Getting Napalm to run on AmigaOS 4.1.2?

@rob

Quote:

No, actaully Napalm is NOT very system friendly. Take for instance the sound driver: It uses OpenDevice to allocate the audio channels, but then it uses an ugly hardware interrupt to write directly to the hardware registers. Same with lots of other things (like mouse and keyboard intput). For the sound, I have to basically rewrite the entire sound system from scratch.

At this point it can play the voiceovers from intro and briefing screens with help from kas1e's code. Ingame sounds are a bit more tricky. For everyone who signed up for betatesting, let me just finish the ingame sound, and then I will ship the testing equipment .

@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

Colonization should be trivial too, you can actually start to play the game before it freezes.

Anyway, let's get Napalm working first! I only played it about twice and then the CD drive on my old A1200 died, so I'm quite looking forward to playing it again (I'm snowed under with other things at the moment so beta testing is not an option)

@alfkil
Maybe you could fix Open Video Toaster to make it work on RTG screens ?

At the risk of scaring alfkil away with another suggestion, Dune 2 might be a possible candidate. I know it isn't completely system friendly, but it might not be much work to fix.

@thread:

Thanks for all the suggestions! I guess I will have work for the next year to come....

Ingame sounds are (sort of) working now, and I have sent out emails/PMs for the betatesters. Have fun!

alfkil what did you use to resource the binary? ira?

and what do you use to compile it again?

RWO

Hello Alfkill

Thanks for sending the beta version. I tried on my Sam460 with RadeonHD. It worked at first attempt. But Napalm is running so fast that it is nearly unplayable.

Also is it possible to select a screenmode to play the game in 1024x768 or higher resolution ? Or is it limited to 640x480 as maximum

Just tried the beta.
A dsi on startup and continue and then like Sinan says it runs very fast.
I tried a setting to alter the vertical from 640 to 800 but that made no difference.
Escape key briefly flashes a big "N" but does nothing else.

@ChrisH

There is a free engine reimplementation for Dune 2. It's called "Dune Legacy". The latest version for x86 Win/linux is here. The MorphOS port can be found here. I have tested the x86 one, and it's fully functional already (though the game must be run in really low resolution to look good).

the latest version of the dune2 remake can be scaled!

*Use scale2x for scaling
*Make game scalable ingame (Zoomlevel x1, Zoomlevel x2 and Zoomlevel x3)

Just a quick note about speed: This can be adjusted in the game menu under game controls. If you can't reach the menu by ESC, use the 'o' key instead.

About scaling, this is hardcoded for 640x480 at the moment. The original game was only two resolutions, 320x280 or 640x480, and since modern monitors rarely support lowres, I have limited it to one resolution. I might try and change that at some point.

Hello,

I have a CRT and can use at 320x280. In fact, I have also napalm but not asking you for the game because I think you have enough betatesters ? Is it exact ?

One of the more annoying things about the speed of Napalm was that the speed option changed the speed of the whole UI, for example the scrolling.

When I played it on my 060 + gfx card at full speed the scrolling was nice but the vehicles moved too fast.

Here are my findings:

First of all I 've started by installing Napalm. At the end of the installation I got an error "unable to copyfiles". Checked the install drawer however and all seemed good. Any idea, anyone, why's that?

Secondly followed the instructions:

1) As for the game's speed, it starts by default value at 8 (maximum). If I reduce it at 6 and adjust scrolling response at 7, it feels good to me. Still, even clickboom's icon at the down right corner of the main menu, spins way too fast.

2) The ingame options' menu is unreachable via "esc" (it shows a ghost N letter).

3) I 've tried to save a game, the keyboard's input seems .. too fast. I typed "test" and all I got was "tttttteeeeeesssssssttttt", even though I was nearly touching the letters (tried several times with same result).

4) If I lose, I get two options "replay mission" and "return to main menu", however the latter looks messed up with another phrase that I cannot distinguish.

5) After restarting the game, at main menu I tried to load my save, but the word "tttteeessstt"" was again messed up.

6) I 've tried to load from ingame, and I got an error "game's structure is corrupted, please reinstall napaml", Perhaps it has to do with the copyfiles error a the installation?

7) Tried to launch the game once again and now I am unable to reach options either by pressing "esc" and "o".

* Note that sound (sfx) works. Would be nice however to listen to some music from the game in future release of the patch.

EDIT: Test machine: OS4.1.2 SamEp 667 Mhz, 512Mb Ram, M9.

@spotUP

Yeah, I know, but scaling in high resolutions those sprites looks bad :P However, it is fairly playable and enjoyable at 800x600.

@cap

make sure you have ENVARC:NAPALM set to the path to your napalm drawer. then you can run the setup installer script which will stop the DSI.

Similar problems on my Sam460.
For Sam460 and RadeonHD on 800x600 resolution, game speed 6 and scroll speed 5 feels good to me..

It would be great if 1024x768 resolution is possible for Napalm. but even in this beta version it is still fun to play Napalm on OS4 again..

Any chance that i can be a betatester, i did start the thread after all ;)

@carvedeye

I have sent you a PM.

@all

I'm currently on vacation, so I wont be back to fix stuff before some time next week. Thanks for all the input, though .

Known issues:

- The garbled text in the stats screen and others is a known issue. I will of course try and fix this.

- Repeated keys ("ttttteeeeesssst"-syndrome) is known, I'm not quite sure how to fix this...

- ESC doesn't work. This is a result of the repeated keys issue.

- Resolution: I might try and make it possible to run in different resolution. I'm not sure, of the code makes it possible or not. If it takes too much work, I'm not going to do it.

- Sounds: The current ingame sounds are not exactly the right ones. I haven't fully cracked the code of the ingame sound system yet, it is a bit complicated.

- CD music: As most newer machines (eg. SATA drives) doesn't have the possibility to play CD music directly, I would have to find a different solution. Maybe an optional AREXX interface to TuneNet would be a possibility (does anyone know if this will work??)?.

- Network: Is there any interest in trying to fix the NULLMODEM driver? Currently it uses dignet.library, which crashes a lot, so it is currently disabled. I would have to do a remake usig just serial.device. I can't test it myself, though, so it would need someone else to do the testing.

@alfkil
Quote:

Imho, the fast/safe/easy way will be to rip CD tracks from original napalm and convert them to MP3. And, if it will be illegal to release patch with mp3s, then, make a remark in the readme to path, like:

For plaing music, you should have original converted napalm's track to mp3, and put it to the root dir of napalm, with such names: 1.mp3, 2.mp3 and so on.

So, no one will have any problems with all that digital cables, cd-track and legal/illegal. You just can test it yourself, but release only working path + readme for make all of this works (via the same hi-level ahi interface as with sounds)