Turrican 2 AGA (PC-DOS conversion) - Released!

[Bren McGuire]

yea i dont understand why you have to preload everything in RAM instead of progressively loading like you would off a disc i dont mind loading times

Originally Posted by Muzza

It would not fit in RAM nor run at full speed with only stock 2MB chip, I’m afraid.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

yea i dont understand why you have to preload everything in RAM instead of progressively loading like you would off a disc i dont mind loading times

I suspect the lack of FastRAM would be the main speed-killer here rather than a trackloader, as the assets for this game are considerably larger than that of OCS T2.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

yea i dont understand why you have to preload everything in RAM instead of progressively loading like you would off a disc i dont mind loading times

I posted about it here: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=113079 but also in some other threads.

Getting a CD loading routine that worked on real CD32s and not just WinUAE was a huge problem. Especially as I don’t own a CD32. I wasted a lot of time on it. And even if it worked, you still need some Fast RAM just like the floppy version so it didn’t really benefit anyone.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

One more question:- would it be possible to relocate data blocks to close up gaps and prevent fragmentation?

Yes and it could have been great. But also complex and easy to introduce new bugs. So I opted to keep it simple and reload instead.

[Djay]

Originally Posted by Muzza

Speed run and Challenge modes don't save. Every other game mode saves the progress at the start of a level.
If you start a new game, the progress on your last game is lost, yes.



I may re-visit it, but I'm not sure what I'd do with it beyond some minor bug fixes. Players did seem to appreciate the new features, but I think only a small number really played the new game modes.

Continued the save game, which started on the next the level after the world boss, i guess it crashed trying to load up (unpack?) the next level (as I had just killed the boss and triggered the end level sequence)

Noticed that score wraps at 10 mill but displays correct score on highscore table.

anyway.. back to speedrunning

[Torti-the-Smurf]

My second attempted Speedrun.

(no Autofire, no Goldsuit usage)

Result = 27:37.44

(I think with more tries i could shave off more Time; maybe a few more minutes)

Greetings, Torti

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Ok, this is Your choice

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

I rethinked Your loading and I think that for level 1 You must/can load files to next offsets:

B-100k
D-100k
A-400k
C-400k

For level 2 it will be as:
B-100k unchanged
D-100k unchanged
E- 300k
H-100k
F-200k
G-200k

This wasn't supposed to be solved! Of course it is trivial when it is this simple. Now try it with 240 files, and 14 scenes, where do not always go through the scenes in order. (skip worlds, loading saved games, going back a level when using a continue, etc). Then make it work whilst files are constantly changing during development, have it flexible enough to work on brand new projects, be multi-platform. I could go on and on, but its really just all the reasons gamedevs abandoned this archaic approach as soon as it was practical to do so. It is only something you do out of necessity, not choice.

I think there is a vast difference between the simplicity you imagine, and everything I had to consider for what I wanted this project to be. On reflection I should have spent the time I've taken trying explain this, just fixing the damn bug instead.

[Don_Adan]

Yes, i know that it can not be simple, but more files to load handling = more possibility for memory fragmention = more "not enough memory" requester. If You want i can solving for You this puzzle, You can tell me which files (with file sizes) are necessary for every game part are loaded to chip memory.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Djay

Just had a "Out of Chip Ram" crashed to workbench 3.1 error

WinUAE (with 8mb chip ram)
1.18 (WHDLoad version)
New Game Plus
4th lap
Crashed just after defeating Level 1-2 World Boss
Lives - 48
Score - 8 and bit million

I've uploaded v1.19. It contains a tiny fix for this (I changed one number).
It seems like the bug was even rarer than I thought. I couldn't get it to happen at all in the DOS version, but I did eventually see it in the WHDLoad version - I think after 7 complete playthrough's (I cheated obviously).
With this new version, I did 32 playthroughs without problem before I stopped. So hopefully that is the end of that.

Although nothing else should have changed, I didn't thoroughly test this version, so please let me know of any problems.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Yes, i know that it can not be simple, but more files to load handling = more possibility for memory fragmention = more "not enough memory" requester. If You want i can solving for You this puzzle, You can tell me which files (with file sizes) are necessary for every game part are loaded to chip memory.

This isn't a problem I need solving, but also remember we're not talking about just solving this for a finished game. I added code, art and sound over a period of years as I converted the game. Every addition or tweak changes all the numbers, so would have needed constant re-visiting. Plus it is not just Chip memory, Fast RAM needs it too.

And here is another challenge. I said there were 240 files. In actual fact I output 480 files. One with low compression (more disk space, but faster decompression), and one with high compression (less disk space, but can slow loading times down due to the complex decompression).
My build process then looks at all the files and chooses which version of each file it will use. This is to solve three goals:
1. We want the minimal number of floppy disks possible.
2. We don't want more than 1 disk change per scene change.
3. We want to keep loading (decompression) times as low as possible.

So we prefer low compression where possible, but high compression where it makes the difference between spanning floppy disks or not. It was not trivial to fit the whole thing on 3 floppies, and two out of three floppies have zero kb of free space on them.

Low compression uses NVR2S which is in-place decompression, so has no extra RAM requirements.
High compression uses Shrinkler, which requires loading it into Fast RAM first, then decompressing to EITHER Chip or Fast (depending on what it is).
These have completely different RAM requirements, and any tiny change in the game could result in a large change to which files use which compression scheme.

Hard drive versions make different compression choices for obvious reasons, and so have different RAM behaviours.

I haven't even talked about pak files, or pre-loading, or the various small ways the different versions may differ. Remember this has separate build outputs for Floppy, DOS, CD32, WHDLoad, A500 Mini, as well as the unreleased Windows PC version.

My point is that the RAM requirements for loading are complicated, and I needed everything to 'just work' as much as possible, without adding any friction to adding or changing files. The project took long enough as it was. Having to manually process disk and RAM layouts at every turn would have been too much, and given no real gains.

[Don_Adan]

One thing, for high compression ratio better using Arj m7 than Shinkler, better compression and much fastest decompression. Then game will be loaded fastest in general, of course You can replace also NVR2S with Arj m7, You will be have only 1 decompression method for all files, much fastest decompression (total time), more space on disk. Arj m7 can be depack where You want. You can check 1 disked Turrican 2 version from Wanted Team.

[stefl0n]

Originally Posted by Muzza

I haven't even talked about pak files, or pre-loading, or the various small ways the different versions may differ. Remember this has separate build outputs for Floppy, DOS, CD32, WHDLoad, A500 Mini, as well as the unreleased Windows PC version.

There's an unreleased Windows PC Version?

[Bren McGuire]

ok thanks for clarifying i didnt know the floppy version needed fast ram too

Originally Posted by Muzza

And even if it worked, you still need some Fast RAM just like the floppy version so it didn’t really benefit anyone.

[Djay]

Originally Posted by Muzza

I've uploaded v1.19. It contains a tiny fix for this (I changed one number).
It seems like the bug was even rarer than I thought. I couldn't get it to happen at all in the DOS version, but I did eventually see it in the WHDLoad version - I think after 7 complete playthrough's (I cheated obviously).
With this new version, I did 32 playthroughs without problem before I stopped. So hopefully that is the end of that.

Although nothing else should have changed, I didn't thoroughly test this version, so please let me know of any problems.

wow, 32 playthroughs... thats dedication to playtesting

thanks for taking the time to fix the bug... is there a cap to difficulty cos i could imagine a couple of bosses taking hours

will installing the updated version remove highscores and speedrun times?

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Djay

wow, 32 playthroughs... thats dedication to playtesting

thanks for taking the time to fix the bug... is there a cap to difficulty cos i could imagine a couple of bosses taking hours

will installing the updated version remove highscores and speedrun times?

As you long as just copy the new files over, and don't delete the existing files, all your highscores should be preserved.


There is no cap to the enemies health going up in NewGame+. The players health going down each round is capped at 1 though

[Torti-the-Smurf]

@ Muzza . You got Mail (PM)

Greetings, Torti

[Djay]

getting there...

[TCD]

Somebody should request the game on https://www.speedrun.com/games

[Djay]

Originally Posted by TCD

Somebody should request the game on https://www.speedrun.com/games

Yeah thats a good shout..

The WR for the original Turrican 2 is 17:49 but that includes a decent skip on the first level and a fairly large skip later... which I dont think is possible to do on the remake.

I made a few mistakes, slightly better routing and favourable RNG on one section could bring time down quite a bit.

[TCD]

Don't know if you can do it, but I would love to see a video of a 25 minute Turrican 2 run