Nice graphics, music, and game play. I went up to level 8 before losing.

I did encounter one glitch when I entered I think level 5 or 6. The piece didn't move down until I pressed the down key on the keyboard.

Stretch wrote on 2022-03-13, 06:17:

Nice graphics, music, and game play. I went up to level 8 before losing.

I did encounter one glitch when I entered I think level 5 or 6. The piece didn't move down until I pressed the down key on the keyboard.

Thanks, and thanks for the info! I'll keep an eye on that problem...

Tried the game and looks nice!

On a real machine equipped with AMD K6-2+/450 CPU however I got runtime error 200 (divide by zero) after selecting the "About" option and occasionally while playing. Neither the utilities used to deal with that runtime error nor the slowdown utilities did help.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-03-13, 20:03:

Tried the game and looks nice!

On a real machine equipped with AMD K6-2+/450 CPU however I got runtime error 200 (divide by zero) after selecting the "About" option and occasionally while playing. Neither the utilities used to deal with that runtime error nor the slowdown utilities did help.

Could you send me the crash addresses shown?
There's no CRT unit in it (which often causes this crash), or at least there shouldn't (had it temporarily for debug purposes), so slowing down doesn't address the issue.

NooN wrote on 2022-03-13, 21:03:

Could you send me the crash addresses shown?
There's no CRT unit in it (which often causes this crash), or at least there shouldn't (had it temporarily for debug purposes), so slowing down doesn't address the issue.

The runtime error 200 address displayed after selecting "About" is 000A:2C34.

This DOS game of Tetris 2 looks Fabulous. However, I can't even get to the point Gmlb256 mentions where he encouters "Runtime 200 Errors". For me, the only thing that loads is the initial title screen, and the program then freezes hard and I can't play the game, and must hard-reboot. So, so frustrating. I tried several options like -nosound, -nonet, and -VTrue all to no avail. Also several memory configurations (limit XMS to 16M, 64M, or 2048M). Still hard freezes after displaying title page, with no further progress possible into the game itself. I am using bare metal DOS on an intel core i5 laptop with DOS version 7.1, and VBE 3 Intel onboard graphics, which does support framebuffer and MTRR speedup. Do you have any other suggestions? Very bummed out that I can't try this best-looking Tetris game I've ever seen for DOS.

The runtime 200 errors suggest the "Turbo Pascal"-like speed bug, where Turbo pascal programs wouldn't run on systems above ~200 Mhz due to an overflow bug. However, I do not know which language Tetris 2 is written in, but it looks like C.

NB: Also I can't run your original tetris1.exe program, either! Same configurations. This program progresses not even to a title screen before the system hard-freezes! It just gives a black screen, with hard freeze. Extremely frustrating. Does Tetris1 have any commandline options which I may try? Everything I tried failed.

zyzzle wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:23:

This DOS game of Tetris 2 looks Fabulous. However, I can't even get to the point Gmlb256 mentions where he encouters "Runtime 200 Errors". For me, the only thing that loads is the initial title screen, and the program then freezes hard and I can't play the game, and must hard-reboot. So, so frustrating. I tried several options like -nosound, -nonet, and -VTrue all to no avail. Also several memory configurations (limit XMS to 16M, 64M, or 2048M). Still hard freezes after displaying title page, with no further progress possible into the game itself. I am using bare metal DOS on an intel core i5 laptop with DOS version 7.1, and VBE 3 Intel onboard graphics, which does support framebuffer and MTRR speedup. Do you have any other suggestions? Very bummed out that I can't try this best-looking Tetris game I've ever seen for DOS.

The runtime 200 errors suggest the "Turbo Pascal"-like speed bug, where Turbo pascal programs wouldn't run on systems above ~200 Mhz due to an overflow bug. However, I do not know which language Tetris 2 is written in, but it looks like C.

NB: Also I can't run your original tetris1.exe program, either! Same configurations. This program progresses not even to a title screen before the system hard-freezes! It just gives a black screen, with hard freeze. Extremely frustrating. Does Tetris1 have any commandline options which I may try? Everything I tried failed.

Hey, I'm sorry to hear that. I haven't tested it on such new machines, they are not expected for a DOS environment, and this might be the problem. Your machine may not be supported, and I can't tell at the moment whether I can do that at any point, as I don't have such a machine for testing. The only thing right now you can do is to write down the specific model number of the CPU, so I can try it when such a thing happens.

As said in the previous post, the RTE 200 is not due to the unit CRT and hence not due to the processor's speed. My personal guess is that your problem happens due to processor extensions not tested on your CPU. It's Borland Pascal, but think of it as a very advanced way to use it. It does things that are close to bare metal of the CPU and DOS.
My only suggestion is to try it on older hardware or DosBox at the moment.

I can't offer support for the older Tetris. It hasn't been part of my publication, and It's almost 25 years ago that I wrote and tested it.

Edit: If you're experienced in Pascal and Assembler, I could give you the part that I suspect could cause the issue for debugging purposes. The game uses the CPU time stamp counter (present on Pentium and above), and as you're on a more modern AND mobile CPU, it might behave differently than originally designed.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-03-13, 21:48:

The runtime error 200 address displayed after selecting "About" is 000A:2C34.

Found it... at least the code line, but don't understand it at the moment. Do you have a sound card installed and was it playing any music?
Edit: You obviously have one, if you liked the music... what kind of card is it? If not original, which SB does it emulate?

NooN wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:55:

Found it... at least the code line, but don't understand it at the moment. Do you have a sound card installed and was it playing any music?
Edit: You obviously have one, if you liked the music... what kind of card is it? If not original, which SB does it emulate?

The sound card used was the Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 which is compatible with the SB16. And yes, I liked the tracker music 😁.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-03-14, 21:16:

NooN wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:55:

Found it... at least the code line, but don't understand it at the moment. Do you have a sound card installed and was it playing any music?
Edit: You obviously have one, if you liked the music... what kind of card is it? If not original, which SB does it emulate?

The sound card used was the Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520 which is compatible with the SB16. And yes, I liked the tracker music 😁.

Have that one, but not at my hands right now. Not sure why this happens, but I've added a workaround for the issue. If samples are missing somewhere, then the cause might be somewhere else. Simply download the game again and overwrite with the new .exe. Let me know your results!

NooN wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:10:

Have that one, but not at my hands right now. Not sure why this happens, but I've added a workaround for the issue. If samples are missing somewhere, then the cause might be somewhere else. Simply download the game again and overwrite with the new .exe. Let me know your results!

Downloaded once again the game and replaced the exe with the one dated 03/15/2022.

The runtime error 200 is still there after selecting the "About" option, this time the address was 000A:2C3B. While playing the after several minutes I got a different runtime error which is 205 at 0009:679B and happened when playing K_ARYX.XM.

Seems that the problem happens with certain tracker music because I replaced them with a different one and no runtime error happened.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-03-15, 01:06:

Downloaded once again the game and replaced the exe with the one dated 03/15/2022. […]
Show full quote

NooN wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:10:

Have that one, but not at my hands right now. Not sure why this happens, but I've added a workaround for the issue. If samples are missing somewhere, then the cause might be somewhere else. Simply download the game again and overwrite with the new .exe. Let me know your results!

Downloaded once again the game and replaced the exe with the one dated 03/15/2022.

The runtime error 200 is still there after selecting the "About" option, this time the address was 000A:2C3B. While playing the after several minutes I got a different runtime error which is 205 at 0009:679B and happened when playing K_ARYX.XM.

Seems that the problem happens with certain tracker music because I replaced them with a different one and no runtime error happened.

Thanks for the feedback! The issues appear to happen in conjunction with the MOD playback. I can't tell at the moment why, as the player is working here on several machines. Is anything on your machine run out of specs? CPU or mem overdlocked/run with tight timings? Are there any issues with the storage medium, or is it run under tight timings or unfitting cable? (UDMA 66+ requires 80 wire cable)

I can check back on my K6-III, but your input would also shed some light on it.

NooN wrote on 2022-03-17, 13:30:

Thanks for the feedback! The issues appear to happen in conjunction with the MOD playback. I can't tell at the moment why, as the player is working here on several machines. Is anything on your machine run out of specs? CPU or mem overdlocked/run with tight timings? Are there any issues with the storage medium, or is it run under tight timings or unfitting cable? (UDMA 66+ requires 80 wire cable)

I can check back on my K6-III, but your input would also shed some light on it.

The only thing that is out of spec on my system is the FSB running at 75 MHz on a motherboard with an Intel 430VX chipset (no UDMA). It also has a "turbo" switch to slow the FSB down to 50 MHz but that does nothing to deal with the runtime error.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-03-17, 15:54:

NooN wrote on 2022-03-17, 13:30:

Thanks for the feedback! The issues appear to happen in conjunction with the MOD playback. I can't tell at the moment why, as the player is working here on several machines. Is anything on your machine run out of specs? CPU or mem overdlocked/run with tight timings? Are there any issues with the storage medium, or is it run under tight timings or unfitting cable? (UDMA 66+ requires 80 wire cable)

I can check back on my K6-III, but your input would also shed some light on it.

The only thing that is out of spec on my system is the FSB running at 75 MHz on a motherboard with an Intel 430VX chipset (no UDMA). It also has a "turbo" switch to slow the FSB down to 50 MHz but that does nothing to deal with the runtime error.

Okay... I have the suspicion that there might be some memory corruption. Unfortunately it's hard to debug it in any way. BUT the SoundLib version I used there (and hence the MOD player) were improved under Windows, where I actually had proper debugging tools. I ported back many changes from these versions (there are 2, one for Delphi, a newer for C++), which also added several safety checks to the player. Might not work better, but was worth the shot. It also adds XM player improvements, so some XMs will sound more correct, depending on which (extended) features they were using.
Simply download it again and overwrite Tetris2.exe. If there are crashes, let me know. I'll take notes for another round.

NooN wrote on 2022-04-09, 22:28:

Okay... I have the suspicion that there might be some memory corruption. Unfortunately it's hard to debug it in any way. BUT the SoundLib version I used there (and hence the MOD player) were improved under Windows, where I actually had proper debugging tools. I ported back many changes from these versions (there are 2, one for Delphi, a newer for C++), which also added several safety checks to the player. Might not work better, but was worth the shot. It also adds XM player improvements, so some XMs will sound more correct, depending on which (extended) features they were using.
Simply download it again and overwrite Tetris2.exe. If there are crashes, let me know. I'll take notes for another round.

Replaced TETRIS2.EXE with the new executable and it still crashes with the same runtime error codes at the same location I mentioned prior. 🙁

It seems that the runtime error code 200 and 205 happens when playing S3M and XM respectively.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-04-10, 00:16:

NooN wrote on 2022-04-09, 22:28:

Okay... I have the suspicion that there might be some memory corruption. Unfortunately it's hard to debug it in any way. BUT the SoundLib version I used there (and hence the MOD player) were improved under Windows, where I actually had proper debugging tools. I ported back many changes from these versions (there are 2, one for Delphi, a newer for C++), which also added several safety checks to the player. Might not work better, but was worth the shot. It also adds XM player improvements, so some XMs will sound more correct, depending on which (extended) features they were using.
Simply download it again and overwrite Tetris2.exe. If there are crashes, let me know. I'll take notes for another round.

Replaced TETRIS2.EXE with the new executable and it still crashes with the same runtime error codes at the same location I mentioned prior. 🙁

It seems that the runtime error code 200 and 205 happens when playing S3M and XM respectively.

Got it! Sorry, I'm only sporadically doing this..
So basically the issue was only on MMX machines, and I wasn't using one at the time of refreshing the project. MMX works on the FPU on these older CPUS, and when an interrupt of the sound card interrupts an MMX operation, and FPU operations are done, the crash occurs.

You could currently resolve it if you can turn off CPUID in the BIOS or turn off the MMX extensions.
Will issue an update soon, as I'm preparing some more improvements...

NooN wrote on 2023-02-15, 21:58:

Got it! Sorry, I'm only sporadically doing this.. So basically the issue was only on MMX machines, and I wasn't using one at the […]
Show full quote

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-04-10, 00:16:

NooN wrote on 2022-04-09, 22:28:

Okay... I have the suspicion that there might be some memory corruption. Unfortunately it's hard to debug it in any way. BUT the SoundLib version I used there (and hence the MOD player) were improved under Windows, where I actually had proper debugging tools. I ported back many changes from these versions (there are 2, one for Delphi, a newer for C++), which also added several safety checks to the player. Might not work better, but was worth the shot. It also adds XM player improvements, so some XMs will sound more correct, depending on which (extended) features they were using.
Simply download it again and overwrite Tetris2.exe. If there are crashes, let me know. I'll take notes for another round.

Replaced TETRIS2.EXE with the new executable and it still crashes with the same runtime error codes at the same location I mentioned prior. 🙁

It seems that the runtime error code 200 and 205 happens when playing S3M and XM respectively.

Got it! Sorry, I'm only sporadically doing this..
So basically the issue was only on MMX machines, and I wasn't using one at the time of refreshing the project. MMX works on the FPU on these older CPUS, and when an interrupt of the sound card interrupts an MMX operation, and FPU operations are done, the crash occurs.

You could currently resolve it if you can turn off CPUID in the BIOS or turn off the MMX extensions.
Will issue an update soon, as I'm preparing some more improvements...

That did it! 😁

Since I'm unable to turn off CPUID or the MMX instructions, I had to hexedit the executable to disable the detection of the latter. It worked flawlessly afterwards.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-02-16, 01:04:

Since I'm unable to turn off CPUID or the MMX instructions, I had to hexedit the executable to disable the detection of the latter. It worked flawlessly afterwards.

Please list which hexedits you manually made to the TETRIS2 executable to disable MMX instructions.

zyzzle wrote on 2023-02-16, 11:58:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-02-16, 01:04:

Since I'm unable to turn off CPUID or the MMX instructions, I had to hexedit the executable to disable the detection of the latter. It worked flawlessly afterwards.

Please list which hexedits you manually made to the TETRIS2 executable to disable MMX instructions.

It is in offset 599F8h in TETRIS2.EXE and looks like this:

1599F8h 66 B8 01 00 00 00     mov eax, 1
2599FEh 0F A2                 cpuid
359A00h 66 F7 C2 00 00 80 00  test  edx, 800000h
459A07h 75 06                 jnz 59A0Fh
559A09h 90                    nop
659A0Ah 90                    nop
759A0Bh B0 00                 mov al, 0
859A0Dh F9                    stc
959A0Eh CB                    retf
1059A0Fh B0 01                 mov al, 1
1159A11h F8                    clc
1259A12h CB                    retf

Just change the value from 1 to 0 from the "mov al" instruction in offset 59A0Fh.

For convenience, I uploaded the hexedited executable.