BloodNet ECS HD install frustration

brett71 · 28 May 2012, 20:56

Hi, guys,

I've just been going through some old archived games and found BloodNet ECS. The game has a HD installer on disk 1 (of 8), but I can't get it to work properly on my KS 3.1 A500. The game itself appears to be NTSC, but I can't get the installer to run unless I boot the machine into PAL and then run it. (in NTSC, when I run it, it just sucks up CHIP memory and doesn't open a window or anything visible) The problem is, even if I get it to run, it apparently fails to copy everything necessary to the hard drive to run the game. It makes the folder, but then fails to copy the icon for the game executable. I manually copy it and run it, but then the damn thing immediately prompts for Disk 1 to be inserted.

This is probably the worst HD installer I have ever seen. 2nd place would go to Beneath a Steel Sky (15 disks and the HD installer only recognizes df0: ).

mai · 29 May 2012, 19:38

what about to create the Bootdisk?
seems to work fine from HD for me then.

BTW: Can you upload your NTSC version?

mai · 30 May 2012, 18:14

still no success, still no upload?

brett71 · 30 May 2012, 18:42

Haven't had a chance to upload it. It's the same version that's available through places like www.thegamearchives.com. I downloaded a copy from there, along with the alternate disk 1, and none of them has a working HD install. I even tried a site that purports to have downloads of all of MicroProse's games with the blessing of MicroProse, but it was the same cracked version that I originally had and also is on The Game Archives. I can try to find the link for you later. They all behave like I described. The screen dimensions once you're in the game suggest it's an NTSC version (in other words, the screen fits perfectly inside the confines of my NTSC 1084P monitor without kicking it into PAL).

For now, I've given up on this game, but will get back to it someday, unless someone has also run into this issue and can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

mai · 30 May 2012, 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett71

For now, I've given up on this game,

thats fine of course

I dont like to try to help and unexpectedly he dont need help anymore.

brett71 · 30 May 2012, 21:32

Oh, don't get me wrong....I'd love the help, it's just that I'd rather not play this game unless I can get the HD install to work. I tried playing it from disk and the disk-swapping was ridiculous.

TCD · 30 May 2012, 21:53

Can you transfer a preinstalled version to your A500?

mai · 30 May 2012, 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett71

Oh, don't get me wrong....I'd love the help, it's just that I'd rather not play this game unless I can get the HD install to work. I tried playing it from disk and the disk-swapping was ridiculous.

then again, have you tried to create and use the bootdisk?

brett71 · 30 May 2012, 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Can you transfer a preinstalled version to your A500?

I'm not sure. I don't have any easy ways of copying things larger than an 880K floppy to it, unless maybe HDBackup? I can get things from my PC to my A3000 through TCP/IP, it's the A3000 to A500 part that I don't have any easy methods besides sneakernet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mai

then again, have you tried to create and use the bootdisk?

I'll give that a shot tonight.

While this might be a viable workaround, it still doesn't change the fact that the included HD installer isn't working as it should, as far as I can tell. Would love to get my hands on a set of originals, just to see if it's something screwy with the generally-available cracked version.

brett71 · 31 May 2012, 02:45

OK, I reinstalled BloodNet to my HD and made the hard disk boot floppy. This worked. I rebooted and went to the drawer where I installed BloodNet and tried to start it just from Workbench and immediately got an AmigaDOS prompt to insert disk 4. I tried to go to a command-line and run the BloodNet500 program and instead got a game-generated prompt for Disk 1.

Then I decided to take a look at the hard disk boot floppy to see what it was doing that made it work. Pretty simply, all it did was a crapton of ASSIGNs for each disk including also the save game disk and then ran the BloodNet500 program. Why the built-in HD installer fails to add these assigns to the startup-sequence on its own is beyond me. I'll try adding these assigns to the startup-sequence which should solve my problem.

brett71 · 31 May 2012, 02:54

Well, the game now appears to run, except when I double-click on the icon, instead of going through the character generation process and the title screens, it takes me to the screen shown in the HOL entry for the game of a basement room, then a moment later it automatically brings up the "Restore Game" list and proudly tells me that "No saved games exist." Clicking the mouse or pressing any key causes the game to bail out back to Workbench for a few moments, then the game restarts and does the same thing over again.

Edit: I managed to fix this. Apparently when you first start the game, the BloodNet500 program needs to be run, which shows the credits and starts the character generation process and also allows the player to restore a game. The BloodNet program (with the icon) apparently is meant to be used once a game has been started and saved. To fix this, I just renamed the BloodNet.info to BloodNet500.info. Issue solved. Looks like the authors had intended you to boot up the game for the first time and create your character from floppy and THEN install the game to HD and run it from there. Still pretty convoluted.

mai · 31 May 2012, 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett71

Would love to get my hands on a set of originals, just to see if it's something screwy with the generally-available cracked version.

The original is identical to the scene versions, also the HD-install is the same.

nice to read, that you have solved the HD-install issue now.

brett71 · 18 January 2021, 17:25

OK I hate to necro one of my own threads, but between my original post and now, I'd gotten out of the Amiga, sold off all my stuff, then in the last year or so, gotten back into the Amiga in a big way. I now have an Amiga 500 with an ACA500+ on it. The computer (thanks to the ACA) is booting up with 3.1 softkicked, 1MB Chip RAM, and I'm trying out the WHDLoad version of this game and running into a new problem.

When launching the game originally, it complained about my A600, A1200, and A4000 Kickstarts being wrong. I don't remember the exact wording. Since this is an Amiga 500, I got rid of the 1200 and 4000 Kickstarts and downloaded an A600 Kickstart and RTB file. When I launch BloodNET now, it says my Kickstart is an invalid image and says "error during 'resload_LoadKick'". The Amiga 500 is already softkicked into 3.1 from the ACA, why does it need an A600 3.1 Kickstart when the one already running should be sufficient?

Matt_H · 30 January 2021, 18:53

Quote:

The Amiga 500 is already softkicked into 3.1 from the ACA, why does it need an A600 3.1 Kickstart when the one already running should be sufficient?

That’s just how WHDLoad works. It uses Kickstart images to create a pseudo-emulation/virtual environment, bypassing the native Kickstart in the machine.

28 May 2012, 20:56	#1
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	BloodNet ECS HD install frustration Hi, guys, I've just been going through some old archived games and found BloodNet ECS. The game has a HD installer on disk 1 (of 8), but I can't get it to work properly on my KS 3.1 A500. The game itself appears to be NTSC, but I can't get the installer to run unless I boot the machine into PAL and then run it. (in NTSC, when I run it, it just sucks up CHIP memory and doesn't open a window or anything visible) The problem is, even if I get it to run, it apparently fails to copy everything necessary to the hard drive to run the game. It makes the folder, but then fails to copy the icon for the game executable. I manually copy it and run it, but then the damn thing immediately prompts for Disk 1 to be inserted. This is probably the worst HD installer I have ever seen. 2nd place would go to Beneath a Steel Sky (15 disks and the HD installer only recognizes df0: ).

31 May 2012, 02:54	#11
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	Well, the game now appears to run, except when I double-click on the icon, instead of going through the character generation process and the title screens, it takes me to the screen shown in the HOL entry for the game of a basement room, then a moment later it automatically brings up the "Restore Game" list and proudly tells me that "No saved games exist." Clicking the mouse or pressing any key causes the game to bail out back to Workbench for a few moments, then the game restarts and does the same thing over again. Edit: I managed to fix this. Apparently when you first start the game, the BloodNet500 program needs to be run, which shows the credits and starts the character generation process and also allows the player to restore a game. The BloodNet program (with the icon) apparently is meant to be used once a game has been started and saved. To fix this, I just renamed the BloodNet.info to BloodNet500.info. Issue solved. Looks like the authors had intended you to boot up the game for the first time and create your character from floppy and THEN install the game to HD and run it from there. Still pretty convoluted. Last edited by brett71; 31 May 2012 at 03:02.

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29 May 2012, 19:38	#2
mai Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Federativnaya Respublika Germaniya Posts: 4,994	what about to create the Bootdisk? seems to work fine from HD for me then. BTW: Can you upload your NTSC version?

30 May 2012, 18:14	#3
mai Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Federativnaya Respublika Germaniya Posts: 4,994	still no success, still no upload?

30 May 2012, 18:42	#4
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	Haven't had a chance to upload it. It's the same version that's available through places like www.thegamearchives.com. I downloaded a copy from there, along with the alternate disk 1, and none of them has a working HD install. I even tried a site that purports to have downloads of all of MicroProse's games with the blessing of MicroProse, but it was the same cracked version that I originally had and also is on The Game Archives. I can try to find the link for you later. They all behave like I described. The screen dimensions once you're in the game suggest it's an NTSC version (in other words, the screen fits perfectly inside the confines of my NTSC 1084P monitor without kicking it into PAL). For now, I've given up on this game, but will get back to it someday, unless someone has also run into this issue and can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

30 May 2012, 21:32	#6
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	Oh, don't get me wrong....I'd love the help, it's just that I'd rather not play this game unless I can get the HD install to work. I tried playing it from disk and the disk-swapping was ridiculous.

30 May 2012, 21:53	#7
TCD HOL/FTP busy bee Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Germany Age: 46 Posts: 31,982	Can you transfer a preinstalled version to your A500?

31 May 2012, 02:45	#10
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	OK, I reinstalled BloodNet to my HD and made the hard disk boot floppy. This worked. I rebooted and went to the drawer where I installed BloodNet and tried to start it just from Workbench and immediately got an AmigaDOS prompt to insert disk 4. I tried to go to a command-line and run the BloodNet500 program and instead got a game-generated prompt for Disk 1. Then I decided to take a look at the hard disk boot floppy to see what it was doing that made it work. Pretty simply, all it did was a crapton of ASSIGNs for each disk including also the save game disk and then ran the BloodNet500 program. Why the built-in HD installer fails to add these assigns to the startup-sequence on its own is beyond me. I'll try adding these assigns to the startup-sequence which should solve my problem.

18 January 2021, 17:25	#13
brett71 Registered User Join Date: May 2010 Location: Ames, IA, USA Posts: 521	OK I hate to necro one of my own threads, but between my original post and now, I'd gotten out of the Amiga, sold off all my stuff, then in the last year or so, gotten back into the Amiga in a big way. I now have an Amiga 500 with an ACA500+ on it. The computer (thanks to the ACA) is booting up with 3.1 softkicked, 1MB Chip RAM, and I'm trying out the WHDLoad version of this game and running into a new problem. When launching the game originally, it complained about my A600, A1200, and A4000 Kickstarts being wrong. I don't remember the exact wording. Since this is an Amiga 500, I got rid of the 1200 and 4000 Kickstarts and downloaded an A600 Kickstart and RTB file. When I launch BloodNET now, it says my Kickstart is an invalid image and says "error during 'resload_LoadKick'". The Amiga 500 is already softkicked into 3.1 from the ACA, why does it need an A600 3.1 Kickstart when the one already running should be sufficient?

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