What's needed in the startup-sequence for PRELOAD to work?

[Gaula92]

That's about it.
Let's say my Amiga doesn't have a startup-sequence at all and even if I have my registered whdload and it works, preload option is ALWAYS ignored.
I have 2MB Chip + 4MB Fast, recognized by the system of course.
IF I load Workbench, the PRELOAD option is used and I get preload in games, BUT if I don't load WB, I don't get PRELOAD. It just doesn't work.

I have tried small startup-sequences like:

setpatch quiet
assign ENV: RAM:
assign T: RAM:
whdload gamedir/gamename.slave preload

but it's no use. The PRELOAD option is not used.

regards

[FOL]

Originally Posted by gaula88@hotmail

That's about it.
Let's say my Amiga doesn't have a startup-sequence at all and even if I have my registered whdload and it works, preload option is ALWAYS ignored.
I have 2MB Chip + 4MB Fast, recognized by the system of course.
IF I load Workbench, the PRELOAD option is used and I get preload in games, BUT if I don't load WB, I don't get PRELOAD. It just doesn't work.

I have tried small startup-sequences like:

setpatch quiet
assign ENV: RAM:
assign T: RAM:
whdload gamedir/gamename.slave preload

but it's no use. The PRELOAD option is not used.

regards

Assign ENV: RAM:
WHDLoad drive:gamedir/gameslave.slave PRELOAD

Should work fine, I never had any problems.

[Wepl]

if the files to preload are not in the current directory you have also to specify from where to load them, e.g.

whdload gamedir/gamename.slave data=gamedatadir preload

otherwise whdload will load other unnecessary files

[Bamiga2002]

What I would do is to CD to the directory of the game and then run it.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Wepl

if the files to preload are not in the current directory you have also to specify from where to load them, e.g.

whdload gamedir/gamename.slave data=gamedatadir preload

otherwise whdload will load other unnecessary files

Ah this is why I have never had issues.
As I also assign gamename: drive:gamedir/
then cd gamename:
then do the whdload stuff.

[Gaula92]

My startup-sequence looks like this, following your advices:

setpatch quiet
assign ENV: RAM:
assign T: RAM:
whdload games:games/TheLostVikings.slave data=games:games/data preload

The game loads without CD'ing into it's slave base directory, and that indicates the "data=" parameter is working, but I still don't get preload (ie flashing intro with broken sound). Of course, the same slave works WITH preload when I soubleclick on it from wb if I restore the default startup-sequence, so I'm still missing something.

Hahaha! Crazy! If I run avail before running the whdload, the game DOES preload:

setpatch quiet
assign ENV: RAM:
assign T: RAM:
avail
whdload games:games/TheLostVikings.slave data=games:games/data preload

I believe the preload wasn't happening because the OS hadn't configured the fastram when the startup-sequence ran whdload... something like that. It works now but I'm not sure this explanation makes sense

[Wepl]

it doesn't make sense to me.
I never heard the avail will change anything regarding the memory setup (besides 'avail flush').
whdload itself tries to flush the memory but because memory fragmentation it may make a difference to do it before whdload
the assigns and setpatch are not required by whdload (they will eat a small amount of memory)