Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!cbnews!wbt
From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Bard's Tale II on speed
Message-ID: <2415@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 1 Dec 88 14:25:14 GMT
References: <2357@cbnews.ATT.COM> <285@gtss.UUCP>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 75

In article <285@gtss.UUCP> chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) writes:
>In article <2357@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) writes:
>)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
>)in line as 1.3 trickles in... another reason to hate California), and
>)have FaccII.  Happily, the game disk is not copy protected  (wow !,
>)thanks, EA !).
>)
>)My first guess would be to copy the entire game disk to RAM: and assign
>)"Bard's Tale 2 Game disk" (or whatever the disk's name is) to RAM:
>
>So I use the following startup-sequence to copy some, but not quite all,
>of the Bard's Tale II disk to ram:.  Perhaps I would do better to copy more,
>or even less, but what the hell, it works for me.
>
>#--- humble and imperfect startup-sequence exemplifing alternative follows:

Unfortunately, Charles omitted a few crucial steps (as an excercise
for the reader, no doubt 8-)

1) You must create the directory "DESTINY KNIGHT CHARACTER DISK:c" and
copy the commands "path", "copy", "assign", "cd", and , "makedir" into it
from "Workbench 1.2:c". (Score one for me, I realized this before I read
the post).

2) The directory "DESTINY KNIGHT CHARACTER DISK:l" must contain the files
"Disk-Validator" and "Ram-Handler" from "Workbench 1.2:l"  (add half a 
point for me, I copied in disk-validator. Got a failed book then figured
out that "copy to RAM:" won't work without ram-handler 8->

3) You must relabel your game disk. If you leave it labeled "BARDSDK".
the system will be unable to assign that name to RAM: while the disk is
mounted.


Below are the changes I used to Mr. Cleveland's s/startup-sequence.

>"DESTINY KNIGHT CHARACTER DISK:c/path" add "DESTINY KNIGHT CHARACTER DISK:c"
>assign l: "DESTINY KNIGHT CHARACTER DISK:l"
>copy DF0: to RAM: all
>cd ram:
>assign BARDSDK: ram:
>assign fonts: ram:fonts
>assign libs: ram:libs
assign devs: ram:devs     ; the added assigns are probably pointless. At
assign sys: ram:	  ; 9:00 I started getting frustrated. 8-)
bard

I know this is gross overkill; I don't need to copy all of the game
disk (e.g., s/*) into RAM:  But I've got enough memory that that's
easier than farging with it.

Now, here's the killer: it works, but doesn't.  

The game goes into RAM: fine, starts up, nice and quiet, no disk access.
But everytime there would have been a pause playing it off disk (i.e., for
loading graphics, sounds, etc), there's still a pause, and it doesn't seem
any shorter to me. You also get the "busy" signal (the cartoon-balloon
snore).

I realize that there's still bound to be some lag as the information from
RAM: is decoded and used; but I'd expected a full second or more saved on
each access.  

Is this all there is,  or have I done something wrong ?

------------------------------ valuable coupon -------------------------------
Bill Thacker						att!cbnews!wbt
	"C" combines the power of assembly language with the
	 flexibility of assembly language.
Disclaimer: Farg 'em if they can't take a joke !
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