Messages

Since I just tested the prev build, I am going to take a break again for a bit.
Really short on time lately.

I will test again in a few weeks to a couple months.
Hopefully no other glaring problems come up during that time, making it hard to figure out which build caused the problem.

So I tested stuff and some things seem faster and some seem slower.

Seems like the bigger the room in Gemini, the slower.
Ex.  Start screen with the rain is slow when moving the cursor and sometimes the sound skips.  Same with another.

Also, any rooms that have things moving are really slow.

Although I did notice a speed up with skipping scenes.  Especially that one at the beginning, but still not as fast as it used to be.

I tested the Apr 9th build.

K, that mean's I have not tested it yet.

I will get to it in the next couple of weeks and let you know.

I was just wondering if there were any speed improvements implemented in the last 2 builds in March.

Figured it was easier to ask before testing.  Saves me some time =P

I will check if anything else is not working when I test for the speed issues.

I am doubtful if Primordia would run at full speed on a psp.
It will probably be choppy.
Especially since it has system requirements similar to Resonance.

Awesome.
I wonder how it will affect the bullet sequences in Gemini Rue.
Or is that a limit of the PSP processor?

Test the Feb 9th Build.

I see you switched back to the old save format as the MMD saves now load and the new Gemini Rue saves didn't.
Loaded up the old ones and they worked.

Everything seems to still be working.
Can't tell if there were any speed improvements.
Seems like there might have been.

Let me know if I am mistaken.

Keep up the good work.

I think JJS may have to answer that one.

I honestly have no idea.  I never noticed anything reporting that information, although I seem to remember something report the fps.... but I could be thinking of something else.

The builds are coming out too fast for me to keep up with =P

So in that case, I will test after every 3 to 5 or so, unless they slow down again.
Hopefully nothing breaks in between those.
Harder to find which build it happened with when I skip a few.
Oh well.
Thanks for keeping the PSP port alive.

New PSP build
All three games work great still.

No change in speed.

Hey there,
I just downloaded the latest daily, dated Jan 17, 2013.

Everything seems to still be working ok with the 3 games, although I can't tell if anything was changed with the script speed issue.  It still isn't as fast as the Aug Build, but it might be minimally faster than the Dec build...  but I can't be sure.

Was anything changed with this?
Was also curious what other updates were done with the newest build.

So these saves will not work then....

It's not that big a deal anyway, since they aren't the main saves.  Only a couple of them are busted...
I can just scrap those two I guess.

So the only thing left then is the real time interpreter stuff.
If that is sped up, then those two games will be fully functional.

Thanks again for taking the time to work on this.

Good news,
The Gemini Saves work now.
Bad news, new saves don't work in the old build where the interpreter has not been changed and Gemini works doesn't run slow.
Guess I will just keep my old saves for this build.

Maniac Mansion saves do not work with the Dec 26th build.
They still need to be converted to work, although I know JJS has fixed this error for future releases.

Bug at the end Maniac still good, so no problems there.

Resonance has some weird red screen when loading, but if you wait long enough, it loads properly.

I guess all that is left now is to fix the realtime interpreter issues you were talking about and converting the MM saves to work.

It's interesting to read what you guys are writing back and forth, even though it is all foreign to me.

My programing experience is limited to Touring hehe... grade 11 programming.

Yea.... never even dabbled in visual basic, although I am guessing you guys use c++ which is way over my head.
You are explaining it pretty well though.

You guys all self taught or did you go to school for programming?

It's nice to see this isn't dead yet.

I actually came to the psp scene only a year and a bit ago, so it is still very new to me and has plenty of novelty with a huge library of games yet to be played.

With kids... buying the latest thing on the market is just not an option due to expense.

Anyway, if you need any help with testing, let me know.
I can try to see what happens once you make those changes to the script interpreter.  Might be able to get just a few frames that makes all the difference. 

Can those Maniac Mansion saves be fixed or is the current fix you put in that prevents it in the future all that can be done?

And is a converter for the saves from Win to PSP and vice versa and/or between AGS versions, which could fix the MM Saves possible?

Thanks for all your work with this, even though it seems I might be the only person still interested in the psp version at the moment. 

I tried to send them, but I got a post master delivery error due to exceeding your email space.

After zipping them, they are only 1.8 Megs, so they should be fine now to be emailed.  I guess I should have thought of that previously.     I emailed them to you now.

Hopefully the speed issues could be fixed. On the August 29th build, Gemini is working.  It does take a bit to skip the scene that ends with "MH Where are you", but overall the rest of the scenes skip good with only a slight delay, and it is not choppy during the actual playing of the game except the gun fights (although it was always choppy here)  This build may be slightly slower than previous builds... can't tell as I no longer have them, but it is so slight the game is still very playable.

It could give you a starting point with seeing what was changed.

Sorry for the Novel.  Did lots of testing.

I have a hard time reproducing this. The game never "freezes" for me when skipping cutscenes, but it takes a long time to get to the next playable section. What I mean is that when I skip the "operation scene" it takes about 20 seconds, then skipping the next scene (which ends with "MH, where are you?") takes more than 40 seconds. These times might well we longer now than in previous versions because the script interpreter lost a bit of speed.

K, tried and see what you mean.  I thought it froze but it just takes forever.  As far as the loss of speed of the script interpreter... it makes the game a bit painful to play.  It is quite choppy now. Not unplayable, but it is fairly noticeable.  Especially when you are outside and it is raining.  It depends on the size of the room too.  First screen is not to bad but the one to the right of that is.  Skipping when you walk across the screen takes a bit of time too depending on how far you told him to walk.  It is the same kind of thing that plagued the shooting sequences, but not as bad as that, although I am afraid to see what one of those shooting sequences is like now... I don't have a save game at one to test it.  Plus the save games aren't loadable yet. What ended up causing this?  Can it be fixed?

I noticed you fixed the sleep mode bug.  Before, when you would put the psp in sleep mode, it would come back to the blue screen with an error... now it comes back.  This is really nice.

(Update)
Found another bug, realized the sleep mode bug is not fixed.  It is just delayed due to the script interpreter slow down.  Instead of coming back to a blue screen, you can play for a couple mins and then it comes up.
Here is the exception log.  It might change every time though.

Exception details:

Exception - Bus error (data)
EPC       - 08844DB8 / gro Application.text + 00040DB8
Cause     - 1000001C
Status    - 40008613
BadVAddr  - 03140D04
zr:00000000 at:DEADBEEF v0:00000000 v1:00000406
a0:0904D458 a1:FFFFFFFF a2:00000000 a3:0904C5D0
t0:09048550 t1:0904A590 t2:DEADBEEF t3:DEADBEEF
t4:DEADBEEF t5:DEADBEEF t6:DEADBEEF t7:DEADBEEF
s0:08B30000 s1:08AA5658 s2:08AA0000 s3:000003A2
s4:08E8AEAC s5:00000001 s6:000000A4 s7:00000402
t8:DEADBEEF t9:DEADBEEF k0:0BABFF00 k1:00000000
gp:08A84A70 sp:0BABFC50 fp:00000064 ra:08844DB8

Happens in Maniac Mansion too.

Exception details:

Exception - Address load/inst fetch
EPC       - 089B1814 / gro Application.text + 001AD814
Cause     - 10000010
Status    - 60008613
BadVAddr  - 89209016
zr:00000000 at:DEADBEEF v0:89209016 v1:00000002
a0:0BABFA80 a1:00000000 a2:0BABFA80 a3:89209016
t0:00000000 t1:00000002 t2:89209016 t3:0BABFA80
t4:DEADBEEF t5:DEADBEEF t6:DEADBEEF t7:DEADBEEF
s0:7FCD924A s1:00000002 s2:08BA12EC s3:0BABFA80
s4:08B40000 s5:08A7A8E8 s6:00000002 s7:09063450
t8:DEADBEEF t9:088C70C4 k0:0BABFF00 k1:00000000
gp:08A84A70 sp:0BABFA50 fp:00000002 ra:089AF5B8

This crash happens in the audio code, not sure why yet.

Concerning the saves causing this.
For Mansion Save Slot 1, 3 & 7 cause the blue screen crash.
2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, & 11 load fine.
I emailed you the saves.

Had another bug in Gemini, but I think it was fluke related to sleep mode as it only happened once.
Black screen, something about not being able to draw some sprite.
There was one change in save game routine lately, which actually fixed incompatibility with 3.21.1115. There is a range of builds between when the mistake was first introduced and when it was fixed, and savegames made with any of that builds are now incompatible.
"Game has changed (audio types)" message is directly related to this. Not sure about MM's BSD.

I also emailed you the Gemini Rue Saves.  Can you make sure Crimson Wizard get's these if he wants them? or maybe you can work with them in the same way he wanted, to make a converter.  You know what would be really neat is a converter that can convert the saves from pc to psp and vice versa as well as a converter that can convert between AGS versions

The problem was that SetPlayerCharacter() behaved differently on 2.61 and lower. It would set the new character and change to its room regardless of whether that character was already the player. Newer versions of the engine just ignore the command if the new character is the same as the current player character. Interestingly the documentation to SetPlayerCharacter() does not mention this.
Because of this behaviour, the end scene never triggers as it runs in the room where "Dave" is. But if "Dave" is already the player, the room switch never happens.

Other Maniac Mansion bug at the end is fixed.  Thanks.

Can you easily reproduce that crash? If so, I would be interested in save games that crash like this. The one savegame you provided loads fine for me.

I know of one savegame that does it for sure.  Some worked and some crashed, so I will have to go through them.
I will specify which ones worked and which ones crashed.  You want them just sent to your email again?
I may not be able to do this until tomorrow.  Should be able to get it done for sure by the weekend.

Can you upload these saved games somewhere?

Where did you want me to send these?  I usually just emailed them to JJS.
I can send all of them as there are only 6 max I think.

Start a new game, and it works ok in the little intro, but once the title is shown and the game starts if I hit the start button which is mapped to bring up the menu (ie escape key), the game freezes.  This only happens if I try to do it before the cinematic is done... if I wait until it is done and the cursor comes up, it works fine.  This button is used to also skip cinematics, so it can could cause a potential problem.  Although, it seems to work fine in the intro part because it is not gearing up to start a playable section of the game.  When hit during the intro, it is skipping to another cinematic... hope this makes sense.

What about this bug in Gemini Rue?  Was this one fixed in that build?  This is kind of a strange one as it never happened before.  This is when starting a new game too... not just when loading a save game, which currently doesn't work at all.

If you really need those savegames (like to test particular moments) I think we may make a simple utility that converts savegames to 3.21.1115-compatible format. It would also help if you can remember which build did you use to play games when you made those saves (like which date, approximately, that was).

As for when I played it....  I don't remember the exact build.
I know for a fact it was in May sometime, but I had been using the same build since March maybe?

What I can tell you for sure is the last build that the save games worked.
I know this for a fact that they worked with this one 2012-08-27 12.41.46.
This was the last one they loaded properly with.  So if they can be converted to this one, they should work.

Hope this helps.

Should be fixed in the newest build.

The problem was that SetPlayerCharacter() behaved differently on 2.61 and lower. It would set the new character and change to its room regardless of whether that character was already the player. Newer versions of the engine just ignore the command if the new character is the same as the current player character. Interestingly the documentation to SetPlayerCharacter() does not mention this.
Because of this behaviour, the end scene never triggers as it runs in the room where "Dave" is. But if "Dave" is already the player, the room switch never happens.

No time to test it right now, but I will let you know when I get a chance.

This crash happens in the audio code, not sure why yet.

Looks like this is the last thing to make it completely playable.
I might not be able to test the compatibility fix until this is fixed.

Thanks again.
You guys are great.

Found more bugs in the latest daily.

Resonance loads ok... didn't have any save games to test since it is unplayable due to slowness on the psp.

Gemini Rue
Start a new game, and it works ok in the little intro, but once the title is shown and the game starts if I hit the start button which is mapped to bring up the menu (ie escape key), the game freezes.  This only happens if I try to do it before the cinematic is done... if I wait until it is done and the cursor comes up, it works fine.  This button is used to also skip cinematics, so it can could cause a potential problem.  Although, it seems to work fine in the intro part because it is not gearing up to start a playable section of the game.  When hit during the intro, it is skipping to another cinematic... hope this makes sense.

Second bug in Gemini Rue.
Trying to load any saved game at any time gives an error.  The menu comes up, but when you pick your game to load and hit load, you get this message.
Black screen,
An error has occured. Please contact the game author for support, as this is likely to be a scripting error and not a bug in AGS.  ACI version 3.21.1115

Error: Restore_Game: Game has changed (audio types), unable to restore.

Maniac Mansion Bug.
When trying to load some save games, not all, I get the blue screen of death.

Exception details:

Exception - Address load/inst fetch
EPC       - 08895C58 / gro Application.text + 00091C58
Cause     - 10000010
Status    - 60008613
BadVAddr  - 00000017
zr:00000000 at:DEADBEEF v0:FFFFFFFF v1:08B30000
a0:00004BE4 a1:00004BE4 a2:0BABFC80 a3:00000000
t0:0BABFC80 t1:08AA0000 t2:00000000 t3:00000001
t4:08A70000 t5:0000030C t6:DEADBEEF t7:DEADBEEF
s0:08B299DC s1:08B20000 s2:08AA5638 s3:00000000
s4:00000000 s5:00000000 s6:DEADBEEF s7:DEADBEEF
t8:DEADBEEF t9:088BB674 k0:0BABFF00 k1:00000000
gp:08A84A50 sp:0BABFD18 fp:0BABFE40 ra:08895E68

Not exactly sure why I get this with only some of the save games.

As far as the other general backwards compatibility bug, I am just waiting on getting that fixed so I can play through the first maniac mansion on the psp with the other characters.  I don't have much time to play through it on my computer and it looks much better on the psp due the smaller screen. 

Thanks again for all your hard work.

The general backward compatibility problem with maniac mansion.

Is it even fixable?