WHDLoad saving games

Hi everyone

This is my first post but certainly not my first visit... these forums have helped me get a really decent Amiga set up going :-)

I have set up WHDLoad on my Amiga along with a few games, however something has crossed my mind - is it possible to save the games that weren't "savable" on the original releases??

The two games I have in mind the most are Wizball and Paradroid 90 (the latter is quite a large game and I'm really surprised no save feature was originally included!!)

Any help would be really appreciated.

J

[Bamiga2002]

Yes add savestate-support into WHDLoad !!

[mailman]

Originally Posted by zuluisgrate

I have set up WHDLoad on my Amiga along with a few games, however something has crossed my mind - is it possible to save the games that weren't "savable" on the original releases??

In most cases authors of the slaves add support for saving highscores which originally could not be saved - this is the fact. What you are really asking is if WHDLoad has something like "save state feature". Frankly speaking I haven't heard anything about it and I don't know any game which is "saveable" and originally it wasn't. But I can be wrong and maybe such exists. Anyway everything is possible and maybe in the future versions of WHDLoad we will have such a feature.

[Carlos Ace]

Hmmm, i think JST had that feature ...

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Bamiga2002

Yes add savestate-support into WHDLoad !!

I second this!!!!!

[BippyM]

I'm sure this has been discussed before guys!

[Retro1234]

Yes - this would be Great! - I guess its possible your only dumping memory form the created WHDload environment.

Originally Posted by Carlos Ace

Hmmm, i think JST had that feature ...

? The only thing I can think of is the Lotus install.
Possible iconify with TAB
The TAB key will return to Workbench, but the new feature is that you
go BACK to the game by pressing RETURN.

Thanks for the responses... but how do I add save state support into WHDLoad?

J :-)

[coze]

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

Yes - this would be Great! - I guess its possible your only dumping memory form the created WHDload environment.

it's not as simple as that. there are also custom chip register contents which should be restored. Amiga chipset is a very complex beast and I'm sure there are some write only registers there which whdload can't read.

[turrican3]

in theory, could it be possible to create a key to save the game and a key to load the saved state ???
something like savestate= $5d
loadstate=$5f
theorically, possible or not ???

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by turrican3

in theory, could it be possible to create a key to save the game and a key to load the saved state ???
something like savestate= $5d
loadstate=$5f
theorically, possible or not ???

Irrelevant.

WHDLoad would need to be able to know the contents of ALL custom registers, lots are READ only, lots are WRITE only, which causes problems.

Hence why save states on the Atari ST are so easy.

[Miggy2TheMax]

The Action Replay cartridge had a save current state feature, just wondering how that piece of hardware was able to access the "write only" registers?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Miggy2TheMax

The Action Replay cartridge had a save current state feature, just wondering how that piece of hardware was able to access the "write only" registers?

You've hit the nail on the head... "hardware". The Action Replay is connected via the expansion bus, i.e. has direct access to the 68000.

The Action Replay also has a piece of hardware that enables it to watch the 68000 and store the last write to custom registers, and then when you reactivate the game from Action Replay or a Save All function, it then restores from those saved values.

However, its not a 100% foolproof way of doing it, but the way most Amiga games work means that any colour errors are corrected by the naturally updated copperlist that has screen colours in it.

[Miggy2TheMax]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

You've hit the nail on the head... "hardware". The Action Replay is connected via the expansion bus, i.e. has direct access to the 68000.

The Action Replay also has a piece of hardware that enables it to watch the 68000 and store the last write to custom registers, and then when you reactivate the game from Action Replay or a Save All function, it then restores from those saved values.

However, its not a 100% foolproof way of doing it, but the way most Amiga games work means that any colour errors are corrected by the naturally updated copperlist that has screen colours in it.

That's pretty cool, didn't realise the Action Replay Cartridge was that nifty! So I guess the only way to create a "save state" feature for whdload would be to first create a piece of hardware that stores the last write to these custom registers, which whdload could read to create the save state. Hardware project anyone?

I'm thinking about some workaround considering inability of reading some HW registers. It may be not easy, but perhaps someone will deal with it - some games deserve savestate option.
The idea is to writing all unreadable HW reg. settings in some special list, which will be saved together with RAM and readable reg. contents. So, by state restore we can set all it.
Obviously, only way to do it is by examining game code, searching all such HW reg. writings and modding code so, that add proper writings to list too. I guess that in some cases it may be relative easy.