Gnome Ranger & Lancelot gfx glitches workaround

[NewDeli]

As some of you may know, Toni W. is giving us a chance to experiment with Cycle-exact for the beefed-up emulated Amiga models, namely the A1200 & the A4000.

Dlfrsilver got me into this Cycle-exact "business" a few days ago, and with the other betas, I could not load my AmigaOS Workbench with more than a 020. So it was frustrating for him, and a bit difficult for me to experiment the benefits of this new feature.

Apart from slower bootup, I could notice some gfx glitches in some preinstalled games, so I was rather preoccupied with Cycle-exact putting a heavier burden on WHDload coders shoulders to adapt their slaves to the new mode.

Just to let you know, I didn't unpack dozens of preinstalled games, just to play my 5 or 10 favorites and let the others rot in a corner. I like zapping among them, and WHDload makes it very convenient for me, even though I never used one of these Amiga models.

I believe every thing in my setup is up to date -WHDload itself, updated and registered, I update my slave collection once a while, I even noticed a Codetapper slave requiring an external lib and droped this lib in my LIBS: path.

If you don't like the idea that I play those games mostly from within AmigaOS 3.9, I have setup AmigaSYS 4, upgraded, with an A1200 config (the other distros weren't flexible enough for my needs, or it's a case of my Amiga internals knowledge showing its limitations, I am not reluctant to try harder, if you consider for example PAL, and NTSC graphic modes are the way to go with preinstalled).


Anyway, I don't have many more creative options than to report to my mates dlfrsilver and Retro-nerd and ask for report to me or better via the Mantis bug reporting panel.
I should thank them again for testing popular and less popular slaves for me, when I encounter an error.

Overall, it was mostly and hopefully a false alarm, every slave I wanted to load and play for a few seconds work fine with Cycle-exact enabled, except two belonging to the text&graphics genre, for which "we" have made a bug report.

So this is a call to WHDload users and especially to "hardcore" WHDload/WinUAE testers. Try to enable Cycle-exact with your preferred config, and see if some remotely known games support this, as Actual Amiga owners are fewer and may not be bothered to play them extensively. AFAIK, it shouldn't break anything except for the slaves that would need updating (you probably won't find more than say 1 out of 80), especially with 3.0 et 3.1 setups.

A call and an announcement :
Except for owning the comfy feeling that my emulated miggy behavior is closer the real thing,
I found two games which would absolutely require Cycle-exact to run properly :

• Ilyad
• Cruise for a Corpse

I hope this doesn't look too pathetic, and anyway it would have been even more gibberish writings without the valuable input of Amiga owners, and the WHDload coders' I am still in touch with.

[killergorilla]

Where is the poll option "What are you talking about?"

[Galahad/FLT]

Waste of time, totally and utterly.

WHDLoad is for REAL Amigas, any bugs that are evident in an emulated environment are for Toni to fix so that WinUAE becomes as close to a perfect emulator as is possible.

This isn't ever getting off the ground.

[dlfrsilver]

Well i'm quite stupefied I talk with you deleauvive and told you that a slave must only be corrected if it doesn't work with a real machine. If it doesn't work on winuae,
it's a winuae bug then. And the coders must not change anything inside slaves in that case.

Galahad is absolutely right, and as i told you, the base for testing is the real thing (a real 1200 or 4000).

[Retro-Nerd]

Don't use JIT with WinUAE+WHDLoad and 90-95% of all glitches are gone.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Don't use JIT with WinUAE+WHDLoad and 90-95% of all glitches are gone.

That concludes this useless thread... non?

[NewDeli]

I am still learning you know, but I am getting used having people pointing my mistakes instead of providing some helpful guidance.

I am merely saying this :
A game which WAS working perfectly fine with WinUAE normal settings (A1200 or A4000 emulation as we always knew it) may be suspected of not working on a real Amiga if it appears to throw errors with Cycle-exact enabled.

Then I pass over the info to people owning a real Amiga, whom I trust to tell me if they can confirm it or not. If the games runs on their setup, end of the story, I work again on my setup to increase compatibility if it can be done and don't bother anyone about it.

Also, I have reported bugs to whdload coders completely unrelated to emulation (remaining bits of manual protection), and I don't agree with that statement of yours that non-Amiga onwers can't have an interest in WHDload, but to each their own. And I use JIT only for boot up and it's entirely disabled during any gameplay. You'll have to take my word for it.

Since you're being so self-assured Galahad, you might experiment with the setting yourself and you will notice at least one of your slave bears gfx glitches with are noticeable in WinUAE as well as on REAL AMIGAS (confirmed x2).

This behavor is NOT noticeable with Cycle-exact unticked.

I am not asking you to do anything about it, it's entirely your decision, and I might be completely wrong as whether other game bugs would show up with Cycle-exact enabled (when these games appear to be set aside by Amiga owners), and Cycle-exact mode itself will certainly be improved over time, but it may be worth a try.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

I am still learning you know, but I am getting used having people pointing my mistakes instead of providing some helpful guidance.

I am merely saying this :
A game which WAS working perfectly fine with WinUAE normal settings (A1200 or A4000 emulation as we always knew it) may be suspected of not working on a real Amiga if it appears to throw errors with Cycle-exact enabled.

Then I pass over the info to people owning a real Amiga, whom I trust to tell me if they can confirm it or not. If the games runs on their setup, end of the story, I work again on my setup to increase compatibility if it can be done and don't bother anyone about it.

Also, I have reported bugs to whdload coders completely unrelated to emulation (remaining bits of manual protection), and I don't agree with that statement of yours that non-Amiga onwers can't have an interest in WHDload, but to each their own. And I use JIT only for boot up and it's entirely disabled during any gameplay. You'll have to take my word for it.

Since you're being so self-assured Galahad, you might experiment with the setting yourself and you will notice at least one of your slave bears gfx glitches with are noticeable in WinUAE as well as on REAL AMIGAS (confirmed x2).

This behavor is NOT noticeable with Cycle-exact unticked.

I am not asking you to do anything about it, it's entirely your decision, and I might be completely wrong as whether other games bugs would appear with Cycle-exact enabled (when these games appear to be left away by Amiga onwers), but it may be worth a try.

GFX glitches with which install?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

I am merely saying this :
A game which WAS working perfectly fine with WinUAE normal settings (A1200 or A4000 emulation as we always knew it) may be suspected of not working on a real Amiga if it appears to throw errors with Cycle-exact enabled.

Option A : Buy an Amiga and confirm the issue on real hardware.
Option B : Make a proper WinUAE bug report.
Don't assume something if you're not certain.

[dlfrsilver]

Lancelot that you installed, and also Gnome Ranger from level 9. Those have both the same graphic bug, which makes both games unplayables on my A1230.
Winuae have the same glitch with cycle exact mode, but less pronounced.

The letters are completed cutted to the point you can't read words

Since those 2 games shares the same engine, the same problem is present.

I can join a picture of my A1200 screen to illustrate the problem.

Psygore is aware of this problem on Gnome Ranger.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Option A : Buy an Amiga and confirm the issue on real hardware.
Option B : Make a proper WinUAE bug report.
Don't assume something if you're not certain.

Don't assume???? what a revelation, some other members might want to take note!

[Toni Wilen]

I guess someone has missed that 68020 "cycle-exact" mode is very experimental and far from cycle exact. Only memory accesses are cycle-exact (which was the main problem causing glitches) but instruction execution timing is something far from cycle-exact.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Lancelot that you installed, and also Gnome Ranger from level 9. Those have both the same graphic bug, which makes both games unplayables on my A1230.
Winuae have the same glitch with cycle exact mode, but less pronounced.

The letters are completed cutted to the point you can't read words

Since those 2 games shares the same engine, the same problem is present.

I can join a picture of my A1200 screen to illustrate the problem.

Psygore is aware of this problem on Gnome Ranger.

If it happens on real hardware, then yes I want to know, if by me fixing a graphic bug for a real Amiga also happens to fix it for WinUAE, then that is nice happenstance, and means its game related bug not WinUAE bug.

Fixing stuff SPECIFICALLY for WinUAE is precisely what Toni does NOT want, as that masks a problem he could fix that will make the emulator more 'real' in its operation.

Yes i'd like to see evidence of this bug and how to reproduce it

[dlfrsilver]

well it's very easy to reproduce in fact, the glitch is present everytime you launch gnome ranger or Lancelot. The glitch occurs at the begin of + - each line of text on the very left.

I have zipped and zoned the pictures of the bug.

[NewDeli]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Fixing stuff SPECIFICALLY for WinUAE is precisely what Toni does NOT want

I don't want that either. And I don't trust blindly Cycle-exact Toni, it gave me a couple of indications of problems suspected to occur on actual hardware, AND I didn't fill any silly bug report from the glitches I could see under WinUAE without any proper confirmation.

Agreed, these gfx and audio bugs are up to the Amiga owners to report in Mantis anyway, if that's what you were anxious about ;

Alas it's a case of not so many of them are interested in playing or bugtesting this particular game, and it's a genre I am particularly found of, which explains why I am going zealot about it.


Glad I could make that clear, at last (and to the least).

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

well it's very easy to reproduce in fact, the glitch is present everytime you launch gnome ranger or Lancelot. The glitch occurs at the begin of + - each line of text on the very left.

I have zipped and zoned the pictures of the bug.

Probably a rogue blit thats only ever used for writing text, which would be odd given that the code is all system friendly.

Cheers Denis, i'll take a look at Lancelot and report back.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Probably a rogue blit thats only ever used for writing text, which would be odd given that the code is all system friendly.

Cheers Denis, i'll take a look at Lancelot and report back.

Or check the Mantis Bugtracker, ID 0002162.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

I don't want that either. And I don't trust blindly Cycle-exact Toni, it gave me a couple of indications of problems suspected to occur on actual hardware, AND I didn't fill any silly bug report from the glitches I could see under WinUAE without any proper confirmation.

Agreed, these gfx and audio bugs are up to the Amiga owners to report in Mantis anyway, if that's what you were anxious about ;

Alas it's a case of not so many of them are interested in playing or bugtesting this particular game, and it's a genre I am particularly found of, which explains why I am going zealot about it.


Glad I could make that clear, at last (and to the least).

Well that is kind of at odds with your assertion that we should be doing WHDLoad fixes for 'cycle exact' which as Toni has already said, isn't exact at all for 020.

And then when Toni corrects you, you say "And I don't trust blindly Cycle-exact Toni"..... why would you then request WHDLoad coders make support for a system that isn't exact?!?!?!

I sometimes wonder what motivates you, its almost as if you are so desperate to have a 20 page thread dedicated to something you've initiated that you never think it through properly and it summarily gets pulled to pieces 5 posts into the first page.

Well, thats my take on it anyway.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

well it's very easy to reproduce in fact, the glitch is present everytime you launch gnome ranger or Lancelot. The glitch occurs at the begin of + - each line of text on the very left.

I have zipped and zoned the pictures of the bug.

so 030+ has problems, does 020? I guess not or i'd have seen it when I installed it.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

Glad I could make that clear, at last (and to the least).

Tbh, I don't think you have... So was that thread just about the Level 9 games then? Why don't you just make a thread about these games and post your findings, so Toni can have a look? Why these lengthy posts containing almost no usuable info what you do and what exactly the problem is? Why this poll which doesn't help either way? Well, I don't get it.