About amiga emulation

[mrseguin]

Hello the wonderfull Pandora community !


Even I'm not posting very often,it's always a pleasure for me to hav a look everyday on the forums !


I'm still planning to buy a PAndora but its hard for me to save 500 dollars....


(I maybe have to stop drinking wine for 2 month and it should be ok !)


Anyway would love to see some vids about some amiga games I love on the pandora,to figure if its working with no issue..


So if some owner of Pandora and amiga lovers have some time you will make me happy


Lionheart(finished it after 11 hours non stop playing when I was a student on real hardware...)


First samurai(finished it also slightly drunk in one night on real hardware too)


Arcade pool


Ninja warriors(never finished it...)


Fuzzbal


X-it(fantastic sokoban like was stuck somewhere on the 50 level...)


GemX(excellent puzzle game)


And to finish with amiga emulation on Pandora is it possible to remap some keyboard key to the main buttons(like space bar alt...certains games use them but its more practical to have them close to the main button


Pandora advertise 10 hours battery life


Did somebody make a test of battery life using the pandora in heavy use?


If I'm on aplane for 8 hours switching with vids,ebook,games and music with a full charge should be ok?


Anyway thanks for your answers.


A future owner of a pandora...

 

[Seamus]

Hi,


I have amiga emulation up and running .Got my Premium Pandora a few days ago.


ruff n tumble, superfrog and alien breed have worked flawlessely most games seem to work ok on a500 machine.


I will try to post some utube videos soon.


Als the ZX Spectrum emulation is excellent.

 

[gunrock]

Anybody using EUAE or PUAE to run non-gaming apps?


I'm interested if I can get to 68040 speeds or higher but with low GFX output reuqirement, i.e just workbench based app.

 

[Newfarmy]

Well, i have the Amiga-emulation running as well. With some games the window is cut at the bottom, but i'm experementing with different screen settings to find a working solution.


Only the sound is a bit too fast. I played some games that I often played on my old REAL Amiga (R.I.P.) and the music was way slower in those games.


I mostly play games where you have to use a mouse (Gobliiins, Keef the Thief, Discovery,...) and a "click" with the stylus often activates a different spot than i touched (still found nothing there to correct this).


I'm sure with further releases of the emulator a lot of things will be fixed and if i get my damned head free for a couple of weeks i might take a look at the sourcecode myself (i've mostly programmed databases during the last years, but when i work myself in the emulatorstuff i might even develop a new one if i find the time)

 

[mrseguin]

argh...


if the stylus doesn't click where you expect its a big issue.....(ah Gobliiins,never finished this game but was great fun...)


some game may be cut on the bottom when they are full screen...(fuzzball,arcade pool,gemX for example)


before my dingoo died I enjoy to test the amiga4all version and experienced this issue with full screen...


unplayable at all even the game is working fine! make even more frustrated...


Anyway I don't really knows if the (courageous!)persons behind amiga emulation have heard about these bugs and are still working to find the solution...


if not we should find a way to give them the info...

 

[Newfarmy]

You never finished Gobliiins? Man, i must have played through it about ten times as a kid and been playing it last year again with scummvm on my DS. You really miss something

 

[craigix]

argh...


if the stylus doesn't click where you expect its a big issue.....(ah Gobliiins,never finished this game but was great fun...)


some game may be cut on the bottom when they are full screen...(fuzzball,arcade pool,gemX for example)


before my dingoo died I enjoy to test the amiga4all version and experienced this issue with full screen...


unplayable at all even the game is working fine! make even more frustrated...


Anyway I don't really knows if the (courageous!)persons behind amiga emulation have heard about these bugs and are still working to find the solution...


if not we should find a way to give them the info...

There Amiga does not support a touch screen or a standard mouse coord location, so there is so real solution to that, aside from using the nubs as a mouse.


Different games use different resolutions, this can be set in the emulator menu, all games can be made to fit the screen on the Pandora, you just have to set the right size.

 

[Caine]

argh...


if the stylus doesn't click where you expect its a big issue.....(ah Gobliiins,never finished this game but was great fun...)

That is a surprisingly hard issue to fix. You would think that absolute/relative coordinate transformations should be easy to do, but it quickly turns into a variety of incompatible dirty hacks if there is no reliable and uniform way to retrieve the current mouse position (which there isn't).

 

[Newfarmy]

Yes, i understand the problem here. A simple way around this would be to set the mouse to an absolute position (e.g. 0,0) everytime the screen is touched and then bring it back to the position that has been input by the stylus - practicaly this won't look very good when the courser is jumping around the screen all the time and the next trouble is to get this working with different screen resolutions...

 

[Caine]

Yes, i understand the problem here. A simple way around this would be to set the mouse to an absolute position (e.g. 0,0) everytime the screen is touched and then bring it back to the position that has been input by the stylus - practicaly this won't look very good when the courser is jumping around the screen all the time and the next trouble is to get this working with different screen resolutions...

Unfortunately, no. The amiga uses relative mouse input if I'm not mistaken. In order to place the cursor at an absolute position using relative movement, you need to know it's location. You don't.


Tracking position by logging all relative movements doesn't work either, since the (amiga) software can move (or block) the cursor as well and you have no way of detecting this.

 

[Newfarmy]

OH, i didn't know that. I thought you could track down the current position at any time.

 

[Seamus]

One game that really works well on the Amiga on Pandora is Ruff N Tumble.


ok

 

[Stephane Hockenhull]

problems:


- mouse is relative, touch screen is absolute


- cursor can jump anywhere (start a game, cursor gets reset, could also be reset between levels, entering leaving menus, keyboard inputs, etc)


- games/software can have a mouse acceleration factor, precision and/or dead-zone factor where movement beyond a certain speed gets multiplied or below a certain speed gets divided (non-linear relative movement speed) or smoothed out (art program).


- games/software can miss some movements and fall out of sync (can be fixed in most cases by detecting hardware access)


possible pseudo-solutions:


- use the touch-screen like a laptop touch-pad (touch anywhere and drag to move cursor, tap to click)


- figure out the exact ratio between mouse "ticks" and cursor movement (+acceleration threshold) for a particular title and add a (re)calibration hot-key


- figure out the hardware sprite used as the cursor (works only if the amiga game/software use a fixed sprite and does not multiplex sprites)


the last two requires adding a calibration feature and/or menu to the emulator to feel better than using the nubs (way more work than most porters are willing to do)


possibly also adding a "the cursor is here now" hot-key + click sequence to periodically correct the emulator.


the touch-pad emulation would be a bit confusing but might be the best/easiest solution aside from getting one of those mini wireless mice for less than 10$:


http://www.dinodirect.com/JetTech-2093-Mini-Wireless-Optical-Mouse-Black-Red-Silver.html

 

[Sugar_Kane]

Is there a list of which games require which resolutions to display properly? I might make one if not. Also, could it be possible to allow resolution settings to be saved specifically for each rom, rather than selecting at boot?

 

[mrseguin]

Nice to see that a lot of people have still big interest on the amiga :rolleyes:


But you go far away from my questions....


I'm still hoping some people can give the answer of the question I asked !

 

[Sugar_Kane]

some vids about some amiga games I love


Lionheart


First samurai


Arcade pool


Ninja warriors


Fuzzbal


X-it


GemX

I don't have a video camera but I can try these out and let you know if they work.

And to finish with amiga emulation on Pandora is it possible to remap some keyboard key to the main buttons(like space bar alt...certains games use them but its more practical to have them close to the main button

I haven't investigated because I didn't need to change them myself, but I don't think it's possible to remap the keys via the menu, maybe by editing the system files.

Pandora advertise 10 hours battery life


Did somebody make a test of battery life using the pandora in heavy use?


If I'm on aplane for 8 hours switching with vids,ebook,games and music with a full charge should be ok?

As far as I recall the advertised battery life is based on the unit being used properly. A lot of companies advertise maximum battery life knowing full well that you'd have to do things like lower the lcd brightness to 1% and turn off all services, but Craig was determined not to do that.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

Lionheart - booted but stuck on white screen - might be my rom


First samurai - First disk booted and played intro, mine crashes after I put the second disk in


Arcade pool - Don't have this rom


Ninja warriors - works


Fuzzbal - Works but I only seem to have disk one


X-it - Works


GemX - Gets as far as pressing fire to start a game, then stays as a black screen with music playing


Like I say though, some of these are probably due to my roms being naff.

 

[craigix]

Probably worth trying the different cpu cores too.

 

[john4p]

Lionheart(finished it after 11 hours non stop playing when I was a student on real hardware...)


First samurai(finished it also slightly drunk in one night on real hardware too)


Arcade pool


Ninja warriors(never finished it...)


Fuzzbal


X-it(fantastic sokoban like was stuck somewhere on the 50 level...)


GemX(excellent puzzle game)

Lionheart sadly has a lot of gfx glitches (both with uae4all and the recent e-uae port).


Gem'X works fine with Cyclone core.


The other games should work fine with the default core FAME/C.


Pandora uae4all compatibility list (with confirmed working ADFs): https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AuBR5X_s_5_idG92ZVQ5cEs4ZEhYTm5sSjFIcl83U2c&output=html

And to finish with amiga emulation on Pandora is it possible to remap some keyboard key to the main buttons(like space bar alt...certains games use them but its more practical to have them close to the main button

Yes, you can map any key to the ABXYLR-buttons and the dpad using the custom controls menu in uae4all (and save the setting per game).

Pandora advertise 10 hours battery life
Did somebody make a test of battery life using the pandora in heavy use?


If I'm on aplane for 8 hours switching with vids,ebook,games and music with a full charge should be ok?

Yes, the battery lasts like forever.

Is there a list of which games require which resolutions to display properly? I might make one if not. Also, could it be possible to allow resolution settings to be saved specifically for each rom, rather than selecting at boot?

Currently we can't change resolutions on the fly (so you have to choose one prior to starting the emulator).


We'd need some kind of zooming function for the sdl supported framebuffer hardware scaling. I requested this function here: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/57506-improved-sdl/page__view__findpost__p__948971


But notaz is too busy with other stuff so we have to do without this added convenience.


Unless someone else implements the needed function.


The source of notaz' modified sdl is freely available on GitHub: git://notaz.gp2x.de/~notaz/sdl_omap.git

 

[mrseguin]

Thanks a lot Sugar cane , John4p !(and craigix !)


Looks like First samurai should work if we select one drive(same as winUAE)and arcade pool too (uae4all compatibility list)


Its a shame for the moment for Lionheart(wonderful packaging as wonderful as the game!)but it looks like its really complicated to fix certainly because of the resolution of the screen used with all these parallax scrolling....)


Maybe in the near future some smart guy will find a solution


Thanks for your precious information.


Would love to save some money before to go back to the state to enjoy using pandora....won t be possible but have to save for the next long trip i would make


And buying Pandora from the state is a better deal


Anyway Pandora is such an amazing nicely little powerful device...


Big thanks to the Pandora team again because long hard and risky was the way to arrive to make this project real....


I hope to join soon the club of Pandora owner