Academy - Tau Ceti II

andreas · 13 January 2002, 22:03

Hi,

I cannot get Academy - TC II working on any emulator nor was I able to get it working on my A500, Rev. 6A, KS 1.3.
Don't shoot too quick and say it's broken - it's possible, but it might as well be fully working - please check out this article.
"Compatibility: Kickstart 1.2" could mean that it really won't work on recent A500s, maybe rather on A1000s.

Maybe there's a way to find out why it breaks on both ...
It's in the Zone. If someone has another version, please post it.

Twistin'Ghost · 14 January 2002, 03:12

Is it possible to softkick into 1.2 on your real Amiga?

andreas · 14 January 2002, 03:43

Wheeoo...that's an excellent idea man!

Well if I knew how I could perform this, there would really be a realistic way...any hints?

In all honesty, I've never tried this.

Twistin'Ghost · 14 January 2002, 04:10

Well, there's several softkick utils in Aminet under various names (at least as I remember...it's been AGES since I've used one of those programs). I think there was one called Skick and another called AddKickMem and very likely others. I wish I had a stable, working Amiga to try this with, as well, because it would be useful for checking out some of those E/A games, and the original Hacker and some other tricky games.

RetroMan · 14 January 2002, 08:40

SKick is capable of softkickin´ Kick 1.2 for sure ...... If you have a Blizzard Turbocard, use BlizKick from Aminet ! Some other are ZKick, Relokick, CPUControl, SetCPU and MKick ! Some require MMU, some do not ......

Galahad/FLT · 14 January 2002, 22:50

Just to let you know..... Academy is 256K A1ooo only!

I have downloaded the game, and I have tested it on my A5oo 1.2 Amiga and it doesn`t work. Reason? Because although the ACADEMY file is an AmigaDos relocatable file, it tries to load the other files from the disk at ABSOLUTE addresses. I.e. No matter where the program code loads itself, it still tries to load the data files in the same place.

So, I am working on it now, I have partially got it working, I have to recode some interrupts and shit like that, but theres no reason why I cannot do something with it.

Twistin'Ghost · 14 January 2002, 23:36

Excellent, Galahad. I'm just curious, though: why on earth would (or why did) programmers use absolute addresses the way they did back then?

andreas · 15 January 2002, 00:38

Galahad, this information was valuable beyond compare.

I'd never thought that I would see a game working on an A1000 only and not on an A500! I was just afraid that I had really uploaded a broken copy ...

Great investigation!

CodyJarrett · 15 January 2002, 10:01

Or it might be easier to run the game on an A1200 using Bored Seal's WHDLoad install!

http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.lha
http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.html

Toni Wilen · 15 January 2002, 19:04

I played Academy when I had A1000 with 256k RAM expansion installed (This was over 10 years ago..). Didn't most (every?) PAL A1000 came with expansion pre-installed?

Of course, it is possible my version of Academy was different..

Unfortunately it still crashes with WinUAE and 256k chip ram.

I tried to debug this problem without success.

Galahad/FLT · 15 January 2002, 20:00

If WinUAE is a close emulation of AmigaDOS, then the same problems that plague a real Amiga will also apply to Academy.

It is simply that the programmer is displaying a lack of knowledge about the Amiga. Had he used a custom fileloader, then the game would have operated correctly, and yes, the game would most likely operate on a A1ooo with a sidecar ram expansion.

In the UK, the A1ooo was sold WITHOUT the ram expansion, you had to buy it right up to the point that the A5oo came out. Gues Commodore Germany were a little more generous!

I have had the game running, but also, if you check out the interrupt code, instead of acknowleging the interrupt and terminating with an RTE, the programmer has HARD CODED the JMP address into the ROM!!!!!!

Of course, you CAN take the address already installed in the level 3 and use that (not advised as it would activate some AmigaDOS features!) but the programmer has actually hard coded them in.... of course, the interrupts cannot possible work on any kickstart that doesn't share the same offsets!!! Plain stupid!

I know that Bored has done a version, but I will do a version for all you UAE chaps. Most likely it will be a single file, but I will keep it as an ADF.

Dont bug me about it, it will be ready when its ready.

andreas · 06 April 2002, 03:42

Let's bring this topic back up.
Bored's installation does perform correctly, but it does NOT work on emulators.

The mouse cursor is invisible. I tested on 0.8.8 R8 and 0.8.21 R2 - same thing. It's hard to select something, it's more than a guessing game.

At least, the stuff installs correctly and doesn't crash anywhere.
A final question: does this game happen to be controlled by mouse only? Joystick buttons didn't react when prompted to "press fire".

Toni Wilen · 06 April 2002, 16:13

Quote:

The mouse cursor is invisible

This happens because game never enables sprite dma. (I traced all writes to DMACON) Looks like installer is broken.

andreas · 06 April 2002, 16:44

Whoops, I don't hope that the image I used for installing is actually broken.
Could this be true?

Galahad/FLT · 07 April 2002, 12:51

Academy is very poorly written, and I suspect that the only reason that the sprites work on the A1000/A500 is solely because AmigaDOS has setup the sprites beforehand for the CLI Pointer

Toni Wilen · 07 April 2002, 21:57

I enable sprite dma "manually" and corrupted cursor appeared. I think this game must be one of most badly programmed commercial game ever...

jmmijo · 07 April 2002, 22:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Toni Wilen
I enable sprite dma "manually" and corrupted cursor appeared. I think this game must be one of most badly programmed commercial game ever...

You think

:laugh

andreas · 08 April 2002, 01:10

No I don't think so. It could also be a preview version that I had where this bug was still in.
I would've to test with ANOTHER image and Bored's installer to be absolutely sure.
Jeez, that bastard really keeps me puzzled more and more, heh

jmmijo · 08 April 2002, 01:20

You could be right andreas, just that it appears to be a really quick and dirty coded game if you ask me

andreas · 06 March 2003, 22:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
Just to let you know..... Academy is 256K A1ooo only!

I have downloaded the game, and I have tested it on my A5oo 1.2 Amiga and it doesn`t work.

Hey Galahad!

Just to let you know: I'm now an owner of quite an early A1000 model (with female serial connector even

)

In any case, I transferred the first TOSEC image to my A1000 and IT DID NOT WORK. I didn't expect this, even. I even removed the RAM expansion, just to be sure that it doesn't actually happen to work with 256K Chip only. I'd really like to know how you came to this conclusion above. Or was it just an assumption?

Toni has pointed me to another crack of this game, a rare QUARTEX crack (Tosec 0.24 + only!) and this one is DIFFERENT!
It works on an A500, but not on the A1000!

If you use an A1000 Kickstart 1.2 (33.166) with WinUAE, the game freezes instead of showing a scrolling text. (Academy ... by ...)
If you use an A500 Kickstart 1.2 (33.180) IT WORKS!

Could you please check the difference of the two versions and/or the changes QUARTEX made with their release and thus why it fails on the A1000?

13 January 2002, 22:03	#1
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	Academy - Tau Ceti II Hi, I cannot get Academy - TC II working on any emulator nor was I able to get it working on my A500, Rev. 6A, KS 1.3. Don't shoot too quick and say it's broken - it's possible, but it might as well be fully working - please check out this article. "Compatibility: Kickstart 1.2" could mean that it really won't work on recent A500s, maybe rather on A1000s. Maybe there's a way to find out why it breaks on both ... It's in the Zone. If someone has another version, please post it. Last edited by andreas; 14 January 2002 at 03:45.

14 January 2002, 22:50	#6
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,986	Academy Just to let you know..... Academy is 256K A1ooo only! I have downloaded the game, and I have tested it on my A5oo 1.2 Amiga and it doesn`t work. Reason? Because although the ACADEMY file is an AmigaDos relocatable file, it tries to load the other files from the disk at ABSOLUTE addresses. I.e. No matter where the program code loads itself, it still tries to load the data files in the same place. So, I am working on it now, I have partially got it working, I have to recode some interrupts and shit like that, but theres no reason why I cannot do something with it.

15 January 2002, 00:38	#8
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	Galahad, this information was valuable beyond compare. I'd never thought that I would see a game working on an A1000 only and not on an A500! I was just afraid that I had really uploaded a broken copy ... Great investigation! Last edited by andreas; 06 March 2003 at 21:00.

15 January 2002, 10:01	#9
CodyJarrett Global Moderator Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: UK Age: 46 Posts: 6,160	Or it might be easier to run the game on an A1200 using Bored Seal's WHDLoad install! http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.lha http://www.whdload.de/games/Academy.html Last edited by CodyJarrett; 13 March 2007 at 09:37.

06 April 2002, 03:42	#12
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	Let's bring this topic back up. Bored's installation does perform correctly, but it does NOT work on emulators. The mouse cursor is invisible. I tested on 0.8.8 R8 and 0.8.21 R2 - same thing. It's hard to select something, it's more than a guessing game. At least, the stuff installs correctly and doesn't crash anywhere. A final question: does this game happen to be controlled by mouse only? Joystick buttons didn't react when prompted to "press fire". Last edited by andreas; 06 March 2003 at 21:02.

14 January 2002, 03:12	#2
Twistin'Ghost Give up the ghost Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: U$A Age: 33 Posts: 4,662	Is it possible to softkick into 1.2 on your real Amiga?

14 January 2002, 03:43	#3
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	Wheeoo...that's an excellent idea man! Well if I knew how I could perform this, there would really be a realistic way...any hints? In all honesty, I've never tried this.

14 January 2002, 04:10	#4
Twistin'Ghost Give up the ghost Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: U$A Age: 33 Posts: 4,662	Well, there's several softkick utils in Aminet under various names (at least as I remember...it's been AGES since I've used one of those programs). I think there was one called Skick and another called AddKickMem and very likely others. I wish I had a stable, working Amiga to try this with, as well, because it would be useful for checking out some of those E/A games, and the original Hacker and some other tricky games.

14 January 2002, 08:40	#5
RetroMan Registered User Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Germany Age: 51 Posts: 3,704	SKick is capable of softkickin´ Kick 1.2 for sure ...... If you have a Blizzard Turbocard, use BlizKick from Aminet ! Some other are ZKick, Relokick, CPUControl, SetCPU and MKick ! Some require MMU, some do not ......

14 January 2002, 23:36	#7
Twistin'Ghost Give up the ghost Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: U$A Age: 33 Posts: 4,662	Excellent, Galahad. I'm just curious, though: why on earth would (or why did) programmers use absolute addresses the way they did back then?

15 January 2002, 19:04	#10
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,506	I played Academy when I had A1000 with 256k RAM expansion installed (This was over 10 years ago..). Didn't most (every?) PAL A1000 came with expansion pre-installed? Of course, it is possible my version of Academy was different.. Unfortunately it still crashes with WinUAE and 256k chip ram. I tried to debug this problem without success.

15 January 2002, 20:00	#11
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,986	If WinUAE is a close emulation of AmigaDOS, then the same problems that plague a real Amiga will also apply to Academy. It is simply that the programmer is displaying a lack of knowledge about the Amiga. Had he used a custom fileloader, then the game would have operated correctly, and yes, the game would most likely operate on a A1ooo with a sidecar ram expansion. In the UK, the A1ooo was sold WITHOUT the ram expansion, you had to buy it right up to the point that the A5oo came out. Gues Commodore Germany were a little more generous! I have had the game running, but also, if you check out the interrupt code, instead of acknowleging the interrupt and terminating with an RTE, the programmer has HARD CODED the JMP address into the ROM!!!!!! Of course, you CAN take the address already installed in the level 3 and use that (not advised as it would activate some AmigaDOS features!) but the programmer has actually hard coded them in.... of course, the interrupts cannot possible work on any kickstart that doesn't share the same offsets!!! Plain stupid! I know that Bored has done a version, but I will do a version for all you UAE chaps. Most likely it will be a single file, but I will keep it as an ADF. Dont bug me about it, it will be ready when its ready.

06 April 2002, 16:44	#14
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	Whoops, I don't hope that the image I used for installing is actually broken. Could this be true?

07 April 2002, 12:51	#15
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,986	Sprite Problems Academy is very poorly written, and I suspect that the only reason that the sprites work on the A1000/A500 is solely because AmigaDOS has setup the sprites beforehand for the CLI Pointer

07 April 2002, 21:57	#16
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,506	I enable sprite dma "manually" and corrupted cursor appeared. I think this game must be one of most badly programmed commercial game ever... Attached Thumbnails

08 April 2002, 01:10	#18
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	No I don't think so. It could also be a preview version that I had where this bug was still in. I would've to test with ANOTHER image and Bored's installer to be absolutely sure. Jeez, that bastard really keeps me puzzled more and more, heh

08 April 2002, 01:20	#19
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	You could be right andreas, just that it appears to be a really quick and dirty coded game if you ask me

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