Voyager, The Immortal, Dungeon Master, and Arctic Fox (but this one works)

[Unregistered]

Hello everyone,

I only moved into the emulator scene last Friday and have gotten just about every game I had or always wanted. My Dad had an Atari ST but we both longed for an Amiga, so after learning about these emulators a 12 year old dream is coming true. Though most all of the software I've come across is working great (after my crash course on WinUAE over the weekend), there are a few titles I'm still having problems with. After exhausting the bag of tricks I've learned it's for me to turn to the forums. Any help you can provided will be appreciated and I thank you.


- Voyager (by Ocean) -

After some very liberal CPU experimentation I was able to load Voyager up to the moment you enter the tank cockpit, and then all of a sudden the screen goes black. Specificially, by using a standard A500 config but with a 68020 CPU, I can select the game language, get past the main menu, and even watch the initial drop ship movie (selecting the 68020 allows this movie to play, otherwise no experimentation with the 68000 CPU allows the game to progress this far). Does anyone have any ideas about this problem and specifically, any configs for WinUAE with Voyager?


- The Immortal -

This game is stable in WinUAE with a standard A500 config but has a terrible screen refresh problem. Additionally the sound was a bit glitchy until setting "Sound Buffering - 2" and "Stereo Mode - Mixed". As for the screen refresh problem, the entire game screen flickers more than half of the time. You can temporarily stop the flicker by adjusting the Display - Refresh setting between "Every second Frame" and "Every third Frame" while also turning "Immediate blits" on and off sporatically. The other 640x400 game I have is "Defender of the Crown" and it works without fail. Any suggestions or configs?


- Dungeon Master -

The game is stable but has a slight flicker similar to The Immortal, but only in the game world window instead of the entire screen. Each time you walk or change direction the game window redrawns and produces a flicker. Adjusting the Display's refresh setting produces an effect at least, but does not correct the problem. Any ideas on this one?


- Arctic Fox -

And finally, after searching many an Amiga forum and attempting this game myself, it's apparent Arctic Fox is one of the most stubborn titles I'd like to see on WinUAE. I came up with a solution though, get the "Steem" Atari ST emulator and the ST version of Arctic Fox, it happens to work perfectly. I'd still like the Amiga version though, from what I've experienced so far the Amiga games have vastly superior sound (eg: Blood Money) and usually have a few more colors than the ST versions.


Thanks again and happy holidays,

- David Parson (davidparson@home.com)

[CodyJarrett]

I haven't tried the other ones recently, but there is something wrong with the common crack of Arctic Fox - it doesn't work on real Amigas either!

I believe that those Electronic Arts loaders are a real mess too.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Correction...that game and many other old E/A games do work on real Amigas, but some conditions need to be met first. In my initial Amiga days, I had no problems with games like Arctic Fox, One On One, Archon I & II, etc., but the system I had was an A500, OCS, NTSC, original Fat Agnus (0.5 meg chip, not 1 meg chip Fatter Agnus), plus I had 0.5 meg slow/fastmem. Not that all of those elements are needed, but under that config, all of these old impossible to run games like the E/A stuff, among a few others (like Hacker, Hacker II, etc.), were just a matter of pop in the disk and you were playing.

We also later acquired an old A1000 and those games all worked with no issues on it, as well. Probably a number of these games floating about the net come from my versions, so I know they worked on my old system(s). And as soon as my box full of A500's arrives here, I will hook my most ancient config up and re-test them, but since the games came from my old DMS and WRP versions, the fact that they expanded with no errors tells me that these games will work on the right (?) Amiga setup.

I say this because it's important to know that these aren't knackered dumps.

[CodyJarrett]

Yeah, but Arctic Fox is usually spread as an incorrectly sized ADF, which leds me to believe that there may be something wrong with it.

I don't doubt that the game has been seen on Amiga screens sometime - but I'm thinking about the common dump in particular.

It would be nice if there was at least one report of it working on a real Amiga.

[andreas]

Huh?

Twist, now you've just managed to confuse me completely. I was pretty sure that we've all come to the conclusion that the Arctic Fox dump *IS* faulty and that we first of all need a dump that works on the *real* thing at least.
So the dump from the internet *does* work on a real Amiga? That's news for me...

[Twistin'Ghost]

Hmmm...weird. I just went and checked my copy of Arctic Fox and sure as hell, it's an overdump. I suppose that title I never dumped over from my Amiga yet. Well, actually, I did, but at the time, I was using zip disks to transfer the stuff and that game was a casualty of the flaws of zip transfers. I'm sure that re-transferring it is on an archival to do list that never got realised. It is now back on the list.

Since I am having so many roadblocks getting stuff from my Amiga, I think I have another source for getting it dumped again. I'm glad the subject came up. We need a list of games that only overdumps exist for so that we can eliminate them one by one. Andreas, weren't you successful at fixing several overdumped disks posted here a few months ago?

[andreas]

Let's say: a small few.
Yes, I was successful with the Hellrun Machine thingy. But consider that it doesn't necessarily always have to go on wheels like this... :)

[DPainter]

I just tried running an original of One on One on my new Amiga 500/2.04 roms and it locked up on the same part that the emulator copy does. It must need the 1.3 ROM and?

I did get to Return to Atlantis to work on WinUAE the other day. I don't know if that's news, but I never saw it work before.

[Twistin'Ghost]

I am almost 100% sure (99%?) that One On One needs 1.2 to run. 512k chip only would also increase the odds. You're already NTSC. So those conditions should yield gameplay on most all of those games. Having a rom-switcher and a 1.2/1.3 rom combo is always a good thing (I used to have such an A500 beast).

[RetroMan]

@Twistin

Could you perhaps post the *faulty* version of Arctic Fox to the Zone please :)

[Twistin'Ghost]

OK...I'll up the overdump until I get find out where the hell my old DMS file is.