18 April 2012, 10:06 | #401 | ||
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There is a certain irony that the disc protection is easy to work around, but poor coding of !Run and setup files means quite a few don't work. Not to mention David Braben hard doing the screen address into Zarch - very naughty. I've been looking at creating a patching system to fix things up at runtime, early ideas stage at the minute. Quote:
If anyone has an original copy of Fire & Ice, see my comments on The Icon Bar. It's the only APD that does even work on Arculator, so I would like to find a fix. |
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18 April 2012, 13:07 | #402 | ||||
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Out of interest, what's required before the new disc image format can be set in stone? Do we need to look at more protected games to see if there are other protection methods that need to be handled? Last edited by breach; 18 April 2012 at 13:20. Reason: Add Zarch patch info to this comment since they don't approve of consecutive posts from the same person for some reason. |
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18 April 2012, 19:26 | #403 | |
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1. The disc image file itself. I need to work out how flexible it needs to be. The track, sector and data tables are all pretty much now set - I'm storing the bare minimum required to emulate a 1772 behind ADFS. I need to work out how they're stored in the file. I probably wont fix that until I get further with the ripper, which I'm just starting to look at. 2. The metadata wrapper, which needs more input on the core text sections for the game and image files. We can bolt on the rest later. I think we can say it will be a ZIP file to keep it flexible. To be clear, this isn't a replacement for IPF - its a more user friendly format that keeps the image file to the bare minimum, doesn't require decoding at load time and can be created on original Acorn machines. |
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18 April 2012, 20:01 | #404 | ||||
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Lets start thrashing out format ideas. Here's my initial idea: Quote:
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Maybe the manual would be better as a PDF. Not sure. Anyway, that's a first pass. Indeed. |
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19 April 2012, 01:12 | #405 |
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I've just uploaded the following to The Zone - probably best to keep these to this board, so no distributing elsewhere please!
Acorn Archimedes ADF: "Pesky Muskrats" by Coin-Age (2 discs) Acorn Archimedes ADF: "Blood Sport" by Matt Black (1 disc) Acorn Archimedes ADF: "High Risc Racing" by Modus Software Ltd (3 discs) Acorn Archimedes ADF: "Warlocks" by Network XXIII (2 discs) Acorn Archimedes ADF: "Overload" by Paradise (1 disc) Acorn Archimedes ADF: "Man-At-Arms" by The Fourth Dimension (1 disc) |
19 April 2012, 11:41 | #406 |
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Wow, that's great!
I'll update this post as I test them: High Risc Racing: It runs as far as starting an actual race, where I have to change disc. When I change disc using Ctrl+Shift+F2, I get the following error message: Error Internal error, no stack for trap handler: Internal error: address exception at &00009AAC, pc = 018474B0: registers at 00020150 [Cancel] Clicking Cancel returns to the desktop. And the second disc is correctly present. Changing discs seems to work correctly in the desktop. I'm using ArcEm, ADFFS, RISC OS 3.11. Not sure if it's a problem with the game, ADFFS, ArcEm, or me. I actually had High Risc Racing back in the day, but I am sure it got taken to a charity stand at one of the Acorn shows. Totally remembered the intro/menu music. Overload: Seems to be working perfectly! I never really liked the "floaty" controls, but I seem to be better at it now than I remember being. Inferno is my favourite Paradise game. Edit: OK, I'm still rubbish at it -- defeated humiliatingly in the second world. It certainly works fine as far as level 9 anyway. Warlocks: Seems to run OK, I think. I could change to the second disc to get to the actual game from the menu without problems. However the game was almost unplayable. Not sure if it's some copy protection thing that makes it hopeless if the protection check fails, or if ArcEm is having trouble emulating it. Left/Right movement is staggeringly jerky. Up/Down is smooth. And there's stuff flickering around the screen. Man-At-Arms: Seems fine. Loads, and the first level is playable. I didn't persevere with it to check the later levels though. Blood Sport: Works. I can't get past the first round though! Pesky Muskrats: The menu bit works, but to start a game, you have to change to disc 2. I press Ctrl+Shift+F2, and then the thing seems to freeze up. antom: what sort of game is it? I'd never even heard of it! The funky graphics around the border make it look intriguing. Summary: High Risc Racing and Pesky Muskrats fail when changing to disc 2. Probably needs Jon to take a look at them? Warlocks is unplayable. I'm guessing the Warlocks fault might be due to ArcEm. I'm on Linux, so I can't test it with Arculator to confirm either way. Can someone else try that? Last edited by breach; 19 April 2012 at 14:32. |
19 April 2012, 14:36 | #407 |
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Changing disk is a bit hit and miss at the minute, as you've noticed it crashes randomly. I am aware of this and am working on a fix, I'm 100% certain it's stack corruption.
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19 April 2012, 14:53 | #408 |
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Is there any reason ADFFS's !Boot file has the Set Alias$@RunType_FCE line commented out? I'm not aware of any other software than can handle FCEs.
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19 April 2012, 21:06 | #409 | |
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I left it there, because I need to create a script suitable for the PreDesk folder, so that ADFFS loads during the boot sequence - should you wish to do so. You'll note from !Run that when the Filer is running, it takes over the file loading. |
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19 April 2012, 21:12 | #410 |
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Ah, OK.
I don't have a boot sequence in my emulator setup, and I kept forgetting to run ADFFS before opening the first FCE image in a session. I have !ADFFS in the HostFS root directory. |
19 April 2012, 21:32 | #411 |
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20 April 2012, 00:44 | #412 |
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For those not watching the Icon Bar. !ADFFS 1.24 is out - all APD's with the exception of Fire & Ice should now work.
Download ADFFS Fire & Ice incidentally is missing two quad density tracks and needs recreating. If anyone has it, drop me an eMail and I'll send the code to grab what's missing. The address is in the ADFFS help file. Last edited by Jon Abbott; 11 November 2017 at 21:56. Reason: Update link |
20 April 2012, 01:38 | #413 | |
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It's from the same folk who did Boogie Buggy, which you can probably tell by the mode used (no black borders). Possibly Coin-Age's first release independently (Boogie Buggy was released by 4D), nd then they went on to do Gribbley's Day Out on the ARC & Paradroid. I haven't tested any of these with ADFFS, but all appear to run ok in Arculator just dandy from testing Also, can't believe you prefer Inferno to Overload! The latter is possibly the most polished Jetpac clone I've ever played - hoping it gets an iPhone release like the former has |
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20 April 2012, 01:56 | #414 |
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I've got it (original retail copy) - assuming the code is Basic that can be run against the disc on physical hardware? If so, post it here or PM me and I'll get it sorted
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20 April 2012, 09:57 | #415 |
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@Jon,
Incredible. Been testing 1.24 on A3010 and so far so good. I will try and image any more protected discs I can find after the weekend. Vanpeebles has nearly every piece of software known to man and can be contacted on Youtube. I know he was keen to help where he could, but didn't have an amiga, although if you have something that runs on Arc, I'm sure he will help. Seem to even remember him telling me about some software he had to allow RO2 stuff that wasn't RO3 compatible to run. Really great work Jon, ADFFS is not only incredible, but has come along so quickly. |
20 April 2012, 10:44 | #416 |
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As I've already mentioned on the thread, I've got a ton of software (mainly commercial games) as well, so patiently waiting for the go-ahead on whatever needs to be done
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20 April 2012, 10:48 | #417 |
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I think Jon if Jon has got the capture side of things right it should really push things on, as before it was the fact that very few Archie owners also had an amiga.
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20 April 2012, 11:13 | #418 |
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Just looking at I also have a copy of Fire+Ice. I am guessing as its quad density tracks missing, its not worth me trying with the amiga (as only single and double density). I've got the amiga out, so I will try and dump any more protected ones I have and keep Fire+Ice on standby!!
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20 April 2012, 11:28 | #419 | |||
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I'll test High Risc Racing and Pesky Muskrats again when the ADFFS multi-disc support is fixed. Does anyone have Provocator or Deadline? I've only ever seen them in magazine screenshots/adverts. Quark was great, and I liked Big Bang and Revolver too. Actually, is there a list of the games that we've preserved, and those that we haven't got yet? Last edited by breach; 20 April 2012 at 11:33. |
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20 April 2012, 12:41 | #420 | |
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If you're wondering how it's going to work: 1. You set ADFFS into record mode. As FileCore isn't re-entrant, this file has to be created on a RAM drive or memory and then saved to disc later via key combination. It's tiny though, less than 10kb per disk. For speed, it wont de-dupe or pre-process - some games are time dependent on the DiscOp occuring at a specified time - Sensible Soccer for example. 2. Load and play the game for a bit, changing disks as required. Whilst doing this ADFFS intercepts all DiscOp 0, 1 and 3's (verify, read, read track), building up a list of DiscOp parameters the game requires to load for each disc and from that a list of sectors and their geometry. 3. Once it's fully loaded, hit the key combination to save the recoding to disk, reboot the Arc and go into the front-end. This reads the recorded commands, playing them back to display a list of the disk geometry from touched sectors / tracks. 4. At this stage however, you have a patchwork of disk sectors which may or may not be complete. If it's incomplete, you need to fill in the blanks of which there's three options:
5. Once we're happy with the sector map, the front-end reads the disc into an image file, building up the track / sector tables, recreating ID's / sector CRC errors and storing data for valid sectors and CRC failed sectors. ID's that fail the CRC have no data associated with them, just a stub entry in the sector table. DiscOp 3's are a special case, where only the sector ID's are know, if the game didn't actually follow up with a DiscOp 0 or 1, we have a choice of either just creating stub entries in the sector table to satisfy the DiscOp 3, or actually reading the data which may or may not be valid. The former will be sufficient for the disk to pass it's protection checks. Fingers crossed, you now have a working image file Last edited by Jon Abbott; 20 April 2012 at 13:40. Reason: Typo |
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