Nova's SDL Hack (AGA love)

[SnkBitten]

A4000T with CyberVision 64/3D using Picasso96 and testing on 800x600 resolution.

Window
32 bit - Good
24 bit - Good
16 bit - Good
8 bit - not so good



Fullscreen
32 bit - Good
24 bit - Good
16 bit - Good
8 bit - Good

[SnkBitten]

And just for fun....

Amithlon - Picasso96 and testing on 1280x720 resolution

32 bit - Good
16 bit - Good
8 bit - not so good

Fullscreen
32 bit - Good
16 bit - Good
8 bit - Good

[NovaCoder]

Thanks for testing

With the window 8 bit mode, I've found that it works better if you select the 8 bit screen mode in the Prefs and then you need to restart. If you switch from a higher color mode to 8 bit without a restart then the OS doesn't seem to release the pens (I think this in an OS bug). Saying that, 8 bit will always look a bit crap because it can only use empty pens and most people have a background picture which won't leave many pens available.

Do you know if CyberVision 64/3D is big endian?

There is no point in testing different color depths with full screen mode as it opens it's own 8 bit screen (I'm more interested in the window mode colors).

Update: Just tried building my old Exult port with this new RTG SDL library and it seems to be working OK. I'll so some quick testing and then upload it for proper testing.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Thanks for testing

With the window 8 bit mode, I've found that it works better if you select the 8 bit screen mode in the Prefs and then you need to restart. If you switch from a higher color mode to 8 bit without a restart then the OS doesn't seem to release the pens (I think this in an OS bug). Saying that, 8 bit will always look a bit crap because it can only use empty pens and most people have a background picture which won't leave many pens available.

Do you know if CyberVision 64/3D is big endian?

There is no point in testing different color depths with full screen mode as it opens it's own 8 bit screen (I'm more interested in the window mode colors).

Update: Just tried building my old Exult port with this new RTG SDL library and it seems to be working OK. I'll so some quick testing and then upload it for proper testing.

Here's testing in 8-bit window mode after saving screenmode and restarting.

[NovaCoder]

Yep I just tired it myself with Ultima 7 in 8 bit mode and it looks nasty, I'm just going to have to disable 8 bit support for window mode (no great loss)

[amigoun]

Nova could it be possible to add new SDL also to your ScummVM port, plus fix the keyboard controls for Lands of Lore? Keyboard movement is essential there, but for some unknown reason does not work.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by amigoun

Nova could it be possible to add new SDL also to your ScummVM port, plus fix the keyboard controls for Lands of Lore? Keyboard movement is essential there, but for some unknown reason does not work.

Hi,

Do you mean the newer v1.8 port? The newer ScummVM ports are nothing to do with me (although they used my source code). My old AGA/RTG ports didn't use SDL at all, there are all native Amiga applications.


I also didn't do the Lands of Lore port either, do you have a link?

[amigoun]

I meant your old AGA/RTG ports. The latest was v1.5 which supported LOL very well (v1.4 was even faster). Did not know that they were all native, but cosidering the great speed, its not surprise
The newer port 1.8 is quite slow and I think even LOL engine is not built in it. Lands of Lore port of course do not exist.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by amigoun

I meant your old AGA/RTG ports. The latest was v1.5 which supported LOL very well (v1.4 was even faster). Did not know that they were all native, but cosidering the great speed, its not surprise
The newer port 1.8 is quite slow and I think even LOL engine is not built in it. Lands of Lore port of course do not exist.

Oh OK, now I understand what you mean.

In that case it's either a bug in the actual LOL engine (unlikely) or a bug in my Amiga event handling code. Unfortunately I don't feel like rebuilding ScummVM ever again as it is a hugely time consuming process, sorry.

[amigoun]

Thanks for the explanation, if its a huge task, never mind, I can still play it with PCTask (although without sound, naturally).

[pipper]

It is definitely possible and not too complicated :-)
I made a fork of Nova's work some time ago and rebased on top of
ScummVM 2.0:
https://github.com/mheyer32/scummvm-...tree/devel_2.0

I just tested LOL (old floppy version - the version on Good Old Games doesn't seem to get recognized) and it works.

Configure ScummVM to only enable the Kyra/LOL engine:

./configure --host=m68k-amigaos --disable-all-engines --enable-engine=lol --disable-mt32emu --enable-release --disable-hq-scalers --disable-translation --with-amiga-prefix=<path to where to copy the executable>

then build it via
make amigaos3dist [-j8]

(assumes Bebbo's GCC toolchain in the path)

This misses out to copy the kyra.dat file (found under dists/engine-data) into the output's 'extras' directory, so you'll have to do that by hand. I'll need to fix that at some point.

This will get you a somewhat sane executable size of around 2.5MB, tailored to play just the Kyra games (Eye of the Beholder can be made work, too - enable 'eob' engine in configure line)

I don't have the means right now to provide a fully packaged ZIP nor do I have access to the zone. Maybe someone can take up that task...?

[fryguy]

Originally Posted by pipper

It is definitely possible and not too complicated :-)
I made a fork of Nova's work some time ago and rebased on top of
ScummVM 2.0:
https://github.com/mheyer32/scummvm-...tree/devel_2.0

I just tested LOL (old floppy version - the version on Good Old Games doesn't seem to get recognized) and it works.

Configure ScummVM to only enable the Kyra/LOL engine:

./configure --host=m68k-amigaos --disable-all-engines --enable-engine=lol --disable-mt32emu --enable-release --disable-hq-scalers --disable-translation --with-amiga-prefix=<path to where to copy the executable>

then build it via
make amigaos3dist [-j8]

(assumes Bebbo's GCC toolchain in the path)

This misses out to copy the kyra.dat file (found under dists/engine-data) into the output's 'extras' directory, so you'll have to do that by hand. I'll need to fix that at some point.

This will get you a somewhat sane executable size of around 2.5MB, tailored to play just the Kyra games (Eye of the Beholder can be made work, too - enable 'eob' engine in configure line)

I don't have the means right now to provide a fully packaged ZIP nor do I have access to the zone. Maybe someone can take up that task...?

http://eab.abime.net/faq.php?faq=vb_...ezone_faq_item

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by amigoun

Thanks for the explanation, if its a huge task, never mind, I can still play it with PCTask (although without sound, naturally).

This game doesn't run on the Sonnet with my version? Kyra engine is included or was, I can include it without much work.

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

This game doesn't run on the Sonnet with my version? Kyra engine is included or was, I can include it without much work.

It possibly does, but I borrowed my sonnet some time ago. Maybe its time to get it back and do some tests

But like I said LOL runs well on 68k Nova port, all missing is the non-working keyboard controls for movement. All I wanted to know, if its fixable or not for the novas 68k scummvm port.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by amigoun

It possibly does, but I borrowed my sonnet some time ago. Maybe its time to get it back and do some tests

But like I said LOL runs well on 68k Nova port, all missing is the non-working keyboard controls for movement. All I wanted to know, if its fixable or not for the novas 68k scummvm port.

Ah sorry, for going off topic, was just curious if my version worked with it.



I think Pipper's version is based off of whomever forked Nova's 68k version after 1.8.1 and is Amiga native-not SDL, I can't say how well it runs on 68k though, with this particular game. I have found that the later versions aren't necessarily slow because of SDL but the interpreter is just slower in general, MT-32 emulation used to work just fine at version 1.4 now it's very demanding-and this is with a slower SDL port.

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by pipper

I don't have the means right now to provide a fully packaged ZIP nor do I have access to the zone. Maybe someone can take up that task...?

If you can provide the binary it would be great.

[pipper]

http://eab.abime.net/zone/ScummVM_2.0_LOL.zip

give it a go *crossingfingers*

Make sure to install BlazeWCP. You may also need CAMD library. Both can be found on Aminet. Set up AHI unit 0 to one of the native Paula drivers, I use Paula DMA 8bit stereo.
I tested briefly with WinUAE on a setup that closely resembles a 50Mhz 030 Amiga1200 on Kick 3.1.
Good luck :-)

[amigoun]

Just tested. So far works well on WinUAE (I had a crash on real miggy, hopefuly I will solve this - EDIT: I added LOL game to the scumm list in UAE and now it works well also on real miggy (with 060/60 and BlazeWCP it seems good playable).

Game works but the movement do not work (for movement, numpad is used). Other keys seems to work (for example R does the party rest command). So this seems to have a look at the keyboard handling and somehow activate the mumpad.

Again sorry for the offtopic, could this be moved to new thread with ScummVM 2.0 68k OS3 or simmilar to separate from the Novacoders original SDL testing thread?

[NovaCoder]

I've got my old Exult AGA SDL port up and running OK with this new RTG SDL so I'm going to upload Exult RTG to AmiNet soon for testing. I've never supported windows before so this should definitely be considered a beta release

If it works OK then I'll also do an RTG SDL release of my old DOSBox port.

Current SDL RTG features:

• Audio (but not sdl_mixer, I might add this in later)
• Full screen modes in 8 bit using software surfaces
• Windowed modes with any color depth above 8 bits for targets but source must be 8 bit
• Thread support (required by Audio anyway)
• Timer support
• Video mode switching between fullscreen and widow modes
• Writes directly to video card memory when possible

[AMike]

Great - looking forward to test. Thanks!