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Re: converting to prg files

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 11:25 am
by nbla000
llcameron wrote:I guess I'm still confused about how to get a game on the 'play game' button, and out of the 'extras' button. Do you need to load the TAP and then maybe mount a d64 file and save it to the disk?
Normally is not so simple, TAP games may contain a copy protection and you need to hack it a bit to have a single prg file or a d64 that could be played with the 'play game' button.

In theory you may start any TAP games also from the 'play game' button but it resides in the extra section to have the same structure of the GameBase64.

A solution maybe the Boray's program PrgStarter but you cannot use the GameBase interface of course, you should "surf" the gamebase20 from the PC File System...

finally getting it

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 6:40 am
by llcameron
I think my little brain is finally beginning to understand.

Even if the game has been converted to run as a PRG file, the TAP file is there for folks to might want to recreate the original cassette based image.

If its been converted, you can run the game alot faster from the 'play game' button. If not then you can still run the TAP image from the 'extras' button, and reminisce in your emulated environment just how darn slow it was to load a game from tape. Looks like if the game has been converted, you have both options.

It must have been a bunch of work to convert games to run as a PRG file! Lots of these games were multipart loads, machine code, etc. For example I looked at the game "3d Maze". It was a multipart load, and they had disabled the run/stop key to break into the basic. So how this was made into a single PRG file is unknown to me.?

Re: finally getting it

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 11:12 am
by nbla000
llcameron wrote:Even if the game has been converted to run as a PRG file, the TAP file is there for folks to might want to recreate the original cassette based image.
Yes, exactly.
It must have been a bunch of work to convert games to run as a PRG file!
yes indeed.

It was a multipart load, and they had disabled the run/stop key to break into the basic. So how this was made into a single PRG file is unknown to me.?
It requires a lot of debugging and a bit of hacking. :wink:

Re: finally getting it

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 6:29 pm
by rhurst
nbla000 wrote:It requires a lot of debugging and a bit of hacking. :wink:
... and a few loose screws. :wink:

Re: finally getting it

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 3:08 am
by nbla000
rhurst wrote:
nbla000 wrote:It requires a lot of debugging and a bit of hacking. :wink:
... and a few loose screws. :wink:
few ? Since I'm doing these kind of works, I think a bit more :lol:

Ask Mayhem for references :wink:

Re: finally getting it

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 5:41 am
by Boray
llcameron wrote:If not then you can still run the TAP image from the 'extras' button, and reminisce in your emulated environment just how darn slow it was to load a game from tape.
Or you can press Alt-W to load it in VICE's Warp mode.

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 1:52 pm
by Mayhem
From Vice 2.2 onwards though, the first file is automatically warp loaded in TAP... just if it's multipart, you'll need to hit Alt W after the first file runs.

favorites

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:28 am
by llcameron
Mayhem, how are you storing favorites? Is this somewhere in the database?

Basically what I want to be able to do is keep my favorites in gamebase, and then know the filenames so I can write a script to save the games off to a different directory so I can load them onto my wiz for convenient play.

I can't figure out though how you are storing my favorite selections though! Thanks for any info

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:16 am
by Mayhem
Favourites is entirely part of the Gamebase interface, nothing to do with what I set up, so you'll need to look through that documentation. I suspect it's a mini table read.

favorites

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 11:07 am
by llcameron
found a different way! from the favorites view, Ctrl-F6 export to text file. Boom

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 6:14 pm
by Mayhem
Found an "interesting" issue here while testing out GB20 on the two new laptops I have (one running XP, one running W7). It's important because I'll be continuing GB20 on at least one of them...

Suddenly a few games don't want to boot through the "play" button. I want to check if it's just me, or whether something has broke without me noticing.

So anyone with a build of GB20, can you check if the following games load properly, or just sit and complain about not finding the game type error?

(The) Lair
Laser Zone
Laser Barrage

If they don't work for people, I'll have to fix it and wonder how they got through in the first place. If they do work... then I'll be wondering what on earth has gone on here...

Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 12:08 pm
by Mayhem
I've somewhat fixed these three myself... The Lair worked when shortening the file name down inside the zip file. Laser Zone wanted a SYS call so I found a self booting PRG. Laser Barrage somewhat went funny after I tried to fix the mistakes in the instructions, so I've reverted back to the original file I had at the start.

If ANYONE finds a program not working in Vice (using versions 1.22, 2.1 or the beta 2.3, but NOT 2.2) then please let me know so I can look into it. Especially TAP files that don't want to load in 2.x versions.

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 10:29 am
by Mayhem
GB20 has now broken the 1,800 entries barrier... will it reach 2,000 by the time of the next release though?!

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 11:20 am
by bokvamme
How many of those are commercial releases?

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 12:51 pm
by Mayhem
Pffff... now you're asking heh. I'd have to go through and give a rough estimation...