Beta Uae4All Additions

[lomaxx]

"Trap's n Treasures" is not running. <sob>

To be more precise it IS running, but as soon as sound-output starts things go into a 2000x-slowmo (with FAME/C/uae). There is one core which doesn't have these sound-issues (cyclone), but with that the graphics are busted. Turning off sound (within uae4all) does not really speed things up. Maybe a little. But when i wait until all intros have finished and i am actually ingame, then the game seems to be at normal speed for as long as i do not produce any sound-output. Walking left/right is ok, but jumping or slashing (both produces sounds), makes the game stutter and pause for a second.

I'm not sure if you are interested in game-specific reports like these.

About creating shortkeys: How about a function in the mode where you see the amiga-keyboard, where you can select one key (or a combination of more) and assign it afterwards to one key of the pandora-keyboard A-,Y-,B-Buttons or even keyboardletters like "u","i","o". Afterwards the setup could be safed by saving the game-specific configuration.

Might be a lot of work, but i thought this would be a really nice feature.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, seems like the sound core has some issues. Collecting diamonds in Turrican II does sound wrong.
Didn't think it could also be the cause for slowdowns, but it might be. Turrican II has a slowdown when the character appears, Pinball Dreams has slowdowns just before the ball appears.
No big issue with those two games, but it seems it's a problem with Traps'n'Treasures.

 

[zapman]

Yeah, seems like the sound core has some issues. Collecting diamonds in Turrican II does sound wrong.
Didn't think it could also be the cause for slowdowns, but it might be. Turrican II has a slowdown when the character appears, Pinball Dreams has slowdowns just before the ball appears.
No big issue with those two games, but it seems it's a problem with Traps'n'Treasures.

Turrican II's sound also starts to stutter as soon as I close the Pandora lid. Did you implement some down-clocking when the lid is closed with the latest hotfix? Wouldn't like that mechanism too much, if I want to safe energy, I would rather go into standby mode..

 

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, seems like the sound core has some issues. Collecting diamonds in Turrican II does sound wrong.
Didn't think it could also be the cause for slowdowns, but it might be. Turrican II has a slowdown when the character appears, Pinball Dreams has slowdowns just before the ball appears.
No big issue with those two games, but it seems it's a problem with Traps'n'Treasures.

Turrican II's sound also starts to stutter as soon as I close the Pandora lid. Did you implement some down-clocking when the lid is closed with the latest hotfix? Wouldn't like that mechanism too much, if I want to safe energy, I would rather go into standby mode..

Is switches off the LCD completely now, maybe it doesn't like that.

 

[john4p]

@Lomaxx: Damn, Traps 'n Treasures used to work perfectly with Cyclone core. Now its gfx are garbled. Also in Turrican II the title screen is garbled with Cyclone core now.
Probably many more games.
I guess the code for EHB- and HAM-modes only works for FAME/C- and UAE-cores.
Seems like I'll have to remove EHB- and HAM-emulation for Cyclone to get Traps 'n Treasures (and other games which only work with Cyclone) to work correctly again.

Your idea for assigning keys to the actionbuttons is great - would give this for us Pandora-users unnecessary virtual keyboard-mode a new purpose. But realizing this idea is really more work than one would think. I don't have the time to do this (also don't know a game I want to play for which I'd need this).
Would be great if someone else would implement that (or something similar) of course.


@EvilDragon: In Pinball Dreams only when the very first ball is inserted there is a slowdown. After that there's no slowdown anymore when further balls are inserted (including the 1st ball of a new game).
Btw., 320x262 (scaled to 588x480) screenmode is highly recommended for Pinball Dreams & Fantasies - so you don't miss anything.

In Turrican II there's no slowdown at all when the character appears (tested with FAME/C core).
The diamond collect sound is wrong - just like it used to be on old UAE versions (which UAE4All is based on). Don't know which version of WinUAE finally fixed this.

 

[john4p]

Okay, found out EHB-emulation works flawlessly with Cyclone, too.
It's the emulated HAM-mode which leads to the gfx garble in Traps 'n Treasures.
But no need to remove this mode.
Just added another menu item where you can enable and disable HAM-mode emulation at any time.
Disable it and Traps 'n Treasures works fullspeed and with correct gfx under Cyclone.

P.S. Mostly HAM mode works correct with Cyclone, too. Just for some games you'll have to deactivate it.

 

[lomaxx]

Sounds marvelous. I'm looking forward to test it.

 

[john4p]

New release: "100% accurate" sound-emulation and fix for Traps 'n Treasures

• Audio emulation is more accurate now (e.g. correct sound fx in Turrican II)
• New menu item "HAM emulation" for Cyclone core (set to "off" for Traps 'n Treasures)

Enemies getting hit and collecting diamonds sounds correct now in Turrican II. The more accurate audio-emulation of course affects many more games.

While FAME/C and UAE cores have the menu item "Savestates" the Cyclone core now has the menu item "HAM emulation" instead. If you set this to "off" you can play Traps 'n Treasures fullspeed and correctly emulated with Cyclone core.

Btw., screenmode 320x216 is ideal for Turrican II and Traps 'n Treasures (using the full height of the Pandora's screen while keeping correct aspect ratio).


Download: http://www.filefront.com/17277113/uae4all.zip

Source: http://www.filefront.com/17277114/uae4all_pandora_src.zip

 

[john4p]

Don't PND just yet (should you have intended, ED), because I've been told that "100% accurate audio emulation" causes The Chaos Engine and some other games not to load.

I'll put "fast" and "accurate" as sound-options in UAE4All's menu so we have both methods and upload the new version in the evening.


Thanks @rare_j from the English Amiga Board for the info about what the standard and accurate sound-output methods do.

 

[EvilDragon]

Was about to PND it up yesterday night but forgot about it...

 

[john4p]

That's good because this release is more PND-worthy:

• Sound-options are now "off", "fast" and "accurate"
• added bright and medium bright vertical scanlines and scanline-grid (hor.+vert. combined)

"Accurate" sound emulates Turrican II's sound effects correctly, but is slightly more demanding and slightly less compatible than "fast" sound.

Scanlines only work for doubled pixels mode.


Download: http://www.filefront.com/17279197/uae4all.zip

Source: http://www.filefront.com/17279201/uae4all_pandora_src.zip

 

[lomaxx]

The worst part about your updates is that David-Hasselhof-picture of filefront.

Took me a while to get your update running. The bigger reason for this was my self-confusion once again. But i think - and i might be wrong - that you should do

chmod +x runme.sh uae4all_*

in the uae4all-directory. Also i am not sure if everybody wants your runme.sh-script to set CPU-frequency back to 500mhz after quitting uae4all.

I build myself a quick pnd, but i prefer to not upload it because i didn't care about updating the pxml and am not sure if i did everything right. I used

pnd_make.sh -p uae4all.pnd -d uae4all -x uae4all/PXML.xml  -i uae4all/uae_pvw.jpg -c

to build it.

Thanks for the update, i will do some tests now.

 

[john4p]

The worst part about your updates is that David-Hasselhof-picture of filefront.

No Hasselhoff here - I can thoroughly recommend the plugin "Adblock Plus" for Firefox...

But i think - and i might be wrong - that you should do

chmod +x runme.sh uae4all_*

in the uae4all-directory.

No, that's not necessary. Everything works fine here (I always just use the runme.sh-script).

Also i am not sure if everybody wants your runme.sh-script to set CPU-frequency back to 500mhz after quitting uae4all.

I had my own modified runme.sh which always overclocked a bit. Hence the "reset to 500MHz"-line at the end. Just forgot to remove that.

 

[EvilDragon]

Here you go with a shiny new PND

 

[naples39]

As someone who never was exposed to Amiga in the past, I keep seeing all these updates and meaning to try it.

Pardon the total noob question, but I have read that whdload allows you to run "installed" amiga games, thus greatly speeding up load times, and removing the need for disk swapping. Is it possible to use this on uae4all?

 

[TitanUranus]

As someone who never was exposed to Amiga in the past, I keep seeing all these updates and meaning to try it.

Pardon the total noob question, but I have read that whdload allows you to run "installed" amiga games, thus greatly speeding up load times, and removing the need for disk swapping. Is it possible to use this on uae4all?

Not yet. There is no HDD support to install games to.

 

[DaveC]

Don't PND just yet (should you have intended, ED), because I've been told that "100% accurate audio emulation" causes The Chaos Engine and some other games not to load.

I'll put "fast" and "accurate" as sound-options in UAE4All's menu so we have both methods and upload the new version in the evening.


Thanks @rare_j from the English Amiga Board for the info about what the standard and accurate sound-output methods do.

Thanks for the continued work on this.

It is getting to the point now where something is needed BADLY. With every release comes more and more options. Sound, scanlines, different resolutions, different cores etc. The problem is that we need to configure many of these things everytime we start the emu. What is needed is a per game config file for all things. I see some of that comming in which is great. Most emus have it (look at MAME for a good example) I hope you will consider adding this feature as it will enhance the enjoyability greatly. I tried the "grid" mode but I can't really see the horizontal lines much, maybe a slight bit more ?

Thanks for the good work.

 

[john4p]

It is getting to the point now where something is needed BADLY. With every release comes more and more options. Sound, scanlines, different resolutions, different cores etc. The problem is that we need to configure many of these things everytime we start the emu. What is needed is a per game config file for all things.

The problem with the cores is that they're not some feature, but in fact we have 3 different versions of UAE4All in the PND. For most games each core is fine anyway.
You currently have to also commit to a screenmode before the start because changing the SDL-video mode on the fly results in a crash. Unfortunately wasn't able to find out where and why that happens - so no change of resolutions on the fly for now.
The other options can be saved in General config, except the code needs to be adapted to some new features like mouse-settings and scanlines. Saving the sound-settings works already.
There's also a "save per game config" implemented (as you can see in the menu), but it's buggy and needs to be fixed.

I tried the "grid" mode but I can't really see the horizontal lines much, maybe a slight bit more ?

Okay, will change that for the next update.

Here you go with a shiny new PND

Thanks.


@naples39: No WHDLoad-support in UAE4All so far. But you can create a savestate after a game has been loaded - so next time you can "instantly load" it using the savestate.

 

[lomaxx]

Speaking about configs: My personal favorite for new features are also targeted towards easy starting/usability.

I would like to be able to write my own bashscripts for each game by calling pndrun with the uae4all-engine of my choice, handing over a config-file with _all_ settings available for the chosen engine (including key-configuration) and pointing to all disc-images needed for the game. If there then would be a diskswap-key ingame, that let's you cycle through the discs with one key-press for 2 discs (and a automatically activated direct-quick-selection-menu instead, if there are 3 and more disc-images), then gaming could look like this:

Double-click the bashscript -> PLAY -> at some point switch disc-images with one button (or as few as possible with more disc-images)-> PLAY

No more hassle with going through config-menus and disc-image-directories once you set up your script. And even if you dislike the idea of using bash-scripts than this system could still be used in a more stylish launcher.

 

[bodhee]

Odd as I played the game on wiz with uae4all with the 512k kick31 and it worked fine. Def won't work on pandora version though. Tried everything.

Any ideas would love to hear the thanks

For some unknown reason Kickstart 3.0/3.1 just doesn't work on this UAE4All-version. But there is no Amiga 500-game that needs it.

There are very, very few titles which require Kickstart 2.0 to run though - but that does work fine (with the FAME/C and UAE core versions).

Almost every Amiga 500-title works with Kickstart 1.3 - including the German version of Amberstar.

For another unknown reason the English version of Amberstar - while working on real Amigas with Kickstart 1.3 - gets a black screen on emulators (incl. WinUAE) with Kick 1.3.
But with Kickstart 2.0 it works fine in emulators. See this discussion at EAB:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=20637

So in order to play the English version of Amberstar in our UAE4All do this:

• obtain a 512K Kickstart 2.0 rom
• rename it "kick20.rom"
• place it into the uae4all/kickstarts/ - subdir
• select Kick 2.0 in UAE4All "more options"
• Reset the emulator (R-trigger) with your Amberstar-installed-to-FD-ADFs inserted

@all: Almost every Amiga 500-game works with Kickstart 1.3. Very few titles really require Kickstart 2.0. Many games don't work with Kickstart 2.0 (but work fine with 1.3).
There is no Amiga 500-game that really requires 3.1.
There might be some very old titles that only work with Kickstart 1.2 though.

was using a bad 2.0! finally got it to work!! sound great everything perfect. only slight issue is touch mouse. it never seems to line up exactly with the stylus or in "true touch mode". otherwise right on!