Academy - Tau Ceti II

[andreas]

Hi,

I cannot get Academy - TC II working on any emulator nor was I able to get it working on my A500, Rev. 6A, KS 1.3.
Don't shoot too quick and say it's broken - it's possible, but it might as well be fully working - please check out this article (http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/DBA1/Academy.html).
"Compatibility: Kickstart 1.2" could mean that it really won't work on recent A500s, maybe rather on A1000s.

Maybe there's a way to find out why it breaks on both ...
It's in the Zone. If someone has another version, please post it.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Is it possible to softkick into 1.2 on your real Amiga?

[andreas]

Wheeoo...that's an excellent idea man! :)
Well if I knew how I could perform this, there would really be a realistic way...any hints? :)
In all honesty, I've never tried this.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Well, there's several softkick utils in Aminet under various names (at least as I remember...it's been AGES since I've used one of those programs). I think there was one called Skick and another called AddKickMem and very likely others. I wish I had a stable, working Amiga to try this with, as well, because it would be useful for checking out some of those E/A games, and the original Hacker and some other tricky games.

[RetroMan]

SKick is capable of softkickin´ Kick 1.2 for sure ...... If you have a Blizzard Turbocard, use BlizKick from Aminet ! Some other are ZKick, Relokick, CPUControl, SetCPU and MKick ! Some require MMU, some do not ......

[Galahad/FLT]

Just to let you know..... Academy is 256K A1ooo only!

I have downloaded the game, and I have tested it on my A5oo 1.2 Amiga and it doesn`t work. Reason? Because although the ACADEMY file is an AmigaDos relocatable file, it tries to load the other files from the disk at ABSOLUTE addresses. I.e. No matter where the program code loads itself, it still tries to load the data files in the same place.

So, I am working on it now, I have partially got it working, I have to recode some interrupts and shit like that, but theres no reason why I cannot do something with it.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Excellent, Galahad. I'm just curious, though: why on earth would (or why did) programmers use absolute addresses the way they did back then?

[andreas]

Galahad, this information was valuable beyond compare. :)
I'd never thought that I would see a game working on an A1000 only and not on an A500! I was just afraid that I had really uploaded a broken copy ... :rolleyes
Great investigation!

[CodyJarrett]

Or it might be easier to run the game on an A1200 using Bored Seal's WHDLoad install!

http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.lha
http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.html

[Toni Wilen]

I played Academy when I had A1000 with 256k RAM expansion installed (This was over 10 years ago..). Didn't most (every?) PAL A1000 came with expansion pre-installed?

Of course, it is possible my version of Academy was different..

Unfortunately it still crashes with WinUAE and 256k chip ram.

I tried to debug this problem without success.

[Galahad/FLT]

If WinUAE is a close emulation of AmigaDOS, then the same problems that plague a real Amiga will also apply to Academy.

It is simply that the programmer is displaying a lack of knowledge about the Amiga. Had he used a custom fileloader, then the game would have operated correctly, and yes, the game would most likely operate on a A1ooo with a sidecar ram expansion.

In the UK, the A1ooo was sold WITHOUT the ram expansion, you had to buy it right up to the point that the A5oo came out. Gues Commodore Germany were a little more generous! :(

I have had the game running, but also, if you check out the interrupt code, instead of acknowleging the interrupt and terminating with an RTE, the programmer has HARD CODED the JMP address into the ROM!!!!!!

Of course, you CAN take the address already installed in the level 3 and use that (not advised as it would activate some AmigaDOS features!) but the programmer has actually hard coded them in.... of course, the interrupts cannot possible work on any kickstart that doesn't share the same offsets!!! Plain stupid!

I know that Bored has done a version, but I will do a version for all you UAE chaps. Most likely it will be a single file, but I will keep it as an ADF.

Dont bug me about it, it will be ready when its ready.

[andreas]

Let's bring this topic back up.
Bored's installation does perform correctly, but it does NOT work on emulators.

The mouse cursor is invisible. I tested on 0.8.8 R8 and 0.8.21 R2 - same thing. It's hard to select something, it's more than a guessing game. :rolleyes
At least, the stuff installs correctly and doesn't crash anywhere.
A final question: does this game happen to be controlled by mouse only? Joystick buttons didn't react when prompted to "press fire".

[Toni Wilen]

The mouse cursor is invisible

This happens because game never enables sprite dma. (I traced all writes to DMACON) Looks like installer is broken.

[andreas]

Whoops, I don't hope that the image I used for installing is actually broken.
Could this be true?

[Galahad/FLT]

Academy is very poorly written, and I suspect that the only reason that the sprites work on the A1000/A500 is solely because AmigaDOS has setup the sprites beforehand for the CLI Pointer

[Toni Wilen]

I enable sprite dma "manually" and corrupted cursor appeared. I think this game must be one of most badly programmed commercial game ever...

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by Toni Wilen
I enable sprite dma "manually" and corrupted cursor appeared. I think this game must be one of most badly programmed commercial game ever...

You think :laughing :laugh :laughing

[andreas]

No I don't think so. It could also be a preview version that I had where this bug was still in.
I would've to test with ANOTHER image and Bored's installer to be absolutely sure.
Jeez, that bastard really keeps me puzzled more and more, heh :D

[jmmijo]

You could be right andreas, just that it appears to be a really quick and dirty coded game if you ask me :D

[andreas]

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
Just to let you know..... Academy is 256K A1ooo only!

I have downloaded the game, and I have tested it on my A5oo 1.2 Amiga and it doesn`t work.
Hey Galahad!

Just to let you know: I'm now an owner of quite an early A1000 model (with female serial connector even :))

In any case, I transferred the first TOSEC image to my A1000 and IT DID NOT WORK. I didn't expect this, even. I even removed the RAM expansion, just to be sure that it doesn't actually happen to work with 256K Chip only. I'd really like to know how you came to this conclusion above. Or was it just an assumption? :confused

Toni has pointed me to another crack of this game, a rare QUARTEX crack (Tosec 0.24 + only!) and this one is DIFFERENT!
It works on an A500, but not on the A1000!

If you use an A1000 Kickstart 1.2 (33.166) with WinUAE, the game freezes instead of showing a scrolling text. (Academy ... by ...)
If you use an A500 Kickstart 1.2 (33.180) IT WORKS!

Could you please check the difference of the two versions and/or the changes QUARTEX made with their release and thus why it fails on the A1000?

[IFW]

If anyone has a complete original, drop as a line... :D

[Mangar]

I've been able to get this loaded using Kickstart 1.1, however, when the screen comes up that says press fire to start, no matter what button or key I push I cannot start the game.

Has anyone been able to get this to work as an ADF in WinUAE yet?

[andreas]

Yes. The TOSEC Quartex version (do *not* try with the other one) works with an 1.2 Kickstart version 33.180.
Do *NOT* try using other Kickstarts, either! It will not work (not even kickdisk 1.2/33.166 that came with my A1000).

[Mangar]

Thanks Andreas,

Using 1.2 (33.180) I managed to get the piece of junk working. This is one game that would probably have been better off lost.
Or never developed.

[andreas]

:D

Well I've still to add the worst of it all:

WinUAE doesn't display the mouse cursor, whereas it does display on my A1000!

(Yes, Toni, I shit you not. :p But don't ask me how they magically enable sprite dma instead of using the "normal" way. At least it does display here.)