26bit Module support

[JonAbbott]

-James Pond 2: repeating frames, so scroll is broken. I'd say it will drive me nuts if I play it for a while!

The screen width increases as it scrolls, almost certainly an issue in the VIDC1>20 translator.

ALSO: the music is veeeeeery wrong here.

Sounds like it's getting the note pitches wrong. I'd say with 99% certainty that it's a bug in their tracker player as it also happens on RO3.11 - I suspect it's not taking account of the VIDC speed. Unfortunately its an internal player, so I can't switch it to one of the corrected Trackers that come with ADFFS.

I'll add it to the list of known issues and have a think about how this can be resolved.

-Flashback: "UNKNOWN OPERAND" when booting the floppy image. Maybe there's something wrong with the obey?

It was indeed a typo in the Boot script - now corrected and updated on the dev site.

I have also noted that GODs has also music problems.

GOD's sounds okay to me, admittedly there's no filter being applied, so its obvious just how bad the original samples are.

[Vanfanel]

Rythm is wrong in GODS respect to the main lead music. I don't know if it's well explained, but I believe the rythm is too fast compared to how it sounds in the video I posted, seems desynced from the rest of the music to me.

Flashback works now! But it's protected by that numbered key so I can't really play it. Agh
EDIT: Found the protection codes. Maybe you could ehmm... make addfs bypass this painful part? After all, the protection codes are ridiculous nowadays and a click away.

EDIT2: Do you know if it's possible to install Flashback to HDD? I mean, real install like we did for "The Dungeon".

[JonAbbott]

Rythm is wrong in GODS respect to the main lead music. I don't know if it's well explained, but I believe the rythm is too fast compared to how it sounds in the video I posted, seems desynced from the rest of the music to me.

It's not 100% in sync on any machine that I've tried it on, again it uses an internal Tracker player and is reliant on the VIDC speed.

Flashback works now! But it's protected by that numbered key so I can't really play it. Agh
EDIT: Found the protection codes. Maybe you could ehmm... make addfs bypass this painful part? After all, the protection codes are ridiculous nowadays and a click away.

If you download the full archive, it contains the protection as an image. Likewise Alone in the Dark contains a PDF of the protection manual - it's close to working on the Pi, there are issues with the palette which make it impossible to get past the protection.

If I can get approval to release Flashback, I'll look at removing the protection. I don't actually know who owns the copyright on this title, I think it's now with Eidos.

EDIT2: Do you know if it's possible to install Flashback to HDD? I mean, real install like we did for "The Dungeon".

I believe so, if you look at the Boot script you'll see it does a check to see if its running from Floppy or HD. Try copying all the floppies into the game folder and overwriting its !Run with F1015901 from obey.zip and strip out the first two lines that force it to load from floppy.

Update Modules and obey.zip on the dev site, which get James Pond II+ Robocod working - it seems they fixed the tracker player in this version, although the game has been heavily modified due to the copyright infringement in the original.

[Vanfanel]

James Pond II+ has correct music!! Great!! This game has very good music in my opinion
This version however shows VERY wrong colors and even worse scrolling problems, at least on the Pi

Flashback installed and working!! No more asking for disks, at least for the fisr level...

Good luck with EIDOS... I hope they're no so evil as most of these big devs are nowadays! Keep us informed about their response when you ask them about the RISC OS version of a 1993 game they didn't even make! It's sure to be a good read.

[JonAbbott]

James Pond II+ has correct music!! Great!! This game has very good music in my opinion
This version however shows VERY wrong colors and even worse scrolling problems, at least on the Pi

Did you update the ADFFS Module, I fixed a bug in the VIDC20 palette register emulation that was causing the colour issue.

Scrolling issue is the same as the original, the VIDC20 emulator is working out an incorrect screen width as it shifts the HBSR/HDSR/HDER/HBER registers.

[Vanfanel]

Ah, ok, updated module and now colors look correct.
The game's protection is failing I believe: it seems to be loading the demo level. It's mentioned in the game's README.

[JonAbbott]

Ah, ok, updated module and now colors look correct.
The game's protection is failing I believe: it seems to be loading the demo level. It's mentioned in the game's README.

I've been looking at both this and the Tracker in the original this morning, not made much headway yet though. I did get it to load correctly once.

Whilst fixing JP2+ yesterday, I did note that the protection is different from the original - it did very illegal things to both FileCore and ADFS, so I had to patch it before it would work on RO5. One thing I also noted was its use of OS_ReadMonotonicTime, so it may need some of the sectors marking as "Slow" so they're read at the original floppy speed.

EDIT: Marking the protection sectors as "Slow" has resolved the protection, however it now hangs on the Pi

[JonAbbott]

Updated Modules and James Pond II+ disc image on the dev site, the protection should now be fixed.

Alone in the Dark should work on the Pi - I've fixed the palette issue, however it's now failing when it touches the samples. I had this whilst testing yesterday and fixed it, but can't for the life of me remember what the cause was. Rather annoyingly, I also didn't note it in the game notes at the time but my note pad has all the tracing details on it!! I remember it being something stupid like file paths.

There's a few more games on your wish list to look at, but as there's now four games that require blitter changes, I'll probably start look at that next.

[Vanfanel]

Updated and now it loads the castle exteriors as expected

[JonAbbott]

Updated Modules and obey.zip to correct the music/scrolling in Manchester United Europe and vertical scrolling in Manchester United. Europe now failing to change the mouse cursor, so I need to roll back through the builds to figure out when that broke!

I watched the VIDC border parameters whilst scrolling James Pond 2, it seemed to only go wrong when there's no left border - not sure why that would be. It's getting the screen width correct, so it must be getting the DA2 screen start address wrong.