Castaway 16.1 Bugs/feedback

[frolik]

CaSTaway 16.1 bugs/feedback

I've spent a long time playing with the new version of Castaway and it's very nice, especially the latest improvements. There are a few niggling things that I think would make it even better.

Enhancements:

* If the batteries die in mid game, saving a state CAN corrupt files on the SMC or the SMC itself. DrMD works around this problem by changing the clock speed to 66Mhz every time you enter the menu, this would fix the problem of potential crashing during saves and more peace of mind. B)

* Now I have loads of savestates in the menu, can it be changed to save all RAW files in a subdirectory (saves?) and accessed from a different menu. (I have a 128Mb card for ST stuff so it can get a bit busy!

* Some games do not detect 2nd disk in drive B (Civ for example) so you must go through several menus to change the disk each time, an option for "Swap disk A / B" would work very well so the disk doesn't have to be reloaded into memory each time you need to swap disks.

* Erm.. sorry but the brightness still isn't quite right

Bugs:

* The disk selector menu crashes quite often when I use SELECT to scan the disk.
(excuse the dodgy pic).


* When using the FAST rendering mode the savestate keyboard graphic is completely corrupt, have to press start to quit out of it.

* Dropping a savestate with the sound turned off will cause the sound to be crackly once you reload it, until you turn it ON/OFF again from the menu.

Sorry to drop a load, but after playing with it over the years and spending all day with it yesterday, I though I'd highlight these points. Especially lowering the clock speed when using the menu/saves - this is my number #1 want!

thanks for the great emulator

 

[skeezix]

Speed in MHz wouldn't impact saving-and-crashing-when-batteries-low at all.. if it runs out of power it runs out of power, and GP32's eat SMC's when they do that. But it would save a few bits of battery power while hanging out in menus. I never thought people hung out in menus you much, but I suppose if you make a lot of savestates maybe it could help get oy an extra 5 mins of playtime out. I could add it in likely.

I'll reply to the others when I get a mo.. on the way out

jeff

 

[frolik]

I'm not 100% if I got my facts straight but here's what I do with DrMD.

When the FLU and lcd starts flickering I switch to the menu and turn off the volume and the flu, the display will now be stable but unlit. Now I drop a savestate and it saves fine, sometimes with a little lcd flicker but it has always worked. I put it down to the lower clock speed slowing down the drain on the last bit of juice and extending the life to allow the saving to complete.

In the past with castaway, I have done the same thing but the unit will fully "die" half way through the save and it ends up corrupting stuff. (my poor captive session )

If you're not convinced maybe we could get Reesy to comment?

 

[skeezix]

Why not just use the castaway option to drop the speed, and then do the savestate?

jeff

 

[frolik]

I hadn't thought of trying that, ok I'll give it a shot when I get home.

It's probably worth mentioning that in DrMD I have the clock speed set at 150Mhz by default, but I usually run with 133Mhz in Castaway as it resets to the default. Maybe the difference of 150 > 66 helps too.

 

[skeezix]

You can set up a config file to set your default speed to whatever you like. One of these days I'll make a "save current settings as default config" option ..

jeff

 

[frolik]

I've just done that as it goes. Strange thing with the default.cnf config is that it sets the clock speed and brightness when you boot, but doesn't let you use the default.cnf button map until you select "custom input" from the menu.

Ok so I was all set for the batteries to die so I could lower the clockspeed and save, and somehow it crashed horribly while loading a game, it froze and the flu flickered fast. So I didn't get chance to try it. I'm all backed up now so am ready to try it next time hopefully.

As for the points I made in the original post, it looks like I'm the only one who cares, so maybe it doesn't need them... Castaway is all I've been using lately, so I've got to know it pretty well. Thanks again.

 

[EvilDragon]

Speed in MHz wouldn't impact saving-and-crashing-when-batteries-low at all.. if it runs out of power it runs out of power

​

Not exactly true.
Try for yourself: Play some 166MHz apps until power runs out (screen flickers, app crash, even turns off).
Then play a 66Mhz app. You can still play for about 10-20 minutes even though the 166MHz app immediately crashes. That's just because 166MHz needs more power than 66MHz.

So, switching to 66MHz would CERTAINLY decrease the possibility of save-corrupted SMCs to 0%.
Why? Simply because the emulation would run out of power before the saving would run out of power, so you would certainly have enough power left to save.
(and you can't save when emulation already crashed because of low battery )

If saving runs at the same speed as emulation, the chance that it crashes while saving is MUCH higher, since SMC operation needs a bit power - so saving could run out of power even if emulation would still run for a few minutes.

So I certainly like the idea

 

[A600]

* Erm.. sorry but the brightness still isn't quite right

I agree. For example, "Horror Zombies From The Crypt" is too bright (I tried it with FLU and BLU GP32).

 

[blondin]

A lot of demo (like dark side of the spoon) don't work.
fullscreen are bugged and most of time the demo don't start.

it will be fixed in the next release or demomaking is too
hard coded for being emulated on castaway ?

i hope you understand my poor english
thanx

 

[A600]

I have a couple of suggestions:

- The default input mode is Mouse-mode but most games use joystick so it'd be a good idea to add a "default-mode" option to the config file, so for example, adding "default-mode joystick" to the defaults.cnf file will start always in joystick mode.

- If a custom configuration file is selected in the rom/disk menu then, the custom-mode should be automatically enabled.

 

[frolik]

- The default input mode is Mouse-mode but most games use joystick so it'd be a good idea to add a "default-mode" option to the config file, so for example, adding "default-mode joystick" to the defaults.cnf file will start always in joystick mode.

​

I find many disk menus need to use the mouse in the desktop so mouse is my first choice, but you should be able to do this using the comprehensive custom mappings (which are very great btw) only thing is I can't get a custom mapping to work by default - the clock speed and brightness work in the default.cnf file but not the button/joystick mappings - until you choose "custom input"

My batteries still haven't run out on me while playing so I haven't been able to test the 66Mhz-saving-on-low-batts yet!

Something else I discovered last night, the emulator started crashing (rebooting) quite frequently - especially when I went to "Insert new floppy", I think this was to do with having too many disks on my SMC (over 100 zip files) and many saves, so I am stripping out the ones I don't need to hopefully fix this.

 

[Tidus]

Something else I discovered last night, the emulator started crashing (rebooting) quite frequently

​

actually I got the same troubles .... but without too much disks (around 20) & 2 saves ... it usually crash after a while (20 minutes) and my batteries are totaly new.... so I don't know where it come from.... I still use thesame disks than before, and maybe I make something wrong but I already had my SMC corrupted once using the last version of Castaway... So the version 16,xx appear for me really less stable than the old one (15,xx) .... thus I come back to this one

concerning the mapping, I still got troubles with Major Motion & I would love to find a way to set up the joystick to make it work by a way or another

if someone could help me... the game is working so fine but that's so horrible to can't play it, to can't control it at all
/me pretending asking some help by some pity lol ;p

 

[skeezix]

The floppy code in the latest is definately a little less stable; ie: boot up the desktop with blank floppies, and try and write to them or format them and you get back weird messages. So I think the FDC emulation is screwy.. ie: it handles better timing and true STT loppies, but is a little futzy, so I think I'll roll it back to the FDC (floppy disk controller) from the previous build and not worry about it.. the FDC wasn't really a big factor in compatability imho, except with STT disks (of which I've never seen one

Lots of good thins to look into; right now I'm sick as hell and crawling back to bed

jeff

 

[Iorgy77]

the FDC wasn't really a big factor in compatability imho, except with STT disks (of which I've never seen one

​

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/coverd...ment/THEONE.htm

Some of the coverdisks on that website were imaged as .STT files to get around copy protection. Not that I mind at all if you rollback to non .STT support.

A brightness/gamma fix would be most welcome though since others brought it up. Some of us still use FLUs.

 

[frolik]

I've nailed down the "insert floppy" problem a little, it seems to be to do with states you save with the new filename option, all works ok until I go to switch disks in A, (in any game), and then the gp32 will reboot. If I now delete the .raw files that I've saved with the keyboard (not the original ones in the 8 slots) then try it, you can change floppies fine.

@tidus: major motion? not tried/heard of it, which disk are you using, I'll have a go at getting it working when I get a chance.

 

[skeezix]

Waaait.. you mean using the Insert Floppy menu breaks if you've got keyboard-saved states? I'll have to check .. it used to assume the filenames due t the 1-8 picker, so maybe that code doesn't handle the arbitrary names right.. but I'd think it should due to how I did it. I'll check..

jeff

 

[A600]

@tidus: major motion? not tried/heard of it, which disk are you using, I'll have a go at getting it working when I get a chance.

I tried it using Win.ston emu but it only works if the joystick is plugged on the mouse port so I suppose Castaway doesn't support it because you can change joystick ports.

 

[frolik]

Waaait.. you mean using the Insert Floppy menu breaks if you've got keyboard-saved states? I'll have to check .. it used to assume the filenames due t the 1-8 picker, so maybe that code doesn't handle the arbitrary names right.. but I'd think it should due to how I did it. I'll check..

jeff

​

I just remembered, I also noticed that the filenames were being truncated to 7 characters, I haven't looked into this though - hopefully tonight if I get a chance, though this may be linked to the problem.

 

[Tidus]

@Tidus: major motion? not tried/heard of it, which disk are you using, I'll have a go at getting it working when I get a chance.

​

@Tidus: major motion? not tried/heard of it, which disk are you using, I'll have a go at getting it working when I get a chance.

I tried it using Win.ston emu but it only works if the joystick is plugged on the mouse port so I suppose Castaway doesn't support it because you can change joystick ports.

​

Hey Frolik thanks to want to try it I'm using a compil' disk that I don't remember the exact name, but PM me if you still want to give it a try

that's an excellent game, but the worst is that it suffer of this 'joystick' trouble....
I've never understand why, but finaly A600 explain it better than anyone

Please Skeezix, could you tell me if there's a way to map the Joystick on the Mouse port 'quite' easily??? Maybe it can be a new function of your next release when you'll got time & when you'll feel better btw I wish you to recover fast !