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ADFFS 2.63 public beta

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:02 am
by JonAbbott
This is a public release of the current ADFFS 2.63 beta build, if you wish to take part in testing, please try running known working games available via this site with this build.

If you spot any issues/regressions, please detail the full game title (ie "F1064001 Blaston (1991) (Eterna)") and full details of the machine you've tested it on (ie RiscPC StrongARM RISC OS 3.71) with repro steps so I can reproduce the issue if appropriate.

There's been updates and fixes across the board, so machines suitable for testing include and machine detailed below with a minimum of 4mb of RAM:

A3xx, A4xx{/1}
A5xx (untested to date, but should work provided there's no more than 12mb of RAM)
A4000
A5000
A7000 (fix added for ARM7 macrocell erratum)
RiscPC ARM610
RiscPC ARM700 (fix added for ARM7 macrocell erratum)
RiscPC ARM710 (fix added for ARM7 macrocell erratum)
RiscPC StrongARM
Iyonix
Pi1/2/3

All OS versions are supported, from 3 onward however RISC OS 4 is not suitable for games due to the changes in video memory handling. Games that require specific screen memory sizes will fail under RISC OS 4, so although ADFFS works on RISC OS 4 it may not get a game running that it can on later machines such as the Pi.

Attachment removed, download the full release here

Re: ADFFS 2.63 public beta

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:03 am
by Vanfanel
Hi Jon!
So, is this a good time to re-test all compatible games looking for regressions again on the Raspberry 1/3?

Re: ADFFS 2.63 public beta

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:04 am
by JonAbbott
Vanfanel wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:03 am So, is this a good time to re-test all compatible games looking for regressions again on the Raspberry 1/3?
Sure is...the bit I don't look forward too as it takes so much time testing all the games across so many OS/ARM/chipsets variations.

That said, I could just take the decision to push updates out without the testing we do and await feedback, but I've found people simply don't provide feedback, or if they do seek help its on ROOL/StarDot and not here and quite often mixed into other threads meaning I lose track of them. There's also the issue of most supported games not being distributable, so a bug could be introduced that breaks something and then go undetected for many builds, which can make it difficult to diagnose and/or correct many builds further down the line, especially if several bugs overlap and make it difficult to pin down which build(s) regressed.

I'm hoping that by going back to making public betas available, more people might at least try the publicly available games, which are the ones I definitely want to keep running and would like to improve platform support, where they don't currently run on a particular OS/ARM variation.

What I really want to implement is an automated PackMan distribution point, for both nightly builds of ADFFS and the games, but despite attempting to contacting Alan Buckley for help on many occasions, I've yet to get a response. This would make distribution so much easier, particularly for testers, as there's now so many supported games it can take weeks installing them all manually...or as you've discovered not always straight forward and it's easy for the !Run to get out of sync.

I now have every game supported installed to HD, awaiting packaging, it just needs an automated way of creating them. Manually updating each game package is not an option, it simply takes too long with the number of updates to scripts. That said, perhaps I should find a way to run HD based games, that doesn't require the package to be updated when the !Run scripts changes :idea:

Re: ADFFS 2.63 public beta

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:29 pm
by Vanfanel
@Jon: I have been testing almost all compatible games, and except for some !Run script updates I had to do on HD-installed games, I couldn't find any regressions.. Have you seen anything strange you want me to try on Pi1/2?

Re: ADFFS 2.63 public beta

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:48 pm
by JonAbbott
Vanfanel wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:29 pm @Jon: I have been testing almost all compatible games, and except for some !Run script updates I had to do on HD-installed games, I couldn't find any regressions.. Have you seen anything strange you want me to try on Pi1/2?
That is good news.

I'm not aware of anything specific to test, although I will have the Alpine Software titles ready for testing soon. There's one minor update build to come which fixes an issue in COPS. Plague Planet is missing some disc sectors and I've yet to look at Cyborg and Kidnapping.

I'll let you know when the disc images and build are available for testing.