Tape games easy start guide: - At the READY prompt, type LOAD and press Enter. We force Play to be pressed, so it should immediately begin to load the program on the tape.
Run with another emulator:
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Biz can DO run#5374: Kabuto's C64 The Great Giana Sisters in 10:11.52's ROM before. But it doesn't after changing. So I changed the right place. However, SQIJ!.t64 ROM still can't autoplay the tape. How to do?
Something that came up on IRC today, the TAStudio state sizes for C64 games seem unusually large for a machine which has 64kB RAM. I tested a few roms, they seem to use either 0.26MB, 1.04MB or 4.26MB: [...] From that relatively small sample size, seems like any floppy disk image will use 1.04MB, any (raw) tape image will use 0.26MB and most cartridges will use 0.26MB, but some use 1.04MB, few even 4.26MB. Any idea why or how? * There're two tape formats for C64, .tap (which is a raw tape file, shows up as a supported format in BizHawk's Open ROM dialog) and .t64 (which was originally designed for C64s, doesn't show up as supported but still works, it just loads as a floppy image) From the cartridge ROMs I tested, one didn't seem to work, it just booted into normal C64 startup. Tested on fresh Vice, worked fine: "Leaderboard Golf (1986)(Access Software).crt"
I've got a message out to the C64 SMB creator to see if he thinks it may be related to the VSP scrolling. I haven't received a reply yet. I'm guessing it has something to do with how BizHawk processes that scrolling technique. I've also tested on VICE with no problems and CCS64 as well also with no problems. EDIT: I received a reply from ZeroPaige (the SMB dev), who suggested I test Mayhem in Monsterland in BizHawk as it also uses VSP scrolling. After testing, I can confirm that it also exhibits this same twitchy background bug. So anyone wanting to update/improve the C64 core now knows where to look to improve this issue.
Some interesting info about T64 files, which are apparently unrelated to tapes whatsoever and are a relic of really old emulators: https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=71839 Now that I know they aren't related to tapes (and even have "1541 file types" on them!) I could probably just stick the contained files into a disk image the same way we do with PRGs and be done with them.
For what it's worth, there is a T64 to TAP converter (and vice versa) that's available called WAV-PRG. It can be found here. If games converted from T64 to TAP can be used for TASing them....that's left for the senior judge to decide.
For VSP Mayhem In Monsterland is also a good test case. See also https://csdb.dk/release/?id=126927 for AGSP I trust you know about the VICE test repository?
