LCDGameModes v0.11

Discuss LCDGameModes by Steve Harrison
steve3000
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LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by steve3000 »

Just sent out by email v0.11 of LCDGameModes. Please post up any testing results here.

Key new features:
----------------------

New *command " *LCDGameModes [ON|OFF] "

Default is ON for monitortypes 4 and 3, and OFF for all others, but it can still serve a useful purpose on type 1.

Now also detects Risc OS 3.0/3.1 and gives an error if not either of those.

The Y-position of Modes 0,8,12,15 has been corrected to match Modes 1,9,13.

Reduced size to <2kb (well, it will be, without the 'test version' text).

Fully 32bit compatible (although it exits on any 32bit OS, so not really needed!).

Steve
PaulV
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by PaulV »

It's looking really good.

I've just tested the following games:

Gribbly's Day Out
Diggers
Xenon II
Speedball II
No Excuses
Chuck Rock
Elite
SWIV
James Pond
Pacmania

I was also testing the games running the latest test release of ADFFS and my latest test work on AutoVIDC which has the Sync. Polarity support implemented under the SWI only. Since LCDgm uses the AutoVIDC SWI, it was using the new Sync. Polarity selection code.

As I'm currently running the WE Standard VIDC Enhancer in order to test the clock speed switching, I had to start all the games from MODE 31 which uses the 36Mhz clock. So in order to make sure I had as much free memory as possible, I went into the Task Manager and dropped everything down as low as it would go. This gave me 2400Kb to play with before loading a disk with ADFFS.

I'm happy to report that all the games worked pretty much first time out of the box. The only one that I have problems with is Chuck Rock when it hangs on the loading screen and as that is an "intermittent" issue, re-trying the game a second time did the trick.

Speedball II is a nice one to test as it creates a totally odd custom mode that LCDgm ignores so it's a nice one to test with as an exception to the rule. The thing with the Speedball II screen mode is that the refresh rates on it are very low so many modern monitors won't display it. I guess this is one of those games that may require a specific patch at some point in the future.

Elite is also useful as a test as you can go back and forth to/from the Desktop without exiting the game. Again, it worked great.

Of the games that would exit gracefully enough to get back to the Desktop, most worked fine. Chuck Rock from time to time hangs and plays a nasty noise through the speaker on an ALT-BREAK, other times it exits cleanly. No Excuses doesn't allow you to exit at all it seems.

The only other observation I have which is unrelated to LCDgm but may be a good test for a QTM shim is Pacmania. On an ARM3 processor the soundtrack is horrific!

Anyway, I think that's all for now :D

Nice work!

Paul
JonAbbott
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by JonAbbott »

PaulV wrote:The only other observation I have which is unrelated to LCDgm but may be a good test for a QTM shim is Pacmania. On an ARM3 processor the soundtrack is horrific!
I don't think it's possible to shim Pacmania, I believe the mod player is internal.
PaulV
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by PaulV »

JonAbbott wrote:I don't think it's possible to shim Pacmania, I believe the mod player is internal.
That's a shame. I've never tried playing it with the cache turned off though. Maybe that will be sufficient to fix it.

Also, I've done some more testing of more games.

TopBanana
Zarch
Chaos

All three worked well and all returned to the MODE 31 desktop cleanly :D

Some versions will not launch correctly from MODE 31 so I used an ADF of my original "late release" copy which is effectively a PIAS release of Zarch on its own. That launched and returned to the desktop without issues.

I also tried a "development" beta version of Blurp for the Arc.

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Blurp

The Arc version is no longer in development and is available as a curiosity rather than anything else but I quite like it as a concept so I play it from time to time. The screen positioning on Blurp is off to the left when compared to every full release game I've seen so something's not quite right but it still works and is usable.

I've no idea if it's even worth taking a look at as possible variation of screen settings but I thought I'd raise it anyway.

Paul
JonAbbott
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by JonAbbott »

steve3000 wrote:Just sent out by email v0.11 of LCDGameModes.
We'll need to make some minor changes to LCDgm_init before it will work in ADFFS. It needs to do a #if to see if "adffs_version" is set, if so, exit silently and not generate any errors.

If you want to test ADFFS compiles and works correctly with the code swapped over, I'll then put it in the ADFFS source.

I'm hoping to release it next week, provided DA's continue to behave themselves.
PaulV
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by PaulV »

I just realised that I failed to mention, the new command line function seems to work as expected too.

Paul
steve3000
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by steve3000 »

PaulV wrote:Of the games that would exit gracefully enough to get back to the Desktop, most worked fine. Chuck Rock from time to time hangs and plays a nasty noise through the speaker on an ALT-BREAK, other times it exits cleanly. No Excuses doesn't allow you to exit at all it seems.
Thanks for all the testing Paul - really glad it's holding up well!

I'll have a look at Blurp. If the screen is shifted, it's probably down to the game sending a very low HDSR setting. I have a plan for a future version to get round Rockfall's title screen problem by resending 'good' values to the VIDC once or twice a second (controlled by a *Command) - this might solve the problem. It would be useful to keep a list of games the still need work...

Jon - I'm happy to include LCDGameModes with the next release of ADFFS, if it's ready. I won't be back at the computer until next weekend, so if you can wait that long - that's fine, otherwise we'll leave it until the next release. I'd also be happy to release as a stand alone module through Paul's website or alongside AutoVIDC, if he's happy with that?

Steve
steve3000
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by steve3000 »

...also I meant to ask, what does ALT-BREAK do? I've not used that before - is it Risc OS 3.5 onwards?

I manage to exit most games using the what I assumed was the 'standard' ie. Ctrl+Shit+Esc - certainly Chuck Rock and other Krisalis games exit fine with this, as do a lot of others (although sometimes you do need to repeat Ctrl+Shift+Esc a few times).

HTH
Steve
JonAbbott
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by JonAbbott »

steve3000 wrote:Jon - I'm happy to include LCDGameModes with the next release of ADFFS, if it's ready. I won't be back at the computer until next weekend, so if you can wait that long - that's fine
That's fine, I need to fix this DA bug anyway and also need to sort out reserving for games running in BASIC. I think it's going to be a few weeks as I want to see 1 week of no issues before I release.
PaulV
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Re: LCDGameModes v0.11

Post by PaulV »

The phone did something odd.

Not a double post but not what I wanted either. The second attempt worked, this is just an edit to remove the junk.

Paul
Last edited by PaulV on Mon May 06, 2013 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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