FS-UAE Exporter to create a folder structure for import into Launchbox

[Eirulan]

The period bug should have been solved already in 6.9

I think @Wutex mentioned it somewhere in this thread and I think i tested it and it worked 

[Zombeaver]

Oh? I must have missed that. I'll test it again tonight.

I've just been using the "without variant name" option because I didn't think it'd been fixed yet.

[orac31]

Just a few notes ilf files are good but they are clean copys with any copy protection intact if you have a game that needs a code monkey island airborne ranger etc use the Adf as it's cracked if using disk all whday games are cracked 

Spoiler

 

 

[Zombeaver]

Yeah I assumed as much since ipf is part of the preservation project - C64 games in the PP are the same way.

The video will be based on using WHDLoad games. The same basic principles apply to ADF versions though - the export/import process is the same, you'd just be directing LB to a different UUID if you wanted to use the ADF version. You could actually add different versions in as additional-apps in LB if you wanted to.

I'll also go over creating/using .fs-uae configuration files for the games that aren't in the Open Amiga Games Database/don't have built-in configs. I've actually encountered a handful of games where the built-in config either didn't work (crashed) or didn't work very well (were abnormally slow loading). They all seem to be instances where they use the A600 for whatever reason. So setting up your own config is useful for those situations as well.

[orac31]

That would be great i think if you could do a video many people can get it working and with the two programs eurilan has done it works great with save states and with your help can do normal saves with WHDLoad games.

Of to play mego maina Adf so I can use save states 

If anyone has a chance can they try mercenery WHDLoad won't work for me

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, orac31 said:

If anyone has a chance can they try mercenery WHDLoad won't work for me

Oh? I haven't tried the first one but I know Damocles (Mercenary 2) works in WHDLoad format. I'll check out the first one tonight.

[Zombeaver]

I see the problem with Mercenary now - it's not in the OAGD so it doesn't have a built-in config in FS-UAE. In those cases they need to be created manually. I just tested it out and my default settings (A1200 / 8MB Fast RAM / Empty Floppy Drive Volume: 0) seem to work just fine for Mercenary. I just added the zip to the hard drive section, added PRELOAD to the WHDLoad Arguments section (so it reads Mercenary.slave PRELOAD), and named/saved the config as Mercenary. It boots up fine.

I have no idea what I'm doing in game though haha.

[orac31]

Thank you game from my childhood  bit like elite will try tomorrow 

[Eirulan]

Looking forward to the video!

I myself still prefer ADF because I never used a HDD back then in my A2000, only floppies and it just doesn't give me the same "nostalgic feeling" - if this makes any sense (probably not)

But I'm open for "new things" and maybe I can learn a thing or two about WHD handling with this guide. I know how to make them myself and have a full ClassicWB installation running with lot's of them startable via Workbench, but this is of course nothing that can be integrated into Launchbox (but - this way of doing HDD installations again feels "authentic" to me )

...

Just a small follow-up from my side: I still plan to do the updated version of the exporter to let you choose which variant to export, but as this requires some REAL programming, not just hacking down 50 lines of code, but to populated UI elements with data and handle user actions, this can't be done in roughly an hour like the first version and I don't see myself doing this before the end of next week. I'm on heavy load in the office at the moment and this weekend is already planned with other stuff. So please be patient :-)

I've started works for a new project today, which I will attempt to do after this: a fully automatic ScummVM importer, and I have plans on doing something similar with W95/98 games run through PCem, but that's still far on the horizon ^^

 

[orac31]

I look forward to it I will keep my set up as is in till your new importer. 

Any way to select language as in porting one game only is OK but some games have many languages.

 

Understand  you have done this is spare time and thanks even if it stays as is I'm very happy as I grew up with amiga I have a a1200 with all the WHDLoad games on it but don't have the space to have it out

[Zombeaver]

7 minutes ago, Eirulan said:

I myself still prefer ADF because I never used a HDD back then in my A2000, only floppies and it just doesn't give me the same "nostalgic feeling" - if this makes any sense (probably not)

It makes perfect sense to me. Quake is one of my favorite games of all time, but if it's literally anything but regular-old chunky-ass software mode Quake I can't stand it - that's what I know, remember, and grew up with and anything else is just wrong. So believe me, that sort of thing is preaching to the choir for me. It's just that I have no childhood nostalgic connection to Amiga (I was a C64 kid) so for me it's just a matter of what runs smoothest/fastest and works. For my purposes I just prefer WHDLoad. There are some C64 games, on the other hand, that if I didn't see the cracktros by Ikari or Remember on some games I wouldn't know what to do with myself 

12 minutes ago, Eirulan said:

Just a small follow-up from my side: I still plan to do the updated version of the exporter to let you choose which variant to export, but as this requires some REAL programming, not just hacking down 50 lines of code, but to populated UI elements with data and handle user actions, this can't be done in roughly an hour like the first version and I don't see myself doing this before the end of next week. I'm on heavy load in the office at the moment and this weekend is already planned with other stuff. So please be patient :-)

Thank you! No rush! It works as is - this is just extra QOL! Speaking of which, if it's at all possible - adding in "remembered" locations for the launcher.sqlite and the chosen export folder would be a nice touch too 

14 minutes ago, Eirulan said:

I've started works for a new project today, which I will attempt to do after this: a fully automatic ScummVM importer, and I have plans on doing something similar with W95/98 games run through PCem, but that's still far on the horizon

Awesome! I can't wait! I've got about 50 ScummVM games in my library but it is quite a pain in the butt to add each one.

I have no experience with PCem so I'm curious about that one as well. I used VirtualBox with a W98 environment years ago - I imagine it's somewhat similar to that.

[Evil_Orko]

this is great, i'm going to enjoy using this as soon as I re-read the instructions a few times.  I have FS-UAE already set up with the .lha WHDload collection, and they work wonderfully from within FS-UAE.  Thanks for doing this for the community!!!!

[Zombeaver]

I figured out how to fix the handful of games that have the "half color" bug. In WinUAE I just set up their configs with custom brightness settings but I couldn't figure out how to do this in FS-UAE. It turns out though that Frode actually made a shader for this specific issue called atari-color-fix.shader that fixes them. Evidently this is a problem that affected some Atari ST to Amiga conversions, thus the "atari-color-fix" name. According to the FS-UAE forum this shader is supposed to come with FS-UAE but mine did not; I'm not sure if it's because it's the portable version or if it was just removed in later releases. I was able to find it on github, however, and just created the file myself. I've attached it below. This just needs to go in your base FS-UAE folder and then you create a custom config for the game you want to use it on and in the Additional Configuration -> Custom Configuration section just add in shader = atari-color-fix.shader save your config and you're good to go.

atari-color-fix.shader

Turning this (which is using the built-in config):

Into this (using a custom config):

I also figured out how to fix Hostages so you don't just get murdered immediately, even when you don't get caught in the spotlight. The game runs at the wrong speed with the built-in config which uses A1200 and the graphics are basically out of sync from the internal speed (which makes the game impossible). The model just needs to be changed to A500+. In WinUAE you had to enable "cycle exact" in the settings.

With these fixes I'm no longer using WinUAE for any of my games so huzzah for that.

I'll try to get that video out this weekend.

[orac31]

Hi can I ask i got mercenery working thanks you but can't launch config with the rest do I just add another copy of FS-UAE as my normal config uses the extra program the op made.

 

[Zombeaver]

I have two emulator entries for FS-UAE in LB - one is just regular old "FS-UAE" that's using the normal Launcher.exe from FS-UAE and the other is "FS-UAE UUID" which uses Eirulan's launcher. The reason the two have to be separate is because the "no quotes" and "no file extension" check boxes that are used for FS-UAE UUIDs makes it mutually exclusive from use with launching config files. If you want to launch your own config, you need to use FS-UAE and if you want to launch a UUID file, you need to use FS-UAE UUID.

You probably could use Eirulan's launcher with your non-UUID emulator entry but you don't need to - launching via your own config files does not create the problem that his launcher fixes. Launching via a custom config updates the config_name field in the settings.ini so your saves will work normally as-is.

[locvez]

@Eirulan - The tool is awesome, great work.

 

Would it be possible to have some way of selecting which "version" of the game is loaded? I have a couple of games where it has picked german versions over english and non AGA versions over AGA

 

Ideially I think having a language section (prefer all english/french/german/spanish/italian/other games) and a "model" section? (CD32, AGA, OCS, everything else)

 

Thoughts?

[Eirulan]

@locvez

I wanna do an updated app which lets you decide which "variant" of a game is exported. I'm thinking about a way to set prefererences too...

But unfortunatelly I don't have spare time last week and this week so I can't work at it at the moment. If you leave office every day at 19 o'clock there's not much spare time to dedicate

Hopefully I can look into this next week...

 

[locvez]

Thanks @Eirulan , if there's anything we can do to help just yell

What about throwing the source on github and we can help contribute?

[Eirulan]

That's a good idea - it's not much source at the moment

I'll look into this at the weekend...

[levellord]

Hello guys!

Eirulan, thanks so much for putting launcher tool together, it sounds like a great way to run Amiga games through LB. Now I had a bit of a problem trying to set it up and running as described on page 4 of this topic. I followed description very closely but it still won't run for me and instead of feeding LB with UUID information, it will just open FS-UAE launcher and do nothing else. I am running Launchbox version 6.11 and FS-UAE Launcher is version 2.8.0. latest stable. Launchbox is working normally with my C64 setup. I have logged into the FS-UAE database through FS-UAE and local base is populated. I have edited "Launcher_uuid.exe.config" and have set locations of all three parameters. Now, the only difference for me here is that "Launcher.exe" parameter I have replaced with "fs-uae-launcher.exe" because there is no other "Launcher.exe" in FS-UAE directory but this one. It appears that filenames are bit different from FS-UAE 2.8 stable than in developer version, but I don't think that should be an issue here?

Is this what might be a problem here? I would appreciate a lot if someone is able to advise how they set up FS-UAE UUID using FS-UAE 2.8 stable.

I also have changed emulator entry in LB and replaced "fs-uae-launcher.exe" with "Launcher_uuid.exe" with "no quotes" and "filename only" checkbox ticked as can be seen below:

Here is my "Setting.ini" where "config_name" is reflecting on second line:

Are you guys using any Command line parameters not mentioned in the topic here or you leave it blank?

Just to mention, not sure if this is relevant, but if I leave emulator application path to "FS-UAE-launcher.exe" (and not  "launcher_uuid.exe") it will run the game as A500 (no parameters used).

 

@Zombeaver, you mentioned that tutorial video might be on it's way to cover this topic. I really hope it will be sooner than later.

 

Thank you both of you for everything covered here and for you help with the issue. Please let me know if you need anything else.

Best regards,

levellord