Total Chaos under WinUAE?

[davidpc]

Can anyone get the new version of Total Chaos to work under WinUAE?

It's available here: http://www.aminet.net/package/game/s...otalChaosAGAr6

From its system requirements, it looks like it should work (and it even mentions UAE in the readme).

Whenever I try to run it, though, I get the title screen (with the "Audio Decompression of 1000+ files will take 6+ minutes" message), and then WinUAE crashes.

I'm running WinUAE 1.3.4. I've tried a variety of configurations in regard to processor, FPU, and memory, but haven't found one that works.

[davidpc]

Of course once I post a request for help, I get it to work.

Apparently the problem was with the Workbench I was using (which is kind of surprising, since it hasn't caused me any trouble in the past, running various games & demos).

I booted from a vanilla Workbench 3.1 and it works. Don't know why I didn't think to try that sooner...

[StrategyGamer]

It works awesome on my real Amiga.

I have heard a lot of stories from folks who run illegal, unfriendly hacks that it skrewz Total Chaos hard.

Apparently Total Chaos uses every single arcane function of the entire Amiga OS, so if you break just 1 little obscure, remote, never-before-used OS function wiith a hack.... *BLAM* no worky.

I am curious which "workbench" were you running that caused WinUAE to crash? Was it a custom thing you made yourself? Or was it AmiKit or AIAB or AmigaSYS?

I would like to try the game on some kind of UAE-based Amiga Virtual Machine (AVM)... or even an Amithlon based AVM... or what the heck, any AVM at all. Just to see if it is half as good as my Amiga Actual Machine.

[davidpc]

I was originally booting from the Workbench 3.x hard disk image that comes with Amiga Forever 2006.

The game appears to work fine under WinUAE, only obvious problem so far is a minor screen glitch. I'll post a screenshot of it later.

Are you running version 6.41? How stable is it on your real Amiga? I've had it crash a couple times. No idea yet whether to blame that on WinUAE or not.

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by davidpc

I was originally booting from the Workbench 3.x hard disk image that comes with Amiga Forever 2006.

So Amiga Forever Workbench is somehow nonstandard? I never knew that.

The game appears to work fine under WinUAE, only obvious problem so far is a minor screen glitch. I'll post a screenshot of it later.

I'd be interested to see that.

Are you running version 6.41? How stable is it on your real Amiga? I've had it crash a couple times. No idea yet whether to blame that on WinUAE or not.

Yes I run 6.41 latest version. It works 100% for me so far. But I have only played about 30 games so far on the new release. This game rawkz hard. Its brilliant!

If you get the infamous UAE Digital Sound Process failed bug then there is a way to fix that.


If you crashed it some other way then tell me what you did to make it crash and I will do the same thing on my A1200 and we will find out what happens.

[davidpc]

Yeah, Amiga Forever's 3.x configuration is a custom mixture of 3.5, 3.9 and some 3rd party stuff. You can read their description of it at:
http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/5-107.html

I've attached 2 screenshots of the game running in WinUAE. You can see the graphics glitch I mentioned on the help text screen--the bottom line of text is cut off (I assume it isn't on your real Amiga). The main play screen, though, looks OK to me. Does it appear to be missing anything compared to yours?

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by davidpc

Yeah, Amiga Forever's 3.x configuration is a custom mixture of 3.5, 3.9 and some 3rd party stuff. You can read their description of it at:
http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/5-107.html

Well something is dreadfully wrong. They claim to be including stuff 100% compatible to OS3.9 yet it explodes your UAE. I run a real OS 3.9 since several years and the game works perfect with it.

Either Amiga Forever has some evil hack installed or you did something silly when you launched the game such as not supplying enough ram. BTW I recommend 8 MB Chip + 64 MB fast to be 100% compatible.

I've attached 2 screenshots of the game running in WinUAE. You can see the graphics glitch I mentioned on the help text screen--the bottom line of text is cut off (I assume it isn't on your real Amiga).

LOL!
The text is not castrated! Total Chaos uses standard system screens. That particular screen is a standard AmigaOS AutoScroll screen. If you just move your mousepointer down to the bottom of the screen it will silkysmooth autoscroll.

The main play screen, though, looks OK to me. Does it appear to be missing anything compared to yours?

Yeah, its missing the dungeon!
I prefer DungeonWars + lots of generators! Then the battles get FEROCIOUS!!!

But your graphx look ok for a n00b


Now how are you causing those crashes?

[StrategyGamer]

The game may have become damaged when your WinUAE crashed the first time.

Does the music work correctly?
Does the speech work correctly?
Do the monster attack sounds work correctly?

[davidpc]

Thanks for all the info (especially about the autoscroll screen ). I'm definitely a n00b when it comes to anything related to AmigaOS 3.x (my real Amiga is a 1000, so I'd only used Workbench 1.x prior to using WinUAE).

I think the problem with Amiga Forever's 3.x config is that it loads Picasso98. Once I figure out how to disable/remove that, I'll see if Total Chaos runs OK.

I wondered about the damaged installation possibility, too, so I did a fresh install. The crashes happened after that.

All the sounds seem to work.

After I spend some more hours playing with it, I should have more to report in regard to the crashing.

[davidpc]

Ok, here's what I've observed in regard to crashing:

There's no obvious trigger event or sequence of events that causes the game to crash. I've had it crash when casting a spell, when clicking the End Turn button, and when doing nothing but mousing over spells in the spell list.

It seems to crash a lot more, though, the more of the game's audio features I have turned on. With all of the game's audio options on (speech, sound, combat sound, music), I can't get through a game without a crash. If I turn off speech, it appears to crash less, and if I turn all of those off, it crashes even less. But it never seems 100% stable, even with all those options off.

Also, it appears impossible to completely turn off the sound from within the game. Even if I uncheck speech, sound, combat sound, show casting, and music, I still hear a variety of sounds while playing. Is that true on your real Amiga, too?

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by davidpc

It seems to crash a lot more, though, the more of the game's audio features I have turned on. With all of the game's audio options on (speech, sound, combat sound, music), I can't get through a game without a crash. If I turn off speech, it appears to crash less, and if I turn all of those off, it crashes even less. But it never seems 100% stable, even with all those options off.

This sounds like the infamous UAE sound bug. Luckily there is a simple fix: increase your stack.
It is of course, impossible for this trick to work, yet it does. Programs running under a UAE-based Amiga Virtual Machine cannot require more, or less, stack than a silicon-based Amiga Real Machine. Yet somehow they do.

There are 2 small scripts called Start_Chaos and Start_Total_Chaos. They both do the same thing, they are each attached to a different icon, one icon is "classic" and the other is 256 colors.

In each of those 2 files is a line:
stack 50000

Which you should change to:
stack 100000

As I said before, making that simple change cannot possibly have any relevance, yet somehow it fixes the AVM bug that lies deep in the core of WinUAE. Either that or it is just good old-fashioned magic.

Here is the original info about TotalChaosAGA
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...ht=total+chaos

Note to Toni: I have learned from the programmer that the sound effects and speech are played with a resident CLI command. Could this somehow be the reason for the stack problem?

The CLI command uses audio.device to play the sounds/speech. Could that cause increased stack usage under winuae avm?

The music is played in the traditional way of dominating Paula and banging her senseless like most games do. The music seems to work ok with winuae avm.

Also, it appears impossible to completely turn off the sound from within the game. Even if I uncheck speech, sound, combat sound, show casting, and music, I still hear a variety of sounds while playing. Is that true on your real Amiga, too?

hehehe yes that is true on my real Amiga. I have played the game for nigh unto 20 years and no version has ever had a "silence" option that I am aware of. I love the sound effects anyway.

However there is a trick that I sometimes do:
Turn off all sound/audio options except for Music. Now all the sound effects will be silent and you will only hear beautiful music. This also speeds up the game as many graphical effects will not be waiting for the sound effect to finish playing.

I don't know what the Show Casting option does... or if it does anything at all. You are on your own with that one.

[Toni Wilen]

Any switching to and back from native side (harddisks, bsdsocket, ahi etc..) require some extra stack space.

Also JIT dies extremely easily if program does illegal accesses. Real Amigas either don't care or can also die horribly depending on accelerator type, CPU type, MMU configuration etc..

[davidpc]

Well, with the stack increased to 100000, I haven't seen a guru meditation yet. I did get a strange problem that I hadn't seen before, though, where the screen went all wavy, stayed that way for awhile, and then corrupted further, flashing on and off, and eventually just going black. Seemed like the game was still running, but it was impossible to see or do anything. If it happens again, I'll try to get a screenshot (of one of the weird screens before it went black, since a black screenshot probably wouldn't help much ).

Sounds like I should turn off the JIT in WinUAE, too.

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by davidpc

Well, with the stack increased to 100000, I haven't seen a guru meditation yet.

The magic still works.

I did get a strange problem that I hadn't seen before, though, where the screen went all wavy, stayed that way for awhile,

The screen waves when you get drunk. Don't drink so much dude!

The enemy Wizard must have cast Vodka on you. Or maybe you cast it on him. Either way I never saw it make any problems.

and then corrupted further, flashing on and off, and eventually just going black. Seemed like the game was still running, but it was impossible to see or do anything.

I suppose I will forward this info to James. It is just to strange for me! Maybe you passed out drunk from alcohol poisoning?

[davidpc]

Tonight the game hung while playing. Everything was working fine (stack set to 100K, JIT off) when a computer-controlled wizard cast Alter Reality on a creature. The casting animation started to play but then froze a few frames in and the mouse pointer disappeared. I waited several minutes for it to come back, but it never did.

I'm starting to think this game is either too buggy or just pushes the hardware in too many strange ways for it to ever be stable in WinUAE.

[StrategyGamer]

I have never in all my years of playing this fine game, ever had the game lock up during an Alter Reality spell. That is just totally whack!

Here is part of what James wrote me about your "alchoholic-blackout-siezure" bug:

> In fact, I've been seriously planning releasing a special AVM version
> of the game since I get endless Emails from UAE users who experience
> various problems. I know how 2 work around various WinUAE bugs but
> this new bug u r telling me... I donno about that...
>
> Maybe he just needs 2 change the CPU/Chipset balance and push it
> over toward CustomChipset a couple of notches?
> That is what my cousin told me he had 2 do 2 make WinUAE work
> correctly.

[davidpc]

Alright, next time I play it I'll adjust the CPU/Chipset slider.

I hope he decides to release an emulator-friendly version of the game. I'd certainly send him a donation if I could get a version that ran well.

James (main author) and I are working on it (an emulator-friendly Total Chaos). The external sound player isn't anything stack intensive but the patches to the OS do reap havok with Total Chaos. Also, make sure you have 32 megs free memory set up in your emulator since version 6 requires more memory than version 5. As for the Vodka spell, the waviness used to be copper-based in version 5 but James said he took that out in version 6.

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by SamuraiCrow

James (main author) and I are working on it (an emulator-friendly Total Chaos).

Ooh ooh ooh! What will be the new features?! Will it use native x86 libraries to speed the game up? Will the external sound player be recompiled to be native x86? Tell me tell me, I gotta know!

You said "emulator-friendly'. Which Amiga Virtual Machine is this new Total Chaos going to be converted to and optimized for? Amithlon? AmigaXL? UAEX? WinUAE? E-UAE? Fellow? Petunia+Blitzen? Trance+MOS? AmiKit? AmigaSYS? AIAB?

The external sound player isn't anything stack intensive but the patches to the OS do reap havok with Total Chaos. Also, make sure you have 32 megs free memory set up in your emulator

I recommend 64+ since he may have other programs running or hard drive buffers or MUI or so forth.

since version 6 requires more memory than version 5. As for the Vodka spell, the waviness used to be copper-based in version 5 but James said he took that out in version 6.

Nah man the waviness is till there. Works for me. But now that you mention it, the waviness does seem to have vanished from all the other spells that used it in v5. I am not sure that waviness has anything to do with his crashes. He just seems to crash randomly, anytime, anyplace, like my ex-girlfriend. Who if you ever meet, don't let her have the keys to your car!

First step is to make it work with P96. After that, who knows?

My first task was converting the music from OctaMed to a format that is supported on more platforms: .XM . I still have a few songs to go but I've sent the first batch to James already. (Playing Total Chaos with the music disabled is much faster under WinUAE but leaves some of the experience lacking.)