Help making Hard Drive Version of AMOS game

[amigapd]

Hi,

I created a Football Manager game in AMOS which spanned 3 disks and I wanted to make a hard drive version as I guess most users prefer and use their hard drives to play games.

I changed the code in my source code to point to the 1980FM folder which is located under my Games part of my Hard drive

Therefore the code loading iff images has changed from

Load iff "data:coach.iff"

to

Load iff "Games:1980FM/coach.iff"

and the music files from

Load "music:tune12.abk"

to load"Games:1980FM/tune12.abk"

I then placed the compiled AMOS game file in the 1980FM folder under my Games section of my hard drive. All this was done in WINUAE and the game loads and plays fine from hard drive.

So far so good - but then I thought if I copied these files and Zipped them I would be able to share them with others. However this didn't work.

I thought it might be a problem with windows so I coped them to an ADF file and unpacked them onto my Amiga 1200 - this caused two problems.

Firstly if I copied the AMOS game file to the real Amiga 1200 hard drive it was not recognised - Workbench gave me the message - can't open tool

If I tried to load the AMOS file from a real 3.5 disk - it was recognised but then gave me a software fail message - 8000 003 I think

How should I go about making a hard drive version of this game?

I will try to upload the zip folder of game contents to the Zone if it helps.

Below is link to youtube video of set up working under Winuae on my laptop.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Mrs Beanbag]

I never use assigns, you should be able to access everything in the current directory, which should be where the game is loaded from. But I suppose if there are 3 disks that's more difficult.

Are you using a compiled version, or is it dependent on the AMOS runtime? "Can't open tool" implies it is trying to open the file as data but can't find the program to run it in (i.e. AMOS runtime). So check that the tooltype in the icon info is pointing to the right place.

Which version of AMOS?

Or perhaps Zip is mangling the file attributes for some reason, try using LHA instead.

[amigapd]

Thank you for your reply - I have gone for the approach of having no assigns and putting all the files in the same current directory.

I ve compiled the game using winuae - and it works there - I have now ziped the file and added to the zone - I would really appreciate someone trying it on their Amiga -
and letting me know if it works.

Thanks

[amigapd]

I 've tried it on my Amiga 1200 and it all works fine

Thanks Mrs Beanbag - this will help with my current project (Dangermouse Adventure game) which I hope to return to in December.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by amigapd

Load iff "Games:1980FM/coach.iff"

This Load command is using what's called an "absolute path" - it tries to open file coach.iff, which is in directory 1980FM, which resides on the Games: partition. This path only works if every user that runs your game has a partition named Games, containing a directory 1980FM.

What you need to use are relative paths. Those are paths that don't start with a partition name:

coach.iff - file coach.iff which is located in same directory as your game executable
data/coach.iff - file coach iff, located in sub directory data.

As these paths are relative to the current position, they require that the current directory is the directory in which your game file is located, otherwise they won't work. If your game is started from Workbench, the current directory will be set properly automatically. If your game is started from shell, you need to cd into the game directory first, then run the game.

[Mrs Beanbag]

If you are using AMOSPro and the compiler, consider using the (unfortately named) "spack" command to compress the graphics, and then the compiler extension's "ppsave" command to save it to disk using powerpacker.library, I found this much more space efficient than ILBM.

Fun fact: Mr Beanbag still uses the AMOS packed picture format to this day! The source code for this extension was handily included on the AMOSPro disk. Internally it also still uses the AMOS bank formats for bobs and icons, too.

[Amiten]

Originally Posted by Korodny

This Load command is using what's called an "absolute path" - it tries to open file coach.iff, which is in directory 1980FM, which resides on the Games: partition. This path only works if every user that runs your game has a partition named Games, containing a directory 1980FM.

What you need to use are relative paths. Those are paths that don't start with a partition name:

coach.iff - file coach.iff which is located in same directory as your game executable
data/coach.iff - file coach iff, located in sub directory data.

As these paths are relative to the current position, they require that the current directory is the directory in which your game file is located, otherwise they won't work. If your game is started from Workbench, the current directory will be set properly automatically. If your game is started from shell, you need to cd into the game directory first, then run the game.

Totally agreed with this help, so dont use "xxx:" just "xxx/" and put your Executables into a Folder and inside this folder the Subfolders change in the Code the loadings Head to "xxx/" and just that if you need more help ask no problem for help yopu in that thing.

Best regards
Amiten.

[amigapd]

Originally Posted by Amiten

Totally agreed with this help, so dont use "xxx:" just "xxx/" and put your Executables into a Folder and inside this folder the Subfolders change in the Code the loadings Head to "xxx/" and just that if you need more help ask no problem for help yopu in that thing.

Thanks - i ve done this and it works fine on my real Amiga 1200 - I ve added it to the zone for others to try out if they wish - it would be nice to know it works for others' hard drives.

Will have to read up about the spack command - will be useful for the graphic adventure game