Apidya WHDLoad

[Graham Humphrey]

Wow, I never knew all those existed...

[killergorilla]

Neither did I to be honest, it's quite a full game isn't it.

Nice of you to sort out all the problems too Girv, I look forward to a full-on, fully fixed slave of doom. Cheers

[girv]

Can anyone confirm or deny if Apidya needs 1Mb chipram? Is it mentioned anywhere on the packaging or manual maybe?

I've patched up to the guardian of Stage 4-1 now, but it does blits past the end of 512Mb chip. It looks very much like a bug, but will be a nasty job to fix so I thought I'd check first

What happens on real hardware if a blit overruns the end of chipmem?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by girv

What happens on real hardware if a blit overruns the end of chipmem?

Depends on Agnus type. (I didn't know there was Agnus that supports 512Mb of chip ram )

"Nothing" happens if for example 1M Agnus (8372A+) and 0.5M chip. It does not wrap around to low 0.5M like CPU accesses do.

0.5M Agnus + 0.5M chip = wraps around.

[girv]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

(I didn't know there was Agnus that supports 512Mb of chip ram )

Unless there's a "morbidly obese" Angus I'm not telling you about, I guess I've spent too long looking at PC memory specifications recently

As it turns out, the bug only shows up if I use my "dev mode" cheat to start the level already most of the way to the 4-1 guardian. It seems sensitive to the exact value of the start point and I guess something didn't get initialised as expected when I jumped in at a random position. It works fine in 512Kb if you start from the start of the level (like you're supposed to ).

[girv]

Phew! Finally got it done!

New 2.00 BETA 1 slave and installed game in The Zone...

Some notes:

• Both versions of the game are supported
• Requires WHDLoad 16.7 (I may relax this to 16.5 )
• Requires 0.5Mb chipram
• CUSTOM1..3 = 1 enable infinite lives, invulnerability and keep-weapons trainers
• CUSTOM5=2..5 sets the start level (try 6 also )
• It doesn't do high score saving (yet)
• I've only tested it in single player

Regarding the NTSC / PAL problems that started all this: bad news The game is very much designed for a PAL screen and hangs if you patch it to start in in NTSC mode. Sorry, but you're gonna need to rewrite it if you want to run in NTSC

Try it out anyway, and have fun!

[Retro-Nerd]

Awesome, girv. I will play through the whole game right now. With your cheats, of course.

Edit:

I caught the little angel figure released by the caterpillar guardian at then end of Stage 1-1 and got sent to the subgame, but are there any others ? If so, how do I get to them? They'll probably need patched

This little bonus game with the angel is flickering as hell. Still Beta, i assume?

Edit2:

The invulnerability cheat doesn't work for boss enemies, is this correct?

Edit3:

Very strange: Just finished level 2, the big fish boss. Then the game asks for Continue Yes/No. If i say yes, level 2 starts again. I used your Custom1-3 cheats.

Edit4:

So, just completed the whole game in "Normal" mode. But i had to use the Custom5 cheat to start in level 3, but then it works flawless till the end.

Aaaah!! No single slowndown on my A1200/030.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers girv, I'll give it a whirl tonight if I get the time.

[girv]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

This little bonus game with the angel is flickering as hell. Still Beta, i assume?

No, it should be OK. I'll have to check it out. I assume the non-WHDLoad version doesn't flicker like hell ? What about the 1.x series WHDLoad version ?

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The invulnerability cheat doesn't work for boss enemies, is this correct?

Yep. Gotta leave some challenges I could look at fixing it for the bosses I suppose but it would take some work.

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Very strange: Just finished level 2, the big fish boss. Then the game asks for Continue Yes/No. If i say yes, level 2 starts again.

I saw that once before while testing. I've an idea what might cause it (I don't think its anything to do with the cheats) but I'll need to check it out. Did you try playing the level more than once?

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

So, just completed the whole game in "Normal" mode. But i had to use the Custom5 cheat to start in level 3, but then it works flawless till the end.

Sweeeeet Thanks for the top testing!

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Aaaah!! No single slowndown on my A1200/030.

No you are the fool!! You simple did not see the slowdowns down to the insynkronisation of the tv beam with your eyes!! Amiga chips have reach the limit because of the many bugs so will for sure have slow times.

(ahem)

I think they are, but I'll need to check the CPU caches are disabled in the slave, which should (I think) avoid any sudden slowdowns on 040 or 060. 030 should be OK in any case.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by girv

No, it should be OK. I'll have to check it out. I assume the non-WHDLoad version doesn't flicker like hell ? What about the 1.x series WHDLoad version ?

No flickering with Slave 1.x.

Yep. Gotta leave some challenges I could look at fixing it for the bosses I suppose but it would take some work.

Thanks for the info.

I saw that once before while testing. I've an idea what might cause it (I don't think its anything to do with the cheats) but I'll need to check it out. Did you try playing the level more than once?

Tried it 3-4 times.

No you are the fool!! You simple did not see the slowdowns down to the insynkronisation of the tv beam with your eyes!! Amiga chips have reach the limit because of the many bugs so will for sure have slow times.


I think they are, but I'll need to check the CPU caches are disabled in the slave, which should (I think) avoid any sudden slowdowns on 040 or 060. 030 should be OK in any case.

Yep, no slowdowns on a 030 CPU here, but maybe in 2-player mode.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by girv

I think they are, but I'll need to check the CPU caches are disabled in the slave, which should (I think) avoid any sudden slowdowns on 040 or 060. 030 should be OK in any case.

The slowdowns are just as bad as in the old slave. In fact, it's worse because the sprites tend to flicker when it slows down as well. (I'm trying it on an 040 of course.)

Also I get the bad flickering in the first bonus stage as well, but that's obvious I guess.

[girv]

2.00b2 in The Zone, which should address the weirdness in the Heaven & Hell bonus game after Stage 1-1 and the credit screen issue after the Stage 2 guardian. It also ensures the CPU caches are off.

@Graham:
Is there anywhere in particular the game always bogs down for you? I don't see any problems on my A1200 + Blizzard 060.

Can you run the WHDLoad speed.slave and post the results ?

Did you try NOCACHE and CHIPNOCACHE options?

Maybe I should get an A1200+040 for testing Oh yes, my wife would really go for that idea

[Retro-Nerd]

Good news first: The flickering angel bug is gone.

Bad news: I got an Exception "Address Error" during the big fish boss fight. Check the Zone for the Coredump.

BUT: I got no crash when i start with Custom5=2 in level 2. Then it loads straight in level 3 after killing the big fish. Strange, eh?

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by girv

@Graham:
Is there anywhere in particular the game always bogs down for you? I don't see any problems on my A1200 + Blizzard 060.

Yeah, on stage 2-1 it's pretty bad, just like it was on the old slave. All the levels in stage 1 are fine. I didn't play any further than stage 2-2 as I didn't have the time to last night so I can't comment on how bad it gets later on.

Can you run the WHDLoad speed.slave and post the results ?

I'll do that later tonight.

Did you try NOCACHE and CHIPNOCACHE options?

I used NOCACHE, haven't tried CHIPNOCACHE so I may do that later on as well.

[girv]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Good news first: The flickering angel bug is gone.

That was just a stupid typo in the slave. PL_P instead of PL_PS in case you're interested

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Bad news: I got an Exception "Address Error" during the big fish boss fight. Check the Zone for the Coredump.

BUT: I got no crash when i start with Custom5=2 in level 2. Then it loads straight in level 3 after killing the big fish. Strange, eh?

I'll check the coredump later.
<grumble reason="stupid work and their stupid \"we don't like you coding WHDLoad patches on work time\" rule " />

Strange though, I played through the big pike fight a couple of times with no problems. When exactly was the crash - during the fight, when the fish is exploding or afterwards ?

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Yeah, on stage 2-1 it's pretty bad, just like it was on the old slave. All the levels in stage 1 are fine. I didn't play any further than stage 2-2 as I didn't have the time to last night so I can't comment on how bad it gets later on.

I'll check out Stage 2-1 and 2-2 later then, thanks.

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

I used NOCACHE, haven't tried CHIPNOCACHE so I may do that later on as well.

With 2.00b2 the caches are disabled, so I'm not sure any cache related switches will have an effect.

I have two theories for the slowdowns:
1) 68040 attempting to cache chipmem accesses but getting told "not cacheable" by the memory controller and restarting each access for a ~5x write speed penalty. Depending on your 68040 board this may apply to instructions and reads as well as data writes. Disabling caches completely should avoid this beahviour, so we'll see how 2.00b2 fares.

2) Blitter DMA slot starvation during blitter wait loops, where the CPU repeatedly checks the dmaconr custom register very quickly (more quickly than a 68000 anyway) and uses DMA slots that would otherwise be used by the blitter, so the blitter slows down. This behaviour needs to be confirmed! I'm wondering if moving all blitter waits to slave memory (= fastmem) and putting a slow CPU-only instruction (like a div maybe, or a couple of nops) before each test of dmaconr would help this ?

Just my pet theories at the moment. I could easily be madly wrong

[Retro-Nerd]

Strange though, I played through the big pike fight a couple of times with no problems. When exactly was the crash - during the fight, when the fish is exploding or afterwards ?

The game crashes before the fish is exploding. Maybe short before the exploding animation, i can only guess it.

[Graham Humphrey]

Just tried the new slave and there's still a lot of slowdown in there (though the flickering has gone), not sure if this is possible to fix on an 040...

[girv]

2.00b3 in The Zone.

• Fix access fault in Stage 2 boss fight (wait until the fish goes up for the first time, then fly underneath and fire a lot)
• Fix all(?) blitter waits
• Move all blitter waits to fastram if available

There are a few slaves in the archive that do blitter waiting in different ways. They may make a difference to the 040 slowdowns, I'm not sure. In fact, I'll be very surprised (and happy!) if they do

For the record I get no slowdowns on my Blizzard 1260.

[Retro-Nerd]

Thanks girv, will give it a try.

Fix access fault in Stage 2 boss fight (wait until the fish goes up for the first time, then fly underneath and fire a lot)

Works fine now. I noticed only an ugly, yellow screen for one second, just before the big fish appears.

What's left, high-score saving? I noticed, that you can't save the game options like in slave 1.x, is this correct?

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks girv, I will give this another go when I find the time and cross my fingers