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Forums > CSDb Entries > Release id #187773 : Alternate Reality - The City +11D

2020-02-15 17:47

jcompton

Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70

Release id #187773 : Alternate Reality - The City +11D

With a dramatically improved saver and a trainer, it is now much much easier to live long enough to stumble into the original game's bugs!

Notably:

- Certain potion effects (Potions of Protection +1/+2) modify the wrong area of memory and may not actually provide any benefit whatsoever.

- These potion-related memory trashes can affect playfield graphics like door labels and mountain backdrops.

- Too many potion effects will crash the game!

- Banks may exhibit erratic behavior at times.

- Upon transitioning from a building back to the game map, the game sometimes "forgets" whether you are outdoors or in an "enclosed area."

- The game mostly hides the mirroring of door labels, but forgets to do so in certain types of Enclosed Areas, so words like "SHOP" and "TAVERN" will appear reversed on the bottom of the door.

- In silent interiors there's a horrible buzzing sound when the SID should probably just be turned off.

... 92 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2020-02-20 03:23

Fungus

Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 680

Lets get some things straight first since there is a lot of misinformation about stuff which has floated around for decades.

1) G*P did not invent IFFL, nor is a true IFFL with byte linking. V-MAX and Rapidlok used this technique YEARS before, and it is also truely byte linked. It is just taken from a commercial loading system. So lets not continue this useless sack riding of Snacky who didn't invent dick.

2) n0sd0s is compatible with almost any commercial drive, including CMD devices, ide64, and almost any 3rd party 1541 clone. We tested that exhaustively, so this argument is invalid.

3) If you don't like something or that n0sd0s doesn't do, and I know you have the source. Add it, which is what any capable cracker/coder will do. If this is beyond your skill, then ask one of us, I'm sure we can manage for you.

As for dir buffering, this doesn't make any sense when space is often limited, and there is no room for such things. You know that krill. Also please don't start an IFFL bashing thing, different loaders for different purposes. Demo loaders are mostly useless for cracks and you know it.

*Nostalgia Council*

2020-02-20 08:53

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1408

Firstly, mad props on the achievement - getting down to a single side is amazing work.

Secondly 9's not a downvote if it's what the original 9 voter genuinely rated the release as - and hey, this means whoever it was now has room to give a higher rating to a 101% version :) (note - I've not voted yet :P )

Anyone who doesn't like anon votes is free to ignore them - csdb already gives two scores :P

As for the whole IFFL thing - yeah, I can see compatibility arguments against it, and clearly the extra space wasn't needed. It also sounds like Bacchus has done a nice job of moving the most commonly used files to the front to minimise the dir scanning.

Interesting that there are some pairs of files that are always loaded at the same time though. Sounds like there's room in the toolkit for a loader/decruncher pair that can deal with fragmented memory. (fwiw, nucrunch can decrunch to multiple areas, but the source has to be contiguous, and besides the decruncher isn't all that small)

Again, excellent work on this release!

2020-02-20 08:57

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2969

Quoting Fungus

As for dir buffering, this doesn't make any sense when space is often limited, and there is no room for such things. You know that krill.

I was merely refuting the argument that loading by directory means seeking to the directory track for every loaded file. And whether you buffer (cache) a directory or an IFFL T/S/offset table doesn't make much of a difference, in size or otherwise. Of course you'd go for having the buffer in drive RAM first, and even having only 9 entries in the cache (which is just a ring buffer) makes for quite an improvement regarding minimising seeking to and fro the dir track.

Quoting Fungus

Also please don't start an IFFL bashing thing, different loaders for different purposes. Demo loaders are mostly useless for cracks and you know it.

I didn't intend to bash the very concept of random-access reading from a large file to save block allocation overhead. I simply stated its biggest downsize on this platform is that there never was standardised support for it, so compatibility is the big issue. I also admitted that it does have its uses. But i don't quite see how a "demo loader" would be much different from loaders used in games, in size or otherwise. "G.I. Joe" would like to have a word with you. :D

2020-02-20 09:34

Danzig

Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 440

Quote: Quoting Fungus
As for dir buffering, this doesn't make any sense when space is often limited, and there is no room for such things. You know that krill.
I was merely refuting the argument that loading by directory means seeking to the directory track for every loaded file. And whether you buffer (cache) a directory or an IFFL T/S/offset table doesn't make much of a difference, in size or otherwise. Of course you'd go for having the buffer in drive RAM first, and even having only 9 entries in the cache (which is just a ring buffer) makes for quite an improvement regarding minimising seeking to and fro the dir track.

Quoting Fungus
Also please don't start an IFFL bashing thing, different loaders for different purposes. Demo loaders are mostly useless for cracks and you know it.
I didn't intend to bash the very concept of random-access reading from a large file to save block allocation overhead. I simply stated its biggest downsize on this platform is that there never was standardised support for it, so compatibility is the big issue. I also admitted that it does have its uses. But i don't quite see how a "demo loader" would be much different from loaders used in games, in size or otherwise. "G.I. Joe" would like to have a word with you. :D

I guess "demo loader" was ment in terms of "linear loading" from start to end instead of "randomly" loading depending fe. where the player decides to go.

2020-02-20 10:34

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2969

Quoting Danzig

I guess "demo loader" was ment in terms of "linear loading" from start to end instead of "randomly" loading depending fe. where the player decides to go.

Okay, but there are only two demo-centric systems that i'm aware of that don't support loading files in dynamic order (Spindle and Sparkle). Which i always felt to be too restrictive, as it doesn't allow for certain kinds of demo/effect.

2020-02-20 11:02

Danzig

Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 440

Quote: Quoting Danzig
I guess "demo loader" was ment in terms of "linear loading" from start to end instead of "randomly" loading depending fe. where the player decides to go.
Okay, but there are only two demo-centric systems that i'm aware of that don't support loading files in dynamic order (Spindle and Sparkle). Which i always felt to be too restrictive, as it doesn't allow for certain kinds of demo/effect.

Are there any more especially "demo-centric"? ;-)

TBH I prefer compatibility over speed, nevertheless I haven't really waited for true drive for ages, just using WARP in VICE nowadays :-D

In my book it's absolutely legit ppl wanting to run multi-loader games/demos from the U1541*IEC*Whatever.

I always ever saw IFFL as a weapon crackers "invented" (yeah, scott, I know ;-) ) because swappers where too m*f dump and copied full-side-multi-file productions with filecopier or (even worse and happened more often) fuxxored the T/S-loader-products using VALIDATE just to copy some silly note on the disk. IFFL was considered swapper-friendly :-D

2020-02-20 11:37

Fungus

Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 680

I look at it like people are buying inferior hardware (sd2iec) that will not work with 90% of software released for the c64, so that's on them if things don't work and we shouldn't automatically want to support something like that. I would prefer to encourage people to buy a proper drive emulator like pi1541.

By "demo loader" I meant that they are tailored specifically for demos, built for pure speed, and not for space constraints. They also tend to want to unpack after loading and that's often just impossible with a game due to there being no buffer space for that, although newer crunchers are being able to support in place unpacking, but sacrifice some ratio, which is paramount in a quality crack. Also demo loaders can be overly complex and you have to make multiple versions to support multiple drives, where something like n0sd0s is all in one and supports everything via detection and/or menu choice.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. If you cannot improve on a release from back in the day, then I see no point in doing a new version. That includes supporting actual real hardware with fast loading and IFFL for space saving. It also includes fixing bugs, making sure *everything* is present in the game including loading screens and music loaders. I have other pet peeves about some of the "improved" things released lately but that's a rant for another topic.

2020-02-20 11:56

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2969

Quoting Fungus

By "demo loader" I meant that they are tailored specifically for demos, built for pure speed, and not for space constraints.

Those would be Spindle and Sparkle, which are exceptions. Most loaders are general purpose. Oh, and the two aren't faster than, well, my general-purpose loader. :)

Quoting Fungus

They also tend to want to unpack after loading and that's often just impossible with a game due to there being no buffer space for that, although newer crunchers are being able to support in place unpacking, but sacrifice some ratio, which is paramount in a quality crack.

With Exomizer being the current reference in pack ratio, the files it generates can be (and are) depacked almost in-place, while loading. That is, three or so bytes are overwritten after the end of the unpacked area. If those cannot be buffered and restored, there are other options with slightly worse pack ratios. That is pretty much independent from the loader, though.

Quoting Fungus

Also demo loaders can be overly complex and you have to make multiple versions to support multiple drives, where something like n0sd0s is all in one and supports everything via detection and/or menu choice.

You seem to be comparing bad implementations of "demo loaders" with a good implementation of a "game loader", not conceptual differences, of which there aren't many. Detecting the drive and uploading one or the other piece of custom code to it isn't restricted to "game loaders". :)

2020-02-20 12:29

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4723

Quoting Fungus

I look at it like people are buying inferior hardware (sd2iec) that will not work with 90% of software released for the c64, so that's on them if things don't work and we shouldn't automatically want to support something like that. I would prefer to encourage people to buy a proper drive emulator like pi1541.

This! Exactly.

2020-02-20 15:26

jcompton

Registered: Feb 2006
Posts: 70

If anybody's interested in a player's perspective on this, I'm absolutely as pleased as a Tail of the Dog dinner of pork ribs and sasperilla that we lucked into SD2IEC compatibility in the final day of tweaks and testing.

Yum.

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