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The Ring of Darkness - rom error - can anyone help?

Started by Clutchman, 14:23, 30 April 09

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Clutchman

Hi,

I remember playing a game for ages on the 464 called The Ring of Darkness. Until the day I pressed play and record down on the tape deck and erased it (hadnt removed the tabs!!!). Just found the ROM and using the latest version of winape, getting a "memory full" error just after character creation (stats etc). Can anyone assist with this??

Cheers

dlfrsilver

Please use CPCE for tape reading. Winape has big problems to read correctly tapes.
Also, this game surely needs a 464 / 64k memory/ Basic 1.0

Devilmarkus

When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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Executioner

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 23:38, 30 April 09
Winape has big problems to read correctly tapes.

What problems exactly? I know of a discrepancy between the TZX specification and the way some CDT files seem to be created resulting in an unwanted bit reversal across block boundaries.

dlfrsilver

Well that's simple, i made 95 % of all speedlocked games available on CDT, converting and identifying copy protection.
While my CDT's works 99% of the time on CPCE and Wincpc, it fails to load on Winape :(

It resets, doesn't load, doesn't even see the standard blocks. (Version used => Winape 2.0a 17)

And it's too slow. The best thing is to be able to check once a CDT file is made that it runs 100% ok.  For that
superfast loading is needed, only CPCE allows that.

Tzx must not be used on CPC, CDT is what we use. Only some games needs to be process by spectrum tool :

Lotus turbo challenge, Supercars, Toyota celica rally, all zydroload games (Light corridor, Hostages, North and south),
Spherical, Fiendish Freddy big top of fun just to name a few, Dinamic games like Jabato, AMC, After the war, Aspar Master GP all in their english version, Capitan Trueno Spanish or english version.

All the other games are unsupported (Impossamole, Games like Trivial Pursuit using UNIlode)

And 90% are using known schemes that can be CDTed.


Executioner

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 00:52, 05 May 09
It resets, doesn't load, doesn't even see the standard blocks. (Version used => Winape 2.0a 17)

Can you send me some that don't work, especially the ones where it can't see the blocks.

QuoteAnd it's too slow. The best thing is to be able to check once a CDT file is made that it runs 100% ok.  For that
superfast loading is needed, only CPCE allows that.

If it works in WinAPE, it will work with frame skip of 50 (ie. Display every 50 frames), that should be about 1500% speed on a 1.6GHz pentium.

QuoteTzx must not be used on CPC, CDT is what we use. Only some games needs to be process by spectrum tool :

CDT is almost exactly the same format as TZX. It still adheres to the TZX specification with maybe a few extras.

Devilmarkus

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 00:52, 05 May 09Tzx must not be used on CPC, CDT is what we use. Only some games needs to be process by spectrum tool

As I know, TZX is the same format than CDT... JavaCPC uses TZX2WAV to read CDT files. (internal TZX2WAV was converted from C to Java by John Girvin, and JavaCPC itself is based on JEMU by Richard Wilson, so it uses the same cycle method and Z80 emulation, than JEMU, too)
So JavaCPC first converts a CDT file to a WAV and puts the WAV into tapedrive. (This takes ca. 1 second converting time)

In fact, JavaCPC cannot read all Speedlock protected games (I think, that this is a Z80 bug, but I don't know much about emulating hardware)

About speed:
JavaCPC calculates the speed from WAV-bitrate, clock frequency and a delay which I use in tape-cycle. (I don't know, how other emulators work here)

So some Speedlock games like "Gryzor", "Batman, the movie", "Rainbow islands" etc... work,
but others like "Robocop", "Terminator 2" and more simply crash the emulator (directly after launching the loader) and sometimes it seems like a POP-problem, but this is not sure @ the moment. Z80 emulation looks well here.

Video about Speedlock crash: http://cpc-live.com/speedlock

Video about successful Speedlock loading: http://cpc-live.com/speedlock2

Fact is: JavaCPC's emulation of CPU, GateArray, Sound and all other "required" peripherals is still used from JEMU, I only add "features".

The latest JavaCPC debugger features "Breakpoints", so perhaps someone is willed to debug Speedlock protected games and find out, why they crash...?!?? This would be great!

Now back to topic  ;)

Cheers,
Markus
When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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