The WHDLoad '040 compatibility problems list

[Graham Humphrey]

Thought it was about time a thread like this was set up. As I'm sure some of you have discovered, the 68040 processor (maybe even the '060?) does cause problems for some games. So it seemed like a good idea to have a list of the problematic games somewhere for reference, together with a description of the problem. I was prompted to do this by a couple of games that severely slow down on '040 processors that don't on '030s and the like.

If anyone knows of any sort of problem that is '040 related (and not just a bug in the game or the slave) then it would be cool if you posted it in this thread, and I'll keep a list of the games and their problems below...

Games known to have problems with the '040:

Alien Storm: Corrupt intro and score panel graphics.
Apidya: Tends to slow down a lot on the boss at the end of the first stage, and through a lot of stage 2, usually when the screen is very busy.
Charlie J Cool AGA: Contains some graphical corruption, usually while the screen is scrolling. Is actually worse with the Nocache tooltype.
Crackdown: Contains some serious in-game graphics corruption.
Future Basketball: Game crashes after the intro.
Mean Streets: Works up until you start the game, and then it freezes on that pic after you start and you can't do anything, even quit or soft reset. With Nocache set, you just get a black screen and nothing else.
Monster Business: Game runs but some graphic corruption.
Pinball Mania: Scrolling slows down severely. (Works fine on my Apollo card - could be a Blizzard problem?)
Shuttle: No sound in the 3D sections, also extremely slow 3D updating.
Switchblade 2: Has corrupt graphics, but it appears to be only on a Blizzard card, works fine on my Apollo.
Theatre of Death: Freezes at the start of a level, only on a Blizzard card though - fine on an Apollo.
Trolls AGA: Severe slow down.
Universal Monsters: Heavily corrupt graphics, and crashes early on.
Wiz 'n' Liz: Some graphical glitches that go away with nocache, but then there is plenty of slow down instead.
Zool 2 AGA: Slows down badly as soon as pretty much anything appears on the screen, rendering it almost unplayable.
Zool 2 ECS: Slows down but not as much as the AGA version and not enough to make the game unplayable.

[killergorilla]

I hate you

You might want to look at this post too...

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=324563&postcount=3

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers KG (and keropi), I'll have to take a look at those games.

Also keropi, you don't happen to know if they are problems just with 040/060 processors, or if the slaves are just bugged generally?

[Retro-Nerd]

I can confirm a generally bugged Ghostbattle slave, but the the most games from keropi's list works (at least starts) fine on my 1230 machine.

[frikilokooo]

The solution is not to use accelerators

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

I can confirm a generally bugged Ghostbattle slave, but the the most games from keropi's list works (at least starts) fine on my 1230 machine.

Thanks. Also Bubble Bobble works fine too, since the slave has been updated.

Originally Posted by frikilokooo

The solution is not to use accelerators

Thanks for the advice

[Retro-Nerd]

Iirc correctly there is a crash in Magic Marble or Marblelous too.

[musashi5150]

Originally Posted by frikilokooo

The solution is not to use accelerators

Maybe not... ApanoSin (1.3 English) from KGs pack refuses to run on my A2000-000.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Iirc correctly there is a crash in Magic Marble or Marblelous too.

Do you mean generally, or just on an 040?

[Angus]

Star Crusader initially runs very slowly on an 060 machine, but with Girv's superb patch and the addition of FastExec or similar there are no problems.

Don't know about 040, but is this to do with the 030 having decent chip memory access?

Shuttle is also problematic on processors above 030, well certainly 060.

[girv]

The Star Crusader patch redirects the rendering to fastram then c2p's it back into chipmem, I guess that helps a lot on 040 boards with bad chipram access.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Angus

Star Crusader initially runs very slowly on an 060 machine, but with Girv's superb patch and the addition of FastExec or similar there are no problems.

Don't know about 040, but is this to do with the 030 having decent chip memory access?

Shuttle is also problematic on processors above 030, well certainly 060.

Cheers for the info, Star Crusader doesn't have a WHDLoad patch though so that's not really relevant, and as for Shuttle, do you have any ideas what problems occur?

[girv]

Shuttle is bugged to heck on 000 as well !

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Cheers for the info, Star Crusader doesn't have a WHDLoad patch though so that's not really relevant, and as for Shuttle, do you have any ideas what problems occur?

Well, I thought the Star Crusader info might possibly illustrate part of the problem, but yes - no WHDLoad slave.

I will look again at Shuttle in the next day or two - it was certainly slow, but there were sound/music issues as well as general instability on the 060. Its a shame because it actually looks like it would be a really nice game at a decent framerate. I gather it had a user definable difficulty level so it was not as complex as it appeared to be. The 3D space effect, and the way the stars are done is difficult to describe, but it looked really effective to me, and enjoyable just to watch the rolling demo.

[Bamiga2002]

Most games seem to be designed 030 processor in mind, thus it's compatibility against 040/060. Add to that the cache slowness/problems of a bppc...

[adolescent]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Zool 2: Slows down badly as soon as pretty much anything appears on the screen, rendering it almost unplayable.

Should specify AGA. AFAIK, ECS version works fine.

[Graham Humphrey]

Ah okay, thanks for that.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Ah okay, thanks for that.

Regarding Shuttle, first of all there's NO SOUND in 3D parts of the game, although the loading music is there.
Secondly, and as I detailed, the 3D update is extremely slow - 2 fps, while the on the other hand GUI side of things seems extremely responsive and smooth.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers! I'll add it to the list

[Dwyloc]

Here's some more for your list with problems on my Blizzard 1240/40 Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, LotusII and Lotus 3 all need the NoCache tooltype or they crash.

And the scrolling in PinballMania slows down to a complete crawl no mater what you try even though both Pinball Fantasies AGA and Pinball Illusions both play perfectly and are silky smooth.

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for the information - the Lotus games do work with Nocache as you say so there's no need to add them to the list - only if the games don't work (or work as they should) full stop will I add them.

Pinball Mania will be added though, cheers!

[Wepl]

Originally Posted by Dwyloc

Here's some more for your list with problems on my Blizzard 1240/40 Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, LotusII and Lotus 3 all need the NoCache tooltype or they crash.

Are you sure about Lotus 2? Using latest Slave?
It runs with full caches on 68060 and should also on 68040.

[Dwyloc]

Originally Posted by Wepl

Are you sure about Lotus 2? Using latest Slave?
It runs with full caches on 68060 and should also on 68040.

Yes but it now works without crashing when I tested it again just now. Lotus 2 would start fine but it always crashed just as the race started.

But I made a some changes to my A1200 tower setup over the weekend so one of them may have fixed the problem.

1. I removed my Elbox FastATA 1200 and drivers and replaced it with IDE-Fix Express instead as I was unhappy with the way my mediatorSX fitted on top of it, and I had to remove it to fit my Subway USB adapter anyway (I plan to fit it to my desktop A1200 at some point in the future). Removing it also allowed me to refit my Lyra keyboard interface with I much prefer to the elbox adapter.

2. Updated my Mediator drivers from update 3.9 to update 3.10 (I was already using Multimedia CD UP 1.26 as that was the version supplied).

3. Installed whdload 16.9 beta instead of release version 16.8.

I had not expected to have to have to set nocache as I did not require the setting with my BlizzardPPC 060 card in the past.

[Graham Humphrey]

Update time.

I tried Pinball Mania for myself and it appears to work fine (not that I can stand to play it for very long; I only tried two of the tables) with no tooltypes set or anything - for what it's worth I'm using an Apollo '040 card.

Zool 2 ECS has its problems too - it does slow down a fair bit but it's not as severe as the AGA version and it is still playable.

Also Trolls AGA slows down a hell of a lot so that's another one to add to the list.

[Graham Humphrey]

Another one for the list - Wiz 'n' Liz. It runs fine except for quite a few graphical glitches. Using nocache does away with the glitches but it replaced by slowdown whenever it gets busy

[Graham Humphrey]

Time to bring this thread back to life

Recently I received a PM from Irek `72, who has had problems with various games on his Blizzard '040 and asked me to try them on my Apollo.

Here are the games that have problems on both cards:

Mean Streets: Works up until you start the game, and then it freezes on that pic after you start and you can't do anything, even quit or soft reset. With Nocache set, you just get a black screen and nothing else.

Future Basketball: Game crashes after the intro with this message:



Universal Monsters: Heavily corrupt graphics, and crashes early on as well, with this message:



Theatre of Death: Already covered in another thread, fails to work properly on a Blizzard but is fine on an Apollo.

The following games suffer from graphical errors:

Alien Storm: Corrupt intro and score panel graphics, however otherwise it appears to be totally fine.

Charlie J Cool AGA: Contains some corruption, usually while the screen is scrolling.

Crackdown: Contains some serious in-game graphics corruption.

Apparently Enchanted Land has graphical errors too but I haven't tried it on mine yet (it would be great if anyone could confirm). Also Switchblade 2 was reported to have graphical corruption on the Blizzard (but not on the JST version, curiously) but I found it to be fine here. Likewise, the JST version of Paperboy works fine but there appears to be some corruption after game over on the WHDLoad version.

If anyone can confirm these problems on other processors if possible (I suspect it'll be fine on others though), or if anyone has any solutions to these bugs then please post them here, it would be appreicated. Otherwise they'll end up being added to the main post.

[Boo Boo]

I dont know if it worth testing but I get slow down in Zool 2 even on my 030 but If I run the CD32/Dos version theres no slow down - plus it got an extra world.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers, I'll try and play the CD32 version at some point and see how it goes.

[Graham Humphrey]

Another update - Irek kindly tested some of the current problematic games in the list on his Blizzard which gave some interesting results - for instance, Pinball Mania works fine on his. I don't have the time right now so perhaps he'd be kind enough to post his findings.

I also started a user group dedicated to such things (Irek's idea, not mine); if you own an '040 please join so we can see how many people these problems affect.

As usual, anyone else finds any new problems/solutions do use this thread and/or the new user group to report them

[Irek´72]

I wanted to thank Graham, for his kind support first. As already mentioned would, I have a few days ago some games from the "black list" on my CPU with 040 Blizzard tried out. The results are in the 040 WHDLoad user group to see.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cool, great you've posted for all to see, thanks.

[mfletcher]

@Graham,

Ive joined yer group as well... Ive got a Blizzard / DCE 040 card for my A1200 and Im seeing some problems with demos from Killer Gorilla's demo packs.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cool, thanks for joining!

Must admit I've never been a big fan of demos, but hopefully sometime this week I'll get to try the demos you've had problems with.

@Irek

Sorry, no time to test Evil Dawn yet

[cybernoid]

With my A4000 040 25mhz, decided to put all demos except AGA with nocache in the .info

The only exception I found was copperdemo.
I think AGA games should work fine with nocache enabled too.

... a good (and should be not very difficult) way to fix incompatibily was to add the nocache option in the whdload s: startup list. If there's noautovec option, why not nocache?

An ultimate solution was to make some kind of script that recognize if the game/ demo is ocs or AGA. If OCS then nocache.
That could be set with a variable in the wdload s:startup with a name like accelerator_mode=1 or so...

...But I'm not a coder, I don't know if whdload.slaves tells whdload what chipset to use, etc, etc

[Graham Humphrey]

I still have problems with the odd AGA game though - have you tried Zool 2 AGA on your setup, that had big problems on mine.

It does appear to be the case that everyone seems to have slightly different problems on some games which makes things even more awkward.

[Mad-Matt]

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

There should never be a need to set 'nocache' icon setting since this is controlled in the slave itself if the game is compatable with caches or not. although im sure there are cases where it can help but then the 040 becomes slower then a standard 500/600 then so usualy not a good option for me.

Quite alot of slowdown in Zool, but zool2 is mostly ok in game, but quite slow on title screen drawing the logo.

[Graham Humphrey]

Chipnocache, now I didn't think of trying that with many games, thanks for reminding me of that one.

[Dwyloc]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

The strange part is that a lot of games that work perfectly with whdload on my blizzardPPC060 with cache on require the nocache tool type to work on my blizzard040/40. But I do use the chipnocache option on my BlizzardPPC card but it did not seem to make much difference on my Blizzard1240/40 card.

I am now begining to wonder if the problems are CPU clock speed/ram access speed diffrence issues rather than strate 040/060 compatibilty diffrences.

[cybernoid]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

There should never be a need to set 'nocache' icon setting since this is controlled in the slave itself if the game is compatable with caches or not. although im sure there are cases where it can help but then the 040 becomes slower then a standard 500/600 then so usualy not a good option for me.

Quite alot of slowdown in Zool, but zool2 is mostly ok in game, but quite slow on title screen drawing the logo.

Tks, I will try chipnocache next weekend.

About nocache option, with a 3640 3.0 it really works - The speed is pretty much the same of a real A500, but more compatible. Some demos just don't work without nocache option. I believe same happens with games - with E-UAE with same config/Kick/Wb, found a lot that need to put nocache to run.

[Irek´72]

Well, I think the nocache option is the most widely used and most successful local option on 040/060 CPU. It is not always necessary to use it can even happen that the option for some games or demos can cause problems. Of course there are some games or demos that require a different option to work (CACHE, EXPCHIP or NOMMU) but generally this is an exception.