Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!mirror!ssi3b1!ssibbs!jlockhar
From: jlockhar@ssibbs.UUCP (John Lockhart)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Bard's Tale II on speed (kinda LONG)
Summary: Bard's Tale II - Problems with 1.3
Message-ID: <46@ssibbs.UUCP>
Date: 30 Nov 88 03:48:54 GMT
References: <2357@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Sangho's Public Access Unix, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 51

In article <2357@cbnews.ATT.COM>, wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) writes:
>[stuff deleted] 
> Soooo,... tonight I'll start experimenting with ways to speed it up.
> I'd also appreciate any help anyone out there may care to offer.
> 
> My system is an Amiga 2000 with 2 megs of expansion RAM. I'm operating
> under 1.2 (out here in the sticks (! ? ) most of us are *still* waiting
[more deletions]
> Naturally, the character disk must be left as is, so you can save your
> game. Has anyone tried this ?
> Bill Thacker						att!cbnews!wbt

I use a combination of hard drive, RAM:, and messy bug workaround to get
it to work reasonably well.  I believe I had to alter the binary to get
rid of some hard-coded paths and replace 'em with logical names,
preserving the original string length.  I did this only after I had
problems doing it the obvious way (copying it to a directory on the hard 
drive, doing ASSIGNs, and trying to run it unsuccessfully, as below).
Not nice, but it works - kind of.

First, my system is an A2000 with Micron/ASDG 2M RAM, A2090, ST251 hard
drive, flickerFixer, internal floppy, and external floppy, running under
1.3 AmigaDOS.  Usual things I run are:  FF, WShell, MachII, WorkBench,
ARexx, ConMan, RAD:, and various ARP commands (basically rm, cp, mv-type
stuff; some ARP stuff breaks with 1.3). 

Bard's Tale II does not work properly.  After booting normally, I do the
necessary ASSIGNs ("bardsdk:" to ff1:games/bt and "Destiny Knight
Character Disk:" to ff1:games/bt/chars, where ff1: is the FFS partition
on the hard drive).  I then CD to ff1:games/bt and type "bard".  Guru!!

*However,* Bard's Tale works perfectly well if you do *nothing* else
before starting it up [I found this out before altering the binary].  So
I've created a special "Bard's Boot" disk for which the startup-sequence
copies necessary executables to RAM: and starts the program with a RUN
command, and then goes about the business of setting up the hard drive,
etc.  I still keep much of the picture data and all of the character
data safely on the hard drive -- it does the ASSIGNs before BT2 gives
up looking. 

I called EA and they said, "We're looking into it."  Sounds like a line
to me, especially after the demise of Archon for lack of support.  But
who knows, at least it isn't copy-protected (hooray).  Does anyone have
a better solution than this workaround?


-- 
                    --- John Lockhart
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         jlockhar@ssibbs.UUCP         or    jwl@feanor.stanford.edu