WHDLoad - Zool 2 AGA - Jerky on my Blizzard 1260 - Help!

[Legerdemain]

I've got rather some tiresome problems with running WHDLoad games on my 060. Most of the times there are workarounds to make them run fluently, and the overall experience with WHDLoad installs is marvellous, but when it comes to running my Zool 2 AGA, it doesn't work well at all.

The game is so jerky I can't stand it. The first sign is when the title comes scrolling up. About halfway up it starts to jerk, scroll slowly, and then everything seems fine again. But when I start the game everything slows down an unbearable hefty amount. Especially when the screen is scrolling two ways at the same time (right & up, left & down and so on).

Is this something I will have to live with when running the game on my Blizzard 1260? Or is there something that I might do to get the game running as smooth as it does on a bare 1200 (and smoother than that it isn't possible for any game to run)?

[adolescent]

Quick fix is to use the ECS version.  

Otherwise, you might be able to run it on your 020 without preload.

[Legerdemain]

Yes, but although there is really not much difference the two versions compared the AGA one has quite much nicer backgrounds. I wan't the full experience, with smooth scrolling (oh, here I go again with my smooth scrolling talk).

 :lol:

[Matt_H]

Maybe your caches are disabled?

[humppa]

Try it with the following Tooltypes - it will run smoothly:

NOVBRMOVE
NOAUTOVEC
CACHE

[Legerdemain]

Humppa:

Nope, sorry, it does not work. Still jerky scrolling.

[adolescent]

I've yet to see it run smoothly (whdload version that is) on a 040/060 system.  Perhaps emailing the slave author would help.  (He posts regularly at eab.abime.net)

[Hyperspeed]

I found Zool 2 AGA very jerky too and this was on '020. Certainly not the Sonic-style experience I remember from the ECS version of Zool 1.

Maybe it was designed on an A4000T... doesn't that have the full 68020 instead of the 68EC020 in the A1200 desktop?

I eventually sold mine and got the Atari Jaguar version of Zool 2 (which uses a 68000) and is extremely smooth, colourful and you can at last play tunes AND sound-fx at the same time. Syndicate is still better on Amiga than Jaguar though.

:-)

Smoothest scrolling platformer I've ever seen on Amiga is Kid Chaos - a worthy rival to Sonic games.

[humppa]

Legerdemain wrote: Humppa: Nope, sorry, it does not work. Still jerky scrolling.

Strange, that's how I got it to run smoothly on a 68040/40. When not using the CACHE tooltype or using NOCACHE instead, the game was stuttering horribly.
"CACHE" enables the instruction cache, but disables the data cache.

[Legerdemain]

Kid Chaos? Well, it is scrolling smooth, yes, but I find it sad that the game in itself is rather unbalanced. At the second world there is this level where you are not only running against the time, but aswell you have to smash all those flowers... and I have yet not managed to get through this level. Extremely annoying, and its not like I am bad at platformers...

That is the most sad thing with most platformers for the AMiGA, instead of genius level design they stuff the levels with things to "get hold of" to be able to exit the level. Super Frog. Kid Chaos. Zool. And so on. It sometimes feels like this is due to lazyness... that they did not really know how to make challenging and original levels, and instead made them labyrinth like with tons of things to collect on the way to the exit.

If one like that style of platformers, well, then AMiGA is platforming heaven, but if one does not... well, then... though luck. =/

[Narayan]

"Oh yeah1 the Atari Jaguar now."

[patrik]

@adolescent:

Sounds like a good idea to try to get in touch with the author and see if can help with the 060 compability. Atleast here on my CSPPC, no combination of options is able to make it run smooth.


/Patrik