Giana Sisters STE - New Game!

[purpleeagle01]

Awesome job finally the ST version can stop hiding its head in shame

well absolutely ashamed of the ST version does not have the 1987 there was still no STE sure everything could always be better but now we do have a super STE version.

[simonsunnyboy]

I just tried it and in any case: WOW!

I run it on my 4MB STE with German TOS 2.06, at the first try I had split screen glitches on the title scroller, the game did not pass beyound the "Get ready" screen and crashed afterwards. After a reboot it worked ok so far

It seems the ingame music and FX have been replaced? Otherwise I'm really amazed.

Do you plan to fix the Hatari issue? Fixing Hatari would be ok for me

[Zamuel_a]

It seems the ingame music and FX have been replaced? Otherwise I'm really amazed.

Do you plan to fix the Hatari issue? Fixing Hatari would be ok for me

No the music and FX are still the same. I haven't touched that part of the code at all.
The problem with Hatari is that it's not emulating a real machine as it should, so don't really know what to do. Is there some way to test in the code if it's running on Hatari?

[jackmoore]

Hi,

I'm new to Atari Forum and I registered because of this announcement, and I downloaded the work in progress of this great game conversion! Congratz!

I just wanted to brainstorm on some of the possibilities about graphics and music playback routines.

First Zamuel_a this is awesome! Here are my long topics:
- For title picture, are you a fan of overscan? I know the STE has sseveral overscan capabilities, and am wondering if you have validated the feasability of overscan title image and overscan game play (playfield).
- I haven't verified the program yet or seen a video, but I suppose you are using raster colors for background? Or that wasn't in the original, or what about this?
- Ths best title soundtrack for Giana Sisters imho in order is; Commodore 64, then Atari ST and finally Amiga. The Amiga version suffer from using aweful samples and the ST version was limited by only using the YM2149 soundchip base capabilities. Would you consider a playback routine with SID voices and usage of one or two sample voices for drums and some sounds like on the C64 title soundtrack. This would in essence bring back the C64 soundtrack with much better audio out, and would be the most awesome title soundtrack for Giana Sisters ever!

all for now

Cheers!

[npomarede]

Hi

very nice results, congratulations.

I will have a look at Hatari traces to see where's the video problem is coming from ; I suspect this is due to changing video address during the active display, but I wil confirm this later.

Still I found 2 small problems so far :
- if you start the game on STF, it crashes (due to accessing STE only register at ff9202) ; not a big deal, but maybe you could add a small code to detect STE and exit if not STE.
- more blocking problem : when ran from HD, without any floppy in the drive, the game won't start. This is because you're waiting for FDC motor to be OFF ; but when there's no floppy in drive, motor never stops (bit 7 of status reg remains to 1) because the drive can't count 9 revolutions without an inserted floppy. This is the case on my STF if I switch it without any disk, after 1 minute TOS desktop appears anyway, but you can notice that drive led remains ON.
If you just want drive led to be off, you can unselect all drives in ff8802. If you want motor to be off when the game is ran from a floppy, best would be to wait for bit7 to become 0 or to timeout after 100 VBL (at 50 Hz, you need 90 VBL (1.8 sec) for drive to turn off)

Nicolas

[Zamuel_a]

- For titiel picture, are you a fan of overscan? I know the STE has sseveral overscan capabilities, and am wondering if you have validated the feasability of overscan title image and overscan game play (playfield).
- I haven't verified the program yet or seen a video, but I suppose you are using raster colors for background? Or that wasn't in the original, or what about this?
- Ths best title soundtrack for Giana Sisters imho in order is; Commodore 64, then Atari ST and finally Amiga. The Amiga version suffer from using aweful samples and the ST version was limited by only using the YM2149 soundchip base capabilities. Would you consider a playback routine with SID voices and usage of one or two sample voices for drums and some sounds like on the C64 title soundtrack. This would in essence bring back the C64 soundtrack with much better audio out, and would be the most awesome title soundtrack for Giana Sisters ever!

well overscan in Y is simple, but not in X and the game field would be strange if it was taller in Y (Pacmania was great with overscan since that matched the original better).

If someone can make a new music routine and tunes that are better (And doesn't take to much CPU power) when I can implement it.

[Zamuel_a]

Still I found 2 small problems so far :
- if you start the game on STF, it crashes (due to accessing STE only register at ff9202) ; not a big deal, but maybe you could add a small code to detect STE and exit if not STE.
- more blocking problem : when ran from HD, without any floppy in the drive, the game won't start. This is because you're waiting for FDC motor to be OFF ; but when there's no floppy in drive, motor never stops (bit 7 of status reg remains to 1) because the drive can't count 9 revolutions without an inserted floppy. This is the case on my STF if I switch it without any disk, after 1 minute TOS desktop appears anyway, but you can notice that drive led remains ON.
If you just want drive led to be off, you can unselect all drives in ff8802. If you want motor to be off when the game is ran from a floppy, best would be to wait for bit7 to become 0 or to timeout after 100 VBL (at 50 Hz, you need 90 VBL (1.8 sec) for drive to turn off)

Ok, I never tried to start from an STF.

I haven't changed any of the floppy code. That part is messy since the original version used the floppy but the cracked version I had as a base use some kind of floppy emulation with a RAM drive. It should be the same as the usual ST Giana version. I have to check this some more. On STEEM I tried it without any floppy (Hatari to) and it works here.

[Dal]

Does it work ok on a MegaSTE @16Mhz?

[npomarede]

I haven't changed any of the floppy code. That part is messy since the original version used the floppy but the cracked version I had as a base use some kind of floppy emulation with a RAM drive. It should be the same as the usual ST Giana version. I have to check this some more. On STEEM I tried it without any floppy (Hatari to) and it works here.

I understand better, the original game was certainly not supposed to run from anything except a floppy drive. I think Steem doesn't correctly emulates the fact that motor never stop when there's no floppy in drive, else it should lock too, Hatari behaves the same way as my real 520 STF in this case.

[Zamuel_a]

Hmm, need to find a way to solve that.

[Zamuel_a]

Does it work ok on a MegaSTE @16Mhz?

I haven't tried that yet, but it should work.

[Marcer]

About music. Which timers are free and how much cpu is free for the tunes?

Skickat från min C6903 via Tapatalk

[FedePede04]

congratulation and great work Zamuel_a
nice to see a new game conversion from you

i only try it brief no problem under steem, will try it tomorrow on my mist.
it was quite fun to see it, i have never seen or try it before on the ST only on the Amiga, so Thx

[Zamuel_a]

About music. Which timers are free and how much cpu is free for the tunes?

Inside the game, Timer B is the only one used. The amount of free cpu time depends on how many sprites / animated tiles are on the screen. I tested it once by putting in alots of nops in the main loop to see how much time I had left and something like 20-40% depending on the levels I tried.

[Zamuel_a]

How can I turn the floppy motor off so it will start from a hard drive? I noticed that if I had used the floppy (but removed the disk), when it started from the harddrive but not if I started it without doing anything to the floppy first.

[npomarede]

How can I turn the floppy motor off so it will start from a hard drive? I noticed that if I had used the floppy (but removed the disk), when it started from the harddrive but not if I started it without doing anything to the floppy first.

Problem is that you can't The logic in the FDC is that to turn off motor, the FDC must count 9 revolutions ; but the drive will report revolutions only if there's a floppy in it ... This means that even on the original game, if you remove the floppy just after loading and before the motor test is made, the motor won't turn off either and the game would lock.
That's why I think you should either remove this part (the motor will turn off automatically if there's a floppy anyway, so no real need to wait for it), or modify it to wait for bit7=0, but for no more than 2 sec. After 2 sec, leave it this way and continue as if motor was turned off (if there's no disk, you could wait hours, motor would still remain on)

[Zamuel_a]

I just need to find that part of code that looks for the motor, which is not so easy to do. Anything specific I could search for? All I find for $ff8800 and $ff8802 are stuff that writes data to it. Never compares anything with data from it.

[jackmoore]

What I would suggest is to reach the staff behind MaxYMiser and get the player BIN. Then I would gladly try myself to make a conversion of the title soundtrack )))

http://www.preromanbritain.com/maxymiser/faq.html

[npomarede]

I just need to find that part of code that looks for the motor, which is not so easy to do. Anything specific I could search for? All I find for $ff8800 and $ff8802 are stuff that writes data to it. Never compares anything with data from it.

When the games start, it will JSR at address $b9c, then bsr $b78 to wait for motor off, which will loop forever :

Code: Select all

$000b78 : 31fc 0080 8606                       move.w    #$80,$ffff8606.w
$000b7e : 61d4                                 bsr.s     $b54
$000b80 : 0800 0007                            btst      #7,d0
$000b84 : 66f8                                 bne.s     $b7e
$000b86 : 4e75                                 rts       

Just put a RTS at address $b78, and this will remove the check for motor off.

[Zamuel_a]

Thanks! Will try this.

[russ]

Works great NICE JOB-WHAT DO YOU HAVE NEXT????

[bod/STAX]

The way I check for the floppy motor to stop in R-Type is this:

Code: Select all

        moveq #0,d0
.l1     move.w $fffff8604.w,d0
        btst #7,d0
        bne.s .l1
        move.l #$e0e0707,$fffff8800.w ; turn off drive light

[AtariZoll]

The way I check for the floppy motor to stop in R-Type is this:

Code: Select all

        moveq #0,d0
.l1     move.w $fffff8604.w,d0
        btst #7,d0
        bne.s .l1
        move.l #$e0e0707,$fffff8800.w ; turn off drive light

That simple way may cause problems on Mega STE - there are some + lines of PSG port used. So, better is to deselect only drive A selection line. I talk from own experience.

Code: Select all

....
   move.b  #14,$FFFF8800.w
   move.b $FFFF8800.w,d0
   and.b  #$FC,d0    *  Desel. drive A and side B
   move.b d0,$FFFF8802.w

[Steven Seagal]

Once again you deliver, the game is much improved by this smooth scrolling.
About emulation, not to hijack your great thread, but there's already some (technical) discussion (in fact an apart thread in emulators section would be fine):
- Works best with VSync
- 'Floppy motor stays on if drive empty' will be corrected in Steem, slow mode; I didn't know it was so.
Note that in Steem there's a hack to stop the drive motor anyway. Also the led will be on, but not the motor sound.
- Blitter speed, is it with v3.2 or only some SSE version?
On hardware, is there a difference between STE and mega STE for blitter speed?

[Zamuel_a]

- Blitter speed, is it with v3.2 or only some SSE version?

It's the same on both versions (what is the difference between them?). Maybe the blitter speed itself is correct, but the swap between blitter/cpu in the non HOG mode is not correctly handled. That seeems to be slower on a real machine.