Amiga Addict Magazine

[Solid Snake]

Hi all. Sorry if this has already been mentioned. I kind of stumbled onto this bit of news.

amiga-addict.com

[lakitu]

I subscribe, I like receiving it through my letter box each month.

[Havie]

My Flappy Bird game is on their cover disk this month so I will be very excited to see the magazine in Smiths!

[Radertified]

Originally Posted by Havie

My Flappy Bird game is on their cover disk this month so I will be very excited to see the magazine in Smiths!

You might be interested in my post then

[Havie]

Originally Posted by Radertified

You might be interested in my post then

Didn't realise - thanks. Will see if I can sort as it should work on a 1.3 system but you are right, booting isn't working.

[Havie]

OK - having trouble. Not sure if it's the game or my boot disk but gurus on 1.3 512bk and just blue screen (of death...) on 1mb chip (in WINUAE as don't have a 1.3 machine).

Also, discovered that 1.3 doesn't like echo command as well as assign. Anyone know what commands I should use to make a boot disk compatible with KS1.3?

[Havie]

Have found out if I put Echo in the root of the disk then it works so some progress but game not working on 1.3 so I wonder if there is a Blitz basic incompatibility or incompatible command?

[Radertified]

I tinkered with it a little.

You don't need any of the commands you had in C:. Instead, just copy "echo" from Workbench 1.3 into there.

Then remove all of the copy, makedir and assign commands from your startup-sequence. None are needed, especially since you don't have an ENVARC: to be copying from anyway.

With that done, I ran it and.... crashed on Kick 1.3. Works fine on Kick 2.0 and above.

Sounds like something wrong with your code, because with the above changes, everything works fine disk-wise.

[Daedalus]

Just something to bear in mind: Regardless of opinions on whether it should be like that or not, distribution of OS components is supposed to be licenced. There are some alternatives to common OS commands and components on Aminet that might be suitable. AROS equivalents would be suitable but typically require Kickstart 2.0 to work, so aren't an option here.

[Cobe]

I really doubt it has anything to do with your code. Blitz compiles exes runnable on 1.3
Usually its using of commands from higher ks versions or missing of commands and libs we take for granted being used to ks3.0 and above.

[Daedalus]

Oh, I think you're onto something there Cobe, I just remembered that I needed diskfont.library and mathtrans.library on the boot disk. You'd need them on OS 2.0+ too if booting from floppy, but maybe Radertified's test on 2.0 was from a hard drive setup, or booted Workbench first?

Run SnoopDOS before launching the executable on OS 2 or 3 and see which libraries, resources etc. it opens. This will tell you what the executable needs on the boot disk.

[Radertified]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Radertified's test on 2.0 was from a hard drive setup, or booted Workbench first?

Neither. No HDD or other disks. Single disk drive and only ever booted the fixed ADF I made.

When I tested, I always used WinUAE's quickstart.

1.3 was A500 set to best compatibility.
2.0 was A500+ set to best compatibility.

I seem to recall many years ago that AmiBlitz produced executables that didn't work on certain machines. I can't remember what the incompatiblity was, but it might've been a Kickstart thing. I believe this problem has since been fixed in recent versions.

If Havie is using AmiBlitz, I'd recommend an update.
If using regular Blitz Basic, then the problem exists elsewhere.

[Havie]

Thanks - snoopdos used and required libraries being opened added but still same issue. It is very frustrating - will have another look and also realised how terrible KS1.3 is! My first Amiga was an A500+ so missed the whole 1.3 thing...doesn't have very many menu options and needed to full back to CLI!

I can confirm that I am using regular BB2.1 updated to last version.

[Cobe]

Did you check that all commands and libs you copied to disk are v1. 3?

[Havie]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Did you check that all commands and libs you copied to disk are v1. 3?

No I didn't - doh! The next question is - how do I know?

[Cobe]

Thers a "VERSION" command in wb that you could use. You can even see ver with hex editor, its usually at the beginning. Or simply take wb1. 3 disk and copy what you need from there.

[Havie]

Will have a look. Thanks.

[Havie]

Solved it - copied all the 1,3 libs across and it worked apart from the fact that it needs 1mb chip ram so there were two issues causing the crash!

Also discovered a bug with high score saving so worth the effort!

Not sure why it would need 1mb chip ram as not that many graphics or sounds? I could rework the game so it only loads the graphics it needs but at this point I have it working and I am also guessing there aren't many actual 500 owners with only 512kb of chip ram out there?

So I will have one last final check and send to AA guys to update their download and never do anymore with this game again...

[Daedalus]

Hmmm, what about allocated bitmaps? Looking at the source, a quick calculation looks like around 200kB are taken up right away by the bitmaps, then all the shapes and sounds. Also, it looks like you load the shapes that are used for the sprite objects and don't free them afterwards. Creating a sprite object copies the data from the shape, meaning you've got those objects in chip memory twice, so it might be worth freeing the shape objects after using Getasprite. However, loading lots of small objects can fragment the chip RAM, so freeing it up might not make it available for a bitmap, for example, if it's not all contiguous.

[Havie]

Was out and about yesterday and had to pop into Smiths.