Troubleshooting PicoGUS Star Control 2 issues

[starslab]

Greeting from Adrian's Digital Basement!

I noticed on his recent video that you have a "compatibility" issue with Star Control 2.

I very distinctly remember having a weirdo bizarro random sounds constantly playing issue with Star Control 2 on my Ultrasound back when I first installed the game back in the day. There was a fix or patch that cleared that up, but I have no recollection of where I got that, or exactly what form it took.

Can I ask for details on the testing you've done? Are you testing with the initial floppy-disc release of the game, and have you verified this misbehavior only occurs only on PicoGUS and not on ~~real~~ original hardware?

[starslab]

I'm on a discord with the original creators of Star Control 2, and someone there remembers this problem and suggests this workaround - I don't have a legacy computer to test on, but if someone else here does....

It's claimed that this game has an error in it's environment variable processing - specifically, it incorrectly interprets the last value in a typical ULTRASND variable. So change from something like "240,3,3,5,5" to "240,3,3,5" before running Star Control 2.

[drlarsen77]

FWIW, it seems to be working fine without the workaround on PicoGUS release v2.0.0 and the initial floppy-disc release of the game.