Beneath a Steel Sky on 512k chip

[BLUELiGHT]

I am struggling to be able to play B.A.S.S. on an Amiga 1000 with 512k chip + Parceiro (8mb fast + HD)

I've tried:
- Kick 1.3 or Kick 3.1 + HD installed version: "Unable to load steelsky: insufficient free store"
- Kick 1.3 + JST (latest 7.x version): "** Can't allocate enough memory for files !"
- Kick 3.1 + WHDLoad: it loads (albeit with frequent flickering because it can't be preloaded) but there's no in-game QUIT option, and the WHDLoad quit key is PrtSc, which is missing from the A1000 keyboard.
- Kick 1.3 + floppy (or Gotek/FlashFloppy/AutoSwap): works fine.

So, only the disk version is playable, but, well, as you may imagine for a 15 disk game, I'd rather run it from HD.

The next best one would be the WHDLoad but as you can't quit the game, the saved games are lost.

Any suggestions?

[Seiya]

from WinUAE it runs with workbench 1.3 + Kick 1.3, but 1,5 MB of RAM (1 MB chip + 512k slow Fast).
Manual report that to play from Harddisk it requires 1,5 MB of RAM

[Don_Adan]

You can change Quit Key for WHDload. Read WHDload readme.

[Retro1234]

Beneath a Steel Sky has its own HD install probably on disk 1.

Edit: Ok you tried that.

If it runs from Disk it does seem strange it won't run from HD with the official installer, maybe workbench is eating too much memory.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by BLUELiGHT

The next best one would be the WHDLoad but as you can't quit the game, the saved games are lost.

You can use "NoWriteCache" to dsable the WHDLoad write cache. This allows saving data immediately at the cost of more OS swaps.

[Seiya]

ok, i made some test again:

Kickstart 1.3
Workbench 1.3
512k Chip RAM
1 MB Slow Fast
DF0: only

It working with own installer and run good!!

if you have also DF1: you need 1 MB Chip RAM

[BLUELiGHT]

Originally Posted by BLUELiGHT

I am struggling to be able to play B.A.S.S. on an Amiga 1000 with 512k chip + Parceiro (8mb fast + HD)

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

You can change Quit Key for WHDload. Read WHDload readme.

Already tried that. It's a stock Amiga 1000 with a 68000 processor. To change the Quit Key you need at least a 68010.

[BLUELiGHT]

Originally Posted by StingRay

You can use "NoWriteCache" to dsable the WHDLoad write cache. This allows saving data immediately at the cost of more OS swaps.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know this option, I'll try it and see how it goes with all the OS swaps!

[BLUELiGHT]

Originally Posted by Seiya

ok, i made some test again:

Kickstart 1.3
Workbench 1.3
512k Chip RAM
1 MB Slow Fast
DF0: only

It working with own installer and run good!!

if you have also DF1: you need 1 MB Chip RAM

Hmmm could you please check how much memory left you have when you start the game?

I stopped the startup-sequence asap, only have df0: mounted, but I still can't get it to work.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by BLUELiGHT

Already tried that. It's a stock Amiga 1000 with a 68000 processor. To change the Quit Key you need at least a 68010.

No, it can works for every CPU.

**********************************************************************************************
QuitKey/K/N
Sets the rawkey code to quit the program, this works only if the VBR is moved by WHDLoad (NoVBRMove/S must not be set and the cpu must be at least a 68010) or the Slave itself supports it.
**********************************************************************************************

But slave must have support (special routine) for Quitkey for 68000. If i remember right all slaves which using kickstarts has working Quitkey. BASS used kickstart 1.3. Anyway Quitkey can be changed by editing one byte in slave too.

[BLUELiGHT]

Well I tried countless times to add the Quitkey=XXX option in S:WHDLoad.prefs and it never worked so I thought the slave was unsupported (I was getting "press '' to quit" in the splash screen).
I've tried another time and adding QUITKEY=$59 in the tooltypes did the job and the Quit Key was switched to F10.
No idea how I never got it to work before, but thanks for pushing me to try again.

Yay, now at least I can use it in WHDLoad!

I would still like to understand why my HD installed version isn't loading. I've tried re-installing it from the 'hdinst' executable in the 15th disk but I always get a "INSTALLATION ERROR", all it does is create an empty "SteelSky" dir in the chosen path.

Same error under KS 1.3 and KS 3.1

[Retro1234]

Maybe Seiya can upload his files, until then what happens if you just copy Disk 1 to the HD and try and run it?

[Seiya]

After loaded workbench 1.3 (with only DF0)


i was wrong about DF1:
It works also with it that because you have enough chip RAM to run the game (my config use 4 floppy disk by default)
I tried with 512k Chip RAM and 1 MB Slow Fast, DF0 and DF1 and the game works.

avail wigh DF0: and DF1:

[Don_Adan]

Then this is no memory related problem. I think that this problem is related to HD used by Bluelight. Perhaps to too big partition. 2GB or 4 GB can be max. Or file system used. FFS is the best for old games/programs.

[BLUELiGHT]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Maybe Seiya can upload his files, until then what happens if you just copy Disk 1 to the HD and try and run it?

I think the problem is in my HD-installed version. I don't remember where I got it from, years ago, as far as I know it could have been extracted from the newer CD32 version that needs more memory to run.

As the original HD installer is not working for me, I have tried extracting all the files manually (following the info in the installer script) from the 1.1 ADFs and it started playing without a hitch.

I'm doing a cleanup and some testing to see if it's stable, hopefully it will work fine now!

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Then this is no memory related problem. I think that this problem is related to HD used by Bluelight. Perhaps to too big partition. 2GB or 4 GB can be max. Or file system used. FFS is the best for old games/programs.

As in the screenshot in the post above, boot partition is 256MB and Data is 2000MB, so it's within the limits. Also FFS is used. But as I wrote I think the HD installed files are the culprit

[Don_Adan]

Then try to install on your boot partition.