[Bugs] Shadows of the beast CRT not working

I noticed shadows of the beast CRT not working on my TC64V2s. Black screen. Is this a known problem?

I never had Shadows Of The Beast CRT working. Just now I tried to download this one

Don't know if this is the same CRT that comes with the OneLoad64 Games Collection V3 package. Which results in the same black screen. The one in the first link is the Ocean image. I believe I've tried others as well.

I did try to reset the settings back to factory default. No change. System is PAL C64, shortboards 250469 Rev A and Rev B. Cartridge mode. I don't remember if I tried standalone mode with this game. Starting the Shadows Of The Beast CRT always results in a black screen. Other CRTs are working fine. Tried alot of games.

Oh, and if it matters, using the VGA output.

Edit: And I did just now try the CRT image from the first link, in VICE. And there it works just fine. Also using the latest TC64 V2 firmware (Beta 9Q).

Edit 2: Just tried my TC64 V2 in standalone mode using the dockingstation. Both with PAL and NTSC. Same problem.

Quote from Tobias

I confirm this - the .crt from my testrepo also just shows a black screen

No idea what the problem would be it.... unfortunately no time to look at it right now either - it would help if you could check what update introduced the problem. Another interesting test would be using the menu system from the last working update with the latest core.

Thanks for confirming. I came to think about something. When Soul Force from Protovision was released a few years back, none of the official Soul Force CRT images was working with my TC64V2s. A cracked easyflash version did work. I made a post about it in these forums and I believe you made some changes in the next release of the firmware where you fixed some stuff related to that specific size of Ocean CRT images (The size used by Soul Force). I think you said it was an uncommon Ocean CRT size. Protovision later released both an Easyflash and C64GS version of the CRT images after I had contacted them about the issue. So maybe the problem we're seeing with the Shadows Of The Beast Ocean CRT is related to the changes you made with regards to the Soul Force Ocean CRT problem.

Found my old thread,

It's Beta 9i where the Ocean CRT changes were made. I downloaded the Beta 9i and looked in the 'what's new notes'

"FPGA Core:

- Fix in VIC-II emulation, Sprite vs Sprite collisions were wrong for some pixel

values

- Fixed 512k Ocean Cartridge mapping

- When CPU is crashed, force a reset when pressing the menu button. Allows to

enter the menu when CPU is crashed.

- Fixed REU behavior when triggered by a Read-modify-write instruction operating

at FF00.

- REU timing fixes. The REU can steal one cycle during badlines or at the

beginning of sprite DMA.

- REU/VIC-II combined timing fix. Added emulation of slow BA signal for the

first sprite 0 DMA fetch, allowing REU to steal two cycles."

I did find a working CRT version of Shadows of the beast. This easyflash games collection contains Shadows of the beast amongst other games. The first time I started this easyflash cart, shadows of the beast did not work. But all times after that the game started up fine. First time I booted this cart I also got some kind of easyflash logo animation. After that first time I didn't see that logo anymore and shadows of the beast would work every time. It's a 1MB cart and shadows of the beast is 256KB. So at least this is an alternative for people who must play the cart version until the Ocean crt issue is fixed.

Quote from Jens

Is the game available for C64? Haven't seen it! Do you have a download link, so we can test?

And yes, I too didn't know this game was released for the C64 until probably 5 or 6 years back. C64 has so vast of a gamebase that I discover titles I didn't know about quite often.