Castaway/GP 12.1 Released!


skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
Messages
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Website
www.codejedi.com
Killer stuff :) I think I can take a few days off now ;)

http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html


June 4th 2003 -- Release Castaway/GP 12.1

Spit and pollish release :) The games database cache is back full frontal -- at first you'll notice that hitting SELECT remembers the CRC so the next lookup is instantaneous. You'll then notice that you can use right-shoulder to toggle the disk picker between two views.. the normal view (with a new game summary I might add), and a "Game List Mode" which shows one game to a line, alphabetically sorted. Mind you, it only knows about games on disks that you've pushed SELECT on to get them into the cache, so sit there for 10 minutes and go through all your disks, and then you'll never leave this mode! (You can default to this mode with a quick addition to your defaults.cnf!) I might also note that for Bonks I added game dataabse lookup support for .zip files, so you can have all the same bonuses as normal when using zip disk images (though save disk to SMC when using .zip may still be odd).

Release 12.1
------------
CHG: Added game count to bottom right of gamelist menu
CHG: Some dialog internals to make them handle large numbers of options/games

Release 12.0 - killer!
------------
NEW: Game listing mode!
o In this mode, disks that you have previously SELECTed (put into the cache)
will now show their games all together in one big sorted list!
o Gamelist-menu now lists games known in your cache in alphabetical
order, as well as putting in uncached disks at the bottom so they're still
findable; hitting A or B on a game will select it for disk insertion as in
the disk menu; right shoulder will toggle back to disk picker. Leftshoulder
does not do deletion in this view. Select will look up a disk to show you
the other games on that disk, and Start will fire things up as normal.
o so the gamelist view works more or less the same as the normal disk view
but is prettier for your cached games :)
NEW: Games database can now look up .zip file contents, so hitting Select
works on .STx, .MSA, .RAW (savestates) and now .zip's (w00t!)
CHG: Removed wide-desc mode that was in 11.6
CHG: Right-shoulder in disk picker now toggles between disk-menu and
gamelist-menu (which is new)

Release 11.6
------------
CHG: Make floppy access indicators stay around onscreen a bit longer; sometimes
they just blinked too fast, and I like to "see" them ;)
CHG: Reducing status/mode-line render frequency to get performance boost
CHG: Brought cache back in; we can beat it up and see if its all fixed?!
NEW: If cache is enabled then try showing a gamelist beside disks that have
cached CRC32's; only half a screen is available, so not much can be done....
NEW: If you hit Right Shoulder in disk picker, it'll toggle between showing
description field full width (if present) and normal (half width description)
NEW: Variable 'widedesc' available for config; if 1, wide description used; if
0, normal thin desc used. Useful for DEFAULTS.CNF!
UPD: ST Games Database 2.0
 
Well, yeah, aren't the new ones supposed to better than the old ones? :huh:
 
Im gonna try Falcon now, was a great game

Anyone got a good config setup that would be good for it?
 
Maybe loic/ldaneels has one?

For sure you'd want to define 2 or 3 configs.. one for flight, one for combat, one for keyboard junk? Then have right-0shoudler cycle through them? *shrug*

Falcon 1.. that was wicked; maybe its mroe fun than Falcon 4? :)

jeff
 
(though save disk to SMC when using .zip may still be odd).

only use save state so not worried

Actually just saw the zip support snuck in there, thanks jeff, tried it with all the images on my SMC and it works great.... even if it actually only found 4 games (out of 20 odd)

Time to find out how to help update the database me thinks :)
 
(though save disk to SMC when using .zip may still be odd).

only use save state so not worried

Actually just saw the zip support snuck in there, thanks jeff, tried it with all the images on my SMC and it works great.... even if it actually only found 4 games (out of 20 odd)

Time to find out how to help update the database me thinks :)
yeah, the zip support is workign pretty well; the database is very complete for most compialtions, but original disks and demos and some compilations are just not covered. I've got about 50 or 60 disk image son my SMC, and I'd say only about 10 arent' recognized.

Helping out is easy.. just use the crc32 dos tool on my site, or another compatable crc tool, and away you go :) The format of the games database is documented int he games database itself.. just open up stgames.txt from the website or from your downloads, and read the top of it to find out what to do :)

jeff
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hi,
thats great work. i was previously naming all my disks (ie. a_168.stt) to whatever my favouite game on the disk was (ie. platoon.stt) so i would know what was on it. its a whole lot neater now that i dont need to change the file names and can hit select to have a list

there are a couple of games that it isnt working for though. its the d-bug ones' that end in .MSA (ie. DBUG110A.MSA). its not recognising them when i hit select. ive read that the MSA files are compressed or somethin' but wasnt sure if that made a difference because they run even when renamed to *.STT. i read in your readme file that there are a number of reasons that it may not recognise them but just thought id let you know as it mentioned also to inform you.

not really too bothered about it though because the emulator is brilliant. everybody really seems to appreciate the work youve put in ;)

bizt
 
Glad you're enjoying bizt.. thats what its all about :)

As to the database.. its like this.. the database is built up by people. If it smissing, you can help out :)

It works like this.. disks do not have anythign unique about them to identify them; so we can compute a reasonably unique number.. a guess. Think about it like adding up all the number sin it to make up a sum, but we dont' use "add" because 3 + 2 +1 is the same as 1+ 2+ 3.. we use somwething smarter called CRC. So the CRC of a .ST is different from a .MSA because the MSA is a different format (of the same content). So the database can have multiple CRC's for each disk.. one for an ST, one for an MSA, and a half dozen others for whatever format you find that disk in. ie: You could have a .ST disk image of a 70track disk verison, and a 72 track version, and a 75 track version.. samer disk, but the format it was on was a ltitle different, so different CRCs.

So we've got most of the common CRCVs in the database, submitted by people already.

But if your disk images aren't showing up in the database.. you can help out by submitting them :) Let me know if you're interested. Only takes a minute per disk to submit :)

jeff
 
yeh, ill be up for that. ive not read your instructions yet on adding games to the db but ill give it a shot when i get a chance. cheers jeff
 
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