launchpal

Short:        Launch and play old games from an AGA-WB properly
Author:       rade@coli.uni-sb.de (Ralph Debusmann)
Uploader:     rade coli uni-sb de (Ralph Debusmann)
Type:         util/misc
Architecture: m68k-amigaos

--- short introduction

Games like "Battle Isle" can be installed on HD easily but if you run
them from an AGA-WB-screenmode (like DBLNTSC), the display gets
corrupted, sometimes right at the start, sometimes (and this is the
nastier situation) halfway during playing.

"Ok" I hear you say, we have 42 programs like "KillAGA" or "SetChipRev"
for this purpose. But sometimes you can't get games to work simply with
one of those hardware-hacking-display-thingies. Plus those programs can't
prevent those nasty screen mess-ups halfway during playing. You'll need
to really open your Workbench in PAL or have a PAL-screen at the front
when starting the game.

launchpal gets you around calling "ScreenMode", choosing "PAL:HighRes"
and pushing the "USE"-button. launchpal opens its own PAL-screen, which
is made public and 'clones' the WB-screen by intercepting all windows
which the system (e.g. a virus killer like VirusZ) might decide to open
during you playing the game. This prevents the AmigaOS to ever switch
back to the AGA-moded-WB-screen during the operation of your game and
thus you can play e.g. Battle Isle safely and nicely without any
mess-ups. This "SHANGHAI"-functionality is what I missed in "mscreen",
which is a similar program to mine. "mscreen" also at times decided to
crash my 060-machine, which I didn't like either.

--- tech

launchpal was written using E³ and in a quick'n'dirty fashion. Even
quicker and dirtier than MacTransfEr. It's another hack. Nevertheless,
the source is included.