New game adapting for HD concept idea

[Petari]

  While walked in downtown today I was thinking about doing new concept for game adaptations - actually not really new solution(s), just using best of existing ones for specific situation. So, there is concept with TOS used for hard disk access - that's older GAMEX system. It sets GEMDOS part of 1.04 in high RAM and relocates PP hard disk driver there too, sets workspace (condition is fully PC relative code of driver).
Or 'autoboots' Seimet's Hddriver or AHDI - so that it will be in high RAM for TOS in high RAM. Then no need for slow RAM swaps as it is with HAGA (and WHDL (Amiga), ULS ) - hard disk access is pretty direct.
  So, in game launcher will be code for detecting is active hard disk driver PP driver (no support for Hddriver and AHDI) - and if it is detected then go on GAMEX way - but it will be not called so, as there will be improvements. Maybe to call it GEHA :-)
 Improvements possible:  for games not using TOS calls it can be much shorter, as need only TOS init and FAT16 filesystem code. And that will be much shorter.
 Then, it will be iTOS, so good for pure DOS type large partitions up to 1 GB and 30 of them. While is compatible with AHDI/TOS type partitions too . And big advantage is that writes to hard disk will be way faster, especially if there are many short segments - switch from game to TOS in RAM and back is much faster.
 In case of TOS calling games will be full GEMDOS part or full TOS (for AES games), and of course iTOS code for work with all partition types.
 That means need for new HAGA, HAG2, HAGE DLLs, but there will be not much added, so should fit well in top 32 KB RAM.
Need new D15*.FIC files - 3 of them :
Only TOS part for hard disk work - should use not more than some 40 KB RAM.
GEMDOS part - that uses normally some 92 KB (without workspace), but will be less because optimizations (already used in iTOS)
Whole TOS - instead 192 KB about 170 KB .
Of course it will be FIC-ed (packed) to some 60% of len.
Now, as this means extra files in DIRs FILES of games - beside currently used D15 files  maybe to go on not distribute them with every game adapt, but put in usual shared DIR only :  C:/GAMEX  - that will save some space, or plenty of it in case of many games.
 Well, I hope that it was understandable enough good.
Ah, and statesaves, exit to Desktop will be as it is with HAGA now, for all cases.

[Petari]

Some months passed, and I can report here that made very good progress.
There are new HAGE, HAG2 and HAGA function library files for this new concept. And file D15RI.FIC - only for hard disk access. Best place for it is C:/GAMEX - as same one is used for all 3 HAG* systems.
Did plenty of new adapts and tested all them with this new system.
No more screen fading at disk access (or 'flashing' as some call it), and disk operations are faster, especially state saves.
In case of HAGE and HAG2 no need to correct launcher file of game. Only in case of HAGA, but corrections is really simple, can be done in 5 minutes.
So, from now, new adaptations on compilations will be with this. That's the best way, as it needs hard disk driver what supplies some data for further work from high RAM.

More details and YT videos here:  https://atari.8bitchip.info/imprhage.html