform I'm quite aware about some difficulties. Like @xxl finally I decided to support only stock configurations. If my soft will works on moded hardware - fine, if not - no trouble for me.

Exactly my attitude, too. My ass, my time, my decision which hardware I support. To say it with Overkill we don't care what you say ... Fcuk u ,?.

 

And thanks for the port btw. ! Kudos.

 

 

 

 

[Mr Robot]

Maybe it should be released on tape but only for turbo loaders that required a modified tape drive?

 

Honestly I'd have just made a cart release and called it done.

 

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

Per Rensoup's request, I wrote out a physical copy of the "fastestmouse" demo and there's still what seems to me like a LOT of head movement during the loads between graphics screens and the like. Almost like maybe the data contained in the ATR is scattered across a lot of different tracks and sectors rather than being in contiguous chunks on the disk. Like, well over a dozen head movements in some cases, which seems ... extreme. But I don't know how the ATR geometry is laid out, just reporting how the drive is behaving. 

[Mazzspeed]

9 hours ago, Faicuai said:

This is not a complication, nor any other imaginary rationalization on this subject, as such requirement is a target design-premise, stated up-front an eternity ago, from the get-go.

 

On the Atari platform, there are multiple implications when choosing banked-rom vs. banked-ram, in spite of both being natural (and regularly used) configuration options. 

 

Atari PoP is a port of BBC MASTER PoP, and there, its coding team chose 128k as minimum requirement over the seemingly "impotent" (but more popular) 32KB BBC Micro config.

 

Normally, we justify HW expansions with SW that actually requires them. And just watching PoP unfolding on the screen is more than enough motivation to finally get that bit of extra RAM to break the 64KB barrier. There are several, affordable RAM expansions that will work plug-and-play via PBI on the 800XL, efforlessly.

 

 

You're not stating anything I don't already know. As always.

 

No one's arguing the fact that other systems run the game on 128k of ram, I don't know why this keeps coming up. The fact is it doesn't have to run on a hard limit of 128k of ram in the case a certain system has a fairly bloated DOS requirement - And that's essentially the issue here, without beating around the bush as it appears certain A8 users believe there's some shame not running the game in 128k of ram. In order to try and alleviate the issue regarding DOS increasing memory requirements, xbios was chosen which has resulted in slow drive performance and hasn't eliminated the compatibility issues it's supposed to resolve. Furthermore, issues have been compounded with a totally new subset of issues as a result of .CAR images in some attempt to regain speed while sticking to the set in stone 128k requirement originally claiming because it runs on a standard Atari - Even though the only A8 with 128k standard was the 130XE. So the claim was changed to runs on vintage machines.

 

Just accept that 192k would have been better suited to the game and call it a day. Yes you can expand an 800XL using PBI expansions, but realistically I see few people using them. Many opt for 1MB.

 

I'm just re-quoting my original comment to ensure context is maintained:

 

Quote

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.

And thanks for the working .CAR image has, naturally, been mentioned to Rensoup directly.

 

8 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

wtf does jack tramiel have to do with this, more sideshow crap... it's never clear where the conversation is going except that you come across poorly and it's always going to end up with a tramiel or some other machine reference for absolutely no reason.

That's all I need to read, not interested mate. Have a nice day.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Mazzspeed]

9 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

You mean substitute correct for incorrect? Sure.

And yet you worked it out, great job.

 

6 hours ago, ivop said:

As for the C64 .CAR¹ version, if you need a 1541 UII+ for that, you first need to sell a kidney to afford that

 

Easyflash mate, US$65.00 and the whole game loads instantly. http://store.go4retro.com/easyflash-3/

Edited July 8, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[_The Doctor__]

OMG what is your major malfunction? Just enjoy the d*mn game... and stop peppering all the threads with this kind of prattle! Memory on the Atari was always expandable in the 800's modular design, the 400 had upgrade card offering for them as well... Almost all machine from in the years before 1982 required a soldering iron to do so... of course none of this belongs in the POP thread but it seems if it's good or great someone always has to find a way to make some other issue to babble and b*tch about as if it will lessen how good something is compared to some other port out there... It won't though, because the game play look and feel are just wonderful. I'd say reaching out in all directions to make arguments against such a fine port is more a result of a personal dislike towards someone involved in the project or thread and less so about how good it all is including the underlying bios. All of this of course has nothing to do with the game or it's bios/DOS choices. You can pick whatever format you like and enjoy it in that format. But hey please do as you do and prattle about some more until a @moderator handles it for you... have a better day Mazzspeed, life is too short for me (maybe others) to read postings in the nature of what your writing and we want our time back.

[Mazzspeed]

2 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

OMG what is your major malfunction? Just enjoy the d*mn game... and stop peppering all the threads with this kind of prattle! Memory on the Atari was always expandable in the 800's modular design, the 400 had upgrade card offering for them as well... Almost all machine from in the years before 1982 required a soldering iron to do so... of course none of this belongs in the POP thread but it seems if it's good or great someone always has to find a way to make some other issue to babble and b*tch about as if it will lessen how good something is compared to some other port out there... It won't though, because the game play look and feel are just wonderful. I'd say reaching out in all directions to make arguments against such a fine port is more a result of a personal dislike towards someone involved in the project or thread and less so about how good it all is including the underlying bios. All of this of course has nothing to do with the game or it's bios/DOS choices. You can pick whatever format you like and enjoy it in that format. But hey please do as you do and prattle about some more until a @moderator handles it for you... have a better day Mazzspeed, life is too short for me (maybe others) to read postings in the nature of what your writing and we want our time back.

We all have our opinions. Not interested mate, have a nice day.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[_The Doctor__]

If you are not interested then move along, kindly please stop peppering every thread with your prattle and verbiage aimed at or against the forum members.

[youxia]

I can't believe you guys are at it again...

 

I mean - I'm no saint myself, but there really is a time you need to let go and stop arguing.

Edited July 8, 2021 by youxia

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

If you are not interested then move along, kindly please stop peppering every thread with your prattle and verbiage aimed at or against the forum members.

I'm entitled to discuss issues here, that's the point of the thread. As for opinions, you were quite opinionated regarding a certain user and xbios on page 44 of this thread.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[xxl]

54 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

a LOT of head movement during the loads

Rensoup wrote about indexing files (it will not refer to the directory) so probably the effect you are observing will be reduced by half.

[_The Doctor__]

Yes, and I reasoned with and through it... I even talked with the programmers of the game and the creator of xbios, that is how I came to understanding the facets of what all is involved and why.

Edited July 8, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[rensoup]

17 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

That's the problem, it's only the intro sequence. I'm seeing retries as the game loads after the intro sequence.

 

That makes no sense at all, the attract mode loads the demo level.

 

The demo level is just level0, so the same amount of data is loaded during the attract (minus the music perhaps, can't remember).  Level sizes vary between 200-700 bytes or something so that's hardly meaningful in terms of loading times.

 

You are using the bugfix build which has the slow mouse version, it will cause retries but not enough to trip FJ

 

17 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

Here's a video, ignore the first half of the loading sequence (which has very few retries anyway after the last round of fixes):

 

https://youtu.be/Dv-sw1IjVjo

 

You need to make a video of the fastestmouse version. If there are no retries that means it's fixed and it'll be the same when loading the game.

 

There's no point testing a build which is known to have speed issues

[rensoup]

 

6 hours ago, Faicuai said:

...of course, and extensive to the rest of the WHOLE team.

 

Atari 8-bit PoP port already looks way better than the BBC-port it comes from!

 

Kudos!! ????

Yes, seeing the art and sound come together was REALLY IMPORTANT for motivation.

 

And now I feel like reposting TIX's first animation that started it all ( even though he might complain that it's horrible ?)

 

 

 

[rensoup]

6 hours ago, xxl said:

what his next production will be, he said something about arcade titles, but started with such a high level with PoP that it will be difficult to beat it and surprise. hehe

you know what happens when you reach level 256... the counter wraps! 

 

So maybe we'll do pacman ? or something!

[rensoup]

1 hour ago, DrVenkman said:

Per Rensoup's request, I wrote out a physical copy of the "fastestmouse" demo and there's still what seems to me like a LOT of head movement during the loads between graphics screens and the like. Almost like maybe the data contained in the ATR is scattered across a lot of different tracks and sectors rather than being in contiguous chunks on the disk. Like, well over a dozen head movements in some cases, which seems ... extreme. But I don't know how the ATR geometry is laid out, just reporting how the drive is behaving. 

Sure, there are 60+ files after all...

 

Is it better than the bugfix version, or similarish ?

 

The previous log files were quite telling... the drive sometimes read 8 sectors of directory before finding then reading a file which is itself shorter than 8 sectors !

 

44 minutes ago, xxl said:

Rensoup wrote about indexing files (it will not refer to the directory) so probably the effect you are observing will be reduced by half.

I don't know if it will load twice faster but the gains should be significant (and take less memory!)

 

Drawback is that I can't use standard disk tools and I'm going to have to roll mine out

[Mazzspeed]

23 minutes ago, rensoup said:

That makes no sense at all, the attract mode loads the demo level.

Considering the bugfix version of the game (not to be confused with the fastmouse version), when reaching the demo level if I press fire there is more loading (40 seconds perhaps?) before I reach the actual first level of the game. While loading this 40 second portion of code there are still sector retries - Naturally I can't compare this to the fastmouse version as the fastmouse version doesn't go further than the demo level.

 

That's all I'm stating.

 

However, now that I've found the fastmouse version that I didn't even know existed, the work you've done rectifying the sector retries is commendable and I'm sure you'll eventually apply the fixes to all loading sequences experienced in the game - Of which there are many (not an attack, just an observation and obviously something that cannot be avoided).

 

Hence the reason I'm thankful there is a .CAR version of the game as I would simply loose interest constantly waiting for the loading sequences all the time at SIO 1x, but that's just me.

[Mr Robot]

13 minutes ago, rensoup said:

you know what happens when you reach level 256... the counter wraps! 

 

So maybe we'll do pacman ? or something!

Oh please do Galaga or Phoenix! Attempts have been made, nothing completed.

 

[+DrVenkman]

5 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

Oh please do Galaga or Phoenix! Attempts have been made, nothing completed.

Phoenix - that needs to happen someday. A vastly under-appreciated arcade title for sure.

[rensoup]

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

No one's arguing the fact that other systems run the game on 128k of ram, I don't know why this keeps coming up. The fact is it doesn't have to run on a hard limit of 128k of ram in the case a certain system has a fairly bloated DOS requirement - And that's essentially the issue here, without beating around the bush as it appears certain A8 users believe there's some shame not running the game in 128k of ram. In order to try and alleviate the issue regarding DOS increasing memory requirements

 

The limit is for comparing apples to apples... literally.

 

We can take pride knowing that the A8 kicked the A2's ass in terms of power even though Apple is now worth a trillion and Atari is nowhere to be seen.

 

That's all.

 

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

In order to try and alleviate the issue regarding DOS increasing memory requirements, xbios was chosen which has resulted in slow drive performance and hasn't eliminated the compatibility issues it's supposed to resolve.

We know perf is 1x SIO nothing wrong with, the 2nd part is bullshit

 

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

Furthermore, issues have been compounded with a totally new subset of issues as a result of .CAR images

Bullshit, what is the cart device it doesn't work with ?

 

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

Even though the only A8 with 128k standard was the 130XE. So the claim was changed to runs on vintage machines.

No, it works on stock machines. With your proposed 192KB solution it wouldn't.

 

I will remove "XL" from the first post even though as it's been pointed out, you're not as strict when it comes to using the proper terminology yourself  (Hello .CAR vs .CRT)

[rensoup]

24 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

However, now that I've found the fastmouse version that I didn't even know existed, the work you've done rectifying the sector retries is commendable and I'm sure you'll eventually apply the fixes to all loading sequences experienced in the game - Of which there are many (not an attack, just an observation and obviously something that cannot be avoided).

Alright, several pages to conclude that it worked all along... 

 

[+DrVenkman]

29 minutes ago, rensoup said:

Sure, there are 60+ files after all...

 

Is it better than the bugfix version, or similarish ?

 

The previous log files were quite telling... the drive sometimes read 8 sectors of directory before finding then reading a file which is itself shorter than 8 sectors !

It's about the same, even with the mouse moved off-screen to stop the animations. That said, I've had it running from a real drive from a physical floppy for about 2-1/2 hours now, maybe longer, with no lockups. 

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, rensoup said:

Bullshit, what is the cart device it doesn't work with ?

I have two .CAR images here that don't work while they work on other identical devices, no idea why. As I've stated, there could be a CF card controller conflict, who knows? The image that does work, works under FAT32 but not FAT16? Odd is odd.

 

I have also read of others having issues using other carts who's posts went largely unnoticed, once again, possibly CF card controller conflicts? As stated, I'm happy I have at least one image that works, I just hope it keeps working as updates roll out as at one stage I had two .CAR images that worked fine.

 

So, essentially, there are still isolated compatibility issues with the .CAR images. I'm not bothered by it at this stage, just posting as I see it.

 

10 minutes ago, rensoup said:

We can take pride knowing that the A8 kicked the A2's ass in terms of power even though Apple is now worth a trillion and Atari is nowhere to be seen.

This us vs them to be a common theme here, odd. Personally I find the Apple version of the game is every bit as good as the A8 version of the game, granted I only ever played it on a monochrome green phosphor monitor, but the lack of color didn't detract from the detail and gameplay. Realistically speaking, from the perspective of the gamer, the only difference I see in the BBC port is more texturing - Which I suppose is good, if you think it's necessary.

 

However great job.

 

13 minutes ago, rensoup said:

Bullshit, what is the cart device it doesn't work with ?

Well, the game doesn't run from a shared drive using FujiNet for one, even though tschak seems to be of the opinion it should run fine. However, understand that I can be quoted as stating that timing seems to be, overly, critical regarding xbios and certain edge cases are unlikely to ever work. It doesn't discount the fact there is still an issue as a result of xbios.

 

I'm not looking for an argument and you're obviously getting defensive, I'm just stating certain realities as a result of a decision to limit the game to 128k so the A8 could, apparently, beat every other platform. I state 'apparently' as I believe the game has been ported flawlessly on almost every platform, the only difference appears to be the source of the port in terms of presentation - Actual game play is, literally, identical between ports down to the very footstep.