Update on next release

Discuss ADFFS development and download test releases
JonAbbott
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Re: Update on next release

Post by JonAbbott »

ringdings wrote:Is there a rule of thumb as to whether I should hold CONTROL to quit desktop when booting floppy or not?
So far I've found that on the games I've tried I get a blank screen if I hold CONTROL.
You don't need to use CONTROL on the Pi. It's for original Arc's only, where memory is below 8mb and is only required for games that must be run via SHIFT-BOOT.

I need to change the wording on the Pi build as CONTROL to run a game won't work. Thanks for pointing it out - even though I'm potentially booting games hundreds of times a day, I've not really paid it much attention!
ringdings
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Re: Update on next release

Post by ringdings »

On Paradroid 2000 various droids disappear randomly. I don't remember this behaviour on Paradroid 90 on the Amiga.
JonAbbott
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Re: Update on next release

Post by JonAbbott »

ringdings wrote:On Paradroid 2000 various droids disappear randomly. I don't remember this behaviour on Paradroid 90 on the Amiga.
They disappear when not in your line of sight - or is that not what you mean? I played a few levels of it the other day and it seemed to be working okay.

It might be worth installing ArcEm on your Pi so you can double check games if there's a suspicion ADFFS is breaking them. You can download the RISCOS 3.11 ROM from 4corn should you need it.

Alternatively, install Arculator on a PC if you want to do a side-by-side comparison. KarateEd wrote a good document on how to get it running, should you need it.

Once you have one of the emulators installed, you can use the latest ADFFS beta to mount the floppies and boot them in the same way as on the Pi. I've not tested the latest ADFFS beta's on RISCOS 3.11 to any extent, however there's been very few code changes to that codebase, so I don't expect there to be any issues.

I am aware that the sound may not be correct on Paradroid on RISCOS 3.11 - I've yet to track down why. I suspect it's a bug in their code, which may be expecting RISCOS 2 or Arthur behaviour. Once I get hold of an original floppy, I can'test under RISCOS 2 on an original Arc to see what's going on and then get ADFFS to fix it real-time.
JonAbbott
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Re: Update on next release

Post by JonAbbott »

Updated daily builds in /development/32bit/CPU

Ballarena, Fish!, Populous, Quest for Gold and Thundermonk are working again. Be aware that when you fire on Thundermonk, the sprite doesn't appear - seems to play okay otherwise.
ringdings
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Re: Update on next release

Post by ringdings »

I'll have another go on it tonight. I did originally think it was just when they went out of line of sight, but I wasn't convinced.

I've got arculator on a PC. If I install ADFFS to be able to read JFDs won't that negate the comparison or am I not understanding? quite likely :)
JonAbbott
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Re: Update on next release

Post by JonAbbott »

ringdings wrote:If I install ADFFS to be able to read JFDs won't that negate the comparison
ADFFS only acts as a 1772 FDC emulator on RISCOS 3. On the Pi games run under a JIT and paravirtualized OS, with full IOC emulation and frame pacing.

The next release of Arculator does include native JFD support, but you'd have to build it yourself as Tom hasn't released binaries yet.
Vanfanel
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Re: Update on next release

Post by Vanfanel »

I have been testing today (at long last!!) and the latest version even with updated modules seems o have suffered a considerable compatibility drop:

20898AC ok
Fire & ICE ok
Axis Ok
Ballarena WRONG
Blowpipe BROKEN AFTER INPUT MENU
Cannon Fodder HANGS IN DISK CHANGE SCREEN
Chuck Rock BREAKS AFTER CHANGING DISK
GODS ok
Heimdall BLACK SCREEN ON LAUNCH
James Pond OK
James Pond 2 BLACK SCREEN AFTER CREDITS
Caverns BROKEN IN-GAME GRAPHICS
Jet Fighter OK
Lotus II OK
Mad Professor Mariarty OK
Magic Pockets OK
Nebulus HANGS ON KRISALIS SCREEN
No Excuses OK (But I don't understand this game...)
Pacmania OK (Audio is still missing some music samples)
Paradroid 2000 OK
SWIV BLACK SCREEN ON LAUNCH
Xenon 2 OK
Zarch OK
ringdings
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Re: Update on next release

Post by ringdings »

I didn't know ADFFS recognises the platform it's running on and behaves accordingly.

Paradroid IS working correctly
Ballarena seems to be running correctly
Populous is looping on title screen
JonAbbott
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Re: Update on next release

Post by JonAbbott »

Vanfanel wrote:I have been testing today (at long last!!) and the latest version even with updated modules seems o have suffered a considerable compatibility drop:

20898AC ok
Fire & ICE ok
Axis Ok
Ballarena WRONG
Blowpipe BROKEN AFTER INPUT MENU
Cannon Fodder HANGS IN DISK CHANGE SCREEN
Chuck Rock BREAKS AFTER CHANGING DISK
GODS ok
Heimdall BLACK SCREEN ON LAUNCH
James Pond OK
James Pond 2 BLACK SCREEN AFTER CREDITS
Caverns BROKEN IN-GAME GRAPHICS
Jet Fighter OK
Lotus II OK
Mad Professor Mariarty OK
Magic Pockets OK
Nebulus HANGS ON KRISALIS SCREEN
No Excuses OK (But I don't understand this game...)
Pacmania OK (Audio is still missing some music samples)
Paradroid 2000 OK
SWIV BLACK SCREEN ON LAUNCH
Xenon 2 OK
Zarch OK
Most of those are on the known issues list, however there are a few that differ. Could you please:
  1. Fire & Ice - play test this for a while and see if it eventually hangs. Simply leaving it to loop through demo mode for half an hour should do the same thing
  2. Ballarena - Double check this as it should be working, I fixed it in yesterday's daily build. If it's still a problem, please provide some specifics of what's wrong with it
  3. BlowPipe - looks like there's some unhandled read/writes to page zero - is that what you're also seeing? BlowPipe isn't one that I've seen erroneous access in page zero before, so it must be register corruption. I'll investigate further. Could you see if it has the same problem under both the normal and debug builds
    EDIT: It's failing in the VSync EventV code, more specifically the section that reads/writes to the Joystick interface.
    EDIT2: There's actually a bug in this code - it should check the Joystick SWI actually worked and skip the Joystick code if it fails, it's not doing this and is relying on the SWI to exist. The Joystick module however will fail to load or initialize if there's no Joystick interface present.
    EDIT3: The problem starts with ADFFS 2.49a, the 2.48i build is working okay. I'm already looking at the differences between the two builds as a few other issues started with 2.49a
  4. James Pond 2 isnt a working game, so no requirement to test this. I've listed all known working games that we're testing in the known issues list
  5. Nebulus - see if if runs when you do the following: mount the floppy, drop to the Supervisor prompt via F12 and boot with *ADFBOOTFLOPPY
  6. Pac-mania - music is a long running issue on this, it works on some machines and not others, I've yet to track down why. It does the same thing on my original Arc's, so it's more than likely down to their code and needs patching.
    Can you double check Pac-mania - it hangs almost immediately on my Pi, I'm wondering if it's related to a recent ROM update. I'm running the 22-04-15 5.23 RISCOS build, if you could confirm which build your using so I can compare
ringdings wrote:I didn't know ADFFS recognises the platform it's running on and behaves accordingly.

Paradroid IS working correctly
Ballarena seems to be running correctly
Populous is looping on title screen
Indeed, there are four versions of ADFFS that cover original Arcs running RISCOS 3, right up to the latest hardware/RISCOS 5. The PowerPoint presentation that I used at the ROUGAL talk shows the additional layers that are in each build to get games running, if you're interested. There no text with it, but you'll probably get the general idea from the slides.
  1. Paradroid - good, you had me worried there for a minute :?
  2. Pac-mania - could you see if this works on your Pi and confirm which RISCOS build you're running. I'm expecting it to hang.
  3. Nebulus - see if you have the same issues as reported above
Looking down the list of issues and where/how the games are crashing, I think there may be an interrupt issue. More specifically, an issue with code re-entrancy caused by IRQ's. The code that deals with that hasn't changed, so I suspect something else has had a knock on effect. I'll start rolling back through the builds until Chuck Rock / Cannon Fodder work and try to figure out what the root cause is.
ringdings
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Re: Update on next release

Post by ringdings »

I rebuilt on Sunday and I'm using version 14 (23/02/15 21:33:04)
I haven't used a nightly build.

I'll test them tonight.

I can't seem to do the disk swap process for multi disk games. When prompted for the second disk I press CTRL SHIFT F2 but just get an hour glass that doesn't go away.
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