CaSTaway GP feedback

[skeezix]

So maybe it makes sense for frameskip-mode to have its own button.. SELECT, and everythign else hangign off START, and have it pause while it does it.

That seems like a good setup.

Thoughts?

great!

how about this: select puts you into frameskip mode, where you can change as normal.

L+SELECT takes you to frameskip 1
R+SELECT takes you to frame skip 99 (for burst loading)

so that it's really easy to go between realtime and frameskip loading?

Good idea; Hey stick, you sent me a private board.. send it to skeezix@skeleton.org instead. I can't reply via the board, and I'll take a look over the weekend.

jeff

 

[AdamDawes]

Frameskip mode shouldnt' be paused; thats the main one for me..

But FrameSkip itself wouldn't pause; the menu would, until you selected FrameSkip, but as soon as you selected it you would be returned to the emulation with FrameSkip displayed at the bottom waiting for you to set it.

So maybe it makes sense for frameskip-mode to have its own button.. SELECT, and everythign else hangign off START, and have it pause while it does it.

This sounds like it may be the best of both worlds, though.

One other important detail is that whichever button takes you into the menu (Start) should not be the button that is used to select the item from the menu (use A or B for that). This reduces the likelihood of accidentally selecting an item or having the emulator take you into the menu and then straight back out again.

 

[Flack]

Nice screenshots. I'm yoinking them for my page

No problemo! They are actually for a line of reviews I'm doing for gp32emu.com.

 

[Axeman]

Hehe - This is really cool - real interactive development!

I agree with the auto frameskip thing (even though I didn't know that upping the frameskip during loading sped it up till I read it on this forum )

Dunno about the pause menu thingy..... Could work for some things e.g. on slapfight you have to press a key (space?) to select the weapon, but as it is a shoot em up, you're usually dead by the time you get the joystick back...

Like your philosophy by the way -

Our philosophy here is simple -- involve the user in the design and building process: release early, release often, and listen. You can see by our rapid development and busy mailing lists that we truly work this way. If you like (or dislike!) what you see just let us know, and we'll try and fix it in the next release - which is often only a week or two away.

From www.codejedi.com

Definitely DOES seem to be working for CaSTaway!

Cheers

 

[skeezix]

Hehe - This is really cool - real interactive development!

I agree with the auto frameskip thing (even though I didn't know that upping the frameskip during loading sped it up till I read it on this forum )

Dunno about the pause menu thingy..... Could work for some things e.g. on slapfight you have to press a key (space?) to select the weapon, but as it is a shoot em up, you're usually dead by the time you get the joystick back...

Like your philosophy by the way -

Our philosophy here is simple -- involve the user in the design and building process: release early, release often, and listen. You can see by our rapid development and busy mailing lists that we truly work this way. If you like (or dislike!) what you see just let us know, and we'll try and fix it in the next release - which is often only a week or two away.

From www.codejedi.com

Definitely DOES seem to be working for CaSTaway!

Cheers

Yeah, you can tell I was a serious insomniac half my life eh?

I am going to miss the feel of the ST.. a numebr of games really needed you to slap down on the spacebar to change weapons or whatever.. I had this big leanback relax chair for hanging out in, so I'd sit way back, feet up in the air, playing games. Thewn ou'd go "shit"! and need ot reeach for the spacebar, and smack it too hard.. hear a nasty crack, spill pop all over yourself..

Ahh, those were the days

The one thing with growing up.. you lose that sense of amazement at "everything". Playing new games, or old great classics.. its not the same as when you're a dumb kid, when its all just so much more amazing But damnit, we'll try till we die to keep the fun alive

Re: Pause.. we'll see. I think its probabyl a good idea for some things. Taking frameskip out to another key coudl work, too.

One Idea I've had is to hold left-shoudler down, while pushgin the stick. The stick direction setting the mode. This would let you jump bertween modes *fast*.. no mucking about rotating through modes or selecting from a menu.

I suppose I could still add it.. START to bring up the mode menu, and START+direction to jump right to it? *Shrug* Will have to experiment when I get time.

Gotta clean house all weekend I think

jeff

 

[A600]

-Savestates!
CastCE sources already include them.

- An option to choose the amount of memory (512 KB or 1024 KB)

 

[skeezix]

-Savestates!
CastCE sources already include them.

- An option to choose the amount of memory (512 KB or 1024 KB)

Already supports saves. See the README

Mind you, in 004, sometimes the colours it uses for the Save optins are impossible to see :/ I'm fixing that

Savbe states are whacky.. I'm not using them. I'm letting you save your current floppies out to SMC, though. So you hit Save in the gamne, and then Save your disc to SMC.

Seems to be more natural.

No need ot set RAM.. who in their right mind wants the 520ST when they can have a 1040ST?

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Someone try some Demos? Like the Carebears Demos, and such Many should work; others will run, but liekly have flickery colours until I add smarter palette handlers..

jeff

 

[A600]

Savbe states are whacky.. I'm not using them. I'm letting you save your current floppies out to SMC, though. So you hit Save in the gamne, and then Save your disc to SMC.

I also don't use savestates but GP32 is a little different: Imagine that after 3 hours of playing Turrican you're in the last level but batteries are almost empty. With savestates, you can save your progress, change the batteries and continue playing. Without savestates the only thing you can do is scream

 

[Bonks]

Ive always beena massive fan of save states. Think of it this way, games that you played when you were younger... take any Dizzy game for example, when you were younger you had the time, and able to just sit there for hours on end in a single sitting and complete the game.

Now a lot of us older its a lot harder to do this, you dont have the attention span, or just dont have the time to sit through a game like that, or turrican, or others like this, you might pick up and have a quick blast, but it wont last

just my 2c

 

[Avigrace]

I have a problem with the mouse control on this emu, sometimes when moving the mouse from right to left it stops about half-way across the screen like it was at the edge of it, for example in Defender of the Crown I am unable to click on the menu on the left hand side of the screen. Pressing the right shoulder pad resets the mouse to the very right side of the screen and the problem still happens.

This does not happen all the time but I would guess it is at least 50% of the time.

 

[timthepig]

to solve your problem

Move the mouse to its furtherest points eg, move as far as you can to your right then move as far as you can to the left - do this again - and woila your mouse will be able move further across the screen. Do the same with up and down...

This works every time!! - so you games will be fully playable..

 

[Avigrace]

timthepig = you da man

 

[tapsel]

Moving the mouse to the corners of the screen is working, yes, but this
doesn't help much if you're playing "Pirates" for example, where this
problem appears on every 2nd screen.

But I'm sure that Jeff can solve this in a minute.

2 suggestions for improvement of the keyboard:

- The keyboard focus should be able to go from the leftmost
position to the rightmost position (e.g.: from Q to F4), by
pushing left again. The same thing with top and bottom. This
would often shorten the time to reach a button with the d-pad.

- I have sometimes a hard time to reach the buttons in the middle
row of the keyboard, since the d-pad is so responsive. I'm sometimes
switching from top row to bottom row several times.

 

[skeezix]

Moving the mouse to the corners of the screen is working, yes, but this
doesn't help much if you're playing "Pirates" for example, where this
problem appears on every 2nd screen.

But I'm sure that Jeff can solve this in a minute.

2 suggestions for improvement of the keyboard:

- The keyboard focus should be able to go from the leftmost
position to the rightmost position (e.g.: from Q to F4), by
pushing left again. The same thing with top and bottom. This
would often shorten the time to reach a button with the d-pad.

- I have sometimes a hard time to reach the buttons in the middle
row of the keyboard, since the d-pad is so responsive. I'm sometimes
switching from top row to bottom row several times.

Its tougher than you think, actually. Since we don't have any real screen coords (like with a pen in a PDA, you just tap and you know where you are.. with a D-pad, all we have is direction, no real cursor per se). The problem is that we must therefore keep a coord system.. "mouse_x" and "mouse_y" I call them. When you push left, it decrements mouse_X by 1, and reports it to the emulation core which informs the ST internals, etc.

When somethign weird happens to the screen, like resolution is changed, screen address is changed, etc etc, the ST resets the mouse position somewhere. Theres no way for us to know where its reset to, since where inRAM the mouse detsils are changes every boot. So we do not know its been reset. So our mouse_x might read 50, and the ST internals think its much higher. It gets weird then. We talk to the ST internals with relative coords "go left more". If we think you're at 0, we can't tell it to go left anymore.

Its sort of a pain

but I'm working on it; I need to work on my calibration code more so when you hti Calibrate, it'll just keep pushing left, then all the way right, and then back to center, and then set our concept of the mouse to center. Later

jeff

 

[Shrike]

Skeezix, i just tried the Civ .MSA and it loaded to the crack screen then went to the OS when i pressed Space, any ideas?

 

[Flack]

As posted earlier, CaSTaway works better with original disk images than with cracked ones. Try to find a non-cracked disk image and see if you get the same results.

 

[Shrike]

hmm that'll be pretty difficult to find, also seeing as it was 4 disks

 

[stickofjoy]

hmm that'll be pretty difficult to find, also seeing as it was 4 disks

JOE'S FTP has all four discs uncompressed.

 

[Bonks]

Stickofjoy,

on Joes ftp, wheres the best set of disks

I notice under ST hes got all the different sets that came out, whats the best ones to grab?

having only a 56k modem, its a pain searching through them all.

Cheers