home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Short: Launch and play old games from an AGA-WB properly
- Author: rade@coli.uni-sb.de (Ralph Debusmann)
- Uploader: rade@coli.uni-sb.de (Ralph Debusmann)
- Type: util/misc
-
- --- short introduction
-
- Games like "Battle Isle" can be installed on HD easily but if you run
- them from an AGA-WB-screenmode (like DBLNTSC), the display gets
- corrupted, sometimes right at the start, sometimes (and this is the
- nastier situation) halfway during playing.
-
- "Ok" I hear you say, we have 42 programs like "KillAGA" or "SetChipRev"
- for this purpose. But sometimes you can't get games to work simply with
- one of those hardware-hacking-display-thingies. Plus those programs can't
- prevent those nasty screen mess-ups halfway during playing. You'll need
- to really open your Workbench in PAL or have a PAL-screen at the front
- when starting the game.
-
- launchpal gets you around calling "ScreenMode", choosing "PAL:HighRes"
- and pushing the "USE"-button. launchpal opens its own PAL-screen, which
- is made public and 'clones' the WB-screen by intercepting all windows
- which the system (e.g. a virus killer like VirusZ) might decide to open
- during you playing the game. This prevents the AmigaOS to ever switch
- back to the AGA-moded-WB-screen during the operation of your game and
- thus you can play e.g. Battle Isle safely and nicely without any
- mess-ups. This "SHANGHAI"-functionality is what I missed in "mscreen",
- which is a similar program to mine. "mscreen" also at times decided to
- crash my 060-machine, which I didn't like either.
-
- --- tech
-
- launchpal was written using E³ and in a quick'n'dirty fashion. Even
- quicker and dirtier than MacTransfEr. It's another hack. Nevertheless,
- the source is included.
-