Some CD³²-related problems

[MethodGit]

I was testing some CD³² games through WinUAE and noticed some noticable occurences:

1) The general speed all CDs run, even if it's an image mounted onto a virtual drive. At times it feels like you're loading from a floppy disk (Dangerous Streets, Alfred Chicken, Sleepwalker to name a few), and many video movies jutter a lot (CD32-100/200, James Pond 2). Is this how the actual CD³² behaved back then? Is WinUAE emulating the original CD³² access speed?

2) The bizarre control bug that occurs only in certain games. During play, the blue button seems to apply two actions at once, mostly a simultaneous pause/jump or pause/shoot. I've seen this occur in the following titles:

Chuck Rock.
Battletoads.
Superfrog.
Superfrog demo (from Arcade Pool).
Bubble & Squeak demo (from Amiga CD32 Gamer Issue 6).

In Alfred Chicken however, the blue button doesn't even seem to do anything at all. Despite the fact that I've set the button properly to one of my Sidewinder buttons, I don't get the options screen, nor do I get to fire jam pellets. Annoying.

Another control-related thingy: the joypad response on the main menu of the Bump 'n' Burn demo (Amiga CD32 Gamer Ish 7) is absolutely god awful. I have to repeatedly press the D-Pad/Button instead of just once to get a single reaction. Is this an occurence on a real CD³²?


3) Certain games seem to freeze at a certain point. Chaos Engine (Spectacular Voyage bundle version) got stuck on the last screen in the intro, where you see the characters and the title logo (it was meant to finish loading up the game).

4) Regarding Sleepwalker, I've noticed the title music doesn't sync properly with what's going on on the title screen. It's meant to play the fast bits when Ralph runs across the screen after Lee, but it seems to get the timing wrong totally. Not sure if this occurs with the floppy edition.

5) Beneath A Steel Sky demo (Amiga CD32 Gamer Ish 7): when Foster goes down the chute, Joey looks in my direction and says (in a bizarrely non-robotic voice) something about a jamming signal (I forget the exact line) and then the game freezes. Is this how the demo normally ends? Did the same thing happen on a real CD³²?

Attached to this post is my CD³² configuration which, naturally, I apply to all CD³² tests.

[MethodGit]

Surely someone has some advice or notes to give me?

[killergorilla]

Not me. Maybe someone else?

[Toni Wilen]

1: yes, mostly.. I don't know how to fix CDXL programs, probably there is timing signal from CD that is not emulated properly.

2: will test later.. You do use R8? Older versions had very buggy pad emulation.

3: known problem, cd controller is not emulated correctly (not enough hardware information, same problem with CDTV controller emulation..)

4: many CD32 games speed depends on CPU speed (stupid programming but thats nothing new..)

5: no idea

[MethodGit]

Originally posted by Toni Wilen
2: will test later.. You do use R8? Older versions had very buggy pad emulation.

Yup, I iz using 0.8.22 R8, i.e. The Latest Version™.

3: known problem, cd controller is not emulated correctly (not enough hardware information, same problem with CDTV controller emulation..)

That's a darn shame. Let's hope someone helps send you extra previously-unknown information soon.

4: many CD32 games speed depends on CPU speed (stupid programming but thats nothing new..)

So if I adjusted the CPU speed settings in WinUAE I would get different results?

5: no idea

Oh well.......... *waits for someone to test disc on their real machine*

[andreas]

Originally posted by MethodGit
So if I adjusted the CPU speed settings in WinUAE I would get different results?

Let me answer this thing, albeit I only know it 95%. I think Toni means that WinUAE needs to get implemented cycle-exact emulation in CD32 mode, which is not fully done yet.

[MethodGit]

A couple more problems discovered, both related to Chuck Rock 2:

1) The intro doesn't work properly. The moment it starts (either a few milliseconds into the start or straight away) some yellow jagged lines appear around the border areas surrounding the screen, and the screen itself freezes. The narrator voice carries on for a very short time before that adopts the "stuck-record" stance - "...sters to Chuck Rock 2.....sters to Chuck Rock 2..." ad infinitum. If I skip the intro immediately after initial loading however, I can get to the game itself without probs.

2) That pesky "blue button-dual action" control bug is in this game too. But it appears that the pause thing occurs practically every time you press the blue button this time. I'm pretty sure in the games I mentioned above there were at least moments when it would just do the jump/shoot function and not pause.

Not sure if it has anything to do with the way I burnt the game to CD (though these probs occured with the image-attached-to-virtual-drive approach as well) - I got the title off ISOClassics.com, installed CDRWin, corrected the provided CUE slightly (it duplicated the "Track 12" piece near the bottom) and used this modified CUE with CDRWin to burn. But then again, I may just be getting too worked up about the burning methods.