Re: AGS 3.0 Errors on OSX 10.6 using Java 1.6

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On May 20, 4:13 pm, savant42 <jbrash...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Brendan, can I get some documentation? ;)
>
> What's the current state of multigame disks? This whole project began
> because I was dying to play some old school oregon trail, which has
> two disks (if I recall correctly).
>
> If you keep writing it, I'll keep testing it.
>
> savant
>
> On May 20, 1:49 pm, BLuRry <brendan.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > And please, even if it DOES appear to work, don't STFU.  Feedback ==
> > ideas for more features.  The compression routines are sufficient to
> > drive some medium-complexity lores videos for example.  The catch?
> > Can't find a reliable mpg decoder written in java (**sigh**).  Another
> > example: I already emulate DOS 3.3 disks, so why not shoot for
> > prodos?  Or even hard-drive emulation.  (aside from it being dog-slow
> > it would work).
>
> > Even better yet would be nice if someone complained about the
> > abhorrent lack of documentation.  It's trivial to add support for
> > other games just by editing the games.xml file, etc -- but without an
> > explanation of the file format you need to understand XSD or look at
> > the examples in there.  It's also possible to make your own program
> > that loads in segments, or have a bunch of subroutines (which end with
> > RTS instructions) called in a specific order.
>
> > Other fun things lay hidden, such as under the Advanced configuration
> > tab you can change the font for grins.  Or you can change
> > "display_type" to 40-column text and watch it fly like a bat out of
> > hell.
>
> > -Brendan

Multi-disk images are not supported, but adding support is relatively
trivial.  It's just a matter of adding some game.xml changes to
support multi-disk configs as well as some notion of where the disks
should go by default (e.g. drive 1, drive 2).  The only other
component of that would be to have a UI that shows what disk is in
what drive and allow the user to change them.

Does Oregon Trail really work?  It would have to be a really old
version, I recon, since later versions were most likely not based on
DOS 3.3 RWTS and therefore wouldn't get much further than boot.  I do
remember using a version that had an awful lot of Applesoft basic, and
it was pretty easy to modify things in my favor, much to the dismay of
my teacher.  I use a really limited way to detecting what RWTS
replacement to use, based on a really rigid signature.  Perhaps I
should just expose that up to the XML side, with the current
"autodetect" behavior being an option and otherwise letting the
configuration specify a set of patches to use for different track/
sectors.  It would simplify many things, might allow greater
compatibility.  Alas, have to catch up @ work before I can play.  :-(

-B