Presenting Korolev68k, a simple game launcher frontend

[kamiboy]

Now that some annoying bugs have been squashed in doslib thanks to help from Elmer I finally had the chance to implement an old idea of mine.

Korolev68k is a simple text mode game launcher frontend for the x68000 designed around the hdd image that we all use here.

It is meant for people who want the ability to pick and launch games without using a keyboard, and from a simple scrolling list of just the games on the system. It is designed to make X68000 gaming feel more like the use of flash carts on consoles.

Anyway, the executable and documentations are inside the zip. Bear in mind that this has not been tested on the actual hardware, only in XM6 Pro. There might be issues, so do report back my sweet little guinea pigs.

There might be performance issues as well, as the code is very sloppily written in order to keep the project complexity from spiraling out of control.

Cheers all!

Edit:
It has now been tested and confirmed to work on an Compact XVI on the Baller HDD image.

[kamiboy]

Bwa ha ha ha, what a wonderful waste of time!

I was browsing the file archives to see what new games had poped up in the newer HDD images since the V3/Baller that I am using and discovered to my bewilderment that the same game launcher solution had already been implemented by someone else about a year after I stopped visiting these forums.

Oh, well, at least my version only took three days to make.

[NFG]

Reinventing the wheel is... um...  character building.  Or something.  <_<

Still, 7 downloads!  Thumbs up!

[kamiboy]

I am actually glad I made my own launcher. It has some extra features specially coveted by me, such as autoboot of a chosen game.

My initial ambitions for the launcher were much grander though. I wanted something closer to a MAME frontend with game screenshots and perhaps graphical scaling effets of the scrolling list.

It would have been too much work, so I quickly gave it up for a simple elegant list.

[kamiboy]

So, the long,  arduous and not least, costly, quest to recap my X68000 monitor will hopefully be over within a few days and I'll be firing up the old Compact for the first time in over a year. I'll then be able to test the Korolev launcher on actual hardware for the first time.

Has any of the downloaders tested it on real hardware at all? How fare thee?

[kamiboy]

So, I got a chance to test the program on actual hardware today and I get a bus error. Same thing with my game project, so something is awry. Stay tuned, debugging on actual hardware is a huge pain in the ass.

[elmer]

So, I got a chance to test the program on actual hardware today and I get a bus error. Same thing with my game project, so something is awry. Stay tuned, debugging on actual hardware is a huge pain in the ass.

I'm betting on it being the same issue that we saw with the library function ... i.e. accessing a 16-bit/32-bit variable at an odd-byte-aligned address.

If you're using packed structures with "char"s in them, you've got to be careful about the number of chars to make sure that the alignment is "even" before the next 16-bit/32-bit variable.

Good hunting!

[kamiboy]

Yeah, I was suspecting the same thing. I am a bit pusher by nature, so I do tend to use chars when I can. I'll just have to add a bunch of align clauses to all my structs and hope for the best.

[kamiboy]

It seems the VSYNC code was responsible for the crash. I am not sure why it would do that, but removing it solved the problem so the OP has been updated with a fixed version of the Korolev launcher that now works on the actual hardware.