WinUAEX Amiga Emulator port for XBox v1

http://xport.xbox-scene.com
http://www.winuae.net/

Thanks to J-Red for another great skin!


Features :

- Emulates Amiga

- Excellent compatibility - ported from WinUAE 0.8.27

- ZIP support

- Cheat system - Search/Create your own cheat codes (see notes)

- Favorites list

- Save states

- Virtual Keyboard - go to Controller Configuration / UI Mappings to select
the button combo that will bring up the Virtual Keyboard while in-game.

- Real keyboard support

- Real mouse support

- Hard drive files (HDF) and hard drive directory support

- Lots of WinUAE customization options

- Fast forward/throttle

- Resizable game screen

- Skin-able :
- Backgrounds
- Sounds
- Background Music
- Sprites
- Text position (right/left/center, top/bottom/center)
- Text color, select bar color
- Font
- Fading speed
- Screenshot position
- Can specify 2 sprites to surround the selected menu option
- Option to have a transparent select-bar color (from select-color menu)
- Can flip sprites horizontally/vertically
- Can set motion_x and motion_y variables for sprites
- Sprites can loop continuously or just once
- If you want to change the way something looks in this new UI,
chances are that you can change it via the Configuration menu.


- Save Game management - delete save game files

- Text file viewer

- ISO9660 support

- User definable save directory. If you don't like the default of
E:\SAVES\WINUAEX you can change it via the menu

- Take in-game screenshots and display them on the game selection list

- New UI feature - auto-screenshot capture mode. When enabled, the emu
will start taking screenshots at a user-defined interval. Useful for
ripping sprites/animation.

- Hardware filtering options : Point, Bilinear, Trilinear, Anisotropic

- Record/Playback feature - record your gameplay in the emu and then
play it back again. Record up to 10 minutes of gameplay.

- Every single in-game command is fully customizable on any of the
four joypad controllers.

- Map any emulator or UI command to a single button or a combination of
two buttons. (e.g. RTrigger+LTrigger = Save State)

- Autofire capabilities for any emulator button on any controller

- One-button combos (define a series of emulator commands to be played
back when you press a user-definable XBox controller combination.)
(E.g. Press RTrigger+LTrigger to execute the command string
A,B,A,B,Up,Down,Left,Right)

- Traverse any directory on any drive ( Continue selecting the parent
directory entry on the file selection list to get the drive selection
list. Selectable drives are C, D, E, F, R, X, Y, Z, and SMB.
R is the CDROM drive. SMB is the samba share you have defined in your
WINUAEX.ini file.) Press Y from any file-listing screen to go up one
directory level.

- All UI commands (save state, load state, screenshot, etc) can be
invoked from the Options/Pause menu as well as in-game via your
customized joypad mappings.

- Can be invoked from a command-line to directly run a game from a front-end
or dashboard and bypass the user-selection screens. (Only if the frontend
or dashboard supports this feature.)

- Can return to the launching program *if* the launching program supports this
feature. For example, if the custom-launch routines are incorporated into
a new frontend, that frontend could launch WINUAEX and when you exit
WINUAEX, that frontend can be automatically reloaded.



Default ROM dir is D:\AMIGADISKS

===============
Important Notes
===============

--------------
Kickstart ROMs
--------------

You need to put the following ROM files into the D:\ROMS directory:

KICK12.ROM
KICK13.ROM
KICK20.ROM
KICK30.ROM
KICK31.ROM

These are the so-called "Kickstart" ROM images that are REQUIRED in order for
WinUAEX to be functional. Search google for "kickstart roms" and I'm sure you'll
find them.

--------
Cutbacks
--------

WinUAE eats up a LOT of memory. I had to remove the following:

Software graphics filters (2xSai, AdvanceMame2x, etc, etc)
MP3 playback
Network sharing (Samba, Relax, netplay)
Hi-definition modes (720p, 1080i)

If you put a different skin on, I don't recommend using any sprites or sounds
because if you add too much, it may prevent WinUAEX from being able to load
any games.

I don't think these restrictions will be really disappointing to people, though.


-------------------------
Using Disks + Save states
-------------------------


When you change disks while playing, the configuration of the game is updated as well.
For example, if I start a game with DISK1 and then during the game I change the disk
in drive 1 from DISK1 to DISK2, then the configuration of the game will now state
that the disk in drive 1 is DISK2. When you start the game again from the main menu,
it will try to boot off of DISK2. This is intentional. Save states for multiple disk
games requires that the disks present in the drives when the state was saved are there
when the state is reloaded.

If you are playing a game where you have to change the disks during gameplay, then
I strongly suggest these tips:

- Turn on auto-loading of save states

- After you have changed a disk, wait until the game has finished loading whatever
it needs and then save the state. Always remember to save the state after
each disk swap. If you do this, then when you exit the game and restart it in the
future, the disks will be set correctly in the configuration screen, the state will
automatically load, and you'll be all set.


-----------------
Weird Speedup Bug
-----------------


There is a strange bug that has popped up a couple of times during testing that I have
not been able to find. If you notice that the game you are playing is going way too
fast, then simply exit out of it and restart (or save the state and immediately load the
state again.) It should be fine after that.


-----------------------------
Save States + Hard Drive = No
-----------------------------


Saving states while using hard drives is not supported in WinUAE, therefore it is not
supported in WinUAEX. You can still save/load the states, but there is no guarantee
that it will work with hard drive images. I've had it work fine for me in some cases
and in other cases it has crashed.


------------------
Game Configuration
------------------


The default configuration will work with most non-AGA games, but some games do require
tweaking. For AGA games, I suggest using KICK31. There are lots of tutorials,
docs, and forums about configuring games for use in WinUAE. I suggest you read
them first if you are having a problem getting a game to run. I have found that
just about every game will work if you fiddle with the settings enough. There are
also different versions of various games. If one does not work, try to find another.
In the few cases that I couldn't get a game to work, I found that it also did not work
in the Windows version of WinUAE.

Here are some general configurations that have worked well for me:

#1 - This is good for standard A500 games, including Shadow of the Beast

68000
Kickstart 1.3
512k Chip Mem
defaults for everything else


#2 - This is good for some more advanced games (A1200)

68020
Kickstart 3.1
2MB Chip mem
defaults for everything else

#3 - This is good for AGA games

68020
Kickstart 3.1
2MB Chip mem
AGA Chipset
defaults for everything else



--------------------------
Amiga Controllers Defaults
--------------------------


It seems the normal configuration that many games expect is for a mouse to be
plugged into port 1 and a joystick in port 2. The default configuration for
your controller is as follows:

The following buttons apply to the controller assigned to port 2 which is
defaulted to an Amiga Joystick:

XBox DPAD - Port 2 Up/Down/Left/Right
XBox A - Port 2 Button 1 (Joystick Button 1 or Mouse Left Button)
XBox B - Port 2 Button 2 (Joystick Button 2 or Mouse Right Button)
XBox X - Port 2 Button 3 (Joystick Button 3 or Mouse Middle Button)

The following buttons apply to the controler assigne to port 1 which is
defaulted to an Amiga Mouse:

XBox Y - Port 1 Button 1 (Joystick Button1 or Mouse Left Button)
XBox Black - Port 1 Button 2 (Joystick Button 2 or Mouse Right Button)
XBox White - Port 1 Button 3 (Joystick Button 3 or Mouse Middle Button)


The XBox Left Thumbstick will always control the mouse cursor regardless of
the port to which it is assigned. (The same thing applies to a real mouse
if you have one connected.)


Stella, Gnuboy, SMSPlus, FCEUltra, HUGO, NeoPop, DGen, Bochs, HUGO-CD,
FMSXBox, Bliss, WinSTon, Gens, Z26X, StepmaniaX, PCSXBox, XBoyAdvance,
DOSXBox, AtariXLBox, MirrorMagicX, KoboX, MaelstromX, MarblesX, Vice64X,
Vice20X, VicePETX, KegsX, XPired, AdamX, WonderSwanX, BeatsOfRageX,
PowermangaX, LynxBox, BlueMSXBox, GladiatorX, AmphetamineX, StarfighterX,
PachiX, BlobWarsX, OdysseyX, ArnoldX, X68000X, WinUAEX...
what's next?

Enjoy!

XPORT, If Lantus gives you the source code for the Xsnes9x emulator, can you implement a code-generator. SUPER PRETTY PLEASE

WHAT!! WinUAEX has just been released and all you seem to care about is that x-port implements a code-generator in zsnes9x...

Lantus gives credit in his readme text to X-Port. It's not that I don't care but X-Port's hardly never visits the scene, hard to keep up with him. Yes I do care, I just thought this is the only time I can catch him.

I was only joking mate

Great work.

Congrats X-Port on this release of the Amiga Emulator WInUAEX.

Lantus doesn't need help implementing a cheat-code searcher. The more you pester, the less likely it is that it will happen. This is a WinUAEX thread. WinUAEX-related posts only, please.

Fusion - there are no software filters. There are only hardware filters (e.g. bi/tri-linear, etc)

GREAT work Xport

UAEx rocked, but knowing your previous work this will be better.

thaks for yet another great port

ThanX a lot Xport, I don't know what the hell this is, but ThanX anyway.

Wow! My two most wanted emu releases in as many days. First the new XSNES9X and now this. Thankies Xport!

I'll be very interested to see how this compares to the version TheLion and I have been working on.

I'm not sure about the updating of the configuration every time you swap disks though. That sounds like a real pain. When I choose a disk 1 from my games list, that's what I expect the emu to load, regardless of whether I swapped disks last time I played or not.

It would be better to associate save states with whichever disk the emu was launched from (disk 1 presumably) and then have it restore the contents of the disk drives as they were at the time of the state's creation. So you could launch from disk 1 and then restore a state in which any subsequent disk was in the drive.

Just an idea, one of many. Thankies again!

Sorry X-PORT, It just that you're the king at making Code-Generators. I'm Sorry. As you said before, thuis post is for the winuaex amiga emulator. I can respect that.

I think I may have found a bug in the Joypad Keymapping.
Mapping buttons to the Joy Up, Down, Left and Right doesnt seem to work.

another great port by xport

horay for xport

I agree - great release! Now I can go back to my teenage days

While we're on the subject of grabbing Xport while he's around, does this release support the command-line launching of specific images (as found in other Xport emulators)?

And if so (or even if not) could we get some hints on how to use it?

t

FusionX, you where 100% correct thanks mate.

wow, great news, and a great day for all the amiga lovers.

thanks a lot, xport

will post some comments when i tested it.

nascent - command-line launching is implemented in all my projects. This subject has already been addressed in another thread. Suffice to say, the current dashboards out there do not support my method of command-line launching. I know for a fact that Avalaunch will support it in the (near?) future. I've heard that other dashboard makers may also be implementing support as well. Write to them and let them know.

Tanas - what game?

X PORT, all of them.

...for example?

Shadow of the beast, Turrican Giana Sisters, silk worm, kick off, and menace.

The games that you can notice it most on, are smooth horizontal scrollers.

great.
I like the configuration screen, easy as it can, but how to add a folder as a harddrive?
Driveturbo rocks, Gravity Force and Wings load fast as hell .
Still some things to play with.
My wish is that we can add more than one harddrive at once.

the gods are happy

greets

Tanas - you purists make my eyes feel even more feeble than I already suspect they are. This is fixed now, but I'll wait to hear more comments before v2.

Gonkle - on the configuration screen, select the hard drive option and it will ask you if you want to add a HDF or a folder.

I've also noticed the tearing, esp in Turrican and Super Cars II

If you don't save at all (no save state, no in-game save) then it will try and boot disk 2 since that is the last disk that was in the drive before you stopped playing. However, it's much more likely that people will be using save states for practically everything to avoid lengthy load times. I don't see it being a problem that happens often.

gonkle - The defaults are 68000, kickstart 1.3, Agnus, 512kb chipmem (stock A500). The reason you are getting those configuration settings is because they are the same as the last game you configured.

yeah it does sound like this new version of amiga needs alot of bugs to be fixed

Nice work, as expected, but so far I've yet to get Gloom or any other FPS to run full speed full screen.

All the other games I've had a chance to test run fine, but then again they would work on a stock A500 so that's expected.

Okay I've had the chance to try a few things out.

Here's an idea for v2. I used to do this to get many of the more taxing games to run at full speed on my old low-spec PC and I'm sure it'd be perfect for the Xbox.

In WinUAE's CPU Speed settings, if you choose the Variable Between CPU and Chipset option and then set the slider all the way to CPU, many games that ran choppily before (like the awesome Elite II) will now run at full speed. So perhaps in addition to the WinUAE-X's Max and Real CPU Speed settings, we could have a third option that does this.

Note that this only works for speeding up certain games, others it will slow down horribly. But I think it should definitely be added as an option.

Likklebaer - ok, when you select a game to play the first time it will now always load that disk unless a state is loaded wherein it will place the last configured disks in the drives.

deathx88 - No, there are not "alot of bugs" in this release. The only bug, per se, is the screen tearing. Labelling it as a bug is a rather broad interpretation, though. Likklebaer had a suggestion for something that she would prefer to see in WinUAEX. The way it currently works in WinUAEX is not buggy. It's behaving exactly as I intended - but as always it's near impossible to please everyone. I suggest you try it yourself before making comments stemming from groupthink.

XDelusion - I just tried Gloom on WinUAE (on my PC) I don't know what it's supposed to look like, but it's awfully choppy in WinUAE. It certainly doesn't appear to run any worse in WinUAEX.

Edit : Likklebaer - Well, this is the kind of feedback I was wondering if I'd hear. There are a handful of options that I left out because I wasn't sure if they were actually useful to anyone. (I couldn't find a use for them in my testing, and I didn't want to overwhelm the user with a bazillion options.) I'll add those CPU/Chipset finetuning options in v2.

If there are any other missing options that help certain games, let me know. (Along with a specific example so I can test.)

CPU Settings? Slider? Um, where? I know there are the CPU Max or Real settings, and there are the CPU Cycle settings, but there ain't no slider on my screen.

Also is Picasso support always on, and how come the JIT Cache can't be cranked to more than 2MB RAM? Mem limitations? If so please add in support for up to 4Mb for those of us who have 128Mb of RAM.

Thus far Amiga OS 3.1 will not install. It runs slow as hell first off, and second off during installation it errors claiming directories are missing on the floppies, which they ARE NOT.

Also Gloom runs smoothe on my PC, even ran smoothe on my old 600mhz Celeron.

Something else that has just occured to me as well.

Some older A500 games won't work if more than one disk drive is enabled whether or not anything is in it (it was like this on the original machine as well). I can't think of a specific one off the top of my head but I'll find one in the morning as an example. So if it's not this way already then perhaps it would be a good idea to make it so that any drives not in use are disabled. Or just have an option to select the number of enabled drives.

XDelusion - what version of WinUAE are you running? I'm using the most recent one and the slider is on the Hardware->CPU property sheet. If you're asking where it is on WinUAEX - I was saying that I'll be adding that in v2. Furthermore, I just tried Gloom with this slider all the way on CPU and it now runs very smoothly. I'm pretty sure the XBox will have the same results when I've implemented it. Also, yes because of memory constraints the JIT cache cannot go higher than 2MB. I have yet to see any noticeable speed different when playing with the JIT cache on either WinUAE or WinUAEX, however...so there doesn't seem to be much point in allowing for more.

When you say Amiga OS 3.1, is that the same as Workbench 3.1? You can hold down the throttle button (and set the throttle settings to a higher number) to make it load/run faster.

Likklebaer - the number of drives is determined by the existence of images in those drives. If you didn't put anything in drive #2, then only one drive will be initialized.

Glad to hear you've already got the drives issue covered.

One last thing before I go to bed. An option for adding Fast RAM. If you add just 1Mb of Fast RAM to a standard A500 configuration, certain games (Lemmings is an example) will detect it and use it to load in extra sounds, graphics, etc. And some A1200 games will reduce in-game disk swapping by loading more of the game into the memory at the start if enough Fast RAM is detected. Some games may run faster also.

That's it. Bedtime.

A very very big thank you ! one of my fave emulator is now available on Xbox

I have some questions/requests:
- Do the picasso96 mode will be supported in a next version? (And RTG memory)
- full screen rtg
- A second harddrive support
- bsdsocket library emulation

I know it's a lot but all those things make Winuae the best Amiga emulator
Of course Xport if you don't know much about all these, as it's more related to later amigas i'll be very pleased to help you!

Thank you again Xport, i'm so excited to use Winuae on my xbox !

Once again great work XPort!

I got to say i really ought to do some skins as a small way of saying ta for this and the CPC emu...

Any chance you could add a second HD directory option? Just that I have my Workbench as one drive and Work as the other.

And being able to add 8MB Fast Ram would be enough to run any Whdload game too.

Oh and CAPS ipf support would be great too

Sorry to be greedy

Wee! thnx Xport, for making more wonderful emulators .. This one really rocks ..

I agree with Antiriad about the the second hdd directory option, would be very nice if it was possible to add that in next release.

Keep up the good work

/sonic

Yes I was refering to Workbench aka Amiga OS 3.1. And the problem was not in the loading time, it was the fact that it just runs SLOW! Like slower than a stock Amiga 500 I'd say.

Looking foward to version 2, will wait and play with that before I experiment more.

There's some very noticeable slowdown in Batman the Movie using a standard A500 config. Not sure what to attribute it to since this game's hardly a resource intensive one.

Thx alot for this port, and a little suggestion for v2:

When you are in the game selection screen and you have lots of games - lets say like 500 - it takes very long to scroll down the list to a game that starts with Z. Could u add that you can go backwards too - i mean pressing up when on the 1st game makes you jump down to the last game.
Also how about a letter-jump like MameOx has - this would work by pressing the right analoguestick up and down and it jumps from the 1st game starting with A to the 1st one starting with B etc etc...
And a reset option would be nice

Other than that i an confirm the bug Tanas found - configuring the pad keys doesnt work. Did anyone get Picasso96 to work? - doesnt seem to work for me...

Finally i want to add that the switch videomode option made me laugh - if anyone wonders why - try it for yourself

I can probably squeeze in 1MB of FastRAM as another option. Absolutely not 8MB. 1MB is pushing things.

More than one hard drive - fine.

BSDsocket - no. As I said in the README, I stripped all network code to make room for more important things. I can't very well implement BSDsockets without any network code.

Picasso96 - It's implemented (more or less) but I never tested it. The reason is because (and correct me if I'm mistaken) it requires at least an extra 1MB of memory for the RTG. Memory is in short supply and with these other (more important) options, I don't think there's any room for it.

CAPS - For all the people who want to see CAPS support in WinUAEX, send an email to the following address:

caps@caps-project.org

and request for them to make a pure non-DLL, non-Windows static LIB available. CAPS is distributed as a DLL which is fine for Windows emulators, but this DLL is rife with Windows-specific calls that have no equivalent on the XBox. I already know that they have a LIB available for download on their website - but the LIB they have available is simply a wrapper around the DLL which makes the same Windows calls.


For people complaining about specific games/apps - try whatever it is that you're doing in WinUAE 0.8.27. I suspect you'll see the same results with the same options selected in WinUAEX. If you notice it behaving differently, then you'll need to tell me exactly what you're doing, exactly what options you've selected, and exactly how things are different.

Schlauchi - first off, the scroll speed is customizable from the configuration menu off the main menu. Second, there already is a letter-jump function - DPAD left/right. Finally, re-read all of Tanas' posts and you'll see that there is no bug. Read the README.

Thanks Xport. No requests or moans from me - I'm just very grateful that this has finally appeared on the Xbox.