Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

Meneer Jansen

@mediamogul said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@Meneer-Jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

The orig. Mac version is close to something that might even be commercially released on a lightweight portable game platform today. Well, almost then... ;-)

I agree. It's a gorgeous game. I up-voted your post here earlier, but I wanted to wait until I could digest it's contents completely before I commented. This reference guide you put together really is streets ahead. Seeing as how so many of the old Mac games relied on 8-bit color, this will likely serve as a great one-stop tutorial to all the Pi users out there left scratching their heads over this issue. I look forward to giving it a go myself and vanquishing the evil Jaffar once and for all.

Thanks again.

I'm afraid I have to agree w/ you that it's not for the faint of hart. You'l need quite some Pi skills and Linux skills. Most of the fun must be sought in acquiring computer skills, not so much in playing PoP2, ha ha.

Anyway, summarizing it comes to this:

Install the graphical user interface/desktop environment

or this (if at all (still) possible on RetroPie) or re-install RetroPie w/ a script after instaling Raspbian on your Pi (again, if at all still possible) with this script and tutorial.
Compile BasiliskII from source code w/ the option to not use SDL for video but framebuffer/DGA.
Install MacOS operating system on it or download from PoP Unofficial Website the so called PoP Macintosh Total Pack.
Optionally: fiddle a bit w/ RetroPie to get a 512x384 game to play full screen.

You might also try to use the executable/binary that I compiled for my Pi 1B (mediafire link). I don't even know if it will run stand-alone though... Good luck! :-)

mediamogul

@Meneer-Jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

it's not for the faint of hart.

Fortune favors the bold. ;)

Thanks again. Your time and attention to this issue is much appreciated.

mediamogul

@Meneer-Jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

You might also try to use the executable/binary that I compiled for my Pi 1B (mediafire link). I don't even know if it will run stand-alone though... Good luck! :-)

Just a FYI to those who might try. By itself, this executable has dependencies that are not met. Thanks for the link though. It was worth a shot, and I still look forward to using your guide in full when I get a little more time to experiment.

Meneer Jansen

@mediamogul said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@Meneer-Jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

You might also try to use the executable/binary that I compiled for my Pi 1B (mediafire link). I don't even know if it will run stand-alone though... Good luck! :-)

Just a FYI to those who might try. By itself, this executable has dependencies that are not met. Thanks for the link though. It was worth a shot, and I still look forward to using your guide in full when I get a little more time to experiment.

I could also post the files it needs and tell you where they are installed. Also realize that you need to run this executable in a terminal window in LXDE (it needs X). Do you get an error message and could you post it here? Maybe in the error mess tells what files it misses...

mediamogul

@Meneer-Jansen

I do appreciate it, but it's probably best that it be compiled and installed as your guide intends or else we'll just be asking for trouble.

Meneer Jansen

I tried to run the BasiliskII executable from a location other than the standard location (i.e. /home/pi/ instead of /usr/local/bin/). It appears to need a config file (i.e. /home/pi/.basilisk_ii_prefs), a ROM for the virtual Mac and a hard disk image for the virtual Mac (both can be nicked from the PoP Mac total Pack). And BasiliskII needs to be started from within LXDE. One might try to find a good tutorial to install and start LXDE in RetroPie and do an experiment w/ the BasiliskII executable that I posted. Might save one the time and trouble of compiling it from source...

Good luck everybody. :-)

mediamogul

Last night, I was fortunate enough to stumble onto somewhat of a solution to this problem. Using the runcommand-onstart, we can now set the framebuffer to 8-bit color on launch by adding:

if [ "$2" = "basilisk" ]; then
fbset -depth 8
fi

With this enabled, games running in 8-bit color will now be visible. From here, I want to reset the default color depth on exit in the runcommand-onend script. Am I correct in assuming that the default color depth is ~~16-bit~~ 32-bit?

if [ "$2" = "basilisk" ]; then
fbset -depth 32
fi

BuZz

@mediamogul it's 32 bit now.

I could probably add some framebuffer depth setting to runcommand. Ill look into it.

mediamogul

@BuZz

Oh wow, that would be fantastic. Thanks.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul I haven't looked into it too extensively but there are some colour type Macs for the minivmac emulator though currently the macplus is the only binary it compiles

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

Very keen! My childhood best friend had a Macintosh Plus. I think that was the first time I ever played 'Deja Vu'. Has SheepShaver ever been considered for Retropie? If I remember right, it's capable of emulating a PowerPC up to System 9.0.4.

mediamogul

Just tested 'Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame' and it runs like a champ with the framebuffer set to 8-bit color depth. A runcommand setting would indeed be most helpful for games that require a higher color depth, as the screen now turns black when the emulated Mac is set to "Thousands of Colors". It's been a long time coming, but it was well worth the wait to play this great game again. I'm marking this as solved. Thanks again @Meneer-Jansen and @BuZz for your help with this.

BuZz

@mediamogul I made a ticket for myself on the issue tracker. Nice find btw. Strangely I did try switching framebuffer depth before and it didn't work. I obviously did something wrong or a firmware change has affected something. Nice one!

edmaul69

Got this all working today with a "1gb hard drive". Now i notice on the pi the mouse skips. Which makes using paint impossible. Closing stuff gets to be a pain too. Is it possible to have the mouse working a little better? On windows obviously it is flawless. Im going to install doom for fun just to see how bad it runs.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

The mouse doesn't skip on mine for whatever reason. I've even tried it with a few mouse-based games and it's pretty smooth.

edmaul69

@mediamogul strange. I have it with a premade 30mb drive and the 1gb one i made. The skip is so big that the blue squares on the background are slightly smaller than the space between each mouse jump. I watched a youtube video where the guy had the same issue.

edmaul69

@mediamogul also this is on os 7.5.5 with several performa roms and a quadra 650 rom. On a pi 3 i might try a fresh install as i used the files from a premade image.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Mine is MacOS 8.1 with a Performa ROM. My basiliskii.cfg contents may help:

extfs /
seriala /dev/ttyS0
serialb /dev/ttyS1
udptunnel false
udpport 6066
bootdrive 0
bootdriver -62
ramsize 67108864
frameskip 2
modelid 14
cpu 4
fpu true
nocdrom false
nosound false
noclipconversion false
nogui false
jit true
jitfpu false
jitdebug false
jitcachesize 8192
jitlazyflush true
jitinline true
keyboardtype 5
keycodes false
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
dsp /dev/dsp
mixer /dev/mixer
ignoresegv true
idlewait true

edmaul69

@mediamogul well i found out the issue. for some reason it does not like my apple iie mouse. hopefully i can figure the issue out. i even play all my doom mods with this single button mouse. i ended up making my cfg like yours except that i have my ram up to 138412032. thanks for the help.

edmaul69

I just tested and it actually skips in everything. Just never noticed before. This suxx...