Game Request: Diggers

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swirlythingy
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by swirlythingy »

WRT audio, this is just an unfounded suspicion, but have you checked that the audio Diggers was writing into the Arc buffers (from which ADFFS subsequently copied it) is actually non-corrupt in the first place? Diggers uses the Richard Joseph music player, which has almost never been implemented correctly on any non-native platform (see the complete hash the RISC OS ports of Cannon Fodder and The Chaos Engine made of their music). I wouldn't rule out coding bugs of some kind, whether that requires ADFFS to emulate some kind of undefined but previously working behaviour or not.
JonAbbott
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by JonAbbott »

I think I fixed the audio shortly after the last post (memory is a bit hazy as I've not touched the code for a few weeks), it writes a buffer of DMA audio data to the RISCOS 3.11 sound DMA buffers, which is 8 channel, but sets the RISCOS audio layer to 4 channels. The discrepancy was causing half the audio data to be dropped.

Fixing it however may have broken all other games that use sound DMA, I can't confirm at the moment as none of them are working under the dev builds at the minute.

The coding of the sound and cursor handlers in Diggers is quite frankly shoddy given how late it was released, both could have been coded legally but instead the developer(s) decided to directly write to RISCOS private memory areas. If they'd coded it legally (and the compiler they used didn't add the bugs it did), it would have worked on the RiscPC.

I shall not be defeated by their bad coding! Hopefully it will be working under the next release, once I've coded the VIDC List Type 0/1 to 3 translator - provided RISCOS does handle the dual video buffers correctly.
JonAbbott
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by JonAbbott »

The mouse cursor is fixed in the latest dev build and I'm working on the VIDC Type 0/1 to 3 MODE conversion to resolve the issue with its position for the next build.
JonAbbott
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by JonAbbott »

The latest dev build (2.52f) fixes the MODE issue, so the game is now playable on the Pi :D

Just the audio left to sort out, it's working correctly on RO5 SA but isn't quite correct on the Pi yet.
JonAbbott
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by JonAbbott »

The latest dev build (2.52g) and obey.zip fix the audio.

Diggers finally works correctly on the Pi ... what a mission and a half that was!!
Qjimbo
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by Qjimbo »

Amazing, thank you! Have you been able to get permission to distribute an ADF of this game? I still haven't been able to find the full version anywhere to download - the DOS version is already preserved on Web Archive so I can't see this being a stretch.

I also saw in an article that you were at the RISC OS London Show promoting this excellent project! I'm sure you got a lot of interest.
JonAbbott
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Re: Game Request: Diggers

Post by JonAbbott »

There's still an issue outstanding, as the game was hanging randomly prior to the London Show. I've yet to test it on a newer build to see if that's changed.

Regarding distribution I've not even attempted to track down the publishers, if you fancy a bit of detective, feel free to track down someone I can have a discussion with.

Yes, the project was at the London Show, where we had a ten machines running games under ADFFS. There's a few pictures in this thread.
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