Out of place memory req. with original of Beach Volley and with Quik & Silva

[ross]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

All right, I tried that method and guess what, it works even in 1024k chip mode! I could play the game from the HFE v3 image! Now, one important question remains, why does the game require the rule you described ? Why can't it load normally ? Do you need to go through that rule to play from your physical copy of Beach Volley ? I would guess not.

Sooo, if it's not down to the IPF, nor to my meg of chip ram, that leaves us to : The culprit ought to be the gotek (some unimplemented instructions within the HFE v3 format presumably, keirf you've got work to do ). As a side note, another rule of thumb could be described as such : Any machine fitted with slow ram (in addition to the usual chip ram) can boot the original game without having recourse to rule #1. Food for thought.

There is already everything explained in my first post in this thread, but I try to rephrase

The KS 1.x, with any amount of chip-ram and no-fast, allocate (low) memory in a very similar way, but it is not exactly the same in the case of hand display (small fragmentation occurs in the availability list).
But it is very different in the case of available slow/fast memory because many system structures are allocated in that memory and a lot of more space is available on chip-ram.

The game does not use a memory allocator and writes wherever it wants in chip-ram.
Only by chance in the case of the initial splash display everything works as it should.
So the only possible combination to make the original game work is KS1.x and chip ram and hand, or 512KB chip and some slow/fast ram.

The 'culprit' is none other than the original code

[r.cade]

Originally Posted by ross

There is already everything explained in my first post in this thread, but I try to rephrase

The KS 1.x, with any amount of chip-ram and no-fast, allocate (low) memory in a very similar way, but it is not exactly the same in the case of hand display (small fragmentation occurs in the availability list).
But it is very different in the case of available slow/fast memory because many system structures are allocated in that memory and a lot of more space is available on chip-ram.

The game does not use a memory allocator and writes wherever it wants in chip-ram.
Only by chance in the case of the initial splash display everything works as it should.
So the only possible combination to make the original game work is KS1.x and chip ram and hand, or 512KB chip and some slow/fast ram.

The 'culprit' is none other than the original code

How was this not caught in testing? I mean, I can see how... the habit of the programmers or testers was to turn on the machine and not insert a disk until the hand.

How many people used their Amiga that way vs. not?

If it was programmed and tested on A1000, this may explain it. This is a more normal cold start procedure for that machine.

[SquawkBox]

Thought people eager to play original of Beach Volley on unexpanded or 1MB chip A500's would be interested to know that Quik & Silva, adventure of was affected by exact same "issue" described here. Recently, I evoked such workaround in some other thread, but since latter thread belongs to WinUAE support sections, there was a risk fans of said Giana-Sisters-like might skip it, considering it is emulation only issue.

A couple of things worth mentioning : 1) Manual of Quik & Silva doesn't mention waiting for the hand splash screen, 2) None of the cracked versions were fixed (lesser known game implies crack teams more likely to do a rush job, as a general rule) the way Beach Volley was fixed (hacked) BitD.