Patches for multi-disk games to use multiple drives?

[leech]

It's fantastic that we all have devices that can support multiple drives from a single device.

Problem is, I can only think of very few games that are multiple disks, that actually support using multiple disk drives!

 

Take Ultima IV for example, it's 2 disks, 4 sides, yet if I put program disk in one drive and Britannia disk in another 'drive', it won't detect it there.

Pretty sure AR works correctly for it, and even uses 128kb if you have it. 

 

Has anyone patched games to utilize something like the SIO2SD, so you can just mount up all the disk images, then play without swapping?

[Mathy]

Hello leech, guys

 

Wouldn't it be better to add a "disk changed" signal to SIO2-devices?  Either issued automatically when you "swap" disks or manually when you press a certain key (combination) on the device?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[Wrathchild]

Mask Of the Sun (Post #1) and Serpent's Star (Post #33)

 

The Dark Crystal (Post #2)

 

Winter Olympiad 88 (Post #1)

 

The Dallas Quest (Post #1)

 

Infocom Adventures (Post #10)

 

[Wrathchild]

As the OP mentioned Ultima, it's worth referencing that some multi-disk titles were also converted to run from cartridge.

 

To be fair, there aren't a great number of candidates and the majority of those seem to assume there is one drive only and so not check for other drives.

For example, some that use the first side of a disk as a loader and then only use the second side can pretty much run as-is from an SIO2PC device, i.e. when prompted you change disk 1 to next image.

 

I've none planned currently and the next one I'd want to attempt will most likely be Omnitrend Software's Universe, or the Synapse Electronic Novels.

 

Patching multi-disk games to use multiple drives would make sense if these were to be played on actual hardware, but for using SIO2x devices or cartridges that can mount larger images then the single-ATR approach makes more sense IMO. So here would be a good thread to post candidates.

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Wrathchild

[leech]

38 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

As the OP mentioned Ultima, it's worth referencing that some multi-disk titles were also converted to run from cartridge.

 

To be fair, there aren't a great number of candidates and the majority of those seem to assume there is one drive only and so not check for other drives.

For example, some that use the first side of a disk as a loader and then only use the second side can pretty much run as-is from an SIO2PC device, i.e. when prompted you change disk 1 to next image.

 

I've none planned currently and the next one I'd want to attempt will most likely be Omnitrend Software's Universe, or the Synapse Electronic Novels.

 

Patching multi-disk games to use multiple drives would make sense if these were to be played on actual hardware, but for using SIO2x devices or cartridges that can mount larger images then the single-ATR approach makes more sense IMO. So here would be a good thread to post candidates.

 

I guess that makes sense depending on if it is easier to make a larger ATR vs making a game recognize you have 2+ floppy drives.  I always thought it funny that we can now basically have one device plugged in that can do up to 14 drives, but even if you mount all sides of most games, you are lucky if it even picks up D2:

[+slx]

On 3/30/2020 at 2:24 AM, leech said:

I always thought it funny that we can now basically have one device plugged in that can do up to 14 drives, but even if you mount all sides of most games, you are lucky if it even picks up D2:

As 99% of floppy owners had a single unit only, it made no sense for 1980s programmers to cater for the 0.1% who would have been able to stick their four game floppies in four drives....

[+CharlieChaplin]

On 3/30/2020 at 12:54 AM, Wrathchild said:

 

Winter Olympiad 88 (Post #1)

 

 

Hmmm,

 

Winter Olympiad originally came on four 90k disksides, not all of them were fully used...

Why does the single ATR image use a non-standard 384k size instead of standard 360k - is there a lot of additional code required to make it a single ATR and that is why ?!?

 

(As a sidenote, the Homesoft 64k multi-fileversion [disk 071] of Winter Olympiad 1988 fits on one 180k diskside / ATR-image and requires approx. 500 DD-sectors. The 320k single-fileversion [disk 072] requires just 494 DD-sectors. Maybe it was packed with a good packer program...?!?)

 

[Wrathchild]

 

27 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Why does the single ATR image use a non-standard 384k size instead of standard 360k

It's just padded to a nice round $60000 bytes and doesn't utilise compression. It was merely a quick throw-together as I'd done a fair amount of investigation toward making an Atarimax cart version.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Wrathchild
spelling

[leech]

6 hours ago, slx said:

As 99% of floppy owners had a single unit only, it made no sense for 1980s programmers to cater for the 0.1% who would have been able to stick their four game floppies in four drives....

I know that, but the point was we now have easy access to the ability to have all these drives, and while there have been patches for mutiple buttons on games, and taking multiple disks and cramming into one large one (which admittedly is awesome and solves the problem as well), I am surprised it wouldn't be easier to add a detection routine for D#: even the games I have seen that support 2 drives never supported 3.  Granted only either really large games used more than 2 sides, or were single density disks.

 

I mean what if I want to build a tower of 810s?  ?

[+CharlieChaplin]

2 hours ago, leech said:

I mean what if I want to build a tower of 810s?  ?

 

Build a tower of evil and Atarians will destroy it with a Stealth fighterjet.

 

And if you build two towers, the Ents will destroy them...

 

 

[Mathy]

Hello leech

 

3 hours ago, leech said:

I mean what if I want to build a tower of 810s?  ?

 

You'll have to unplug the Tesla first... 

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[leech]

6 minutes ago, Mathy said:

Hello leech

 

 

You'll have to unplug the Tesla first... 

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

Ha, can't go anywhere right now anyhow!  At work we have been doing little video conferencing meetings in the morning as a health/sanity check.  The question came up if anyone was spending some time social distancing with video games.  I said I went old school and fired up Lode Runner!  Such a great game, and as I discovered while messing with AV cables last night, 1) it requires artifacting for color, 2) depending on how it was hooked up to the 1084s and which of the two buttons I pushed, I ended up getting red or blue bricks!  So I guess if you plug things in wrong, you can have 'mirror universe' Lode Runner ?