Commodore Amiga and how to Emulate it.

[weltall]

Hello everyone :D If you want to skip my rambling, I am jsut looking for a way to Emulate Amiga and of course in a way that I will be able to connect it to LaunchBox eventually. All my life I hear about Amiga and how awesome it was in the past. I never seen it myself and if anything my first PC contact was with a 386 and my first PC a 486 @33MHz. Great times, great games and lots of frustration, in a good way always. Thanks to LaunchBox I have been looking through youtube tons of videos of old consoles, which I did not know that even existed and finally reached Amiga. Holy nostalgia! From videos I have seen it looks awesome. I am guessing back then it would blow my mind to see one, but even now it actually did. Now to the emulation. It seems there are three file times, which is the ADF, which is I am understanding an image to the original disk, the IPF, which exists so if the disk had a custom software in it, it will be preserved and LHA, which is a compressed archived image. The way I am understanding this is ADF-ISO / IPF-CCD / LHA-CSO, or at least something alike. Which is supposed to be the best to use? The way I see it, it should be IPF, but then again I know nothing about the emulation if Amiga. Also when it comes to Kickstart, it seems in videos and guides A500 keeps being suggested. After reading though for a while, it seems that A4000 is the only one that support AGA games. I doubt just because it feels logical to me, A4000 is the best one to use, but I am guessing that should be the one to use for AGA games? Thanks in advance to anyone that will help!

[SentaiBrad]

I will say you've done as much research as me, I've been trying for a long time to get it to work with various methods and I still have nothing. Amiga is difficult. However, the FS-UAE developer knows about us (LaunchBox) and is actually working on better command line support so we can easily launch it. That seems to where it breaks the fastest, when you want to launch it through LB.

[weltall]

Considering how complicated it looks, I can only imagine. It is really nice to know that a developer is actually paying attention to what is happening around =D Do you maybe know a guide that will let me at least launch the games? From tests I did, the biggest fail was sadly with FS-UAE. I chose that first cause it's UI looked sleek and new age, but sadly I did not manage to make it work. WinUAE kind of worked, but it was with a couple ipf files I tested... which weirdly only worked with the A4000. Some guides around the next point to how to set it up, but they are like preliminary steps (or they look like it). I am currently going through different youtube videos trying to get a visual guide, but considering the best I have found was for Hyperspin, I kind of put it to the side. If I won't find anything, I will watch it and see if I can at least understand how it works.

[SentaiBrad]

To be honest I don't. Amiga will be the first on the tutorial list when I figure it out. MAME was daunting because it's complicated, this is daunting because there is a surprising lack of information.

[weltall]

Thanks for wanting to help. I hope you soon figure it out and make a video.. and finish your game and also make the power ranger one and keep the forums clean and make videos for all systems and transmute dirt into gold! Definitely no pressure XD

[SentaiBrad]

Shit...

[orac31]

I have Amiga working very well with fs-uae as long as you have the kickstarts (amiga forever is the easiest way) is it ok if I post later a youtube link showing it working in lb

[weltall]

I have been checking some videos about it for like I do not know how many hours now. I better put on my PC glasses @.@ Although sadly with FS-UAE I did not manage anything. Currently just configuring WinUAE. I have to say, I am loving the feeling of the "old pc" I am getting from the whole thing. I would love to see FS-UAE work with LB, although currently I would love to see it work in general. I did not manage to make it even start, but thanks to WinUAE, I am understanding Amiga a bit more.

[SentaiBrad]

Sure, post the video, please do especially if you show how to get it working I may use it as the basis for a tutorial. By that I mean I would watch it, see how you're doing it and apply that to the tutorials. I've got games launching, but it's no where near even a small percent of them working. Some don't launch, some get me stuck at a boot screen, a lot of audio clips and there is a loud as hell clicking noise that sounds like an old Floppy Drive locking and spinning.

[weltall]

Managed to launch it with WinUAE... that moment after hours or trial and error, managing to launch a game!!!! That is full of audio and video clipping XD... but still!

[orac31]

video is processing now will post link when done will try and do a video on how I set it up but I'm not great at explaining things

[locvez]

For what it's worth, I launch the amiga games using a combination of winUAE Launcher and WHDLoad - it saves SOOOOOOOO much grief swapping disks etc, and all my games work perfectly, really easy to setup. I will post pics of my settings when I get home. There's a torrent somewhere, I think likely on the dome of pleasure that contains a bang up to date WHDLoad set. Loc

[weltall]

What I was doing 100% wrong was thinking that the lha files I was testing with were like the adf and ipf images. For now I am launching the games through a folder I have extracted them in which I use as a virtual HDD. It is so enjoyable to see the whole thing even partially work XD I never before realized that Amiga could be so complicated XD I am weirdly loving it. I kind of feel glad my first OS was DOS XD

[locvez]

The way I understand it that .lha files are compressed archives in amiga format. .ipf files are exact copies of original amiga disks, i.e - not copied disks, cracked, etc. I ran into issues with .ipf's as they contain copy protection. .adf's were good, but hated trying to swap disks in win-uae so I eventually found a WHDLoad set that is an Amiga Hard disk install package, i.e - no swapping disks :D

[SentaiBrad]

They are super archaic.

[locvez]

Also wanted to add - the Amiga 1200 does AGA games too :) more reading here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDLoad and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Disk_File regarding disk formatting.

[orac31]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZrn222jGoA

[weltall]

Actually I am using A1200 with AGA, because that was the only one I managed to setup and work with. I honestly do not know how to work with A500 yet, but mostly because I have been testing with LHA files. Seems A500 is meant to be used liek a console. You put in the game and it runs it. With A1200 I managed to actually play games by installing Workbench which I am guessing it is like an OS. Running the games though it with WHDLoad is as easy now as running the "exe" file. It seems to be running quite well and the audio and video hickups seem to happen only when the game loads, not during the actual gameplay. PS: I just realized the title of the thread I opened feels more like I am offering a way to set it up, rather than asking. Think it is possible to change it to a question, so people will not think it is a guide?

[Bil]

In the dev version of FS-UAE, the "Empty Floppy Drive Volume" clicking can be turned off:

[Bil]

As orac31 has shown, the ideal Amiga format type to use are the WHDLoad zipped files with LaunchBox. The only issue with this is the naming of the files, when imported into LaunchBox. There are .map files included with WinUAE Loader that have the filename beside the cleanname. Could these .map files somehow be read by LB to display the clean names? I've attached the WHDLoad map file...