Trying some games with ReWarp

When deleting hyperionvideo.library (no movies...alas) and with using the latest ReWarp library you can actually play Shogo MAD and Freespace (sort of...). At least it seems to be a lot more stable than with the old powerpc.library. No crashes while playing. There's one at the start of Shogo which isn't in the old library. I have to track that one down.


Starting up Shogo through the shell as the start GUI crashes (with both ReWarp and old powerpc lib):

The loading screen if you are fast enough. With no movies it goes by quickly:

The in-game menu. Warp3D renderer also works, but the game becomes very dark and unplayable. Maybe there is a gamma option somewhere. Also some glitches in the 3D with hardware acceleration enabled:

Start of the game using the software renderer:

Second level:

Bit further in the second level. Sometimes, NPC models seem to be missing:

Let's look at FreeSpace. Here the launcher works (with the wizard.library from OS4Depot). Don't forget to activate the Warp3D patch when playing. This game is actually playable now:

Works with all sounds enabled:

The tech room with the various models:

Flying around in your ship.. I rather have a blue HUD :-)

As a bonus here's a screenshot of Heretic II demo which also works:

Laters!

Up and running again!

I finally got around to check what happened to the Sam440 computer and opened up the PSU to at least check the fuse. Seeing the light show I had it probably was not something a fuse could have handled. And indeed it looked very much beyond repair:

I cannibalized the PSU of my AmigaOneXE system and voila:

You can imagine I cheered when the computer came back on :-) And now back to work.

Thunder and lightning...

Just a quick note to say that after returning from my vacation I had some nice fireworks when I put the power cord back into the wall socket of one of my power extensions. I pulled all cords before going on vacation. Both the wall socket and the power extension box were putting up a nice show for a second with loads of sparkles. Then came the nice smell of burned plastic.

Multiple equipment was connected to the box; a laser printer, 2 monitors, 1 PC and 1 SAM 440. Everything still seems to work....except the SAM 440. I hope it is only the PSU which has fried; I'm still waiting for a replacement to check that out.

First time I saw sparks flying at both ends of a cord (wall socket and extension box), don't know what happened :-(

Some more games! (ReWarp)

Quake2 WarpOS running at 800x600:

WipeOut2097 running. It has black boxes for shadows. Maybe some Warp3D setting:

At this stage, it has become apparent that 2 things can hamper your experience regarding ReWarp:

Stack. If you encounter a DSI it is most likely stack related. WarpOS programs seem to need a lot.
Warp3D: I recommend Wazp3D to check if it runs in software and patchWarp3D from Aminet if your Amiga freezes (with no GR).

The original warposemu has documentation stating what works and what doesn't. Next time we'll go through the 'does-not-work' list.

Later!

WarpOS demos running on the Sam440 under OS4.1

Here's an example of a demo which will not run under the old wrapper on the Sam440.

Sadly the screen was a bit tilted so it's a bit dark, but that's filming an LCD screen for ya....

In the mean time, more and more software is starting to run. WipeOut still lacks sound, but I'm looking into that.

Enjoy.

Slow progress...

Progress on the ReWarp project has been slow but steady.

Most of the functions are in with only a few important ones missing (like WaitTime which is used by WipeOut). Also no FPU alignment exception code has been added. Last night, the code for CreateTaskPPC was added and the last of the tools from WarpOS (Multitasking) now finally worked.

So how about games? In the previous posting we had a movie of a Sam440 running QuakeWOS. Warp3D games crashed or gave strange output. They worked on wazp3d, but very slow.

Then (again)  thanks to Alain Thellier I was pointed to a patch program on Aminet (http://aminet.net/driver/video/PatchWarp3D.lha) which solved a bunch of problems.

So here is glQuakeWOS running on 800x600 on a Sam440 666MHz with a Radeon 9200:

This is a good first step regarding Warp3D games. Mileage will vary depending on the video card used.

Tomorrow a posting regarding some stuff that didn't work with the old library but is now working with ReWarp. Until then!

And now for something completely differemt...

Or is it more of the same? Anyway, I've been keeping myself busy with the re-implementation of the WarpOS emulation for AmigaOS4.

The last version of the original implementation is from 2009 and does not support (directly) the newer machines like X1000 and Sam460. Which means that popular games WarpOS games like WipeOut2097 can not be played under OS4.1FE.

During the Neuss show, Timothy de Groote from Hyperion had asked me, with my experience with WarpOS, if I could have a look at it. At the time, the sonnet library was still missing key features and I told him that I needed to implement those first. With the Aminet release of the sonnet library, that was accomplished.

Now I don't own any of the machines on which the original did not work. I have a very old AmigaOne XE 800MHz G4 machine and an even older A4000T with CyberstormPPC, both running OS4.1. Somehow, the A4000T is faster in the reboot so I started the project there (and I needed a lot of reboots in the early start-up of the project). Not having the machines became an obstacle after a few weeks of programming so Timothy kindly provided me with a Sam440 machine which I could borrow for development.

As the chip in the Sam440 is almost the same as in the 460 (the core of the AMCC440 and AMCC460 is both PPC440), I''m confident that anything running on the Sam440 should be running on the Sam460. The X1000 has the PA6T chip which is very much compatible with the older (G2-G3-G4-G5) types of PowerPC so anything running on the AmigaOne XE and my A4000 should also be running on the X1000.

The project is still in the early stages, but here's a move of running Quake on the Sam440:

Only 15% of the total functions of WarpOS have been implemented, but these are the most used/important ones so a lot of stuff should already work. Warp3D is a bit problematic as there seem to be a bit of incompatibilities between V4 and V5 of Warp3D. I have to look into that in the future.