How do I modify the MegaAGS clock speeds?

Nemesis2k · Unread post by **Nemesis2k** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 12:38 pm

The MegaAGS adf has been designed to force a lot of 50hz games into 60hz causing graphical glitches and musical inaccuracies. How can I modify the adf file to toggle these all to the correct speeds?

For example, try running street fighter 2.

Chris23235 · Unread post by **Chris23235** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:22 pm

You can use the force PAL option, but you have to toggle it every time or you can edit the AGS file for the game.

Nemesis2k · Unread post by **Nemesis2k** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:41 pm

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:22 pm You can use the force PAL option, but you have to toggle it every time or you can edit the AGS file for the game.

I do not see a "force PAL" option. Where is that?

Edit: NVM I found it lol, I was looking in the core settings.

Thanks for your help.

akeley · Unread post by **akeley** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:44 pm

The SF 2 gfx glitches are not connected to AGS, I think (or maybe not even PAL/NTSC). They also appeared when I ran whd/hdfs of this game not form the AGS, on my own WB install. The floppy version was ok.

Nemesis2k · Unread post by **Nemesis2k** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:47 pm

akeley wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:44 pm The SF 2 gfx glitches are not connected to AGS, I think. They also appeared when I ran whd/hdfs of this game not form the AGS, on my own WB install. The floppy version was ok.

Good to know, I must check that with my A1200 later.

akeley · Unread post by **akeley** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:54 pm

Nemesis2k wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:47 pm Good to know, I must check that with my A1200 later.

I meant to say "my own WB install on MiSTer, not the AGS WB". I suppose on real HW it's also ok, the SF2 hdf works fine in WinUAE.

FoxbatStargazer · Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:43 pm

I do wonder where I can pick a bone with some of these NTSC/PAL defaults, as you mentioned the NTSC choices often seem incorrect! (And I say that as an American ST owner!)

NegSol · Unread post by **NegSol** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:57 pm

FoxbatStargazer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:43 pm I do wonder where I can pick a bone with some of these NTSC/PAL defaults, as you mentioned the NTSC choices often seem incorrect! (And I say that as an American ST owner!)

Just go to the AGS2 folder. Find whatever *.run file you want to change.
Open in a text editor like ced.
Change the line with NTSC in it to PAL.
Enjoy your new permanent PAL setting for this very game.

akeley · Unread post by **akeley** » Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:06 pm

FoxbatStargazer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:43 pm I do wonder where I can pick a bone with some of these NTSC/PAL defaults, as you mentioned the NTSC choices often seem incorrect! (And I say that as an American ST owner!)

I think it was actually worse in the earlier AGS editions. I remember that last year they had Lotus set to NTSC and it ran way too fast, but now it's PAL.

Overall, I prefer to run games from my own WB install and just treat AGS as a big container hdf.

limi · Unread post by **limi** » Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:07 pm

FoxbatStargazer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:43 pm I do wonder where I can pick a bone with some of these NTSC/PAL defaults, as you mentioned the NTSC choices often seem incorrect! (And I say that as an American ST owner!)

You can pick a bone with the default settings by just letting us know here on the forums when you find a game that seems to have the wrong setting. This is not one of those cases, though — SF2 is broken on WHDLoad in general, it seems?

(as an aside, you have a MiSTer — why would you play one of the worst ports of Street Fighter 2 ever created when you have the arcade available to you?

)

akeley wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:06 pm
I think it was actually worse in the earlier AGS editions. I remember that last year they had Lotus set to NTSC and it ran way too fast, but now it's PAL.

Yes, the early versions of MegaAGS were a bit too aggressive in its NTSC settings — essentially running things at NTSC and 60hz when they worked. The new approach (starting with the 5× scale supporting version in 2021) default to using PAL when the developer studio was likely to be based in Europe. For example, all Cinemaware games (Defender of the Crown, Wings) default to NTSC, whereas games like Lotus Turbo Challenge will now default to PAL even though they are smoother in NTSC — since they were developed on PAL systems originally. You can of course always override the defaults, as mentioned in this thread.

(We did miss a few games along the way that are still NTSC when they should be PAL, a prominent example would be Great Giana Sisters, which was developed in PAL but is smoother in NTSC if you can accept the faster music. It will default to PAL in the future, to reflect the developers’ setups)

FoxbatStargazer · Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:17 am

OK here's a super obscure and irrelevant game flagged NTSC that should be PAL.

Prophecy I: The Viking Child. Plays fine in NTSC WHDLoad but the music is way too fast and aspect ratio too tall. The correct music speed is verified vs. the DOS version running on 70hz. On a 8 mhz ST you also get a ton more slowdown from heavy sprites at 60hz than 50hz. The devs Imagitek were based in the UK.

There are a few other that I am suspicious about (Major Motion, Mouse Quest) but am undecided. I think Major Motion in particular has WHDload speed issues.

HeavyHitter · Unread post by **HeavyHitter** » Sat Nov 13, 2021 12:35 am

I’m trying to fix Walker.run file. My problem is that run file is already set to PAL5 but the games starts in NTSC. But if I force PAL from the options menu before starting the game it work correctly in starts in PAL. Any idea how to get the same with the run file ?

retrodroid · Unread post by **retrodroid** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:52 pm

I'm having a similar issue. Trying to run Another World in NTSC, since I read that NTSC supports 24 fps, vs PAL 20. However, changing the .run file to use NTSC instead of PAL doesn't seem to do anything, still outputs at 50Hz.

Any ideas?

akeley · Unread post by **akeley** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:49 pm

In the latest MegaAGS Another World is set to NTSC and runs in NTSC, no? Or are you running it from your own WB?

limi · Unread post by **limi** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:20 pm

Not that I recommend editing these files directly (there’s a lot more complexity here that MegaAGS does its best to protect you from), but I’m guessing you guys may be editing the line with “setvadjust”, which only controls the viewport — e.g. PAL5 crop. It does not control PAL vs. NTSC. That’s usually done in the WHDLoad invocation, either as a command line argument, or (in some cases) with a dedicated NTSC WHDLoad image.

retrodroid · Unread post by **retrodroid** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:04 pm

akeley wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:49 pm In the latest MegaAGS Another World is set to NTSC and runs in NTSC, no? Or are you running it from your own WB?

Just using the stock MegaAGS distro. I can see in the Another_World.run file that it is specifying PAL5 and PAL, but only if it doesn't find the ENV variables that it uses to determine these values.

It also lists Another World as Hardware: OCS/PAL in the menu preview.

When it launches it puts my multi-sync arcade monitor into 330 x 216 @ 49.9Hz mode. 50 fps vs NTSC's 60 and is quite flickery for that reason.

EDIT>> Nevermind... 10 seconds of looking around at the AGS Options menu I found the "Force All Games to use NTSC" option. Works like a charm!
Sorry for wasting everyone's time.

limi · Unread post by **limi** » Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:52 pm

Oh, and for the record, some of these will have fixes in the upcoming version of MegaAGS:

FoxbatStargazer wrote: ↑Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:17 am
Prophecy I: The Viking Child. Plays fine in NTSC WHDLoad but the music is way too fast and aspect ratio too tall. The correct music speed is verified vs. the DOS version running on 70hz. On a 8 mhz ST you also get a ton more slowdown from heavy sprites at 60hz than 50hz. The devs Imagitek were based in the UK.

Fixed, is now 5×PAL.

There are a few other that I am suspicious about (Major Motion, Mouse Quest) but am undecided. I think Major Motion in particular has WHDload speed issues.

I fixed Major Motion, it’s 5×PAL now.

MouseQuest (aka. MouseTrap) is an interesting one. The developers were in the US, the WHDLoad image is NTSC, but it *is* a port of a BBC Electron game (which was definitely PAL). I didn’t touch that one as it seems correct in the sense that it would match the developers’ setups. But I’m sure it feels more correct in PAL if you played it in Europe back in the day.

scrdcow · Unread post by **scrdcow** » Wed Feb 16, 2022 6:32 am

Hi! Been fiddiling a bit with MegaAGS 20210313 release. My projector is slow at switching modes and AGS boots up in NTSC which is not the best if I mostly want to run PAL-stuff. I switched to PAL HiRes in WB but realised AGS had it's own thing going on... so I changed to some PAL-setting ($29000) in the ags2.conf, and it worked! But... when I run a demo for ex and it ends or I quit with "quit key" it goes back into AGS2 with NTSC again. I also tried to set it to force PAL in-case that also affected AGS itself somehow but it didn't help. What's the error here, easily fixable?

Would be nice if it could respect ags2.conf upon restart in case it doesn't already and I have an old verison or theres some error on my side

limi · Unread post by **limi** » Wed Feb 16, 2022 7:27 am

Boot into Workbench and change the ScreenMode setting to be PAL. We default to NTSC in the menu since most PAL area CRTs handle NTSC just fine, but NTSC area CRTs generally can’t handle PAL.

scrdcow · Unread post by **scrdcow** » Thu Feb 17, 2022 12:15 am

Maybe i'm missing something. I'm not to experienced with AmigaOS. You mean boot into WB bypassing the AGS-menu and then change to PAL and that makes it permanent for the menu? Have to try it...

Because I have already tried escaping out to WB and change the screenmode, and also changed mode in ags2.conf. That worked, it boots up into PAL with AGS and the setting in WB is correct. But when a PAL-demo quits the menu goes back to NTSC. I tried to find any script that is run after whdload stuff is done, in case that is the culprit, but here my AmigaOS understanding is lacking. Thanks for all the great work you guys put into MegaAGS btw

EDIT: I found the problem. Every .run-script for all demos is runnig setntsc after they are done. I'm guessing the AGS-launcher keep running in the background and that's why it needs to switch back with setntsc? Is it possible to have some logic in the run-scripts that looks for a usersetting instead, maybe a swich-able option in the menu that also change the mode in ags2.conf. Atleast I can move setntsc for now, but maybe it breaks on NTSC-titles.

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How do I modify the MegaAGS clock speeds?

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