| Posted By
Degauss
on 2007-10-11
22:17:18
|  Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
Erich pointed out an issue which i think justifies a discussion here:
In short words: Erich's complaining about "emulator-coding", newer stuff won't work on a real +4 properly. For example he claims that "shade" doesn't work properly on real iron (i have to admit i didn't check this myself. can anyone confirm/falsify?). I remember that sire raised similar claims on my "Zenith of Puberty" in the pouet-forum - which i really can't understand, since it was shown on real iron at the party.
To me testing on real iron was always very important because at one hand i was always very serious with the compo-rules, e.g.: it has to run on a stock +4 + 1541. on the other hand it always had that special flair watching demos on a real +4. i got a massive kick out of seeing 8SOB at the compo running on just a c116+1541.
And there's more: If i read those war-threads between c64 and the 8-bit-atari guys i can often see statements like: "The Atari-Demo is very cool, but it runs on fictitious hardware, nobody has a machine that fulfills the specs your demo's based on". If you subtract the typical commodore/atari animosity, it is still a valid argument.
As you can see, i really think Erich's got a point!
I've spawn this new topic to discuss on this:
Does somebody know about software that only runs properly on emulator?
Is it a good idea to "flag" those stuffs in +4-world?
Are you just happy when your code runs in emulator or is it important for you that it runs on real iron?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2007-10-12
02:58:13
 | Re: Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
Oh well, Ingo you know: every time we have to release a new demo game whatever, it should be common guideline to check it when running on the real machine. I would cite some illuminating cases about this point: Ati's part in 8 Shades of Black, which still have some raster troubles in certain conditions, and Murphy's too, which hooked the whole compo entering on a spider web; or the splashes on the sea surface in the last part of my Thalassa demo, coz' they use zeropage address variables, and some of them has shown a different behavior because of the real hardware; not to talk about all the non matching video effects of a overscan picture!
About Shade: mmm...I remember I checked it on real hardware and it run good, maybe Erich uses a 1551 and the trackloader doesn't like it too much? And, hey, we're talking about Larry, I'm persuaded he has been the first one to need real hw checking for his own cool trackmo.
Chronos and Csio promptly declared Adventures in Mono in its party version a "non real hardware compliant", later they quickly released the final version.
Have to be sincere: to me, the on-road checking would be an essential, fundamental requirement for a retro stuff, but Erich's raised the right point (and all the non Germans cry coz' there's no English version of Club-Info): ok it's a good habit, but did we never declare it as essential certificate?
Hey we could spread a graphic brand that certifies your demo as real hardware compliant, in order to show it at the very beginning like, i.e., DolbyStereo or CapCom's QSound! 
Ah, we could code a dedicated packer with that brand, or animating it with DS-Animater V1.0! 
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2007-10-12
10:46:59
 | Re: Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
Ah LUCA!! You're right. In fact I was planning something like your labelling idea myself.
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2007-10-12
14:49:10
 | Re: Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
i've real stuff (machine+sid+1541), i you have any doubts anytime just send it to me.. except you're in a rush as we was with adventures in mono..
in this year there was a problem with all of our releases (aim,paprita...) so everybody suffers about this emu/real problem..
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2007-10-12
15:40:49
| Re: Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
Well, Erich should also know that AIM just runs perfectly well on an expanded C16, as it had an issue with the ACIA that only the plus/4 has. So, in that respect it is not entirely fair to say that it does not run _at all_ on the real machine. Anyway, that was part of the reason why I added ACIA support to Yape how preliminary that might even be.
About Shade I am not sure... the trackloader was done by me, and tested by several other people, too, before put into production. Although I have an Oceanic drive, and of course tested the loader like a hundred times, it can still occur that it fails some other 1541's or compatibles. Just remember the story of the first Megaload version. Emulators were not even thought of at the time. Also, the serial bus thing can be very tricky, since it has after all some analogue characteristics. Did any of you know that the length of the serial cable partly determines the length of the delay on the bus with regards to read/write operations? Anyway, the loader has a very tight timing, maybe even tighter than the once dreaded Coby loaders (basically a Megaload descendant), so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work with all imaginable 1541-compatible drives (and cable lengths ).
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2007-10-15
08:54:54
| Re: Interesting Bit: Club Info 101
"Did any of you know that the length of the serial cable partly determines the length of the delay on the bus with regards to read/write operations?"
Holy sh*t!!! :OO
Anyway, my drive is also Oceanic! I got it from Nukeman for Robomutant!
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