Total Chaos - help for a newbie.

CongealedWallrs · 09 April 2008, 19:38

Hiya All,

I have just got into Amiga emulation and I did so in order to play 'Total Chaos' and possibly other games too. I would be eternally grateful if somebody with more experience than myself could give me a few tips of the best configuration for this game.

At the moment I am running it with the following:

cpu: 68020 + FPU
emulation speed: fastest possible but maintain timing
cache: 8mb
JIT enabled
Chip RAM: 8mb

The only problems that I am encountering now are that the save/load features crash the emulator if I try and use them.

And I experience crashes during gameplay fairly frequently, mainly after casting a spell or after a particular sound effect.

If anyone knows of the most stable settings, I would love to know!

thank you very much indeed

Samurai_Crow · 09 April 2008, 22:13

If loading and saving are crashing, then perhaps it is a problem with the file requester. It uses req.library which is not used very often. If you have it in your libs: directory and it is corrupt it will cause a crash. Also, the load and save functions require that lha be in the /c/ directory within Total Chaos' directory.

If you've deleted the local c/ and libs/ directories then unpack the archive again. You're required to leave them where they are in order to run the game properly.

CongealedWallrs · 09 April 2008, 23:26

Thank you for this information Samurai,

I have not moved any files from the directiry that was created when I unpacked it initially.

I do have a question though. Is it best to unpack the file within the WinUAE emulation or can I do it in windows and then place the file in the right place in my WinUAE/Hard Disk/Software/etc folder?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

If loading and saving are crashing, then perhaps it is a problem with the file requester. It uses req.library which is not used very often. If you have it in your libs: directory and it is corrupt it will cause a crash. Also, the load and save functions require that lha be in the /c/ directory within Total Chaos' directory.

If you've deleted the local c/ and libs/ directories then unpack the archive again. You're required to leave them where they are in order to run the game properly.

Graham Humphrey · 09 April 2008, 23:35

It's always better to unpack files from within WinUAE rather than Windows, to prevent things like filenames and file attributes getting messed up (I think).

davideo · 09 April 2008, 23:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

It's always better to unpack files from within WinUAE rather than Windows, to prevent things like filenames and file attributes getting messed up (I think).

That's been the case with my experience of using Amiga Archives

Dave G

StrategyGamer · 10 April 2008, 00:47

Not only must you unpack Total Chaos within your Amiga Virtual Machine but you must unpack it onto a .hdf NOT to a NTFS partition. NTFS cannot handle all the fancy eurochars like the Amiga FFS can.

Also, unpacking to NTFS damages the file protection bits. So scripts are suddenly not scripts anymore. Residentable files are not residentable anymore. You could cause a thousand bugs by unpacking to lame NTFS.

StrategyGamer · 10 April 2008, 00:51

@Congealed

What distro are you using?

killergorilla · 10 April 2008, 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by StrategyGamer

Not only must you unpack Total Chaos within your Amiga Virtual Machine but you must unpack it onto a .hdf NOT to a NTFS partition. NTFS cannot handle all the fancy eurochars like the Amiga FFS can.

NTFS may not support them but WinUAE does.

CongealedWallrs · 10 April 2008, 02:16

Distro? Does that mean what Amiga OS? I think it is the 3.1 WB. Or does that mean what windows OS? In which case it is Windows XP.

And about using a .hdf partition. Is this really necesary? I need to have a seperate HDD for use with WinUAE games like Total Chaos?

Quote:

Originally Posted by StrategyGamer

@Congealed

What distro are you using?

Calgor · 10 April 2008, 08:35

Using a HDF file to install TotalChaos into preserves the filename characters and attributes as they are originally in the compressed file. Extracting to Windows directory can change some of the filename characters and also attributes. Many applications do not care if you use a HDF or not, but it is less risky especially for large installations.

WB3.1 is fine for TotalChaos.

Using an older 1.4.X version of WinUAE, it was guaranteed to crash TotalChaos while using JIT. Sometimes after 5 minutes, other times an hour. I have never had it crash with JIT off.

EDIT: WinUAE version used is 1.4.1

Toni Wilen · 10 April 2008, 09:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calgor

Extracting to Windows directory can change some of the filename characters and also attributes. .

No, it does not, as long as it is NTFS formatted and unpacked inside emulation.

Calgor · 10 April 2008, 09:29

Thanks Toni. So it appears the JIT setting may be causing the crashes. Try it without it. I did not use the load/save features so I cannot comment on that.

You may need to reduce graphics to 16 bit instead of 32 bit to maintain full speed depending on your computer.

Samurai_Crow · 10 April 2008, 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by CongealedWallrs

Distro? Does that mean what Amiga OS? I think it is the 3.1 WB. Or does that mean what windows OS? In which case it is Windows XP.

And about using a .hdf partition. Is this really necesary? I need to have a seperate HDD for use with WinUAE games like Total Chaos?

An .HDF is not a partition, it is a file that contains an Amiga Filesystem. The reason you need one of those for Total Chaos is that the game is customizable and scans the directories for new files upon startup. That's also why an NTFS directory will not work with Total Chaos. The emulator saves a file in each directory to preserve the attributes of the files under AmigaOS. This interferes with the initial file scan.

Also, unless you unpacked the archive with a known reliable release of LHA, sometimes that is known to generate corrupt files every now and then. That includes the UnArc utility that comes with AmigaOS 3.9 .

killergorilla · 10 April 2008, 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

An .HDF is not a partition, it is a file that contains an Amiga Filesystem. The reason you need one of those for Total Chaos is that the game is customizable and scans the directories for new files upon startup. That's also why an NTFS directory will not work with Total Chaos. The emulator saves a file in each directory to preserve the attributes of the files under AmigaOS. This interferes with the initial file scan.

No it won't.

The file is there when you examine the directory within windows, but the file is invisible to the virtual amiga environment.

Toni has already explained this.

CongealedWallrs · 10 April 2008, 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calgor

Using an older 1.4.X version of WinUAE, it was guaranteed to crash TotalChaos while using JIT. Sometimes after 5 minutes, other times an hour. I have never had it crash with JIT off.

Thank you very much everyone. I am trying to soak up this information and apply it if I need to.

I will see what happens without using JIT, that sounds like a very good place to start.

Toni Wilen · 10 April 2008, 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

The emulator saves a file in each directory to preserve the attributes of the files under AmigaOS.

No, it does not when using NTFS (except if special file is already there, and even if it is, it still isn't visible to emulated Amiga. Note that this forces old mode). Metadata is stored with the file in NTFS-mode and not visible to regular Windows programs (uses NTFS streams)

btw, this change happened ages ago...

(and due to "personal reasons" I can't help if there are problems with emulation and this game)

StrategyGamer · 10 April 2008, 18:59

I would like to agree with SamuraiCrow about the WinUAE making an extraneous __UAEFSDB__ file in all my dirs that corrupted the game when I tried WinUAE years ago... 2001?

The sounds/ dir is only supposed to have sound files in it. But there were all these __UAEFSDB__ files everywhere so the soundfx got screwed up.

The spells dir is only supposed to have real spells in it. Since there is no spell called __UAEFSDB__ the game got confused and crashed.

Ditto for speech, graphics, gadgets, texts, misc. It all went bonkers.

But Toni says this has been fixed!!!

That means CongealedWalls R Us (been playing in a dungeon to long?

) does not have to worry about it anymore.

In fact I think I will try out the latest WinUAE now!

@Congealed
There is still another good reason to use a .hdf.
DaryASYS, creator of the AmigaSYS distro published timing tests that prove conclusively that a .hdf is MUCH faster than an NTFS dir.

I have always suspected that slow NTFS access could maybe be causing all those weird "ChaosDigitalSoundSubProcess has crashed" problems. Buffer underflow?

People who use regular UAE never seem to have any problems with their sound task crashing. It only seems to happen with WinUAE. The only substantive differences that I can think of between UAE and WinUAE are NTFS and JIT. Probably one of them is the culprit.

StrategyGamer · 11 April 2008, 04:32

@CongealedWallrs

By Distro I meant one of the following popular distros used by the Amiga Virtual Machine community:

AIAB (Amiga In A Box)
Amiga Forever
AmigaSYS
Amikit
ClassicWB
Plain OS3.1
Plain OS3.9

A bad distro will break the game just as easily as a bad WinUAE config. Your "can't load or save the game" bug sounds like a bad distro to me. I can't comprehend how WinUAE could mess that up.

Which remembers me this: Total Chaos is equipped with a high-speed autosave feature that always saves the game before each turn. So if you have played the game, your savegame function works. This leads me to conjecture that your distro has improper font handling or a bad req.library. I will guess that it is a bad patch that hijacks normal req.library calls and turns them into a crash.

killergorilla · 11 April 2008, 10:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by StrategyGamer

Which remembers me this: Total Chaos is equipped with a high-speed autosave feature that always saves the game before each turn.

WOW!

11 April 2008, 14:05

Hi,
I played TC on WinUAE on a WinXP and I had same problem, a few minutes later game was crashed.

I tried using hdf, extracted TC with correct LHA (V1.2x), disabled musics.. But problem continued.

Then I played TC for several hours on a Linux system (Ubuntu, it was installed on the same mahcine with XP.. so same hardware.) there was no crash problem anymore.

So I suggest you to install a small linux version on a different partition then use EUAE.

09 April 2008, 19:38	#1
CongealedWallrs Registered User Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: SCOTLAND Posts: 70	Total Chaos - help for a newbie. Hiya All, I have just got into Amiga emulation and I did so in order to play 'Total Chaos' and possibly other games too. I would be eternally grateful if somebody with more experience than myself could give me a few tips of the best configuration for this game. At the moment I am running it with the following: cpu: 68020 + FPU emulation speed: fastest possible but maintain timing cache: 8mb JIT enabled Chip RAM: 8mb The only problems that I am encountering now are that the save/load features crash the emulator if I try and use them. And I experience crashes during gameplay fairly frequently, mainly after casting a spell or after a particular sound effect. If anyone knows of the most stable settings, I would love to know! thank you very much indeed

10 April 2008, 08:35	#10
Calgor (Amigas && Amigos)++ Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Anrea Posts: 999	Using a HDF file to install TotalChaos into preserves the filename characters and attributes as they are originally in the compressed file. Extracting to Windows directory can change some of the filename characters and also attributes. Many applications do not care if you use a HDF or not, but it is less risky especially for large installations. WB3.1 is fine for TotalChaos. Using an older 1.4.X version of WinUAE, it was guaranteed to crash TotalChaos while using JIT. Sometimes after 5 minutes, other times an hour. I have never had it crash with JIT off. EDIT: WinUAE version used is 1.4.1 Last edited by Calgor; 10 April 2008 at 20:04.

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09 April 2008, 22:13	#2
Samurai_Crow Total Chaos forever! Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Waterville, MN, USA Age: 49 Posts: 2,188	If loading and saving are crashing, then perhaps it is a problem with the file requester. It uses req.library which is not used very often. If you have it in your libs: directory and it is corrupt it will cause a crash. Also, the load and save functions require that lha be in the /c/ directory within Total Chaos' directory. If you've deleted the local c/ and libs/ directories then unpack the archive again. You're required to leave them where they are in order to run the game properly.

09 April 2008, 23:35	#4
Graham Humphrey Moderator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Age: 37 Posts: 11,167	It's always better to unpack files from within WinUAE rather than Windows, to prevent things like filenames and file attributes getting messed up (I think).

10 April 2008, 00:47	#6
StrategyGamer Total Chaos AGA is fun! Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: USA Posts: 873	Not only must you unpack Total Chaos within your Amiga Virtual Machine but you must unpack it onto a .hdf NOT to a NTFS partition. NTFS cannot handle all the fancy eurochars like the Amiga FFS can. Also, unpacking to NTFS damages the file protection bits. So scripts are suddenly not scripts anymore. Residentable files are not residentable anymore. You could cause a thousand bugs by unpacking to lame NTFS.

10 April 2008, 00:51	#7
StrategyGamer Total Chaos AGA is fun! Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: USA Posts: 873	@Congealed What distro are you using?

10 April 2008, 09:29	#12
Calgor (Amigas && Amigos)++ Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Anrea Posts: 999	Thanks Toni. So it appears the JIT setting may be causing the crashes. Try it without it. I did not use the load/save features so I cannot comment on that. You may need to reduce graphics to 16 bit instead of 32 bit to maintain full speed depending on your computer.

10 April 2008, 18:59	#17
StrategyGamer Total Chaos AGA is fun! Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: USA Posts: 873	I would like to agree with SamuraiCrow about the WinUAE making an extraneous __UAEFSDB__ file in all my dirs that corrupted the game when I tried WinUAE years ago... 2001? The sounds/ dir is only supposed to have sound files in it. But there were all these __UAEFSDB__ files everywhere so the soundfx got screwed up. The spells dir is only supposed to have real spells in it. Since there is no spell called __UAEFSDB__ the game got confused and crashed. Ditto for speech, graphics, gadgets, texts, misc. It all went bonkers. But Toni says this has been fixed!!! That means CongealedWalls R Us (been playing in a dungeon to long? ) does not have to worry about it anymore. In fact I think I will try out the latest WinUAE now! @Congealed There is still another good reason to use a .hdf. DaryASYS, creator of the AmigaSYS distro published timing tests that prove conclusively that a .hdf is MUCH faster than an NTFS dir. I have always suspected that slow NTFS access could maybe be causing all those weird "ChaosDigitalSoundSubProcess has crashed" problems. Buffer underflow? People who use regular UAE never seem to have any problems with their sound task crashing. It only seems to happen with WinUAE. The only substantive differences that I can think of between UAE and WinUAE are NTFS and JIT. Probably one of them is the culprit.

11 April 2008, 04:32	#18
StrategyGamer Total Chaos AGA is fun! Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: USA Posts: 873	@CongealedWallrs By Distro I meant one of the following popular distros used by the Amiga Virtual Machine community: AIAB (Amiga In A Box) Amiga Forever AmigaSYS Amikit ClassicWB Plain OS3.1 Plain OS3.9 A bad distro will break the game just as easily as a bad WinUAE config. Your "can't load or save the game" bug sounds like a bad distro to me. I can't comprehend how WinUAE could mess that up. Which remembers me this: Total Chaos is equipped with a high-speed autosave feature that always saves the game before each turn. So if you have played the game, your savegame function works. This leads me to conjecture that your distro has improper font handling or a bad req.library. I will guess that it is a bad patch that hijacks normal req.library calls and turns them into a crash.

11 April 2008, 14:05	#20
endo64 Posts: n/a	Hi, I played TC on WinUAE on a WinXP and I had same problem, a few minutes later game was crashed. I tried using hdf, extracted TC with correct LHA (V1.2x), disabled musics.. But problem continued. Then I played TC for several hours on a Linux system (Ubuntu, it was installed on the same mahcine with XP.. so same hardware.) there was no crash problem anymore. So I suggest you to install a small linux version on a different partition then use EUAE.

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