90% of my games don't work

[dreamkatcha]

As some of you know I've just recently worked out how to get games transferred from my PC to my Amiga 1200. Well I copied across about 30 of them all in one go and then started testing them one after the other.

They're nearly all useless in one way or another! Some of them load, then the screen flickers and the computer resets itself. Others throw software failure errors at me and some of them will load and let me begin a game but the graphics will be so distorted that they're unplayable. Two games when I tried loading them sounded like they were having a heart attack so I had to switch them off quickly before my floppy drive exploded (at least that's what it sounded like it was about to do).

This can't be normal can it? I didn't have this many problems with the emulators and I thought the real thing would be far superior.

[RetroMan]

Hmmm, have you tried a slower transfer rate ?? Some games can´t be transfered in speeds above 9600 Baud ! The graphic glitches and messed up gfx maybe because of the AGA chipset and/or Kickstart Version ! Try to disable CPU Cache in Early Startup Menu (press both mouse buttons on bootup), try to use KillAGA (from Aminet) to disable the AGA Chipset and try to use NoFastMem (on WB) ........ alternatively you can try a degrader (like TUDE from Aminet) to turn your A1200 in an A500

[Twistin'Ghost]

Are you transferring expanded adf's or the zipped versions? The zipped would be better since you can tell if it's corrupted by whether it unzips or not.

[mr_0rga5m]

Or use a protocol that includes error checking/correction ..

[Amiga1992]

I think ths is easy peasy... What games are you trying to run? I bet they kill themselves at the sight of an 020 and AGA chipset.

You'll need AGA-fixed versions, or WHDLoad installs for yoru HD (if you have any)

Then again, a lot of software should still work, specially anything from 1993 and later. All that should be working.

If all still fails, there you go, AE wasnt that nice after all

[Codetapper]

I agree with Akira here - I bet the games you are running are all pre-AGA games from say 1991 or earlier. Almost all games require fixing (delays being too short, blitter bugs, stack frame format problems) and the easiest way is with WHDLoad.

Grab it and watch your game woes disappear!

[Tomtom]

thats the answer ...

If you have an HD, than you should use HD-Versions (fixed) of the needed games.
You will find a lot of them on my site, or maybe on: http://www.gandimann.de , or other sites.

[Amiga1992]

Ahh, TomTom! Thanks for all those HD games! My A1200 surely likes them (except those JST ones, she preffers the WHDLoad flavour )

And thanks for that extra link!

[dreamkatcha]

Thanks for the great response everyone. Plenty of things to try here.

I don't think speed of transfer is the problem. As Akira pointed out in another post, Amiga Explorer is much slower than most of the other alternatives - it takes about 3 mins per disk.

I managed to get into the top secret hush-hush boot menu and changed the chipset. I was able to get one extra game working using that method (Apidya).

TG - I'm dragging and dropping ADF files using Amiga Explorer. I established that it does check for disk structure problems as it copies but I don't know to what extent it verifies the ADFs themselves, although I'm sure I've had most of them running fine using the emulators.

I haven't got a hard drive so that option isn't available unfortunately.

Some non-AGA games seem to work fine, but others are screwed up.

Some of the ones which work include Addams Family, Superfrog, Chaos Engine 2 (AGA), Project X (spec ed 93 version), SWIV, Naughty Ones, Overdrive, Parasol Stars and Operation Starfish.

The ones which don't work include Turrican (graphics glitches), Assassin spec ed (doesn't boot at all), UN Squadron (graphics glitches), Twin World (graphics messed up again, but I don't care about this one because it wasn't what I thought it was anyway), Tearaway Thomas (resets itself after the intro), Battle Squadron (graphics are screwed up), Toki (resets itself), Bubble Ghost (sits there looking stupid, then resets), both Nicky Booms (first one has messed up graphics and the second one won't boot at all), Soldier of Light (gets to the intro screen and then resets), both Striders (neither will boot), The Plague (won't go past the intro), Ninja Gaiden 2 (won't boot full stop), Mega Twins (won't boot), Jim Power (won't boot), Final Fight (won't boot) and Pang (graphics are messed up).

[Konrad]

You have to degrade your Amiga as close to an Amiga 500 as possible. You can try Tude. You get it from Aminet. Then do the following
-Enter the Boot Menu
-Boot with no startup-sequence
-then got to the path of TUDE and enter "TUDE DEGRADE BOOT=LOWCHIP"
-insert your gamedisk

after a few seconds it should load. I tried it with my Amiga4000, it should be comparable. It ran Turrican just fine.

You can also try a softkick program. That's the best way in my opinion. Search for soft-kicker's on the aminet. You should find a few.

[Amiga1992]

Of course Echostryker, those games are TOO OLD, and more than probably, the cracktros in them give even bigger compatibility problems. Cracktros used to fuck up more games than I could imagine. I used to have to fix some games (ADOS ones) removing their fucking intros so I could make the thing boot.

You will have to get a degrader like TUDE, ora hard drive and some fast mem.

Nobody said the first steps onto Amiga were going to be easy, specially if you start playing with old classics on an A1200!

I had to move the thread again, sorry.

[Codetapper]

There are a collection of 5 CD's made by Beavis the Canadian sysop. These are a collection of games (all DMS format and some HD games in LHA/LZX) which have aga fixes applied to the game so they run.

If you believe the readme, all games were tested on his A4000 and only games which worked made it to the final CD. I've found a few which don't work but overall they are pretty good.

Echostryker: You need to try and find these fixed versions of games and then you will be able to play the games without problems/degrading/HD!

PS: 99% of games with graphics glitches are not waiting for the blitter. The fixes add code so the graphics aren't corrupt. The blitter also causes a lot of games to crash eventually.

[dreamkatcha]

Thanks again for all the good advice. I've downloaded TUDE from Aminet and will try it out as soon as I get a spare minute. The procedure sounds simple enough which is encouraging.

I'll look out for these AGA fixed versions too. If I can't find them or I can't get TUDE working I suppose I'll just have to stick to AGA games and use the emulators to play the classics.

I wonder why Commodore didn't try to make more old games compatible with the Amiga 1200.

[RetroMan]

Originally posted by Echostryker
I wonder why Commodore didn't try to make more old games compatible with the Amiga 1200.

Because the A1200 was released AFTER the games allready hit the market

[Amiga1992]

Yopu'll need a Kickstart ROM from the A500 in order for TUDE to work. Just use any 1.3 rom you have and use in yoru emulators, renaming it to what TUDE needs.

"TUDE kickstart1.3 degrade" is a good command that will surely will make lots of games work

if you feel like saving a bit of memory (with your 2MB is not needed, but...) you could use one of the 256KBytes images, like the one by Galahad that comes with ReloKick 1.4.

BE WARNED, Workbench games dont work with these hacked images.

[dreamkatcha]

Because the A1200 was released AFTER the games allready hit the market

Oh you know what I mean. I'm sure if they'd wanted to they could have made the 1200 backwards compatible with older games like Sony have done with the Playstation 2. It makes sense from everyone's point of view.

I've already got an old Kickstart ROM so shoving that on a disk along with TUDE won't be a problem.

Edit: Hmm, I seem to have run into more problems. I held down both mouse buttons to get into the hidden menu, booted with no startup sequence, ran Tude using Kickstart 1.3 and then tried inserting a game disk. The disk access light flashed for 2 seconds, but did nothing. Is there something else I should be doing?

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by Echostryker
Oh you know what I mean. I'm sure if they'd wanted to they could have made the 1200 backwards compatible with older games like Sony have done with the Playstation 2. It makes sense from everyone's point of view.

IT IS! But lousy (or just programming that does not go with Commodore's guidelines) make the software faulty. You are having extra bad luck because cracked games were more prone to crash thanks to cracktros. I said this before.

Edit: Hmm, I seem to have run into more problems. I held down both mouse buttons to get into the hidden menu, booted with no startup sequence, ran Tude using Kickstart 1.3 and then tried inserting a game disk. The disk access light flashed for 2 seconds, but did nothing. Is there something else I should be doing? [/B]

Your disk is porbably fuxx0red. But there's the chance that the game is still not running because of the AgA chipset. Since you dont tell us which game and version you got, I can be of no further help

[Drake1009]

And Akira has a good point. On the PSX everything a game developer needed was present already.

On the Amiga the game developers might've decided to rewrite the disk reading routines, rewrite other core things to get better performance from the system. Many had the Amiga squeezed for it's last resources. There wasn't really a need for that in the PSX so they basically followed the guidelines. That's why they work on a PS2 (and there are a couple of games which won't work on PS2 as well).

[Konrad]

TUDE crashes on my Amiga 4000 when I want to softkick with TUDE. That's why I use SET040. Can it be used on an A12000 or is it really 68040-specific ?

@ Echostryker
Try the commandline I wrote above:
"TUDE DEGRADE BOOT=LOWCHIP"

[Amiga1992]

I also suggest to try "TUDE kickstart1.3 degrade"

Konrad: It used to crash on my A1200 but not anymore. I think your proggy is 040 only!