Aleph One

I saw a comment on OS4Depot but couldn't reply it due to captcha. Yes, I'm a bot.

So here is my response:

Alephone seems to be still in development and apparently they use SDL2. Maybe the AmigaOS 4 port could be refreshed.

(it just needs time and motivation)

https://github.com/Aleph-One-Marathon

@Capehill Quote:
I've had major trouble with OS4Depot's Captcha too. IIRC, it seems to treats upper & lower case as different, making it virtually impossible to answer correctly.

@ChrisH

Aleph One is a fucking real good game!!! Enjoy yourselves this Mac user port because I mean is playable at all.

Did it on my Amiga One

It is a really good game! I am really grateful of the port. My question on OS4depot was about HW gfx support. Will it come?

Just FYI, the captcha on OS4Depot is case insensitive.

Got AlephOne SDL2 version running. OpenGL acceleration has currently issue that need debugging. First there was a MiniGL ISI crash when using display lists. I didn't debug MiniGL this time but just worked around the issue. There is still some issue with textures left.

On the plus side, AlephOne exposed a couple of bugs in the SDL2 port, one crash and one that looks palette/alpha-related. Also when using the AlephOne "SW" rendering, it's still possible to choose OpenGL or Compositing for scaling. Compositing version is playable fast on Sam440. There is some issue again in OpenGL scaler, drawing is too slow, similar to StarFighter. This would need some MiniGL debugging again.

Well, anyway, still lot of work to do, a new SDL2 version to be released and so on.

https://github.com/capehill/alephone

@Capehill

Great news!
I will watch closely. Thank you :)

@Capehill

I try " marathon infinity" with Aleph One and get an error about not enought memory.

Someone has tried ?

Virginio

Finally, a new port is released: http://capehill.kapsi.fi/

Remember that you need also data files: https://github.com/Aleph-One-Marathon/alephone/releases

If you get a black screen (and exit by giving ctrl-c at shell / to process), change scmode_accel, in the preferences file, to 0. It is the default, but we all know about defaults.

@Capehill

Were you able to corner the SDL2/MiniGL bugs and fix them in the corresponding sources?

Do we get a new SDL2 release soon?

It doesn't work for me. I've got sdl2 and I've put the Marathon files in directories like instructed to. It opens a script and nothing happens besides a dsi. The log shows just the one line about directories which I created and distributed the data files accordingly.

@Raziel

Which bug you refer to?

If you refer to http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3830 , I don't think it's SDL issue, compositing setting being the only difference between "fast" and "slow".

New SDL2 version will be released after 2.0.6 release.

Tickets #4 and #5 depend on available MiniGL/Warp3D features.

@Srtest

Give me the crashlog, please.

@Srtest

I use a default stack setting of 128 KB. For test, I reduced stack to 64 KB and got a DSI, kind of expected. So, if you have a small stack, raise it to 128 KB at least (in Prefs/DOS and Prefs/Workbench).

I will add a stack cookie for the next release.

@Thematic

I cannot reproduce your problem. I unpacked Marathon 1 data zip, copied binary over and played. Default is pure SW rendering which is slowish. I will investigate if SW/compositing could be the default setting.

Works for me.

Good work capehill.

I set the stack to 128000

Sam440ep mini.

If I launch it from Workbench, setting the icon to launch from Shell and even with stack size of 512000, it crashes. But if I launch it from a real Shell window then no crash and it works (stack size 512000).

@Capehill The long version is that I tried to activate compositing and chose "OpenGL shader", which didn't work. I imagined that could happen to others. While the settings are XML, I did miss this the first tries and tried with changing another thing.

I did notice a minor thing in the console, the program catches that a method doesn't work, but the "on-the-fly" changing of output (2 -> 0) didn't work.

minigl 2.21

@TSK

I think there is something wrong with the icon if stack setting didn't work. My stack setting in Prefs/WB is 128KB and it works ok, I don't have an icon at the moment. AlephOne as a game doesn't of course try to read anything from possible icon, that would be done by the OS.

(I have already added a stack cookie and all this nonsense will go away once I get a new release done.)