Beta Uae4All Additions

[lomaxx]

When i am playing Prince of Persia sometimes the game

- gets very slow for a few seconds but recovers
- gets very slow and there are strange green fragments on the screen, but recovers
- gets very slow, shows green fragments and the game freezes with a blue screen and a white message saying "no default in write.page()"

This happens mostly (but not always) when doing a short jump. I thought i had a setup in between where it worked at least through the first level. But maybe that was just luck. I didn't find a setting that worked again by now. I will try some more.
Anyway: I'm not sure if this blue-screen is feedback from the game or the emulator. I just wanted to report it in case it helps to find some bug.

I will try some more settings.

 

[john4p]

Did you try each of the 3 different cores (Cyclone, FAME/C and UAE)?

 

[TitanUranus]

When i am playing Prince of Persia sometimes the game

- gets very slow for a few seconds but recovers
- gets very slow and there are strange green fragments on the screen, but recovers
- gets very slow, shows green fragments and the game freezes with a blue screen and a white message saying "no default in write.page()"

This happens mostly (but not always) when doing a short jump. I thought i had a setup in between where it worked at least through the first level. But maybe that was just luck. I didn't find a setting that worked again by now. I will try some more.
Anyway: I'm not sure if this blue-screen is feedback from the game or the emulator. I just wanted to report it in case it helps to find some bug.

I will try some more settings.

Have you tried different version, and do you have anything running in the background that might be intermittently hogging resources (Wi-Fi for example)? I have no idea if such a thing may help or not, but have you tried rebooting the Pandora as well?

 

[EvilDragon]

This happens with Pinball Dreams, too. It slows down and stutters (even when overclocked) before the ball arrives in the playfield. No hangs or stutterings while playing, so I didn't care much yet

 

[Stouffa]

do savestates work on Pandora Uae4all? They used to be very useful on the PSP version, cut down on loads of loading times! How are they loaded into this version?

 

[john4p]

do savestates work on Pandora Uae4all? They used to be very useful on the PSP version, cut down on loads of loading times! How are they loaded into this version?

With FAME/C and UAE 68k core savestates work (they're not implemented for Cyclone core).

There's a (self-explanatory) menu item "Savestates" where you can save and load 4 different states per game (with Cyclone core that menu item doesn't exist).
You can also save and load savestates while playing by pressing L-trigger+S (save) and L-trigger+L (load).

 

[lomaxx]

Update: I tried Prince of Persia with several other settings and setups (all cores, rebooted, no wifi, from quickmenu instead of fulldesktop, PAL/NTSC, but without going step by step through a list of all possible combinations and didn't manage to get that version i first had running. However i am quite sure i played exactly this version through on uae on x86-linux. Without any clue left i now (a few minutes ago) tried a different ADF-version and that ran fine until level 4, where some other bug stopped me. I fell into a pit with two spike fields, one was already "occupied" by a dead guard whom i pushed backward into the pit. Unfortunately i didn't get killed and thus was not able to continue.
Speaking of that: How can i do ingame-key-combinations like shift+q? I think Prince of Persia offers some of these for saving,loading, joystick/keyboard - and maybe for getting killed(?)).

Anyway, beside that the game ran fine. I am not sure if this was just luck since - as i said - the first version ran fine once too. I will see in future.

And while mentioning different game-versions: Will UAE4all support IPFs? I think there is a lib for it. It would be nice to have that feature, if it ain't too difficult to be implemented. Just a proposal.

 

[DaveC]

@TitanUranus: Keyboard always worked fine (the info in the Readme was false).

Don't want to override the Pandora's LEDs because what happens when UAE4All crashes?
You can activate "Status line" in UAE4All more options - then diskdrive-access and power led (and fps) are displayed at the bottom of the screen.

For scanlines I'll just add the options "none", "25%" and "50%". And they'll only be available for doubled pixels mode I think (don't think smooth fractional scale + scanlines makes sense).

Here is an example I threw together in PhotoShop. It basically has a scanline alpha channel mask as well as a vertical mask simulating aperature grille (as much as you can with 2X).
The first is no scanlines, then vertical only, then horizontal only, then combined. Notice the combined one the vertical and horizontal are different amount of alpha. Where they overlap it is darker (rounds the pixels). I don't know how hard it would be to do in code (I would think it to be slow) unless there is a hardware alpha channel then you could just cheat and put a bitmap alpha channel screen over everything. Notice the enlarged lines to the right of the images, this shows amount of darkening and the orientation.

Link to photoshop file with layers if someone wnts to play with it. http://www.mediafire.com/?7g97dliwrpdlaw4

NOTE: The forum resizes the image, this will not look right, need to click on it.

 

[EvilDragon]

I like the horizontal-only one. Looks very much like an Arcade or Amiga CRT

 

[centrlink]

i'm with ED - horizontal only looks best - and indeed reminds me of my trusty 1084S, which i sadly through out recently as it died

cheers, simon

 

[john4p]

New release:

• added Scanlines 25% and 50% to "more options"-menu (doubled pixels mode only)
• added Kickstart 1.2 support (has to be 512K and named "kick12.rom" in kickstarts-subdir), removed Kickstart 3.1 support
• added screenmode "320x240 scaled to 640x480" to runme.sh (as alternative to doubled pixels mode)
• fixed "status line" (display power-led & diskdrive-activity at the bottom) - was broken since last release

Download here: http://www.filefront.com/17245111/uae4all.zip

Source: http://www.filefront.com/17245112/uae4all_pandora_src.zip


@DaveC: Thanks for the example pics. If demand is high vertical and bidirectional scanlines could later be added.

 

[DaveC]

I like the horizontal-only one. Looks very much like an Arcade or Amiga CRT

I kind of like the combined one too, it rounds the edges a bit and looks similar to that phosphor 2x mode.

 

[EvilDragon]

PND'ed

 

[DaveC]

@DaveC: Thanks for the example pics. If demand is high vertical and bidirectional scanlines could later be added.

Well actually all you would really need is the combined algorythm. If you only wanted a certain mode you could set the one effect you don't want to zero. So if you wanted horizontal lines only the vertical line setting would go to zero.

You could have a setting config like: Horizontal scanline value = (then a percentage number), and vertical scanline value= (then a percentage number). With this the user could do any combination they want.

 

[lucidchaos]

Games are giving me a slight stutter in the sound and video in 4-second intervals. I have noticed this occurring just today with the previous build. Upgraded to the latest build with the same problem. Tried different cores, different clock speeds (500/600/800), different games with the same result. Any ideas?

Edit: Just tried erasing the /mmcblk0p1/pandora/appdata/uae4all folder and starting over from scratch. This did not fix the issue.

 

[EvilDragon]

Games are giving me a slight stutter in the sound and video in 4-second intervals. I have noticed this occurring just today with the previous build. Upgraded to the latest build with the same problem. Tried different cores, different clock speeds (500/600/800), different games with the same result. Any ideas?

Edit: Just tried erasing the /mmcblk0p1/pandora/appdata/uae4all folder and starting over from scratch. This did not fix the issue.

That was Beta 3 of Hotfix 4.
Try Beta 4

 

[DaveC]

I noticed that the horizontal scanline mode tends to flicker a bit (I am sure this is a hardware effect by the LCD itself). I bet the vertical or combined modes wouldn't do that as bad. That is kind of a reason to add those.

Also some usability things have changed. For one now you MUST use the nubs or touchscreen to select options in the beginning. Before I could just press ENTER which was much more convenient (I never got into the whole nub as mouse click thing, it just feels hokey to me). Could ENTER as select be added back?

Also why couldn't the emu remember the ROM path? I have to navigate through a big directory tree every time including backing out of the default one. This seems unnecessary as other emus can set the ROM path once and remember it. Can a ROM path setting be added?

 

[john4p]

I noticed that the horizontal scanline mode tends to flicker a bit (I am sure this is a hardware effect by the LCD itself). I bet the vertical or combined modes wouldn't do that as bad. That is kind of a reason to add those.

Okay, maybe I'll add them soon.

Also some usability things have changed. For one now you MUST use the nubs or touchscreen to select options in the beginning. Before I could just press ENTER which was much more convenient (I never got into the whole nub as mouse click thing, it just feels hokey to me). Could ENTER as select be added back?

You can also press Start+O (Start=ALT) to pass both initial dialogs. Or you can <TAB> once, then dpad right and then press <Enter>.
To select different cores/resolutions press dpad up/down and <Space> to select.

There's no way to change this (without programming completely new dialogs) because these are just standard "Zenity"-dialogs.

Also why couldn't the emu remember the ROM path? I have to navigate through a big directory tree every time including backing out of the default one. This seems unnecessary as other emus can set the ROM path once and remember it. Can a ROM path setting be added?

There's a "roms"-folder where you're supposed to place your ADFs into (of course you can create as many subdirs and subsubdirs in the roms-dir as you like - if you have a huge library of games and want to sort them). The diskload-dialog will always start there.

 

[DaveC]

You can also press Start+O (Start=ALT) to pass both initial dialogs. Or you can <TAB> once, then dpad right and then press <Enter>.
To select different cores/resolutions press dpad up/down and <Space> to select.

There's no way to change this (without programming completely new dialogs) because these are just standard "Zenity"-dialogs.

There's a "roms"-folder where you're supposed to place your ADFs into (of course you can create as many subdirs and subsubdirs in the roms-dir as you like - if you have a huge library of games and want to sort them). The diskload-dialog will always start there.

I remember enter used to work though, wasn't zenity used then too? All of those multible key combos aren't too intuitive and us non-linux guys don't always remember all of that.

For the ROMs folder couldn't there be a line in the config file with that info? I can understand not wanting to spend time putting that into a menu but some kind of a way to change it would be nice. Not everyone has their system the same way. It is confusing when every dev has a different idea where ROMS should go and can't be changed. Some may think it should be in the root dir of the card in a ROM dir, others in appdata, others with the app, others in a directory in "menu" etc etc. Now with these in all different spots depending on the app the user needs to hunt around to find the directory when they want to add/remove ROMs etc. For me now I just have a dir in appdata called ROMs, and under that subdirs for Amiga, SNES, Megadrive etc. This way I have all roms in one spot which is easier to manage that way.

 

[john4p]

I remember enter used to work though, wasn't zenity used then too? All of those multible key combos aren't too intuitive and us non-linux guys don't always remember all of that.

Enter used to work because there have been simple Yes/No-dialogs before. Now with the multitude of cores and resolutions I had to use "radio list"-dialogs where that doesn't work.
Btw., the behaviour isn't Linux-specific at all. It's just like with a GUI in Windows, too. The "O" from OK is underscored - that's a hint that you can push Alt+O to use that button (Alt=Start). Checking radio buttons with <Space> and tabbing between control elements is also the same as in Windows-dialogs.

For the ROMs folder couldn't there be a line in the config file with that info?

I'll look into it.