Author Topic: A new Napalm speedup hack, help needed (Read 5351 times)

Varthall · « **on:** March 29, 2005, 12:42:44 PM »

Hi,

I'm reposting this request from an italian Amiga newsgroup. A coder has patched the Suzy c2p library from the rtgmaster library, so that only the parts of the screen that are changed are refreshed. This way, Napalm becomes much faster and playable on a basic A4000.

The problem lies with the distribution of this patch. The library quotes "By Kalms, Adapted by Rady/Ablaze.", and there is apparently no licence mentioned for the c2p and rtgmaster. He has tried to contact Rady Marusa from Ablaze, but the only email address we've found is not active anymore. He could release it as a patch file, to be patched on the original library, although it would be nicer to directly release the patched library.

Can anyone get in touch with Kalms or Marusa, or does anyone know the licence status of the library? The coder would like to be 100% sure that he has the right to release it, before doing so.

Thanks
Varthall

Crusher · « **Reply #1 on:** March 29, 2005, 01:13:53 PM »

I´ll try and get in touch with Kalms, my cousin knows him. :-)

Varthall · « **Reply #2 on:** March 29, 2005, 01:23:09 PM »

Quote

Crusher wrote:
I´ll try and get in touch with Kalms, my cousin knows him. :-)

Thanks, let me know if you have any news

Varthall

Elwood · « **Reply #3 on:** March 29, 2005, 01:28:05 PM »

And tell him it would be nice if he could update Napalm. :-)
I bought it but never played it because I had problems on my 1200 (but can't remember what) and then I switched to OS4.
When I tried it on OS4 (a long time ago) he didn't work. I'll have to test again...

mendark · « **Reply #4 on:** March 29, 2005, 03:46:59 PM »

WOW :-o

This really blows my socks off. I'm really curious how the patch works. So therefor I really hope the righful owner will be traced so the patch can be released widely!

I'm sure the patch will speed up a lot of games!!

ChaosLord · « **Reply #5 on:** March 29, 2005, 04:08:31 PM »

Intelligently coded games do not use rtgmaster.library
precisely because it is so ungodly abysmally terribly slow.

So the patch will only help the lamecoded games.

I have never used rtgmaster in any of my games and they have always ran at the MAXIMUM possible speed allowed by the AGA chipset.

« **Reply #6 on:** March 29, 2005, 05:16:52 PM »

Quote

ChaosLord wrote:
Intelligently coded games do not use rtgmaster.library
precisely because it is so ungodly abysmally terribly slow.

So the patch will only help the lamecoded games.

I have never used rtgmaster in any of my games and they have always ran at the MAXIMUM possible speed allowed by the AGA chipset.

Meeowww!!! ;-)

Varthall · « **Reply #7 on:** March 29, 2005, 05:21:11 PM »

Quote

Elwood wrote:
And tell him it would be nice if he could update Napalm. :-)

Hmm, I don't think Kalms is the author, he should be only the author of the c2p routines used in rtgmaster, and hence in Napalm.

Quote

I bought it but never played it because I had problems on my 1200 (but can't remember what) and then I switched to OS4.
When I tried it on OS4 (a long time ago) he didn't work. I'll have to test again...

Toaks on aw.net have reported that it runs on his A1, using NallePuh...

Varthall

Varthall · « **Reply #8 on:** March 29, 2005, 05:27:31 PM »

Quote

mendark wrote:
WOW :-o

This really blows my socks off. I'm really curious how the patch works. So therefor I really hope the righful owner will be traced so the patch can be released widely!

I'm sure the patch will speed up a lot of games!!

I haven't seen it in action, anyway it should work similar to some ECS/AGA video drivers for Shapeshifter. It would speed up only those games where there isn't a lot of animation on screen. For example, the scrolling speed in Napalm remains unaffected, only the animated items are faster.

Varthall

samanosuke · « **Reply #9 on:** March 30, 2005, 05:33:26 PM »

I'd hardly consider Napalm to be 'lamecoded', ChaosLord.

Crusher · « **Reply #10 on:** April 06, 2005, 02:03:28 PM »

@Varthall, you have PM :-)

Skeleton · « **Reply #11 on:** May 07, 2005, 10:32:02 PM »

Quote

Can anyone get in touch with Kalms or Marusa

Sorry for the delay folks. Registering on the forum gave me a semi-hard time.
Anyways, I have been in touch with Mr Kalms and this is his reply:

Quote

I disassembled and checked the Suzy c2p out.

It contains a somewhat older version of the C2P routine inside
c2p1x1_8_c5_030.s (the latest version I published has a few instructions
shuffled around), which has been modified to support arbitrary
bitplane-sizes, and then the RTG C2P header has been tucked onto its
front.

If you are targetting 040+, you probably want to use another routine,
because the Suzy routine reads the source data twice during C2P
conversion.
(It is optimized for 68020/68030.)

All my routines are in the public domain (modify them, sell them for
profit - I don't care). If you want to be absolutely 100% in the clear,
it would be quicker & easier for you to take some other C2P, implement the
deltaskip optimizations there, and make your own RTG C2P package out of
it.
I would suggest that you try with c2p1x1_8_c5_040.s, because it already
supports arbitrary bitplane sizes.

You can find c2p1x1_8_c5_030.s and c2p1x1_8_c5_040.s inside my C2P archive:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~mikaelk/src/kalmsc2p.lha

-Mikael Kalms

AmigaMance · « **Reply #12 on:** May 08, 2005, 01:12:11 AM »

Also, PPC owners can use this package from aminet: RTGoesWarpOS.lha

Crusher · « **Reply #13 on:** May 08, 2005, 09:33:58 AM »

So there you have it Varthall, finally. :-)

lempkee · « **Reply #14 on:** May 08, 2005, 11:48:28 AM »

man thisis great news!

napalm is surely one of the coolest games released for the rts fans on amiga anyway i always played it on 060 so theese days i wouldnt exactly know how much faster it was/is but hey if i get the patch i can try it on both systems :-)

here is some info:

Clickboom never supported the tcp-ip hack thats out for napalm since 2001(?) but i talked to them about it and wondered if they would have put it up on their downloads site as an unsupported item but sadly it seems they never did and since then clickboom has been very quiet, i can only hope this new patch will be accepted :-)

As for reaching the ablaze team , really hard if not impossible... but best would be to go trough clickboom since they still might have updated information on their ex workers.