Outcast 006 Experimental

[skeezix]

Alright; crazy stuff.

From 005 to 006 here, I've done some crazier things and not had time to test it much, so I need you guys to beet it up before I continue working on things..

ex: I've rewound my FDC (floppy controller) code to an older version that should be more stable .. handles writes and formats better, for instance. (You still can't save the disk image back to SD, I'll add that.. but games that need the drive to work right should work.. so this should get you some great RPGs and such.) I've rewound some of the timer code a bit, which has removed flicker from The Pawn's loader artowkr for instance, so some games should look better too.

I've done some work on the sample-playback problem and I think I know where the issue is (similar to on prior variatoins like on the GP32) .. the ST is giving really low rate sample data, and at 44KHz we blow through it too quick. For this build I've added some lame 'stretching' code to make the sample data last longer before being consumed, and samples do sound much better (but still shite

But mostly I'm wondering.. is this verson as stable as, and more stable, than 005?

AFAIK I've hooked everything back up.

Get it here directly:
http://www.codejedi.com/outcast/binaries/o...-experiment.zip

Let me know ASAP

jeff

 

[tobytyke]

I'll take a look when I get home tonight (In about 1 hour) and let you know how it looks. Are there any major games you would like checking or should we check as many as we can?

 

[skeezix]

Check everything, since the changes I put in could break (or improve) a tonne of things..

Save/format coudl help a lot of games who need to wrtite to disk (you'd get disk errors previously.)

ex: Sundog (Frozen Legacy) should work fine now I'd think

CSB character creation woudl work (but not be useful due to can't 'save floppy to SD' yet)

jeff

 

[Belgarath]

two disk version of Cadaver is now worse than before
on 005 it began to load from disk2 but simply stopped partway through.
with 006 the game itself now says "there seems to be an error on this disk"

 

[Watto]

Just tried llamatron. Same sound issues are there i.e. hardly any samples get played .

I appreciate the effort though jeff.

Tony

 

[skeezix]

Really 'short' samples wouldn't be rescued yet. ie: Try Xenon 2 megablast.. shoudl be much better for its sample music.

Belg -- I think Cadaver is hosed in CaSTaway until significant work is done. Its doing some crazy stuff

We'll see when I drop in the other engines

jeff

 

[Belgarath]

Turrican II which loaded up fine on 005 now crashes a few seconds in once the title music (sampled) starts to play

 

[skeezix]

What about games that worked in 005? Do they still work in 006?

jeff

 

[ingrin]

I can enter the first dungeon now in Phantasie, previously (not sure if it was 005 or 004) it would crash with some kind of disk read error.

 

[skeezix]

Hmm, so going backwards makes Phantasie I (love it!) work, but breaks Turrican II.

Options..
1) Try and integrate both better so both games work
2) Support both mod-sets as different variations (ugh) .. CaSTaway1 and CaSTaway 2 lame.
3) Not worry about it, and just go forward with bringing in STonX and Hatari and my own shittier ST emu, and see how it goes

Bleh.

I need to work on things quietly for awhile; can't keep up this pace without killing myself

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Belgy points out a good thing in IRC .. could well just be the sampled music playback changes killing Turrican II, so I will heck.. ie: That was a quick hack, and introduced at same time as the FDC/timer/MFP changes, so itsd hard to see which is the cause.

Let us hope iyts just the music stretcher causing the problem, in which case.. easy fix and go forward

jeff

 

[remowilliams]

Bleh.

I need to work on things quietly for awhile; can't keep up this pace without killing myself

jeff

​

Cheer up - Sundog does in fact save now (w00t!) and the sample playback in Chaos (one of the best games ever) does work perfectly now. So there's some good happening

Hmm. And so does Autoduel, nice.

Not that you don't already have enough to do - but unless I'm missing something - there is no way to hit a key like Control-D. Can you make the modifier keys sticky perhaps?

 

[skeezix]

"Later, baby"

yeah, good call; I keep meaning to do that. Onto the enormous todo list

At least I don't have to add multiplayer support

I think 006 seems pretty stable and worth building upon; I'll keep at the audio of course. Haven't had more than a few scraps of minutes of time in days Hopefully disabling sample stretxchign will return Turrican II, and then I can work on actual godo sample stretching.. right now I'm sort of cheesing it.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

w00t .. Turrican II works fine for me.. all I've done so far is disable audio stretching. So I think 006 is the way to keep going.

jeff

 

[PSyMastR]

Nice release, did you add the hold down to scroll on the menu, as hitting left or right moves too fast. Sorry, Im picky, anyway, its turning out to be an amazing emulator. Also, disk 45 (in version 005) has no description text, and i tried 2 different version of it. Just letting you know.

 

[skeezix]

You can let me know the CRC32 of the disk, and whats on it, and it can be added ie: Check the CaSTaway webpage on my site, andlook for the ST Games Database text file; at the top it says how to add to it. Theres a toll on the site for DOS/Win32 to generate the CRC32s.

jeff

 

[skeezix]

See new post:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=24925

jeff