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 ! ------------------------------- clip and save --------------------------------