Standard / simple method to iconise & run more recent demos

[andyhants]

Hi again all

I want to be able to download and run recent Amiga demos from Pouet.net from a Workbench environment but am really struggling to understand a simple replicable method for this. ADF-based Demos are obviously fine but the larger proportion are executables with little or not explantion of how to run. I am currently running the latest WinUAE 2.7.0 under AMiKit 1.6.7 & understand that I may need to create a seperate Workbnch 2.x envrionment for some ECS/OCS exes, but it seems that a significant proportion just don't run when I suspect they should.

Within Dopus I unpack each demo to a seperate drawer and copy over & rename a.INFO file to create the icon for each Demo but not all demos then run. The same happens when I try to run directly from DOpus. Is there an obvious step I am missing like creating some sort of batch file to call up the executable and run it the CLI?

As ever all help much appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

[daxb]

The normal case is that a demo comes with en executable file that can be started by e.g. from CLI or DOpus (double click). An Icon isn`t necessary. Sometimes (most times) demos lack the information what requirements they need. 68060 AGA + 64MB+ should do the trick.

[Leffmann]

Many demos expect to be run from CLI, and fail to start or crash on exit when run from Workbench, or expect you to give them the right amount of stack space, instead of allocating what they need. Sometimes they don't run properly if you use an RTG screen mode or have a fast CPU. In this regard many demos are not exactly examples of good programming.

You can solve the CLI part by f.ex. using CLITool on Aminet. Create a project icon for the demo, set CLITool as the default tool, and increase the stack space to 100Kb. This way you can click the demos to run them as if from CLI.

[britelite]

If the demo is an executable (with or without additional datafiles), I usually run them without startup-sequence, only running setpatch. Regarding OCS/ECS demos, if it's a single executable you can just run it with an A500 config and attach the exe as a diskimage.

This also probably goes without saying, but you really do need different configs for demos aimed at AGA/060 and the ones aimed at OCS/ECS.

[Edit] The past 10 years or so, it's been pretty much assumed that people know that AGA-demos are for 060-grade Amigas and OCS/ECS-demos are for A500. There are very few exceptions to this rule, and if the prods target different hardware than this it usually says so in the nfo-file or file_id.diz.

[turrican3]

for amiga 500 demos you can try jst.
You can try this : jst XXXXX.exe execute
sometime it works.
You can find jst here : http://aminet.net/game/patch/jst_dev.lha
there is others degrader like this one http://aminet.net/package/game/patch/RebootStartV42 , it looks really great but i never used this one.
edited : i remember now, i used the last one too, but it must be used when you have'nt others choices because it will (like its name says) reboot your amiga from a ram disk that it just created, but some times, there is no other choices.
I suppose you know about whdload patches : http://whdload.de/download.html , there is a bunch of demos that can be run through whdload.It's the best way when a patch is available.
Sorry if i wrote things you knew already... But it could perhaps help new amigans.

[andyhants]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Many demos expect to be run from CLI, and fail to start or crash on exit when run from Workbench, or expect you to give them the right amount of stack space, instead of allocating what they need. Sometimes they don't run properly if you use an RTG screen mode or have a fast CPU. In this regard many demos are not exactly examples of good programming.

You can solve the CLI part by f.ex. using CLITool on Aminet. Create a project icon for the demo, set CLITool as the default tool, and increase the stack space to 100Kb. This way you can click the demos to run them as if from CLI.

Sorry for being thick but I thought you couldn't create a project icon for an executable only a tool icon? Can you clarify please would the CLITool approach work for executable demo files that I want to iconise?

Thanks again for your help.

Andy

[Leffmann]

Yes, CLITool will start your program as if it had been run from CLI. Use Icon Edit (it should be in your Tools drawer) and select Type -> Project before saving, then find the icon and edit it as I wrote in my first post.

[andyhants]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Yes, CLITool will start your program as if it had been run from CLI. Use Icon Edit (it should be in your Tools drawer) and select Type -> Project before saving, then find the icon and edit it as I wrote in my first post.

I did try that but Icon Edit refuses to save the Icon if I set it to Project. If I copy another icon previously created as Project Type over to a Drawer with a Demo exe file and then try to rename the icon the same as the Demo exe it automatically converts it back to a Type Tool icon. So I can't create a Project Icon type for an exe file. Looking up the Workbench userguide online it say that executable files have Tool icon types and Project icon types are for files that read data?

I don't understand how I can create a Project Type icon for an exe file & therefore set the Default tool to CLITool. Sorry if I am being obtuse still but would really like to solve this.

Thanks

Andy

[Leffmann]

So, if you select Type -> Project and save an icon with the name of an existing file, with .info appended, the icon simply does not appear? Have you updated the drawer contents or listed it from CLI and made sure the .info file really is missing? I have no idea why that would happen. It sounds like something is completely broken, or that you're doing something wrong somehow.

Try saving it with a different name, set the tool-type to CLITool again, and add the tool-type "COMMAND=work:demos/demo1" and see if that works. When the COMMAND type is left out, CLITool defaults to trying to run a program with the same name as the icon, but using the COMMAND tool may be more convenient, as you can give the icons any name you want, and keep them in a separate place.