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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 05, 2022 4:52 pm

During my seemingly countless experiments to get Dungeon Master 2 to play smoothly across all areas of the game on my Amigas, I also attempted to use the WHDLoad version at one point last month, too.

Quick refresher, my most recent machine I'm using for my current tests:
  • Amiga 3000
  • OS 3.1
  • zz9000, P96
  • BigRAM 256
  • 8MB Zip RAM
  • SCSI2SD (one as a .5GB boot drive, another for 2GB storage)
Right off the bat, when using the zz9000 video modes the game would crash within 1-2 minutes of playing. I could never get further than the beginning level where you choose your characters in the cryo chambers. Something about the sound effects when you open the doors seems to make the game crash quite quickly.

My fix was to drag the zz9000 drivers out of Monitors and essentially just use the Amiga's native screen modes. But then you lose one of the key features of having the zz9000 in the first place. But, at least the ZZ allows you to use native modes with its HDMI adapter. That's pretty cool.

My thought, though, was to install WHDLoad in the hopes that it might have fixed the P96 RTG crashing. It seemed a hail mary, but worth a shot.

So, I installed WHDLoad to install only this one game. To be completely honest, it was my first time doing anything like this since playing around with JST in 1.3. I was pretty impressed how it asked for my original disks to install the game to the hard drive. I remember thinking, "The original game had a hard drive installer..." Regardless, WHDLoad often packs in a lot of little bug fixes and whatnot.

After installing the game, I was absolutely stunned when I tried to launch it.
IMG_6941.JPG
Noooooooooo!!!


To my astonishment, when DM2 had been entered into WHDLoad back in 2003 it had been converted to require AGA. I couldn't believe it.

And yes, I'd tried to play this game over and over and always ran into performance issues on Amiga but it never stopped me from actually playing. This is where the game itself gets pretty interesting.

On the side of the original box is this sticker:
IMG_6940.jpg

However, inside the box is this baffling reference card insert:
IMG_7112.jpg

We actually know this to be patently false, because the game wasn't an AGA game. It is actually running in 32 color ECS mode.

So, I decided to actually contact the fine folks at WHDLoad and report this as a bug. I know, I know. But I felt it was my duty to at least try even though this game file had been created on the WHDLoad platform all the way back in 2003!

Regardless, I contacted the original developer named Psygore and explained the situation. I asked if it would be possible to make the WHDLoad version not require AGA - when the original disks don't?

A few days went by and ...
I was notified my "Bug report" had been entered into the Mantis bug tracking system!

A short time later, I was notified that a new fix had been applied! It came with the following developer's notes in Mantis.
Attached a new slave 1.1:
- no need AGA chipset
- kickstart 1.3 used
- less memory requirements (512K chipmem, 1.5M fastmem) + some MB for preload
- trainers added
- language can be changed
Incredibly, all of these bug fixes came with a single new slave file that equated to a tiny 6KB. I've since tested the file and it works!
IMG_7118.JPG
Buh-bye 2003. Hello 2022! The new slave file isn't public from what I can tell. If anyone wants it... lemme know.

IMG_7119.jpg
What the...? Look at all of these CHEATS! I'd never do this, but wow!

IMG_7120.jpg
Pretty cool to see these additional languages added. Not sure how much this would change, but maybe a little bit for some?


It not only lets me run the game from WHDLoad, but it allows me to play it with the ZZ9000 RTG modes enabled - which is REALLY bad ass.

The only issue (and it's a big one): the game actually runs noticeably slower while inside the WHDLoad environment. While it has all of these very cool new features, it appears to be less playable than before. I imagine for most games when played on an "monster machine" like my A3000, the WHDLoad extra requirements aren't even noticed. I mean, I have seemingly plenty of chip, fast, and CPU. And the game is running on a really fast and smooth SCSI storage system.

But whatever overhead WHDLoad requires, it definitely slows the game down to a level that makes things stutter.

Ah well... it was worth a try. And frankly I'm very impressed Psygore at WHDLoad took the time and effort to remove the AGA lock on the game and add all the new features. Really, really cool.





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