PopUp_v1.0.lha

README
Short : HD Installer for Pop-Up
Author: DJ Mike (djmike@crystalmike.com)
Version: 1.0
Type: game/patch
Requires: WHDLoad 18, 512k chip mem

This patch applies to "Pop-Up" © 1991 Infogrammes.

REQUIREMENTS

- Original disk or compatible disk image
  (Cracks have not been tested and are not supported)
- Slave requires WHDLoad 18+
- Game requires 512k chip memory
  (+ approx 0.5MB other memory for preload option)

FEATURES

- Game loads fully from HD
- Uses real files, which can be compressed with Propack, CrunchMania or FImp
- Quit game at any time (default key F10), including on 68000 machines
- OS calls removed (no Kickstart ROM required)
- 24-bit memory accesses that crash on 32-bit machines fixed
- bplcon0 color bit setting fixed
- Floppy disk checks and unnecessary waits removed
- Exit option on title screen fixed to actually exit the game
- Raster wait routine fixed for fast machine/emulator compatibility
- Filenames with trailing '.' fixed for emulators etc.
- Keyboard routine replaced for better reliability
- Trainer/other options added - set CUSTOM1 with any of the following:
  + 1 for infinite lives
  + 2 for infinite power-ups
  + 4 to use Help key to skip levels
- Set CUSTOM2=0-99 to select starting level
- Set CUSTOM3=0-9 to select custom level slot for editor
- Color/New/Rom Icons included
- Source code included

HISTORY

Version 1.0 (2024-07-14)
- Initial release

WORDS FROM THE AUTHOR

I took this install on after a request on EAB. (Greetings to phibel!)
It turned out to be a pretty interesting game to patch. On the face of it it
is OS-friendly using real files, but besides using the dos library to load its
files, it basically trashes the OS and hits the hardware directly. That includes
directly polling the CIA registers looking for a disk in the drive, so there
was no chance of this ever running from HD without some attention.

The game has a troublesome loader for its images, where it loads them in
512-byte chunks in order to gradually expand some run-length compressed data.
That doesn't play nicely if PRELOAD is turned off, or if you like to compress
data files, so I've rewritten it entirely to unpack the whole file in-place.

There were also some misuses of an address register to sneakily add a data value
to the top 8 bits - a trick that works fine on original Amigas, but just plain
crashes on any 32-bit RAM machine.

If you use the editor, bear in mind that any levels you make will NOT be loaded
with the game until you open the editor and load them there. For convenience,
if you do create any levels, I've added a slot system so you can have multiple
sets of levels if you really want. Any existing custom levels can be ported by
copying them to the 'data' folder as 'custom_levels.saveX' where X is a number
from 0-9 depending on slot.

So quite a fun patch in the end. Enjoy!

--- DJ Mike (14.07.2024)

         Bug report form, full WHDLoad package and other installs:
                          http://www.whdload.de