Amiga (Review & Questions)

[acris]

Hello
many questions for @voljega

[voljega]

@gibs thank you for the review

The latency issue is an amiberry issue sadly, which they only discovered or even introduced recently, have to wait for a correction

Would it be possible to exit with Start+Select ?

First it's not the only emulator with only one button for exit in the distribution, this is due to the fact that Amiberry is not a libretro core. In this version of the emulator it is impossible to configure two buttons for exit, it is in the latest one, but there is big integration work to do to make it work, so it will be in a while... it will then use hotkey + start

If I push on start it bring the config panel and it's impossible to exit

yes its is, just use a mouse or a keyboard (press q or a to quit)

how to bring the mouse support and a virtual keyboard ?

the mouse is working, just use a real mouse
virtual keyboard is not possible at the moment, and will also possibly be added by amiberry's team in the future

[gibs]

Ok thanks for the answer.

Is there a way to add another drive ?
I try to add DH1: but it doesn't work. Only DH0 is working.

Here is my .uae config:

filesystem2=rw,dh0:dh0:$(FILE_PATH)/TinyLauncher/,0
uaehf0=dir,rw,dh0:dh0:$(FILE_PATH)/TinyLauncher/,0
filesystem2=rw,dh1:dh1:$(FILE_PATH)/Games/,-128
uaehf1=dir,rw,dh1:dh1:$(FILE_PATH)/Games/,-128

Both directories are created at the same level, under amiga1200/

Thanks

[voljega]

@gibs no, the solution is really aimed at supporting amiga the simplest way possible, even for people who don't know anything about it, and using games through emulationstation like every other emulators in recalbox.

not really providing a full amiga system

[gibs]

Ok where are the scripts used for the Amiga side ?
I would like to modify the Amiga configuration before it's copied in /top

Thanks

[voljega]

@gibs if you're using WHDL you can easily define custom configurations without modifying generation scripts (but not for what you asked before) as you want, see the wiki.

For ADF or further tweaking you will have to modify configgen scripts it's in /usr/bin/python2.7/site-packages/configgen/generators/amiberry (more or less, path from memory)

[gibs]

Thanks,
I managed to launch WHDLoad games with TinyLauncher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDHfI_IZZMs

[voljega]

@gibs yeah I started with that but I'm not using it anymore because it is buggy (not able to handle correctly games with several slave files) and also frankly old and not pretty to look at

And the recalbox way is to handle games on a EmulationStation entry basis

[gibs]

@voljega

If it was buggy I would know it as I am the developper

[voljega]

@gibs well I don't know if you published a new version recently but two years ago (!) one of Lemmings game in WHDL wasn't launching for instance because of two slave files

(Yes this is a very detailed and precise bug report :D)

[gibs]

@voljega

Yes there have been several updates since.
So, somebody is going to package the 6000 whdload games for ES ?

I don't think the Amiga configuration is set correctly, you should contact somebody from the Amiga community to improve that.

[voljega]

@gibs there is absolutely nothing to package I have some 2000 whdl games in my es, you just need to uncompress them and create an uae for it which can be empty and massively generated through script

I know the config isn't perfect but it works fine, I also already have a few correction to do

[gibs]

@voljega

Oh this is that easy !
Well you are 100% right then.
I thought I had to create a mini environment to boot a slave for each games.

I confim, this is working fine, I would have found this info 5 days ago

Congratulation !

[voljega]

@gibs also you can do some custom tweaking per game basis if needed : https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/Amiga-on-Recalbox-(EN)

[rsn8887]

@voljega: Nice job getting this to work.

I am pretty sure some of the whdload .lha files often have amiga filenames that can only be uncompressed correctly in an Amiga filesystem.

So, ideally, I think the emulator should take the .lha file as a launch argument and automatically uncompress into a .hdf file to ensure filenames are all correct. No need for .uae file then. It could be read automatically for custom config if it exists, but that's it. This was already solved by FS-UAE.

I also think that a virtual keyboard, analog stick mouse control and gamepad control of the menu are necessary for this to become usable in a typical Pi setting in front of the TV.

I don't think many users have a keyboard and mouse connected to their Pi. It seems the spirit of recalbox is very much to have everything controllable with a gamepad. I for sure don't have a keyboard and mouse connected, that's really the last thing I want when I am in front of my TV.

BTW: Shameless plug, but for anyone who has a cfw VitaTV, UAE4All2 is also a nice alternative for Amiga emulation on the TV. It already has a virtual keyboard, analog joystick mouse, custom control configs for four controllers, etc. etc.

[voljega]

@rsn8887 said in Amiga (Review & Questions):

I am pretty sure some of the whdload .lha files often have amiga filenames that can only be uncompressed correctly in an Amiga filesystem.

'Uncompression of filenames' hmmm ok this doesn't mean anything.... I have tested more then three thousand of WHDLoad games and filenames are not an issue at all, I don't know where you get this idea

So, ideally, I think the emulator should take the .lha file as a launch argument and automatically uncompress into a .hdf file to ensure filenames are all correct.

This doesn't mean anything again, hdf is a specific format, when you uncompress a whload game lha file you hget a folder and a .info file, not a hdf file

No need for .uae file then. It could be read automatically for custom config if it exists, but that's it. This was already solved by FS-UAE.

No it couldn't it's not as easy.
I saw the fs-uae solution for WHDLoad, I may adapt it in the future but then again it's not as simple as you say and what you propose is only a small part of what's needed

I also think that a virtual keyboard, analog stick mouse control and gamepad control of the menu are necessary for this to become usable in a typical Pi setting in front of the TV.

Cool, then the amiberry emulator team is waiting for you commit to help them make amiberry a usable emulator

@rsn8887 said in Amiga (Review & Questions):

I for sure don't have a keyboard and mouse connected, that's really the last thing I want when I am in front of my TV.

Yeah that's so horrible, I'm really sorry you could have to endure this horror ...
Anyway it's okay to have the most possible controls on the keypad, but amiga is a computer you can do what you want, keyboard and mouse will be mandatory for games using it, if only for a question of sensitivity
Virtual keyboard are really a little help to type a few characters sometimes, but that's about it

[gibs]

@voljega

Ok, I did a quick tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzCGgu6DqVk

[voljega]

@gibs thank you

For ADF, disk changing might no be so awfull still, because if the disk are correctly named (containing in their name Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3, etc....) the recalbox solution automatically put 4 of them in the 4 floppy readers.
But it's true there is also a lot of games which only wants the floppy to be changed in first floppy reader only

Since you know a lot about Amiga obviously, do you think I should add the 800% reading speed hack of floppy by default in next version ?
I didn't because of fear for compatibility but if it is a baseless fear and if just a few games fails to boot becuase of that, I might do it.

[RustyMG]

Sorry to jump in on this conversation / thread, but it touches on an issue I have been puzzling over.
As Recalbox now supports the Amiga, I intend to add the games to my setup, but I can't decide if I should just use my ADF collection, or go down the WHDLoad route.
Literally 99% of the games come on 4 disks or less and are named "disk 1 of x" etc, so I can't see there being an issue with those kinds of files, and I've read that quite a few WHDLoad games run far too fast, so basically my question is, ADF or WHDLoad - what's best?
Many thanks!

[voljega]

@rustymg as mentioned in documentation WHDLoad is the way to go !

• some WHDLoad games are broken on Amiberry but they work hard to correct bugs (see their Issues page on github restricted to compatibility issues : https://github.com/midwan/amiberry/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Acompatibility)
• use amiga1200 by default, if some games are too fast, try amiga600 it will usually correct the problem
• a lot of games don't exist in WHDL version anyway, for those one you can try ADF, multi disks is handled natively when possible (some games only wants the changed floppy to be in first folder, for the others nothing to do except press button)

From my personal statistics, I have some 2000 amiga games on my recalbox :

• 1400 of them on amiga1200, all in WHDL except twenty or forty in ADF
• 650 of them in amiga600, all in ADF, except aproximatively 10 in WHDL
• I would say that out of the complete WHDL collection you can find, most of the games work, the percentage something like for every 30 games, 29 working and 1 not working (which you can then try in ADF)