Which games are better played from IPF/ADF than Whdload?

[dmadn]

Originally Posted by sittingduck

Having read the thread about an AGA-fixed version of the Lotus games, I began wondering if there are games that are better played using disk images than the whdload install.

Are there games that you choose to play from disk images? And why?

I am fairly new to WHDLoad having just acquired an ACA500+ for my 500. Apidya doesn't seem to work well under WHDload; your player disappears if you move to a certain part of the screen.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by dmadn

I am fairly new to WHDLoad having just acquired an ACA500+ for my 500. Apidya doesn't seem to work well under WHDload; your player disappears if you move to a certain part of the screen.

under ACA500+. on A1200 apidya works great under whdload.

[dmadn]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

under ACA500+. on A1200 apidya works great under whdload.

Good to know! ADF2Disk it is for me then for that one!

[Calabazam]

I don’t use adf/ipf because I don’t have a working 68000 machine.
I use only whdload, to which I want to express my thanks as a long time registered user.
When no whdload slave available, I wait until someone makes one.
There have been very few problems with whdload so far for me.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Calabazam

When no whdload slave available, I wait until someone makes one.

In those very rare occasions you should try the default slave first. You never know.

[Seiya]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I don't think it is better. Whdload version of HD games solves obsolet piracy protection for instance

if you install game from cracked disk, Harddisk games generally are cracked too. Few games continue require codes protecion

[ancalimon]

Unfortunately Sensible World of Soccer. Whdload version bugs out on 060

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

Unfortunately Sensible World of Soccer. Whdload version bugs out on 060

Really how? Are you using the latest slave?

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Really how? Are you using the latest slave?

Forgot to update the slave. It now runs perfect

[Octopus66]

Originally Posted by alexh

??? The WHDload installs are made using mainly IPF images. The only "beta" is the quality of the slave.

In my experience the quality of the average WHDLoad slave is a mixed bag. I don’t mean this to be harsh, I think it is a natural consequence of the wide ranging goals many WHDLoad slaves aim to meet with limited playtesting and feedback. I put myself in this category - I have experienced so many WHDLoad failures that I choose not to use it without careful consideration. I have not raised bugs on mantis for a long time because life is too short and there are alternatives which work. I do not believe I am the only one.

Please find me someone who has never experienced a WHDLoad slave failure.

In this day and age we do not need to always use HD installers for real hardware or otherwise, although I get the impression that newer members of the Amiga community believe it is the standard. Perhaps due to A500 mini relying on it for example.

[Octopus66]

I will give some examples where I am using though for a positive.

I am slowly rebuilding my games library using Gotek and HD with real A1200 and 030/28. Out of 30-ish games I am using WHDLoad for F1WCE as it seems to fix an auto acceleration bug so that is great. Also for Lotus 1 it is the only way I can play without gfx corruption (relokick etc will not work).

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Octopus66

Please find me someone who has never experienced a WHDLoad slave failure.

The truth right here.

[itsmedoofer]

Originally Posted by Octopus66

In my experience the quality of the average WHDLoad slave is a mixed bag. I don’t mean this to be harsh, I think it is a natural consequence of the wide ranging goals many WHDLoad slaves aim to meet with limited playtesting and feedback. I put myself in this category - I have experienced so many WHDLoad failures that I choose not to use it without careful consideration. I have not raised bugs on mantis for a long time because life is too short and there are alternatives which work. I do not believe I am the only one.

Please find me someone who has never experienced a WHDLoad slave failure.

In this day and age we do not need to always use HD installers for real hardware or otherwise, although I get the impression that newer members of the Amiga community believe it is the standard. Perhaps due to A500 mini relying on it for example.

A1200 B1260, the only issues I have seen are with titles that would never have stood a chance of running on my machine anyway, saying that I can't think of any off the top of my head that don't work.

[Octopus66]

Originally Posted by itsmedoofer

A1200 B1260, the only issues I have seen are with titles that would never have stood a chance of running on my machine anyway, saying that I can't think of any off the top of my head that don't work.

The really problematic errors from my perspective too are those which manifest deep into the game. If you only play arcade titles, or play for 5 minutes, then you might be fine, but I have seen game breaking error messages half way through The Secret of Monkey Island for example.

[Aardvark]

I have played through many old rpg's via WHDLoad, and bugs i encountered were switfly fixed by Stingray & Psygore after reporting them on Mantis. And these bugs were caused by the game not behaving well with fast CPU's and caches, not by WHLoad environment.

But thanks to the work that these guys do without compensation, games that would be otherwise a slugfest, especially on 060, can now be played without loading or degradation.

[modrobert]

If the thread title was "Which games are better played from hard drive install than Whdload?" then there are a few titles, mainly a problem when the whole game can't be preloaded and lots of file access is needed.

[Octopus66]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

I have played through many old rpg's via WHDLoad, and bugs i encountered were switfly fixed by Stingray & Psygore after reporting them on Mantis. And these bugs were caused by the game not behaving well with fast CPU's and caches, not by WHLoad environment.

But thanks to the work that these guys do without compensation, games that would be otherwise a slugfest, especially on 060, can now be played without loading or degradation.

If you have an 060 then yes I totally get it. Even an 040.

[Octopus66]

Originally Posted by modrobert

If the thread title was "Which games are better played from hard drive install than Whdload?" then there are a few titles, mainly a problem when the whole game can't be preloaded and lots of file access is needed.

Yes true. And in some cases the WHDLoad version has patched issues with the original. Good example is BASS crashing in one place on cpu above 020.

The question for me though is why install a NON-HD game to HD. In the 90s I wanted every game installed to HD to protect my precious floppy disks, but now we are fortunate enough to have gotek drives as an, albeit slower, alternative.

[rsn8887]

If you look at the WHDLoad slave situation, many slaves have just been fixed in 2022, 2023, 2024. This means there were many bugs left unfixed for decades. This shows the statistical likelihood of the many bugs left in the slaves which haven’t been updated in more than two decades. Often the source code of slaves is not open source either, making fixes very hard.

Unfortunately, with WHDLod slaves, a similar philosophy of “quantity over quality” was applied back in the day, similar to what happened with early cracks of Amiga games. Slaves were released very quickly without perfect quality control of actually testing the whole gameplay through the end.

So, because of this uncertainty with WHDLoad (maybe it crashes in the last level, etc.), I sometimes prefer .ipf. Sometimes I use well-tested 100% cracks such as Gamebase 2.0 adf releases as well. It depends.

Another thing that bothers me a lot is the flickering of WHDLoad slaves where the whole screen flickers black during loading. It can ruin the experience of cool loading screens and intros.

One example that comes to mind of a game that is better played as ipf or adf is the final Uridium 2 version p1.04 d1.03. It was released as .adf crack by Galahad and is available as .ipf but is not supported by WHDLoad yet. Only an older, inferior release is supported by WHDLoad.

In a stream, we also came across a lot of bugs with saving in Neuromancer WHDLoad (saving and re-loading games corrupted the game). We switched to the floppy version which worked fine.

There are also minor issues which fall in the “won’t fix” category such as the ugly single color in-game score display in SWIV WHDLoad compared to the more beautiful multi-color score display on the floppy version on A500.

Then there are inconveniences such as in Leander WHDLoad. If you forget to enable buttonwait manually, you will not be able to read the password after each world, because the text vanishes so fast. This is an unfortunate choice of defaults for the slave. On the floppy version, the password can be read easily and the game always waits for a button press. On WHDLoad, if you forget to enable buttonwait for this game (and how would you know if nobody tells you?), you will have a great frustration when you finally finish world 1 and cannot read the password. Also, without buttonwait, you won’t be able to read the mission description at the beginning of each world.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

Unfortunately, with WHDLod slaves, a similar philosophy of “quantity over quality” was applied back in the day, similar to what happened with early cracks of Amiga games.

Can you provide specific examples for this rather bold claim, please?

Originally Posted by rsn8887

There are also minor issues which fall in the “won’t fix” category such as the ugly single color in-game score display in SWIV WHDLoad compared to the more beautiful multi-color score display on the floppy version on A500.

This is not caused by WHDLoad at all, try the original disk based game on AGA machines and be surprised what the score display looks like.