Amiga emulation

[Omizzay]

Well?

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

mmmmmrrrrhhhhrrrmrrmrrmrrrrrrhhhh.... mayyyybeeeee
rrmmmmmhmhmhhhhmmmmmmmrrrmrmm.... mayyyyybe not.

 

[_tyrell_]

It's perfectly possible. The question is whether or not it will be fast enough.

_tyrell_

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

i liked my answer better =D

 

[Omizzay]

I don't imagine it's much more difficult than Atari ST. Definitely not as difficult as snes i imagine.

 

[toneeb]

although it maybe possible, i dont think it could run anyway near an acceptable speed.

Unfortunately

 

[Antiriad]

Toni Wilen, author of WinUAE (he is now anyway) says a very cut down version of it emulating an A500 only (A1200 emulation would be impossible i suspect - not a huge loss) would be possible.

Alternatively, theres always Fellow.

 

[khephren]

If you do a search you'll find a massive thread on this somewhere. But basicaly, probably, in fact some screenshots of darkseed (the HR geiger adventure) have been posted running on an amiga Emu (I think GPSpain hosted them). Nothings been heard since then, maybe the authors keeping it under wraps to enter into the GPspain competition. Of course it might be fake, and no frame rates or any info has leaked out.

I think it will be as hard to do as the snes, the A500 had many custom Graphic modes, and a lot of other custom chips (paula, Gary and copper to name but two) all of which relied on carefull internal timings.

Still, we live in hope Skeezix (Author of the ST emu) thinks it is possible, so I think there's a fair chance.

 

[Snooty]

In all likelihood, I think an Amiga emulator would run well (CaSTaway speed), except with those titles that make a lot of use of the custom chips (and lots of titles did).

A1200 emulation would be absolutely impossible, I'd imagine.

 

[Antiriad]

Right...i just spoke to Toni Wilen, author of WinUAE on IRC.
He's written a cut down version of WinUAE called Mini-WinUAE which is a very cut down version of the emulator.
He reckons this is the most likely to be ported.

Its in Beta right now (of which i am a tester) and so when its made public it'll be well worth someone in the GP32
coding community to contact him. Naturally when it is, ill try to contact peeps in the same way i have in regards to
an Amstrad CPC emulator for the GP32.

Oh and apparently porting Fellow is impossible. Its written in both C (like WinUAE) and x86 Assembler. So that one
is a no no.

Thing is, seeing theres a ST (sub Amiga) and a SNES (above Amiga) emulator, i wouldnt give up on the idea!

 

[MojoJojo]

Hmmm, I really doubt it.

I remember when Amiga emualtion was thought too hard to be practical... decent emulation of the Amiga took a lot longer than SNES, Atari ST etc.

Fellow doen't seem to have been updated since 2001. WinUAE has been designed for portability and compatability over everything else-which means porting it to the GP32 would be pretty pointless since everything would have to be rewritten for speed.

I remember I could never get full speed on my old 166MHz desktop using Fellow, which was pretty fast, so I would be really impressed if someone could get it working at a decent speed on the GP32.

Too many custom chips - and those custom chips didn't have dedicated uses like the SNES hardware tiling and scrolling modes. They could be used for many different things. Wierd graphics modes which you don't get on other hardware - several screens at different resolutions displayed on the monitor at once? I believe Amiga emulators have to be cycle exact or near to get decent compatability. That, and games often weren't compatable accross even minor hardaware changes (A600?).

I'd love to see an Amiga emulator, I grew up with one, but I just don't think getting it to run at a decent speed is feasable.

 

[_tyrell_]

Don't forget that the Amiga is using a several custom chips, and emulating all the stuff together to reach a good speed is a real challenge. I would place the Amiga emulation at the same level as the snes one. Anyway, the day the emulator is out and runs at full speed, the author would deserve the praise of all the community ! (hmmm playing turrican, one step beyond, super frog and all the other classics ... I cannot wait).

_tyrell_

 

[dan miracle]

Anyway, the day the emulator is out and runs at full speed, the author would deserve the praise of all the community ! (hmmm playing turrican, one step beyond, super frog and all the other classics ... I cannot wait).

_tyrell_

note: if you didn't already know, you can play a good version of Turrican on GPEngine, and even better, both Turrican 1 & 2 on Castaway (and apart from the music seeming rather primitive compared to the amazing AMIGA soundtrack, the games themselves are virtually identical )

 

[JDUK]

After reading up on the amount of ball ache involved in codeing for custom chips i have to say the Amiga emu doesnt seem like its going to happen any time soon. Coupled with the fact we already have an excelent ST emulator that pretty much does the same thing game wise I cant see any one having the motivation to make a GP specific Amiga emulator either.

Id much rather see a SNES of MD emu. As much as i love the amiga, Castaway does the ST thing so good there's not a great deal to want an amiga emu for (well Except: Moonstone, System-3's Myth, Poject X, Hired Guns & Flashback )

 

[khephren]

I dunno, fellow ran ok on a p90 with frameskip and low quality sound. I think it would take a lot of effort to get a GP UAE port going at a decent clip. Like Fellow, a GP version would need a lot of assembler, and damn good assembler at that. I think the hardware is just about up to it, it's all down to coding skills. A quick port could appear fairly fast, but it would take months of work to get it running at less than frameskip 8.

 

[thebluenewt]

Id much rather see a SNES of MD emu. As much as i love the amiga, Castaway does the ST thing so good there's not a great deal to want an amiga emu for (well Except: Moonstone, System-3's Myth, Poject X, Hired Guns & Flashback )

And of course Sydicate, SWOS, Alien Breed, Zeewolf, Wing Commander, UFO, Red Baron, Wings, Colonization, Populous 2, Eye of the Beholder, Apidya, 4D Sports Boxing etc. etc.

 

[JDUK]

Wasnt EotB series out on ST too ? and good luck getting Wing Commander to run on the GP my A600 cant run it much faster than 5 fps
UFO is for A1200 cant see them getting it running on the GP either.

 

[A600]

Right...i just spoke to Toni Wilen, author of WinUAE on IRC.
He's written a cut down version of WinUAE called Mini-WinUAE which is a very cut down version of the emulator.
He reckons this is the most likely to be ported.

Its in Beta right now (of which i am a tester) and so when its made public it'll be well worth someone in the GP32
coding community to contact him.

Great news!

@Antiriad, Do you have an old pentium (150-166) to try that cutdown WinUAE version? If it's usable on that computer, a GP32 version would be more than possible.

 

[thebluenewt]

Wasnt EotB series out on ST too ? and good luck getting Wing Commander to run on the GP my A600 cant run it much faster than 5 fps
UFO is for A1200 cant see them getting it running on the GP either.

Was it? Have to find them if it is.

Wing Commander was awful on Amiga but that's not the point!

The rest all stand up though, the Amiga ruled!

 

[Antiriad]

My brother does! Ill burn it on cd with some games and try it out i think!