VOGONS


New game: Loonies 8192 (386+, VGA, OPL-2)

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Reply 80 of 120, by alvaro84

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Jo22 wrote:

^I second that: Game was playable with the 486 setting, too.

But it was every way terrible on that huge 6MHz 286 I was trying to get working this week. It was really laggy and forgetful of my keypresses and whatnot. I'm not too surprised.

And the board seem to have hidden broken traces so it seldom starts up. And it's getting worse 🙁

The game played pretty well on a 386SX-40, though. It was a step up. The intro screen is still choppy but the main part is very fine.

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Reply 81 of 120, by Jo22

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Oh well, that's sad to hear. 🙁
Maybe it can be fixed somehow ?

I've never got a 6MHz 286 so far, so I can't say much about it.
It sounds like a clone of the IBM PC/AT Model 5170, though.

I guess the whole AT bus of that PC is running at 6MHz then,
uses no shadow memory and maybe the memory runs with DIP/DIL chips @120ns (plus waistates) ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT

Edit: My old 286 also had start-up issues once. It was the PSU, as it turned out.
It was too weak for the fully expaned machine.. The power surge of the HDD caused that, I believe.

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Reply 82 of 120, by alvaro84

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Jo22 wrote:
Oh well, that's sad to hear. :( Maybe it can be fixed somehow ? […]
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Oh well, that's sad to hear. 🙁
Maybe it can be fixed somehow ?

I've never got a 6MHz 286 so far, so I can't say much about it.
It sounds like a clone of the IBM PC/AT Model 5170, though.

I guess the whole AT bus of that PC is running at 6MHz then,
uses no shadow memory and maybe the memory runs with DIP/DIL chips @120ns (plus waistates) ?

I hope some day I can fix it. It looks like a relic. I also wanted to use it to test ceramic LCC 286 CPUs as I already have test boards for the plastic ones. Even the board's shape is like that of the 5170 but it's slightly different. And yes, fields of 120ns 41256s (I had to replace a bunch of them but I got it working for a while!) and 2 ROMs and no BIOS setup.

Strange that the (Intel) CPU and the (AMD) bus controller are both rated for 8MHz and I even saw one 16MHz quartz by the back edge but it definitely runs at 6MHz, 1 wait state. And I couldn't find any jumpers that would fit the "turbo switch" role, CTRL-ALT-+ or -- don't work either.

I'm being off topic so I go and shut up 😊

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May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 83 of 120, by root42

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Probably one of the early mainboards that were in reality XT boards with 286 instead of the 8086. Does it have 16 bit slots, or only 8 bit ones?

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Reply 84 of 120, by alvaro84

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root42 wrote:

Probably one of the early mainboards that were in reality XT boards with 286 instead of the 8086. Does it have 16 bit slots, or only 8 bit ones?

It has mostly 16-bit ones with two 8-bit ones in the exact same arrangement as the 5170.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 85 of 120, by thp

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DevanWolf wrote:

I made the CT-460/CSM-1 and Miracle Piano versions of the music as well.

Neat! So many synths! Is there some "mechanical" way to translate the MIDI data into versions for those synths? I don't really want to ship multiple MIDI files for each track, but adding some translation code that just remaps channels and program numbers should be doable.

alvaro84 wrote:

And, finally! I got to test the game (r41) on real hardware. I aimed pretty low as it claims to have a performance profile for 286s - so I tried it on the Real Thing.

Headland HT12/A chipset working in WS0, 16MHz AMD CPU, 2.5MB RAM (DIP+SIPP), SBPro2 for the music, and a variety of VGA cards. I had no apparent bug-like problems with any of these. To my surprise it pretty much worked with the dog slow 8-bit Intel Kama VGA (Landmark: 570kB/s) - it ran about as good as with a faster VGA (Tseng ET4000, Cirrus Logic GD5426) in 486 mode. So it didn't feel as responsive as in ideal conditions. I plan to try it on something faster too in the not very distant future. Some kind of 386, perhaps.

Other things: please please do something with the visibility! When the blocks go small romboids, especially of similar colors, I'm completely lost and play to survive until the next sprite switch... I think the game could use longer music pieces, or more of them.

Thanks for testing 😀 I have removed the 286 option in the latest build (will upload after posting this) and renamed the two other options accordingly. Let me know how it goes with a 386, it should be fine with the "Fast" setting too.

As for the visibility, do you think it's just the romboids (something I initially removed for size limitation and because it wasn't particularly nice to look at, but then added as a "bonus" later). As for the music pieces, I don't disagree, but unless somebody composes a new soundtrack, those small looping tracks is all we got 😀 Thanks for the feedback!

Jo22 wrote:

^I second that: Game was playable with the 486 setting, too.
Just did another recording with my 16MHz 286, as promised earlier (+EMU386 loaded).
https://youtu.be/VZMme7Edx6s

Cool, thanks again for the video, I do try to link all of the videos on the Loonies 8192 webpage.

Reply 86 of 120, by thp

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New version r42 of Loonies 8192 is here, changes:

  • Removed "slow" option, renamed the other two options (286, 386+)
  • Added support for PC Speaker

As for the PC speaker, I just implemented a really crude way of mapping the melody channel of the MIDI files to PC speaker beeps, probably not the most sophisticated way, but it was easy to do it this way. Right now it picks the lowest-value MIDI note in case notes are played simultaneously (not the case for "Clickedy", but in "Descent", there's actually lots of chords going on in the melody). I wonder if with some clever "multiplexing" (quickly alternating between concurrent notes playing) one could get the effect of multiple notes playing together, or if the added frequencies (due to switching) makes everything sound weird. At least "Clickedy" sounds acceptable on the PC Speaker (only tested in DOSBox), and with the lowest-value-note-has-preference fix, "Descent" also sounds acceptable.

Fun fact: The binary is now ~ 42 KiB in size, and the revision is also 42. Also, 42(!).

The CD-ROM audio track files can be found in the r41 posting: New game: Loonies 8192 (386+, VGA, OPL-2)

Attachments

  • Filename
    LOON8R42.EXE
    File size
    42.33 KiB
    Downloads
    55 downloads
    File comment
    Loonies 8192, r42 (with PC Speaker support)
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 87 of 120, by bjwil1991

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I'll test the game on my multi sound card Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus and DOSBox. Saw the first page and the design looks amazing.

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Reply 88 of 120, by root42

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I tested R42 on my 286:

https://youtu.be/XFk2_rKzVv4

Seems pretty fine. The setup screen has a bit of lag still, that's why I initially selected MIDI. But other than that I can't complain much! Seems really stable and pretty fast.

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Reply 89 of 120, by thp

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Thanks again for the video! This time I tried to optimize the title screen (but not the setup screen) so it should now run better on a 286, independent of the Machine Speed setting, in my tests (DOSBox) it resulted in 4x speed increase (from 444ms to 110ms for rendering the animation, that's still only 10 FPS, but it's better than before 😉).

Revision 43 attached with these changes:

  • Fix hardware setup menu navigation (there was a bug that required pressing enter twice to confirm for PC Speaker and CD-ROM)
  • Add more MPU MIDI port options (0x310, 0x320), as requested by Eleanor1967 for the SW60XG board
  • Optimize title screen rendering, could result in a 4x speedup (tested in DOSBox, real hardware might vary due to RAM wait states, but might as well be faster with a fast VGA?)
  • Add support for localizations and added German translations

In theory, I could now accept additional translations, but there's the caveat that right now the font only has ASCII characters, so any special characters need to be rewritten in ASCII characters if possible or cannot be shown, and the "Yes/No" question right now just scans for the keycode, so instead of "[J]a" we have the much more funky "[Y]eah" there (...).

I have been thinking of adding some kind of oldschool "copy projection" check at startup just for fun (like back in the old days, "What is the Xth word on page Y of the manual?"), but I'd need to write a manual for that.. or maybe some code wheel thing? Suggestions for creative solutions very welcome (this is just to add that extra bit of retro feeling, I'll probably also add some shortcut/override if one just wants to play the game). Or a "forum check" -- "What is the Xth word in the Yth post of the Vogons Loonies thread?".

Attachments

  • Filename
    LOON8R43.EXE
    File size
    44.36 KiB
    Downloads
    84 downloads
    File comment
    Loonies 8192, r43 (optimized title animation, more MIDI port options, with German translation)
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 90 of 120, by alvaro84

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Fun thing: the last setup I tried R41 on is a Asus P6NP5 (i440FX)+Pentium Pro. It seemed to have problems with Fastvid, the sprites became somewhat garbled. An old version (maybe R16) was fine, though!

Wolfenstein3D is the other of the two things I know that shows incompatibility with write combining and I'm getting curious what the problem could be.

Next time I'll try R43...

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 91 of 120, by thp

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alvaro84 wrote:

Fun thing: the last setup I tried R41 on is a Asus P6NP5 (i440FX)+Pentium Pro. It seemed to have problems with Fastvid, the sprites became somewhat garbled. An old version (maybe R16) was fine, though!

Wolfenstein3D is the other of the two things I know that shows incompatibility with write combining and I'm getting curious what the problem could be.

Yeah r16 is probably old enough that it still used chained mode and no "blitting" tricks, the more recent versions try to be a bit more efficient but it might lead to weird results. Does it work fine without FastVid? I wonder if FastVid has problems when VGA data is actually read back from memory or (using the VGA latches, which is what Loonies 8192 uses) do VGA-to-VGA memory copying. It could very well just be a bug in my code 😉

Reply 92 of 120, by thp

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New version r44 with these changes:

  • Restore higher-quality animation for the "Fast" machine speed option
  • Relayout main window to make the German text translations fit the screen

It's also this version that is now updated on the initial thread post, and I've also updated the build on the website and the Itch.io page. I think if there are no critical bugs, this might be the preliminary "final" version. It's cool that it now has so many different audio output options compared to the initial OPL-2 version, and also I've learned a lot about VGA programming and keyboard/timer interrupt handling, but it has also become a bit of a timesink this summer 😉

Attachments

  • Filename
    LOON8R44.EXE
    File size
    21.09 KiB
    Downloads
    62 downloads
    File comment
    Loonies 8192, r44 (Higher-quality title screen for "fast" machine speed setting)
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 93 of 120, by root42

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thp wrote:
New version r44 with these changes: […]
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New version r44 with these changes:

  • Restore higher-quality animation for the "Fast" machine speed option
  • Relayout main window to make the German text translations fit the screen

It's also this version that is now updated on the initial thread post, and I've also updated the build on the website and the Itch.io page. I think if there are no critical bugs, this might be the preliminary "final" version. It's cool that it now has so many different audio output options compared to the initial OPL-2 version, and also I've learned a lot about VGA programming and keyboard/timer interrupt handling, but it has also become a bit of a timesink this summer 😉

Sounds like a perfect project!

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Reply 94 of 120, by DevanWolf

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thp wrote:
Neat! So many synths! Is there some "mechanical" way to translate the MIDI data into versions for those synths? I don't really w […]
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DevanWolf wrote:

I made the CT-460/CSM-1 and Miracle Piano versions of the music as well.

Neat! So many synths! Is there some "mechanical" way to translate the MIDI data into versions for those synths? I don't really want to ship multiple MIDI files for each track, but adding some translation code that just remaps channels and program numbers should be doable.

alvaro84 wrote:

And, finally! I got to test the game (r41) on real hardware. I aimed pretty low as it claims to have a performance profile for 286s - so I tried it on the Real Thing.

Headland HT12/A chipset working in WS0, 16MHz AMD CPU, 2.5MB RAM (DIP+SIPP), SBPro2 for the music, and a variety of VGA cards. I had no apparent bug-like problems with any of these. To my surprise it pretty much worked with the dog slow 8-bit Intel Kama VGA (Landmark: 570kB/s) - it ran about as good as with a faster VGA (Tseng ET4000, Cirrus Logic GD5426) in 486 mode. So it didn't feel as responsive as in ideal conditions. I plan to try it on something faster too in the not very distant future. Some kind of 386, perhaps.

Other things: please please do something with the visibility! When the blocks go small romboids, especially of similar colors, I'm completely lost and play to survive until the next sprite switch... I think the game could use longer music pieces, or more of them.

Thanks for testing :) I have removed the 286 option in the latest build (will upload after posting this) and renamed the two other options accordingly. Let me know how it goes with a 386, it should be fine with the "Fast" setting too.

As for the visibility, do you think it's just the romboids (something I initially removed for size limitation and because it wasn't particularly nice to look at, but then added as a "bonus" later). As for the music pieces, I don't disagree, but unless somebody composes a new soundtrack, those small looping tracks is all we got :) Thanks for the feedback!

Jo22 wrote:

^I second that: Game was playable with the 486 setting, too.
Just did another recording with my 16MHz 286, as promised earlier (+EMU386 loaded).
https://youtu.be/VZMme7Edx6s

Cool, thanks again for the video, I do try to link all of the videos on the Loonies 8192 webpage.

Hey thp, you're supposed to upload my audio files to your soundtrack (on SoundCloud)! And aren't you supposed to add CT-460/CSM-1 and Miracle Piano as a sound option?

Reply 95 of 120, by alvaro84

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thp wrote:

Yeah r16 is probably old enough that it still used chained mode and no "blitting" tricks, the more recent versions try to be a bit more efficient but it might lead to weird results. Does it work fine without FastVid? I wonder if FastVid has problems when VGA data is actually read back from memory or (using the VGA latches, which is what Loonies 8192 uses) do VGA-to-VGA memory copying. It could very well just be a bug in my code 😉

It's perfectly fine without Fastvid! What you wrote here sounds plausible, those latch copy tricks may interfere with write combining (or vice versa).

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 96 of 120, by root42

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Finally got around to test r44:

https://youtu.be/z5TPixoctqM

Seems fine. No obvious bugs. 386 intro is obviously a bit too slow for my 286... 😉

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Reply 97 of 120, by alvaro84

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Okay, next specimen is an Am386SX-40, the lowliest 386 I could get now. Perhaps I should dig up my DX40 board with jumpers, it can scale it down to 20MHz. That should be slower than an SX40, shouldn't it?
Anyway, r44 was fine in fast mode on the SX40. Exactly as fine as in slow mode. The only thing that stands out is the startup menu. It's far from responsive and it visibly draws the text. The intro is slow too but it flies well under my radar. It's just eye candy and doesn't interfere with any precision input. It's like watching a demo, fully functional but with horrible frame rate, I know that the computer is used to its limits 😁 Playing with the same speed would be an entirely different thing...

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 98 of 120, by thp

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Thanks for testing and the videos! I recently noticed on a 15 inch TFT monitor (NEC 1525M) an issue with displaying the 320x200 screen: "Out Of Range: Frequency Horizontal 35.4 kHz, Vertical 78.8 Hz"; this happens both on a SiS 741 IGP and a Matrox G550 (the two that I had here for testing, although now I'm quite sure it could/should happen on all VGA controllers, and CRTs/other monitors in general might just deal with the bad output timings better). I tracked this down to the VGA mode-setting code. I had experimental support for 320x240 resolution (unused in the game, but the code is there), and that requires reconfiguring the "Miscellaneous Output Register" and the CRTC registers, and I accidentally changed the Misc Output Register also for the 320x200 mode, when it should only have been changed for the 320x240 mode (together with the CRTC registers). The updated version r45 (attached) fixes this.

Attachments

  • Filename
    LOON8R45.EXE
    File size
    22.45 KiB
    Downloads
    63 downloads
    File comment
    Loonies 8192, r45 (VGA timings fix on certain TFT/LCD monitors)
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 99 of 120, by thp

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Ended up porting this game to 3DS and PSP, but kept the DOS port working alongside. Here's a new build.

  • Tiles are now 16x16 instead of 10x10, all tiles have been redrawn
  • The game now uses 320x240 (square pixels, Mode X) resolution
  • There's now a main menu, audio options can be reconfigured
  • Difficulty settings for additional challenge
  • Instructions screen accessible in main menu ("How to play")
  • Every now and then you get a "bomb" powerup that destroys some tiles

All changes are documented here too:
https://thp.itch.io/loonies-8192/devlog/65455 … dos-psp-and-3ds

Attachments

  • Filename
    LOON8R50.ZIP
    File size
    26.75 KiB
    Downloads
    61 downloads
    File comment
    Loonies 8192 for DOS, r50
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception