I've been troubleshooting my config to get started on this, and I need some guidance from those of you more knowledgeable about the inner workings of this stuff. I have two issues I want to work out before I engage with the actual TAS work.
1. Memory
With Crystal Caves, I was able to skip the config.sys and autoexec.bat and jump straight into the game. With God of Thunder, if I do this I get a message saying I need an additional 2K of memory. If I let both run, I can launch the game, but the current FreeDOS image runs the installer, so I'm guessing I should either use a different floppy image or figure out how to tweak the existing one. I tried extracting the image to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat, but for some reason when I tried recompiling the image using 7zip it was slightly larger than a floppy image. (Also, yes, I tried just adding more memory in the JPC parameters.)
Essentially, I need some guidance on whether I should compile my own disc image (and if so, if there's a good guide on making one), or if there's more to editing the aforementioned files than extracting the image and tweaking them in a text editor before re-inserting them. If there's no alternative to just letting them run, that's fine, but obviously saving the boot frames would be nice.
2. Soundblaster compatibility
There's
an old thread about SoundBlaster for GoT, but the only takeaway I got is that the game is pretty unreliable about detecting it. I noticed that the new FreeDOS image has "rem SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330" in the autoexec, but even if I manually run the "set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T6" recommended by the
JPC guide, the game doesn't seem to detect it. It's bundled with a soundblaster testing tool which seems to detect it OK, but obviously if the game doesn't, then it doesn't do me much good.
Am I being sabotaged by the autoexec, or should manually running SET BLASTER correct that? Is there anything else I should do besides running multiple attempts and simply hoping that it eventually detects the card when I try to record?
I realize that you don't need sound cues in a TAS, but this game has such a great soundtrack and SFX that I consider them must-haves.