Voyage: An Intv Journey (@Party Demo)

[carlsson]

Are we using the RAM in the ECS for something? I'm thinking perhaps a redux version with simplified music (that would be my headache) that runs on an Intellivision without required expansions. Without claiming I'm a particularly skilled chip musician (because there are others far better than me), now we have a few examples of what you can do with 5-6 channels and an advanced tracker, so in theory it would be possible with a dumbed down version that is playable.

 

Albert of Pu-239 (not to be confused with Albert Yarusso) did something similar. First him and me released the demo VIMM for VIC-20 with 16K (which itself is a very common expansion). Two years later he reworked some parts of the demo, skipped some and added some, new musics and released VIMMII for the unexpanded VIC-20. The two are not identical but very strongly relate to eachother, for the few people owning a VIC-20 but who can't afford $30-40 on a memory expansion.

[+DZ-Jay]

25 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Are we using the RAM in the ECS for something? I'm thinking perhaps a redux version with simplified music (that would be my headache) that runs on an Intellivision without required expansions. Without claiming I'm a particularly skilled chip musician (because there are others far better than me), now we have a few examples of what you can do with 5-6 channels and an advanced tracker, so in theory it would be possible with a dumbed down version that is playable.

 

Albert of Pu-239 (not to be confused with Albert Yarusso) did something similar. First him and me released the demo VIMM for VIC-20 with 16K (which itself is a very common expansion). Two years later he reworked some parts of the demo, skipped some and added some, new musics and released VIMMII for the unexpanded VIC-20. The two are not identical but very strongly relate to eachother, for the few people owning a VIC-20 but who can't afford $30-40 on a memory expansion.

 

We're not using the ECS RAM for anything, only the PSGs.  Still, I find it strange that the program crashes without the ECS since the worse that should happen is that it writes to the non-existent PSGs, which should just drop the memory writes.

 

I thought it could be the Intellivision II/Coleco lock out "feature," but "cart.mac" sets up a valid cartridge header for us (even if we don't use it), so that shouldn't be it either.

 

I think there may be an actual bug in the bootstrap, which is causing it to fail when the ECS is not present.  I'll have to investigate this week-end.

 

In any case, are you suggesting re-tracking the songs to sound good on 3 channels but still take advantage of 6?

 

Alternatively, if you just re-track the songs as simpler renditions for 3 channels only, we could detect the ECS in the bootstrap sequence and change the songs table dynamically.  We're sort of tight with ROM, but since we require an LTO Flash! to run on hardware, we could employ bank-switching.

 

    -dZ.

[carlsson]

I can't gurantee it would sound good, but might be interesting to try if I didn't have a lot of other things to occupy me. Actually someone else might want to try on their Intellivision model 1 or /// if it runs at all without ECS. I would think even emulation would give a hint there, if it crashes out or not. Heck, even I've got access to an Intellivision and LTO Flash! if testing is required.

[+DZ-Jay]

8 minutes ago, carlsson said:

I can't gurantee it would sound good, but might be interesting to try if I didn't have a lot of other things to occupy me. Actually someone else might want to try on their Intellivision model 1 or /// if it runs at all without ECS. I would think even emulation would give a hint there, if it crashes out or not. Heck, even I've got access to an Intellivision and LTO Flash! if testing is required.

In the emulator it works.  That's why @nanochess was able to record the video without the full six channel music.

 

I know it works with and without the Intellivoice, because @Intymike tested that as part of our previous troubleshooting effort.  He also tested with PAL/NTSC console and ECS, mix-and-match between them.

 

I don't think he ever tested without the ECS, though.

 

The main concern here is that we're bypassing the "cart.mac" bootstrapping sequence completely, and it tries to initialize the resources in a quick-and-dirty way.  That was done for the "lock-out" feature @shazz and I worked on before.  That's all still there, but commented out.  So perhaps it'll just be wise to make a build using the "cart.mac" standard bootstrap, since there's no need to avoid it now.

 

That would make the bootstrap more resilient, since we know that "cart.mac" plays well with all devices (although, honestly, I do not see anything that it does specially to handle the ECS apart from page-flipping the ROM away, which we do also).

 

    -dZ.

[Intymike]

Here you are.

[+DZ-Jay]

Wow! Thanks for that @Intymike, it confirms that the demo works on the hardware, irrespective of configuration.  By the way, is that the BIN+CFG or the ROM?

 

So there may be something wrong with @daldude's setup.

 

 

I haven't used the LTO Flash!, so ... is there a special configuration you need to set for programs to run?

[Intymike]

I think I have now the .bin on the LTO. 

No special configuration.

 

[daldude]

5 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

Yes I'm using the ECS and no matter what setting related to the ECS it still will not run, Enable ECS Never,Enable  ECS Always, Enable ECS  Compatible and Enable ECS, ECS Games.

 

5 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

Are you using the ECS?

The ECS is required.  We bypass all standard bootstrapping, so no explicit check is performed at start up.
 

I should enhance the program to report an error if the ECS is missing.
 

   dZ.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 minute ago, Intymike said:

I think I have now the .bin on the LTO. 

No special configuration.

 

I didn't think so, thanks.

 

@daldude, can you confirm that you are trying with the BIN+CFG or with the ROM binary?

[carlsson]

@daldude, if you want a few more ECS enabled ROMs to compare with, you have some musics here:

 

In particular in the second link, the exact same tracker and musics are used as found in the Voyage demo. I'm not sure what it would add though, as the standalone binaries don't use the "sequencer" we used in the full demo.

[daldude]

Just now, DZ-Jay said:

I didn't think so, thanks.

 

@daldude, can you confirm that you are trying with the BIN+CFG or with the ROM binary?

How do I use the BIN+CFG files with the LTO Flash? When I just tried the bin file I could not find it in the Windows Transfer Program that transfers games to the LTO Flash Cart, only when I select the ROM file does it show up. When I tried the add folder option and transferred  sequencer to the LTO Flash it still just keeps resetting my Intellivision 2.

[daldude]

1 hour ago, daldude said:

How do I use the BIN+CFG files with the LTO Flash? When I just tried the bin file I could not find it in the Windows Transfer Program that transfers games to the LTO Flash Cart, only when I select the ROM file does it show up. When I tried the add folder option and transferred  sequencer to the LTO Flash it still just keeps resetting my Intellivision 2.

I got it to work, needed to use the bin file and found it under Intv Party 2017 and not sequencer.rom. I had to search through all the game listings on the left column of the LTO Transfer Program.

[+DZ-Jay]

37 minutes ago, daldude said:

I got it to work, needed to use the bin file and found it under Intv Party 2017 and not sequencer.rom. I had to search through all the game listings on the left column of the LTO Transfer Program.

 

So ... does this mean that the ROM file does not work on the hardware?

[daldude]

4 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

So ... does this mean that the ROM file does not work on the hardware?

I reckon so

[First Spear]

Hi all. Circling back on this in 2022, I am unable to see the "face" near the end of the video when running under the latest jzIntv on Windows 10.

 

I am not sure if my switches are not correct, or if there is something else I am missing. I am looking to record a .avi for clean conversion to .mp4.

 

Thanks for all ideas!

 

jzintv  --gfx-palette="%jzintv%\jzintvpalette01.txt" --rand-mem --jlp --jlp-savegame="%1.save" -b10 -v1 -z "2048,1080,8" --sym-file="%1.sym"  -E "%jzintv%\ecs.bin"  -e "%jzintv%\exec.bin" -g "%jzintv%\grom.bin" sequencer.bin

 

[+DZ-Jay]

4 hours ago, First Spear said:

Hi all. Circling back on this in 2022, I am unable to see the "face" near the end of the video when running under the latest jzIntv on Windows 10.

 

What do you see?

 

4 hours ago, First Spear said:

I am not sure if my switches are not correct, or if there is something else I am missing. I am looking to record a .avi for clean conversion to .mp4.

 

Thanks for all ideas!

 

jzintv  --gfx-palette="%jzintv%\jzintvpalette01.txt" --rand-mem --jlp --jlp-savegame="%1.save" -b10 -v1 -z "2048,1080,8" --sym-file="%1.sym"  -E "%jzintv%\ecs.bin"  -e "%jzintv%\exec.bin" -g "%jzintv%\grom.bin" sequencer.bin

 

 

Looks correct, nothing wrong here.  It's been several years since I last looked, but if you give me some details of what you see, or not see, I'll try to check what it could be.

 

     dZ.

[First Spear]

3 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

What do you see?

 

 

Looks correct, nothing wrong here.  It's been several years since I last looked, but if you give me some details of what you see, or not see, I'll try to check what it could be.

 

     dZ.

I see the right half of the face for several seconds, then I see the left half (only). It's like my recording is dropping frames or my emulation isn't emulating a CRT properly. I did run it on my real hardware on my TV and the face was visible completely.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

7 hours ago, First Spear said:

I see the right half of the face for several seconds, then I see the left half (only). It's like my recording is dropping frames or my emulation isn't emulating a CRT properly. I did run it on my real hardware on my TV and the face was visible completely.

 

Ah, you are looking at a recording.  I thought it was the actual emulation screen display.

 

Yes, your video recording is dropping frames.  That sequence was designed to be viewed on an Master Component hooked up to an old school CRT.  It runs at 60 Hz, and rotates a block of GRAM on every frame.

 

Each of the four blocks making the face rotates at 15 Hz, so if your video is running at 30 Hz, you see only one side at a time.

The best video I got was with an iPhone to the screen.  It's the one in the first post.

 

     dZ.

Edited October 12, 2022 by DZ-Jay