Pretty Front End Game Selector Idea

[moz]

jeff
is there a way/how much work would be needed for a pretty front end can be made for the loader, maybe have a little screen shot of the games with title 3x3 tiles.

i see a problem with multi game disks with menus, but single disk games should be easier to do?


it would be great to load speedball2 via selecting the title screenshot of the game.

maybe im just lazy mmmm.

thanx for a great emu

 

[c0ncept]

nope your not that lazy, I got into games via the masteer sytem and never had any games machine before that. So these game/computer systems intimidate me a little. I tried getting caSTaway to work but gave up, but I really want to play dizzy, so a front end would be great!

Paul

 

[KickinWing]

i never used an old computer, my first had the version of windows before 95. I tried Castaway without any prior knowledge of the Atari ST and what is so hard about it?? All you have to do is load the image in a or b drive, fire up the st, then chose the executable program that starts the game in the a or b drive.

Robocop kicks ass on ST.

 

[trooper]

i never used an old computer, my first had the version of windows before 95. I tried Castaway without any prior knowledge of the Atari ST and what is so hard about it?? All you have to do is load the image in a or b drive, fire up the st, then chose the executable program that starts the game in the a or b drive.

Robocop kicks ass on ST.

​

Still not as easy as: "Insert cart, Switch on". :lol:

Trooper

 

[moz]

i never used an old computer, my first had the version of windows before 95. I tried Castaway without any prior knowledge of the Atari ST and what is so hard about it?? All you have to do is load the image in a or b drive, fire up the st, then chose the executable program that starts the game in the a or b drive.

Robocop kicks ass on ST.

​

is not hard (as in use the current loader) it would just be the icing on the cake

 

[skeezix]

CaSTaway's loader is already pretty darned smart; note that GP32's SMC's have a size limit of only 128MB, which isn't much when you're cramming ROMs and stuff on there. There are some 5000+ games for the Atari ST, so making screenshot fof any of them would take up much more space than any SMC could ever hold..

CaSTaway already includes a lookup database; ie: Given a .ST or .MSA disk, you can hit a button to have CaSTaway look up the disk in the database and it has a fair chance of showing you all the games on that disk. (the DB isn't 100% complete, but it has a lot of stuff in it.) You can always help out and submit missing disks to me for addition to the database, too (ie: I can tell you how to add them)

Once you've had CaSTaway find the disk in the database, you can flip into a game select mode that shows you a list of all thwe games you've found on your disk roms, and thus pick a game to play from a game listing instead of a disk listing. CaSTaway will then boot up the disk that has the game you requested.

Check the manual

This stuff makes it very easy to work with most ofd the time. Just no screenshots, since thats not possible on the gp32.

If you do wish to see screenshots, see atarilegends.com

jeff

 

[moz]

You can always help out and submit missing disks to me for addition to the database, too wink.gif (ie: I can tell you how to add them)

sure thing ive got some spare time at the moment PM me the details,

wasnt thinking about having a screen shot for all the games (admitidly i only have 5 ST games) maybe capture a screen within the game to use?

anyhow you the boss when it comes to castaway/atari

thanks again for a great program

 

[WhiteFalcon]

You can always help out and submit missing disks to me for addition to the database, too wink.gif (ie: I can tell you how to add them)

sure thing ive got some spare time at the moment PM me the details,

wasnt thinking about having a screen shot for all the games (admitidly i only have 5 ST games) maybe capture a screen within the game to use?

anyhow you the boss when it comes to castaway/atari

thanks again for a great program

​

As Skeezix said, the problem is the space not how to obtain screenshots.

 

[moz]

You can always help out and submit missing disks to me for addition to the database, too wink.gif (ie: I can tell you how to add them)

sure thing ive got some spare time at the moment PM me the details,

wasnt thinking about having a screen shot for all the games (admitidly i only have 5 ST games) maybe capture a screen within the game to use?

anyhow you the boss when it comes to castaway/atari

thanks again for a great program

​

As Skeezix said, the problem is the space not how to obtain screenshots.

​

how much space would a single screenshot take? i find it hard to believe that a person would actually play every game ST on a 128MB SMC it defies my logic of thinking.

 

[johncross85]

One of the problems I've found with castaway is largely due to the game files I'm using - all of which are from Pompey Pirates or Automation (I have loads of original ST games somewhere but no idea how to get them off an ST floppy).

Pompey Pirates/Automation disks have an intro screen and then the games are usually heavily compressed. The result is that I have to wait for the intro to load/play, then use the virtual keyboard to press '1' or whatever, then wait for it to load and unpack. This all seems to take ages...

Is there no way to dump the memory, overwriting the .st file with a snapshot of the STs current state? That way all the initial loading etc would be skipped the next time the game was run.

Alternatively, is the new 'save state' method a way around this - I've not tried Castaway since saves were limited to 8 slots?

J(ohn)


EDIT : I've just realised how dumb that question is. The ST .st files are akin to the Spectrum .tap files rather than .sna files (which are snapshots of the Speccy's memory). ST disks were 800k(ish) and most STs only had 512k so obviously games were loaded in chunks as they were needed so replacing the .ST file with a memory dump would be pretty useless. I suppose the only solution would be the 'Save State' method then - create 1 save state for each game at the point that it has finished loading and load that state as soon as I choose the game in the emu.

 

[skeezix]

Yep, that is exactly what a savestate is for; I don't find the menus get in the way much, but some games take forever to load.. such as Dungeon Master (slow decompress) or Civilization (multiple floppies). So for these, just load them and drop a savestate out. Some folks even delete the original floppy disk and just keep the savestates around.. depends how the game needs the floppy later if at all.

(ie: Original ST's were 512k, while I think most were the later 1MB model. Likewise, original STs had single sided floppy, but most later models had the double sided 720k floppy drive. I think the STF and STFM were the most popular models.)

With regard to screenshots..

It could be possible to take a snapshot of the screen and include it in a savestate (say), to make previewing possible... *Shrug*

As to a fancy thumb-nail based loader.. consider.. Take the best 500 games (say).. first, someone would have to determine wat they are then collect them all and make all the screenshots. (Feel free

A decent thumbnail would have to at leats be 100x75 pixels if not more, biggest say 160x100 (1/2 scale).

I happen to have some screenshots of on of m desktop apps that is 119x66 and its a 2.3k jpg. I have some ones around 15x150 that are about 4k.

Not too big, but lets say.. 500*4k = not so bad 2000k or 2MB for a snapshot pack plus wrapper details. 2MB isn't too bad to toss away I guess, but I imagine it'd be larger, but even 3-5MB isn't so bad perhaps.

The next question becomes how to display them; given a game disk, you look it up in the games database included by crc and you get a match showing 4 games on the disk; do you shoudl them all? cycle through them? Further, the quesitn is given "Time lords v2.0" and "Time Bandits (2.1)" how do you know which screenshot to show.. we'd have to have some mapping between game names and the images. So someone would need to make that.

(This is all blue sky off the top of my head

So could be doable, but lotts of work. I am perhaps game if others are, to do all the tedious work

jeff

 

[moz]

Yep, that is exactly what a savestate is for; I don't find the menus get in the way much, but some games take forever to load.. such as Dungeon Master (slow decompress) or Civilization (multiple floppies). So for these, just load them and drop a savestate out. Some folks even delete the original floppy disk and just keep the savestates around.. depends how the game needs the floppy later if at all.

(ie: Original ST's were 512k, while I think most were the later 1MB model. Likewise, original STs had single sided floppy, but most later models had the double sided 720k floppy drive. I think the STF and STFM were the most popular models.)

With regard to screenshots..

It could be possible to take a snapshot of the screen and include it in a savestate (say), to make previewing possible... *Shrug*

As to a fancy thumb-nail based loader.. consider.. Take the best 500 games (say).. first, someone would have to determine wat they are then collect them all and make all the screenshots. (Feel free

A decent thumbnail would have to at leats be 100x75 pixels if not more, biggest say 160x100 (1/2 scale).

I happen to have some screenshots of on of m desktop apps that is 119x66 and its a 2.3k jpg. I have some ones around 15x150 that are about 4k.

Not too big, but lets say.. 500*4k = not so bad 2000k or 2MB for a snapshot pack plus wrapper details. 2MB isn't too bad to toss away I guess, but I imagine it'd be larger, but even 3-5MB isn't so bad perhaps.

The next question becomes how to display them; given a game disk, you look it up in the games database included by crc and you get a match showing 4 games on the disk; do you shoudl them all? cycle through them? Further, the quesitn is given "Time lords v2.0" and "Time Bandits (2.1)" how do you know which screenshot to show.. we'd have to have some mapping between game names and the images. So someone would need to make that.

(This is all blue sky off the top of my head

So could be doable, but lotts of work. I am perhaps game if others are, to do all the tedious work

jeff

​

well i dont mind doing 10 a day for the next x amount of days, ah the joys of "de stress from work time off- thanks Doc"

i must admit that i use the single disks rather than the multi disks as most of the other games on the disks are erm, not of the quality of the main game and cant be arsed with the decompaction and menu choice, but its for a good cause and ive got the automation set,

i know your a busy busy man, if you fancy doing something in the future im ready and willing