Outcast (castaway Module) Beta 005 Released

[DaveC]

For reference.. I changed the name to OutcaST so that I could have multiple engines inside (later).. for now its just my usual CaSTaway

The FDC code is a little flaky; it works for reads, but format/write/etc is screwy.. I'm going to back out that code to an older FDC versoin of mine that does it all, but doesn't handle some .stt files .. which I've never seen in the wild anyway.

jeff

​

I have been trying to figure out how to compile a good collection of the games that I like and get rid of dodgy ones and duplicates to save precious card space. The only way to do it now is to pull off games and add back to disk images which is a big pain as there is no good utility for managing ST disk images. You need to do it through a few programs and PC-based ST emus etc. I tried it and gave up as it way WAY to time consuming and too many steps. There could be a couple of solutions.

You could add HDD support so that it thinks a dir on the SD is an ST HDD.

I don't know if possible but could you make a disk image that is like 512 Meg instead of 720K? The emu would think it is just a big disk image. I don't know if TOS would puke on that or not.

The other solution is to write a PC-based disk utility that can read files off of an St disk image and store the files on the PC. Then through a GUI you could format a blank Disk image and then drag and drop ST files on to the disk image. If it is too hard to do in real time maybe do like many CD burning programs do and wait until the image is full then write the whole disk image at once.

 

[skeezix]

ST emus can drag ang drop files from A: to B: (ST or MSA files)..

Interesting ideas.

(Making too much work for me

HDD support is already in STonX and Hatari so it'll come soon I imagine..

Right now I have some basic assumptions, like 512b sectors; it could be possible to allow really large tracks and num ber of tracks perhaps.. it should work fine; I think TOS would crap at >512b sectors, but 200 tracks of 200 sectors might just work fine for really fat floppies..

jeff

 

[Radek]

For reference.. I changed the name to OutcaST so that I could have multiple engines inside (later).. for now its just my usual CaSTaway

The FDC code is a little flaky; it works for reads, but format/write/etc is screwy.. I'm going to back out that code to an older FDC versoin of mine that does it all, but doesn't handle some .stt files .. which I've never seen in the wild anyway.

jeff

​

I have been trying to figure out how to compile a good collection of the games that I like and get rid of dodgy ones and duplicates to save precious card space. The only way to do it now is to pull off games and add back to disk images which is a big pain as there is no good utility for managing ST disk images. You need to do it through a few programs and PC-based ST emus etc. I tried it and gave up as it way WAY to time consuming and too many steps. There could be a couple of solutions.

The best way would be just a favorite list. You could add any disk image file to that list and then have option to erase all others. This would be most simplest yet effective.

You could add HDD support so that it thinks a dir on the SD is an ST HDD.

Not many games are compatible with hdd however for aplications it would be great.

I don't know if possible but could you make a disk image that is like 512 Meg instead of 720K? The emu would think it is just a big disk image. I don't know if TOS would puke on that or not.

Better to implement some sort of compression.

 

[PSyMastR]

I love you skeezix. In a non-gay, non-sexual way.

 

[DaveC]

The best way would be just a favorite list. You could add any disk image file to that list and then have option to erase all others. This would be most simplest yet effective.

​

The point is that there are some games on these disk images that are crap and/or a duplicate of a game on another disk image. I may have 1 favorite game on a disk and the rest are crap taking up 720K when I only need 200K for the game. Multiply this for many disks and it means alot of wasted space, that is the point.

 

[skeezix]

Theres not much you can do .. much of the time, its hard to get the games off, as the disks are missing FAT-tables and such

But some cracker groups were good about it, just leaving files, so things coudl be copied around in that case.

jeff

 

[Radek]

The best way would be just a favorite list. You could add any disk image file to that list and then have option to erase all others. This would be most simplest yet effective.

​

The point is that there are some games on these disk images that are crap and/or a duplicate of a game on another disk image. I may have 1 favorite game on a disk and the rest are crap taking up 720K when I only need 200K for the game. Multiply this for many disks and it means alot of wasted space, that is the point.

​

Then I'm afraid there isn't easy solution... Extracting from disk images parts needed just for one game could be hard. Only for titles what aren't making any disk access (once loaded) it's easy - compressed snapshot would make it.

BTW. whole Automation catalog packed to 390MB using gzip (over 500 disk images). How many disks do you need, 100 could not be enough (78MB)?

 

[skeezix]

zipped files is supported (one file to a zip); a double sided 720k disk will often be 400-600k, so 100 disks of choice will come in at 50MB .. so allocating 150MB or so will do anyone and not hurt much.

But you're right, a favourites filter could be cool; I could add an option to the "insert into drive a' type menu to 'add/remove from favourites', and then just have a toggle to show favs or not.

jeff

 

[ThorC]

The best way would be just a favorite list. You could add any disk image file to that list and then have option to erase all others. This would be most simplest yet effective.

​

The point is that there are some games on these disk images that are crap and/or a duplicate of a game on another disk image. I may have 1 favorite game on a disk and the rest are crap taking up 720K when I only need 200K for the game. Multiply this for many disks and it means alot of wasted space, that is the point.

​

Just posting in case you weren't aware, and I hope this helps (I apologise if it does not). If you get gamebaseST - A brilliant collection which I truly love - from here http://www.gamebasest.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Index.htm , first of all it's a great ST resource. Second, it's easy to create a list of your favourite games and find all your old favourites/favourite genres. Finally, each game it includes is an individual disk (eg. the xenon disk contains only xenon). The vast majority of ST games are available, and it saves a) having the menu and B) takes up much less space

Hope this helps

 

[Greenchili]

Just a question for skeezix..

In your experience which menu disks does castaway seem to favor? In other words which ones seem to have the least problems?

Thanks for a great emu on at least three handhelds (PSP, GP32, and GP2X)!

 

[DaveC]

The best way would be just a favorite list. You could add any disk image file to that list and then have option to erase all others. This would be most simplest yet effective.

​

The point is that there are some games on these disk images that are crap and/or a duplicate of a game on another disk image. I may have 1 favorite game on a disk and the rest are crap taking up 720K when I only need 200K for the game. Multiply this for many disks and it means alot of wasted space, that is the point.

​

Then I'm afraid there isn't easy solution... Extracting from disk images parts needed just for one game could be hard. Only for titles what aren't making any disk access (once loaded) it's easy - compressed snapshot would make it.

BTW. whole Automation catalog packed to 390MB using gzip (over 500 disk images). How many disks do you need, 100 could not be enough (78MB)?

​

No 100 is not enough. I want all of the games that I like and none of the lame ones.

There were alot of one-parted games and I have sucessfully pulled off some in the past. It was just a real pain to re-compile onto another disk image as it was slow due to the lack of a good utility for that.

 

[chaos engineer]

No 100 is not enough. I want all of the games that I like and none of the lame ones.

​

Maniac!

 

[Mikey242]

Just posting in case you weren't aware, and I hope this helps (I apologise if it does not). If you get gamebaseST - A brilliant collection which I truly love - from here http://www.gamebasest.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Index.htm , first of all it's a great ST resource. Second, it's easy to create a list of your favourite games and find all your old favourites/favourite genres. Finally, each game it includes is an individual disk (eg. the xenon disk contains only xenon). The vast majority of ST games are available, and it saves a) having the menu and B) takes up much less space

Hope this helps

​

Hey thanks for the link ThorC, its a pretty good site.

 

[skeezix]

Just a question for skeezix..

In your experience which menu disks does castaway seem to favor? In other words which ones seem to have the least problems?

Thanks for a great emu on at least three handhelds (PSP, GP32, and GP2X)!

​

Not sure what you mean; CaSTaway tends to prefer 'the least scary stuff' .. theres a few specific effects it doesn't handle well, so demos or games that se them will botch it up; often you can still get throgh the loader demos by hitting spcebar or '1' or whatever, so the real hangup are the games that do these effects; fortunately, theres not too too many..

jeff

 

[Watto]

Any progress with sampled sound at the moment jeff !!! This is virtually the only thing spoiling my enjoyment of Llamatron. The sound was ok'ish on GP32.....

Tony

 

[skeezix]

Had a life last night

I'm trying to sort things out; my to-do list is enormouas after I shunned things the last week or two due to the 2x, and when you run a little business.. can't let that happen, so I'll be less active for a few days while I recover

We'll see.. the sampled playabck is driving me nuts, so once I get an hour to sit on it, it shoudl be all cleaned up.

jeff

 

[Watto]

Cheers jeff.

I'll be waiting patiently till then .

Tony

 

[Reaperman93010]

I'm in love with this emu, but I've noticed something odd with 003 that I'm not sure if it's been addressed in 005 yet--since I haven't used it enough.

When I first started using the emu, I pluged in tos.rom 1.4. It'd fly, but the keyboard wouldn't let me select anything, so I grabbed a 1.2 and everything was spiffy. However, just a few days later, the keyboard again stopped allowing selection. (though I could show/hide it still) It did this even after extended periods of power-off and was only corrected when I placed a new tos.rom--a fresh copy of 1.2, into the directory.

I haven't been really been keeping up with all the specifics of this post on a daily basis, so if I'm old news, please just ignore me. It's a very strange problem.

 

[dgnadt]

Jeff,

Thank you so much for you efforts on this emulator and thank you for putting in the joystick bias settings. I do notice a difference in the controls when I set it to the u/d l/r bias setting.

One of my favorite games (crapman) is MUCH more playable for me now with this setting.

 

[skeezix]

reaper -- no idea how that could be related

After a few 'ST reboots' the emu will stop takign input; its a bug I'm working on.. that could be it. (ie: just exit the emu and re-run it, and its fine again)

jeff