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Revision 2021 demo: Can Robots Take Control?

Started by krusty, 01:46, 04 April 21

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Optimus

I also had random crashes and corrupted graphics when loading this on HxC on my real CPC (not plus)


I heard of mention of this Gotek, is this similar to HxC? Is this a better alternative or more compatible for demos than HxC? Is the demo 800k floppy only running on one of these devices or can there a floppy disk formatted at such high k? What's the best solution to watch this demo?

Targhan

Quote from: MacDeath on 09:32, 06 April 21so when ?
3'25 and 4'04. Do you only notice things when they are drawn using Spectrum colors? :)
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roudoudou

Quote from: Targhan on 11:52, 06 April 21
3'25 and 4'04. Do you only notice things when they are drawn using Spectrum colors? :)
i was surprise to be part of the credit but if T&J is mentionned for HELP in cat-art (i guess Krusty or Eliot did the cat-art), it's logical to mention both of us, not only T&J

on pouet neither T&J nor me are mentionned, it's also logical as we just helped a little ;)


My pronouns are RASM and ACE

Maniac

Quote from: krusty_benediction on 08:14, 06 April 21
I have no Amstrad plus at home, so I was not able to test on it.I have not even looked at the results with an emulator because I doubt it would be the same.
The demo is supposed to run without crash on Amstrad Plus although 2 screens are not stable.
Random crash probably comes from a general issue of the demo: when extensions are plugged to the CPC there is a high probability of random crashes at loading; when there is no extensions there  is a small probability (but not null). Today I have no idea of the reason of that (if someone can help me, it would be great) and then cannot fix it.
I'm more than happy to help with testing. In terms of extensions I have an MX4 board with an X-Mem and M4 board attached along with a C4CPC cart that I use. The HxC is connected via the external floppy port and the cable has a ABBA and side switch which work just fine with things like Batman Forever and phX (both double-sided disk images). I've removed all of my extensions and used my original system cart and it still crashes I'm afraid as you already mentioned.

How can I be of help? Would recording the demo running help at all?

krusty_benediction

Quote from: Maniac on 12:04, 06 April 21
I'm more than happy to help with testing. In terms of extensions I have an MX4 board with an X-Mem and M4 board attached along with a C4CPC cart that I use. The HxC is connected via the external floppy port and the cable has a ABBA and side switch which work just fine with things like Batman Forever and phX (both double-sided disk images). I've removed all of my extensions and used my original system cart and it still crashes I'm afraid as you already mentioned.

How can I be of help? Would recording the demo running help at all?
Thx I'll PM you in several days after having work on demo synchronisation. It may fix the issue

roudoudou


the demo is OK on 464+zax extension (gotek+512K)

My pronouns are RASM and ACE

pelrun

Quote from: Optimus on 10:10, 06 April 21I heard of mention of this Gotek, is this similar to HxC? Is this a better alternative or more compatible for demos than HxC? Is the demo 800k floppy only running on one of these devices or can there a floppy disk formatted at such high k? What's the best solution to watch this demo?

Gotek is cheap widely cloned floppy emulator hardware that reads images from a USB stick, like the HxC but with barely usable firmware. Alternative firmwares are an official HxC port (which has to be purchased) or FlashFloppy (which is open source). Both are actively developed and roughly similar in capabilities (at least when being used with a CPC), turning the Gotek into a capable drive replacement.

voXfReaX

Quote from: roudoudou on 12:01, 06 April 21
i was surprise to be part of the credit but if T&J is mentionned for HELP in cat-art (i guess Krusty or Eliot did the cat-art), it's logical to mention both of us, not only T&J

on pouet neither T&J nor me are mentionned, it's also logical as we just helped a little ;)


Hi! Actually I designed the cat-art robot, but as I couldn't do it myself, I asked Tom et Jerry to help me out (Krusty had way too much to do and didn't want to add more on him, and Eliot at that time was very busy with real-life issues). Nevertheless, since Tom et Jerry helped me out, he should be mentioned in the credits... Same applies for you too, since you also helped Krusty with the chessboard effect :)




roudoudou

Quote from: voXfReaX on 08:56, 07 April 21

Hi! Actually I designed the cat-art robot, but as I couldn't do it myself, I asked Tom et Jerry to help me out (Krusty had way too much to do and didn't want to add more on him, and Eliot at that time was very busy with real-life issues). Nevertheless, since Tom et Jerry helped me out, he should be mentioned in the credits... Same applies for you too, since you also helped Krusty with the chessboard effect :)
my apologies, i should have mentionned the possibility it was you  ;D
anyway, my remark was about the fact all credits were clearly mentionned in the demo so i do not understand why people miss half of the words

My pronouns are RASM and ACE

voXfReaX

Quote from: roudoudou on 09:00, 07 April 21
my apologies, i should have mentionned the possibility it was you  ;D
anyway, my remark was about the fact all credits were clearly mentionned in the demo so i do not understand why people miss half of the words


No problem! I am not very active in forums, so I found it a great opportunity to write something here  ;)


I do not know what really happened with the credits, maybe Mac lost them somehow, but these things may happen and are easy to fix!
Broadly speaking, that's the main issue of humanity - people just miss half of words, or even more, and do whatever  ;D

krusty_benediction

#35
You can find the final version here: https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2021/revision21/oldskool-demo/crtc_final.zip

There are not much changes:
- sound and/or crtc transition glitches depending on your CPC version are still there
- greetings logo has been updated
- one logo screen has a palette change

However, we have made some modifications regarding the disk support
- better synchronization with the music for fast drives
- fewer crashes when loading
- 3"5 disc only uses one side; you can still use the one of our previous demos ;)
- 3" disc version has been added; you can then watch the demo on a bare CPC ! WARNING there is no turn disc support. You have to manually flip the disc during the rotating 3d scene and during the display of the very last logo
- m4-cpcwifi version has been added;  there are two limitations: there is a sound glitch when loading files, the demo does not loop

@Optimus it should solve your issues

ralferoo

Nice demo, although I kept finding myself doing a double take with all the CRTC logos on most of the screen as that's the name of our demogroup as well as the usual meaning in the CPC scene!


In my defence, the demogroup already existed (doing BBC and other random platforms) before I joined it, and I joined because my friends were in it, not for the name!


Anyway, great art and I loved the chunky stuff too.

ralferoo

Does this demo work in any emulators? It seems to crash on both WinCPC and WinAPE at around the same point, which are the only two I've got installed. The scene after the first few logos (just after the triangular Arkos fades out) and it loads the the chunky pixel rotation thing... It seems to always crash in both emulators at exactly that point doing loading. I've tried all the disk images I can find, 3", 3.5", final, etc... and all are the same. I've set it up to be 6128 and ParaDOS/AMSDOS in each case too.



https://youtu.be/rxhk56qqeec?t=34 << it's about here


Obviously, I'm about 8 years out of touch with emulators so I'm sure most people are using other emulators now, but I'm kind of surprised that it fails in both at the same place because usually these emulators have different bugs to each other! So, assuming that most people are using something like a Gotek, I'm wondering if it's relying on a timing feature of that and the software emulators are emulating different timing, again maybe different to real hardware. Not sure if you use interleaved sectors on the disc, for instance.


It would be more encouragement to get a CPC6128 out of the loft so I can try it on real hardware, but I will still have the problem of getting the demo onto a physical disc anyway if I do that! Normally, I'd load something from tape and save to disc if I want something on a disc for any reason, but with a custom disc format that's not so easy...


If people have recommendations for better emulators, I'd be happy to give them a whirl. I mostly used WinAPE and WinCPC in the past, as WinAPE had a good assemble to memory and run, which made development really quick, and WinCPC has a nice raster-beam crosshairs when debugging, so it helps when working on tricky timing issues.

krusty_benediction

#38
edit: crappy editor failed with inlining image...
check that Fast Disc Emulation setting is disabledI have tested with the post revision version in 3.5inches from pouet https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=88554 and it worked perfectly

ralferoo

#39
Quote from: krusty_benediction on 13:04, 09 December 21check that Fast Disc Emulation setting is disabled
You're a star! That's fixed it for WinAPE :D
Spoke too soon... Still crashes at random points (and in different ways, but always when loading), but it gets a lot further.


ralferoo

CRTC 0 was selected and I plus features disabled, but still crashes. I guess I need to use real hardware! :D

Johnny Olsen

I can run it with WinApe.
It also works with CPCEC.

krusty_benediction

Quote from: ralferoo on 21:40, 09 December 21
CRTC 0 was selected and I plus features disabled, but still crashes. I guess I need to use real hardware! :D
Another possible reason: I could have a bug in bank switching at some place that is visible when you have more than 128kb of memory. Have you configured your emulator to use more memory ?

ralferoo

#44
Stranger and stranger... I tried again today, and it's worked fine on 3 run throughs, so no idea why it was failing yesterday. Maybe you actually have to quit WinAPE and reload after changing some of these settings...

ralferoo

Quote from: Johnny Olsen on 00:49, 10 December 21
It also works with CPCEC.
Oooooh, a new emulator since I was last on the scene!


This looks really nice, great recommendation!


The debugger could take some time to get used to (and also very well hidden), but looks like this emulator will definitely be another useful tool for debugging... And it's open source, so I at least I could hack in special cases when I'm developing and I need something trickier...


Also, I just tried out the video saving and very impressed with the ease and quality. And being able to record a video while running a demo at high speed is a nice bonus! Super impressed with this emulator! :D (sorry, thread hijack!)

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