RunInUAE beta: Now with floppy drive noises!

@all
I have now made the FOURTH beta release (please use the download link in the first post). Changes include:

* Improved the floppy drive noise, thanks to some feedback from DAX.

@all
I have now made the FIFTH beta release (please use the download link in the first post). Changes include:

* The floppy drive noise was far too loud. Now is the same as in WinUAE.

@ChrisH

Man you're productive!

Btw, thx for the joy0 addition :)

@Vulture Quote:
I have Orgin as a role model

@ChrisH

Hi Chris,

I've tried RunInUAE for the first time, and I'm quite impressed! The installation was easy and running old games is now a piece of cake. Thanks for the effort, really appreciated!

A couple of comments I thought I'd share:

I don't seem to be able to switch the floppy drive sounds off. I select "No" in the settings but the sounds are played nevertheless?

For the final release, you should really implement proper menu toggles in the settings. This concerns options "E-UAE Stay in Background", "E-UAE Floppy Drive Noises", and "Toggle Basic Workbench mode". Instead of opening requesters, choices should be made simply through ticking/unticking the respective menu items. Thus, the current state of the options is clearly visible and the user has a visual cue for whether they are on or off. (See the RKRM User Interface Libraries, chapter 6: Intuition Menus.)

I installed this yesterday, and I have to say it's an impressive piece of work.

It happily grabbed the roms off the first Amiga Forever cd I could find (2005) and everything worked smoothly.

Something's not right on my computer with resolutions below 640*480 (heavily dotted flicker in 8 and 32 bit modes and less problems in 16 bit mode), so I went in and changed the .uaerc to linedouble mode and a higher resolution. It's a little bit slower during fading (especially on AGA) but otherwise it seems to run things smoothly with frameskip set to two.

@trixie Quote:
Ooops, a bug on my part. You can work-around it by FIRST telling it to enable drive sounds, and then disabling them again. But it forgets this when you reboot (or otherwise quit RunInUAE).

Quote:
Point taken. I had (in general) avoided showing the current state in the menus, because some of the things it changes are not exclusively under RunInUAE's control, and so they could change without it knowing. But in the cases you mention, that isn't the case, so it should be OK to show the state in the menus.

@trezzer
Thanks for the feedback! I'll give some thought to making 640x480 a mention option, although sadly it's not so easy because it requires changing quite a few lines in the .uaerc config file. But as some (probably cheaper) monitor appearently don't support 320x256, it would probably be a good idea.

@ChrisH

Wouldn't exactly call this a cheap monitor (around ?450), but it is a 24" model. I'm not sure if the problem is with the monitor, the KVM or the Sam, though.

It's not that big of a change, though.

I changed to this:
gfx_width_windowed=640
gfx_height_windowed=512
gfx_lores=false
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_correct_aspect=true

gfx_framerate=2

amiga.screen_type=ask

I guess I could set up a full 7xx*5xx PAL screen and just use custom. That should fit nicely on the default 800*600.

@trezzer
Thanks for the info. I've added menu options to use 640x480 instead of 320x256. As setting it to frame skip 1 does indeed get it running at about the same speed, it also sets that for 640x480.

edit: change frame skip 2 to 1 !

@all
I've also made some other improvements, mostly thanks to user feedback. Will release the new beta version tomorrow.

After some further experimenting, I find that I prefer using scanlines instead of double, as fonts look more like they did on a real CRT. It does require that you disable aspect correction, though, as it'll otherwise look really bad. It adds a tiny bit of extra performance compared to doubled. Scanlines vs doubled will surely be a matter of taste, though. I just couldn't stand looking at doubled fonts any more

I figured setting a graphics mode of 640*512 in uaerc and centering it on a 640*480 mode wouldn't be too far off the mark even if it's a PAL style resolution on an NTSC style screen. So far I've not noticed any graphics dropping off the bottom of the screen.

@all
I have now made the SIXTH beta release (please use the download link in the first post). Changes include:

* Added a "Set floppy drive speed to" menu item.

* Added "Set default screen size to" and "Set screen size to" menu items. Get 640x480 without editing any config files!

* Added tick boxes to certain menu items. Looks a lot better!

* Against my better judgement (!) RunInUAE now tries to always know whether E-UAE is running or not.
This allows disabling of the relevant menu items when E-UAE isn't running, and also avoids unnecessary polling when floppy disk noises are enabled.

* Added missing ... after certain menu items.
* Slightly improved the floppy drive noise.
* Fixed disabling of floppy drive noises being forgotten (and then ignoring further disable requests).
* Fixed "default" menu items creating corrupt per-game config files.
* Fixed a blank line being put at the top of newly created per-game config files.
* Fixed a couple of crashes due to bad handling of rare errors.

@ChrisH

Quote:

You bet!

Thanks for the update. Getting better and better.

@ChrisH

Excellent ! I'v just tried RunInUAE and it's really excellent.

Question : for WHdLoad, how does it work and do I need exacltly ? Only WhDloads or I must have a complete 3.0/3.1 system installed ? I'm little confused on how to make WhDload games/demos work.

ADFs work like a charm !

@all
I have to sadly report that Floppy Drive Noises causes E-UAE amigfx v0.8.29 to become unstable & eventually crash. The good news is that it works fine with the old E-UAE v0.8.28, if you really need the floppy drive noises.

Hopefully E-UAE amigfx can be fixed...

@K-L Quote:
Try reading the Tips & Tricks section of the manual, because it *should* explain WHDLoad. But in case it helps to explain it a different way:

WHDLoad games are HD-installed versions of floppy-disk based games. Normally these have to be created on a Classic Amiga using the original floppy disks, and then copied over to your OS4 machine. But you may also be able to find somewhere to download WHDLoad versions of games you own, if that is too difficult.

One copied on to your OS4 machine, you can simply double-click on the game icon to run it inside E-UAE (RunInUAE redirects WHDLoad games for you).

Yes, WHDLoad games do require an OS3.1 installation, but if you have an Amiga Forever CD, then RunInUAE's installer will create a suitable OS3.1 system for you - otherwise you must supply one yourself.

Hope that explains it?

@ChrisH

Keeps making it look like it's all my fault :) I'm mainly just doing a ./configure and Make. The only real change is -D__USE_INLINE__ and -lamiga (and -O3 if you consider that a change).

So I doubt it's going to be fixed. I can't code (I doubt AREXX counts). Have a look at the source yourself if you want, it's fairly small.

Edit: FYI, with beta 5. I haven't experienced any issues with floppy drive sounds, but I haven't been using it very long either. Most games I play have very little disk access.

@ChrisH

Thanks for the explanation, I think I will order soon an Amiga Forever copy

Regarding the diks noise, E-Uae freezes indeed in a random way. I'll just deactivate the disk noise because the latest version of E-UAE is really fast. Thanks MickJT

@K-L

If it doesn't have any problems with the official SDL version of 0.8.29-WIP4, i'll do a straight port of 0.8.29-WIP4 for amigfx without merging anything from 20080820 and give it to ChrisH to try.

Actually I think I already have an executable somewhere.

Edit: I'm now doing a clib2 version to give him to try out. I doubt it'll help... but you never know.

@K-L Quote:
I should have said that for OS3.1 the contents of a Workbench3.1 disk is all that is needed (and a Kickstart 3.1 rom image, which is easily ripped from a real Amiga).

@MickJT Quote:
Sorry, that wasn't my intention: I never said it was your fault, I just stated the truth, which is that the amigfx version is unstable with floppy sounds. I never suggested a reason why it might be unstable (since that is unknown).

Thanks for all your efforts so far!

@ChrisH

Quote:

I know, I just feel a bit of guilt every time it's said :)

So i've sent you several versions now. I could perhaps try going backwards, WIP3, WIP2, etc..

@all
I have now made the SEVENTH beta release (please use the download link in the first post). Changes include:

* Floppy Drive Noises no-longer causes E-UAE or RunInUAE to crash. (Was due to a tricky bug in RunInUAE.)


Please report if you notice any other problems, as otherwise this is basically the version which will get released.