VOGONS


First post, by Yesterplay80

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I recently bought "Jim Power - The Lost Dimension" on Steam and I really like the game. It's beautiful, colorful and the music is great! But there's one thing bugging me and ruining the gameplay a bit: f you set the cycles to anything higher than 4000, the game will lock up between level transitions or when using your last live. The music continues to play, but apart from that, nothing more happens. Of course I could run the game with limited cycles, but it makes the gameplay less smooth, especially the fights with the large bosses get very choppy this way.

I played around with the CPU settings in the conf file, but so far couldn't find anything that worked better. Does anyone know or have a solution or walkaround to this problem?

My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)

Reply 1 of 25, by leileilol

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FWIW the freezing's mutual on PCem too with the same symptoms. I could only play it on a 386SX config there. Given the design clumsiness of the port (the whole using-320x200-making-jumps-a-risky-gamble especially), i'd almost blame the game...

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 25, by Yesterplay80

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Awww, that's too bad. So I'd rather stick to the SNES versions included in the Steam package, even though I like the DOS version more.

My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)

Reply 3 of 25, by Akuma

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Mine seems to lock up randomly at last life around 8500 cycles and it gets more consistent if I increase the cycles beyond that.

Also I found out it also depends on how far I proceed in the game, so when dying in the in the beginning I can sometimes get to the retry/credit screen with 10000 cycles. Later on it just hangs.

When it hangs I can get to the credit screen by taking this jump, but its beyond me to figure out why it does not take it.

01AB:628E  C6D083              mov  al,83
01AB:6291 3C00 cmp al,00
-> 01AB:6293 7431 je 000062C6 ($+31) (no jmp)
01AB:6295 8BC6 mov ax,si
01AB:6297 8706C8D0 xchg [D0C8],ax ds:[D0C8]=0640
01AB:629B A3C6D0 mov [D0C6],ax ds:[D0C6]=4041
01AB:629E FB sti
01AB:629F C7040000 mov word [si],0000 ds:[00B0]=6868
01AB:62A3 83C602 add si,0002
01AB:62A6 89366AD9 mov [D96A],si ds:[D96A]=453F

@ripsaw8080: I'm out of idea's (tried the svn, regular, staging, loadfix, but the game bug seems consistent)

Reply 4 of 25, by ripsaw8080

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It appears to be a timing bug. Messing with that logic tends to cause glitches in the sound and/or video, so I opted for an "as needed" sort of workaround. Extract the attached program into the game directory and run it to start the game, then press the END key to clear any hangs that occur. I only tested when running out of lives; let me know if end of level hangs aren't cleared.

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  • Filename
    jimfix.zip
    File size
    249 Bytes
    Downloads
    206 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
Last edited by ripsaw8080 on 2020-03-17, 23:56. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 6 of 25, by Yesterplay80

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ripsaw8080, you're a genius! 😁

I ran the game smoothly with 50000 cycles and both level transitions and losing the last life worked by pressing END, thanks to your fix tool!

My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)

Reply 12 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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That does not work. I have checked out the issue.

On my system IRQ7 does work on SB but due to res-conflicts only for 2 seconds.
So I am sure that JimPower always switches to IRQ7 and plays two seconds music.

The goal is to switch the game to use IRQ5 on SB. It's a game from 1993 so IRQ5
should be possible if the autodetection fails with IRQ7.

I have to figure out, where the sound-settings are stored and changed.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 13 of 25, by ripsaw8080

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The IRQ is the first byte in JIM.CFG, but the last byte is a modulo checksum which should be adjusted if you make changes. The game will not load the settings if the checksum is not correct. However, if the game didn't detect the IRQ when JIM.CFG is recreated then editing the config data will probably not help you.

Reply 14 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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That's pretty bad or a stupid behavior of the program. Is this part of the copy-protection?
Or can someone with dosbox working and IRQ5 Setup send it's jim.cfg. That should work
for me too?

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 17 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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On my real-machines I had no luck of getting sound. Seems to be another "tricky" sound-engine. But it's obvious worth of getting it to run. Perhaps I can find a patch for that game. Perhaps in connection with a trainer...lot's of shareware archives to browse through.

Last edited by dr.zeissler on 2020-07-31, 17:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 18 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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I tested jimpower against seven retro-machines. sound worked only on ESS-Solo PIII/600 with disabled caches and PII-233 with yamaha audician32. Soundblaster, aztech, crystal all failed. I can use SFX on my soundblaster, but playing the game without the (fantastic) music...no!

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 19 of 25, by dr.zeissler

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I did additional testing...this game does only run on the authors equickment back in 1992/1993.
It does not run on any of my retro-pc's even when changing to other soundcards... I nearly put
it all that I have but did not found a card that the game is fully working with.

what's the deal here? I do not get it...

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines