Whale's Voyage 2 on hard disk

[Crowley]

Does anyone here have experience with Whale's Voyage 2? I am quite unfamiliar with working Amiga hard disk, emulated or real. I followed the step-by-step introduction at Lemon Amiga, and got the thing working (this would mean I am emulating Amiga 1200 here). Luckily Whale's Voyage 2 (unaltered original German version) had its own install program which seemed to work perfectly. However, getting the game to play seems to be another matter completely. I get the title screen with the options "old game" and "new game" whichever one I click, the game just seems to hang there. WinUAE's on-screen LED doesn't show any activity going on in the hard disk. At first there is a descriptive text at the top of the title screen which explains the option you hover your mouse on. Once I click either of the options, it doesn't change anymore no matter where I move the mouse.

I have tried playing the game directly from the same disks I installed from, and that works fine, though the initial loading time is one of the longest I have ever experienced on the Amiga.

[NewDeli]

You can accelerate the loading of floppies from WinUAE by moving a slider (Floppy Drive Emulation Speed) right. Crank it up to 800 % and there you go.

Whale's Voyage I & II seem like "intringuing" Amiga games, in the sense that EAB Community, and particularly the WHDload team haven't finished to deal with them (there are plans to do so, I think).

If I remember well, I must have the German version of WV II, and an English patch somewhere...

[Crowley]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

You can accelerate the loading of floppies from WinUAE by moving a slider (Floppy Drive Emulation Speed) right. Crank it up to 800 % and there you go.

I am well aware of that. Unfortunately Whale's Voyage II comes on six disks, and at most you can have four drives. Hard disk installation seems preferable to disk swapping even at that rate.

Whale's Voyage I & II seem like "intringuing" Amiga games, in the sense that EAB Community, and particularly the WHDload team haven't finished to deal with them (there are plans to do so, I think).

Yeah. I looked through the WHDload archives before doing this. Only the first game is listed, as a work in progress around 50%.

If I remember well, I must have the German version of WV II, and an English patch somewhere...

Quite so. Over here: http://aminet.net/package/game/patch/WV2EPatch

[NewDeli]

Well, you're welcome to hand me over the installed, translated into English game in a zip file, I would gladly test it with my special WinUAE configs and then put it on my web site, if it's worth it.

By the way, may I ask if you consider WV II a better game than the first opus ?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

Well, you're welcome to hand me over the installed, translated into English game in a zip file, I would gladly test it with my special WinUAE configs and then put it on my web site, if it's worth it.

By the way, may I ask if you consider WV II a better game than the first opus ?

......

[NewDeli]

Yeah Galahad, yesterday I watched American Gangster (OT, sorry) where the corrupted cop says to the Chief Mafia bad guy "Maybe I am SPECIAL. See that right there ? It reads SPECIAL Investigations Unit, SPECIAL... got it ?" So, as a SPECIAL WinUAE user, I like to consider my configs the same way

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

Yeah Galahad, yesterday I watched American Gangster (OT, sorry) where the corrupted cop says to the Chief Mafia bad guy "Maybe I am SPECIAL. See that right there ? It reads SPECIAL Investigations Unit, SPECIAL... got it ?" So, as a SPECIAL WinUAE user, I like to consider my configs the same way

You're definately SPECIAL, just not in the way you think you're perceived!

[Crowley]

I guess I should also mention that I'm having this problem with the game already without applying the translation.

[mailman]

Originally Posted by Crowley

I am well aware of that. Unfortunately Whale's Voyage II comes on six disks, and at most you can have four drives. Hard disk installation seems preferable to disk swapping even at that rate.

To solve this problem create the directory WV2 and copy everything from all the disks to this directory. When you finish, create a simple startup file:

Assign WVDisk1: ""
Assign WVDisk2: ""
Assign WVDisk3: ""
Assign WVDisk4: ""
Assign WVDisk5: ""
Assign WVDisk6: ""
Assign WV_Save: ""
WV2.exe

Save this file as "Start_Game", create an icon (project) and as a default tool type put ICONX.

You can also execute this script typing in shell: EXECUTE Start_Game

[Crowley]

Thanks. I'll go figure out how to do that. As I said, I'm not familiar with this stuff.

edit: Well, that was simple even with my lack of knowledge once I found the "show all files in window" option. Now for that startup file.

more edit: All right, I see one problem here. The game that went through the installation program has two files I can't find by simply copying the files: SELECT.exe and WV2.exe. There are also a few things on the copied game but not the installed one. These include a project file named SSIcon, a drawer labeled C which contains tool files named "run" and "type", and a drawer labeled DEVS which contains a project file named system-configuration.

[mailman]

Forgive me, but what is the problem? Was my advice helpful?

[NewDeli]

Read this thread plz Crowley :

Whale's Voyage 2 - CD32

Unfortunately, the files are not present anymore, may be it's time for a repost of Whale's Voyage CD32

To sum up my position, I would say wait for WHDload Head JOTD (whom I thank for having just finished World Darts') completion of the first opus (since there's a probability he'd be willing to WHD'fy WV2 afterwards), or if you are familiar with the German language, play the German DOS version

By the way, are you sure the game fully supports the mouse ? This is from abandonia.com "You’ve got to hit return and arrow down simultaneously to get into the menus, then you browse them one by one using the arrow keys."

[Crowley]

Please disregard my previous post as me being stupid. Those missing files are on the first disk and somehow I didn't notice them when copying the contents the first time. I did find the problem. For some reason the game simply refuses to run with my Amiga 1200 configuration. I changed the setup to A500+ with a hard disk, and now it works fine.

This game does indeed support the mouse. Abandonia only has the first Whale's Voyage, which does not use the mouse. Luckily the mouse is not used for all, and at least movement can be done by cursor keys (NOT the joystick).

I did also manage to install the translation. There are some glitches present, especially when buying trade goods for cargo. I guess there's not much that can be done about that.

Now, it sure would be nice to have a translated manual to explain the differences between this and the first game...

edit: It fails to load up on A4000 setup either. Maybe this game has something against AGA chipsets specifically. Anyway, I'm slowly learning the ropes with the game, and trying to make some adjustments to the text files to fix some of the glitches in the translation.

more edit: Here's a little something. On the left is the original state of the translation, on the right the result of my fiddling.