Tactic (1990) (Eterna)

[JonAbbott]

if you press K to redefine keys (after the intro title sequence), the game will freeze.

Well, no surprises - its the game's RTFM Joystick code causing problems. I'll correct the Joystick code in due course.

[JonAbbott]

please restore the timer to its normal rate, I hate cheating!

Done. I've now compared the speed against an original copy on an original A305, you now have 50 seconds to complete each phase.

It also randomly hung up, pretty much identical to what you were seeing until I removed its IRQ handler.

if you press K to redefine keys (after the intro title sequence), the game will freeze

I've modified the script to load JoyMod and use SWI when checking the Joystick, if you'd like to give the latest obey.zip a try.

[wmd]

After using some compressed air on my drive I seem to have intermittent access to it again. Enough so to copy the new obey file over. Unfortunately it is still randomly freezing during gameplay. Sometimes you can play for a while before the crash, other times it will crash almost as soon as starting a 1-player game.

[JonAbbott]

After using some compressed air on my drive I seem to have intermittent access to it again. Enough so to copy the new obey file over. Unfortunately it is still randomly freezing during gameplay. Sometimes you can play for a while before the crash, other times it will crash almost as soon as starting a 1-player game.

Could you try running after a SHIFT-Power On to ensure nothing else is loaded. As mentioned above, I play-tested it for several hours to confirm there were no crashes.

That said...I think there might be game-breaking bugs in the game code that need tracking down and fixing, given the original crashes without ADFFS or my boot script involved. I've yet to run it on my Pi3 with Page Zero and Null-deference detection turned on, to see if there's any obvious issues...I'll get round to that at some point.

[wmd]

Tried with Shift+Power On but it still crashed. I used to have the original game back in the 90s when I had an A310 (RISC OS 2), and I don't recall it ever freezing like this, and I played this game a lot.

[JonAbbott]

Tried with Shift+Power On but it still crashed. I used to have the original game back in the 90s when I had an A310 (RISC OS 2), and I don't recall it ever freezing like this, and I played this game a lot.

You were probably lucky...or had a later version. There were 5 versions of the game, this is V2. V5 which I also have, can't be release for legal reasons.

I've tried the original V2 floppy on an original A310 with 1MB and RISC OS 2 today, no additional Podules and its randomly locking up. I've also watched it on my Pi3 and there's no Page Zero access going on, so that's ruled out as a potential cause.

Two other possibilities spring to mind. The SoundChannel handler and protection. I'd say protection is unlikely given I'm seeing the issue with the original floppy on original hardware, so I'll check though the sound code for possible issues. I don't recall if this game uses legal means for the music/sound, so I'll also check if its messing with MEMC or using direct DMA.

On a separate note. With the countdown timer at the original speed, the game is near impossible. With the random nature of the colours being dropped and only 60 seconds to complete a level, there's not enough time without being really lucky with the bonuses to get past even the simplest levels. I can't even complete the first level on my A310!

I'm tempted to add a trainer key that either slows the timer, or turns it off completely as the game is hard enough even without the timer when you have to match multiple 4-long sequences that require mental gymnastics to line up colours in blocks of 2 before using a sacrificial colour in between them!

[wmd]

You might be on to something with the SoundChannel handler. You can press M to turn the music off / on. I tried pressing it a few times and it froze again. Now, this could be entirely coincidental, but it did seem odd that it froze just as I pressed M.

About the timer - I don't remember it being that strict in the version I used to play. Maybe it is a bug that was fixed in later versions? Eitherway, a way to toggle that might be useful, as you suggest. I am looking for my original disk, but I have a suspicion that I lent it to a friend many years ago and never got it back. Can you compare with the timer on V5?

[JonAbbott]

You might be on to something with the SoundChannel handler. You can press M to turn the music off / on. I tried pressing it a few times and it froze again. Now, this could be entirely coincidental, but it did seem odd that it froze just as I pressed M.

Try the latest obey.zip. I've spotted and corrected several issues with the sound:

• Uses *AUDIO OFF / ON when muting/unmuting the sound...instead of flushing the audio buffer
• Returns the wrong flags for muted channels
• Doesn't flush the audio buffer when sound is muted
• Uses BL...which is almost guaranteed to cause random issues

Can you compare with the timer on V5?

I do have an original copy of V5, so will compare the countdown timer on an original A310.

[wmd]

Tried that with a Shift+Power on and am still getting the crash.

[wmd]

I notice though that it always crashes during the in-game demo (or when playing in-game), never on any of the other screens.