Amiga Emulation / FS-UAE: A Comprehensive Tutorial + Launchbox Integration

[maschine]

It now works thanks to great support from @Ted.

You need his modified version of the game. It will run smoothly with A600, kickrom 2.05, FS-UAE 3.0.2, after updating your databases.

[mohanned85]

amazing tutorial
question
Anyone have a xbox 360 controller config for fs-uae or playstation 3 controller thanks
thanks

Edited February 5, 2020 by mohanned85

[Zombeaver]

I'm using a 360 controller in the tutorial.

[mohanned85]

7 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

I'm using a 360 controller in the tutorial.

can you send me your controller profile or send screenshot here how you have it set up thx

[Zombeaver]

It's in the tutorial.

[an531]

Many thanks to @FrodeSolheim for an awesome emulator and to @Zombeaver for the tutorial.

In notes to the most recent version of FS-UAE (3.0.2) I read that two much needed features are on the to-do list. Namely:

Quote

Amiga mouse must currently be emulated with a native mouse device. A nice
feature would be to be able to emulate the mouse with gamepads - analogue
controls for instance.

An on-screen keyboard, controllable with a game pad / joystick would also
be nice, and is planned for a future version.

This is really great and I look forward to having those. Currently, like some people here, I'm using Xpadder to map mouse movements to an analog stick. It works well, but having native support would be much better. However, there is no way that I know of to have a working on-screen keybaord, with Amiga layout (ideally) or Windows layout... any ideas?

That being said, what makes Amiga emulation most painful to me is creating custom configs per game, in particular mapping keyboard keys to gamepad buttons per game. I would like to use OpenRetro configs by default, but add/override custom key mapping manually and save that configuration. From what I know the only way to have custom keys assigned to gamepad buttons now is to create custom configs per game from scratch (or from template) like in Zombeaver's tutorial. However, that means losing all OpenRetro configs! On the other hand, when I use OpenRetro configs and in Additional Configuration add custom keys assigned to gamepad buttons, then this doesn't get saved anywhere and just disappears when I switch to another game...

Is there any way to keep OpenRetro configs, but add to them a few custom lines of code? Where are the OpenRetro configs per game saved?

To give an example, in the game Cyber Assault used in the tutorial, I would like to use OpenRetro configs + assign Delete key (turn left in game) to Left Shoulder + assign End key (turn right in game) to Right Shoulder and finally save that configuration forever. Using Xpadder, I mapped arrow keys to the d-pad and mouse movement to an analog stick, so the game could basically be played with a controller only.

Edited February 8, 2020 by an531

[Headrush69]

Quote

Amiga mouse must currently be emulated with a native mouse device. A nice
feature would be to be able to emulate the mouse with gamepads - analogue
controls for instance.

An on-screen keyboard, controllable with a game pad / joystick would also
be nice, and is planned for a future version.

The P-UAE core in Retroarch does both of these right now.

[Zombeaver]

On 2/8/2020 at 2:22 PM, an531 said:

there is no way that I know of to have a working on-screen keybaord, with Amiga layout (ideally) or Windows layout... any ideas?

To my knowledge, no. There might be a way to rig something up with an external application and/or AHK, but I couldn't tell you specifically. Windows does have its own built in on screen keyboard function from 7+ in Ease of Access. It doesn't have F-keys though. You could probably use something like this + an AHK script to pull it up/hide it with a button/combo.

I do know this is a feature that Frode's planned on adding for quite a while.

On 2/8/2020 at 2:22 PM, an531 said:

Is there any way to keep OpenRetro configs, but add to them a few custom lines of code?

To my knowledge, no. Not that I ever discovered anyway. I wish there was as that would certainly save time.

10 hours ago, Headrush69 said:

The P-UAE core in Retroarch does both of these right now.

P-UAE doesn't support WHDLoad unless you were to manually install an instance of Workbench to make them usable or converted them into .hdf format. It doesn't have pre-made configs for each game either.

[Headrush69]

4 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

P-UAE doesn't support WHDLoad unless you were to manually install an instance of Workbench to make them usable or converted them into .hdf format. It doesn't have pre-made configs for each game either.

You no longer have to do that. I am running WHDLOAD lha archives directly downloaded from the RetroPlay without setting up anything, just need the right kickstart roms in Retroarch/System.

[Zombeaver]

Oh? Well that's interesting. Will have to give that a go.

That still won't give you a library of configs to pull from, but that's not necessarily a huge deal so long as it pulls the arguments that are specified in the .info file (which I would hope it would do). That's what FS-UAE does as a fallback at this point and even that's sufficient for the vast majority of stuff. If it doesn't, you're going to have problems unless you can specify them somewhere - the most important one being PRELOAD.

[Headrush69]

6 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Oh? Well that's interesting. Will have to give that a go.

That still won't give you a library of configs to pull from, but that's not necessarily a huge deal so long as it pulls the arguments that are specified in the .info file (which I would hope it would do). That's what FS-UAE does as a fallback at this point and even that's sufficient for the vast majority of stuff. If it doesn't, you're going to have problems unless you can specify them somewhere - the most important one being PRELOAD.

Quite a bit of functionality has been added but I can't speak for how exhaustive it is for all cases. 

I think their approach is centered on playing games and demos mostly, so Fs-UAE is still valuable. I still use it for running Workbenches.

I only have 36 Amiga games and every one runs using this core. 

A few I needed to be changed from NTSC to PAL and also change the Amiga model emulated. Both these can be done using Retroarch options and saved as a per game config. I believe you can also add to the file name to force model. eg Archon_0903_(A600).lha

The one feature I don't see I miss from FS-UAE is warp, which is nice to skip some of those long intros, but since I'm using WHDLOADs, loading times are fast anyways.

  

[Zombeaver]

4 minutes ago, Headrush69 said:

The one feature I don't see I miss from FS-UAE is warp, which is nice to skip some of those long intros, but since I'm using WHDLOADs, loading times are fast anyways.

You could just use RA's normal fast-forward function for that. You can set the max fast forward speed. I think the default is something like 3x but the max is 10x.

[Headrush69]

8 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

You could just use RA's normal fast-forward function for that. You can set the max fast forward speed. I think the default is something like 3x but the max is 10x.

I don't think it's supported yet.

(I remember reading something in one of the commits about an issue when using cycle-exact timings.)

Edited February 26, 2020 by Headrush69

[FrodeSolheim]

On-screen keyboard (with Amiga keys, not "PC") is being worked on at the moment (Some more information about in-progress work at http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100873).

I will also add some way of overriding OpenRetro configs with local config, but prioritizing getting out a new version of FS-UAE first

[Zombeaver]

14 minutes ago, Headrush69 said:

I don't think it's supported yet.

(I remember reading something in one of the commits about an issue when using cycle-exact timings.)

Really? That's pretty bizarre. I don't think I've ever heard of that being an issue before. Cores not supporting save states is semi-common, but not supporting fast-forward is (I think) a first for me. The VICE core supports both the standard fast-forward and has its own internal warp hotkey.

8 minutes ago, FrodeSolheim said:

On-screen keyboard (with Amiga keys, not "PC") is being worked on at the moment (Some more information about in-progress work at http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100873).

I will also add some way of overriding OpenRetro configs with local config, but prioritizing getting out a new version of FS-UAE first

That's awesome! Looking forward to it.

Good to hear from you!

[Headrush69]

33 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Really? That's pretty bizarre. I don't think I've ever heard of that being an issue before. Cores not supporting save states is semi-common, but not supporting fast-forward is (I think) a first for me. The VICE core supports both the standard fast-forward and has its own internal warp hotkey.

It could be specific to my system, I don't use fast-forwarding normally, but when I turned off vsync and tested FF in other cores, I didn't have it working on them either.

Edit: Needed to turn Threaded Video on and now it works.

I searched for that commit again and it was run-ahead, not fast-forwarding, so maybe it does work. Apparently save states do work according to github page.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Headrush69

[Alby22]

Sorry i don't know if this is the right topic but i am trying to play Sim City 2000 on FS-UAE and it keeps telling me that "Could not find the Workbench file". I don't know what to do, I am really desperate at this point ?

Edited February 26, 2020 by Alby22

[an531]

13 hours ago, Headrush69 said:

The P-UAE core in Retroarch does both of these right now.

Thanks for letting me know! I'll definitely check it out sometime soon.

1 hour ago, FrodeSolheim said:

On-screen keyboard (with Amiga keys, not "PC") is being worked on at the moment (Some more information about in-progress work at http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100873).

I will also add some way of overriding OpenRetro configs with local config, but prioritizing getting out a new version of FS-UAE first

It's nice to hear from you @FrodeSolheim. The work-in-progress looks very promising!

I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't talking about "overriding OpenRetro configs with local config", which in and of itself would also be really great to have. However, as far as I recall there is a very easy work-around for this (I think mentioned in Zombeaver's tutorial), where you keep/import your games with OpenRetro configs and custom/local configs separately. What I was basically talking about is modifying OpenRetro configs and saving them locally. I like OpenRetro configs in general, but for example I would like to add custom key mapping for each game. To do this now, I have to create a custom config from zero (or template). Instead, for each game I would like to use OpenRetro configs as a basis, modify those configs (e.g. by adding custom key mapping) and then finally save the modified OpenRetro configs locally.

[Patgom145]

Hi Everybody,

I have followed this great tutorial and I have got now about 2 200 uuid games that work perfectly through Launchbox and pretty well scraped.

The problem is that http://www.whdload.de/ Team is too good and offers continously fixed or improved installations.

How do you manage to update your uuid roms in Launchbox to take fixed or improved WHDload installations into account ?

Thanks a lot,

Patgom145

[Colorman3605]

I am using FS-UAE (portable version that does not create folders in the windows user directory ....) as an emulator for WHD files. Everything is ok, but I have several questions to ask. I searched the internet but there are too many references with the WIN-UAE that send me into confusion, among other things the WINUAE I have used it until recently.
So, I wanted to ask how to hide the WHDLOAD splas screen when starting games with the name of those who made the files and which sometimes contains cheats. Through the options of FS_UAE for some titles the thing is hidden but for others it continues to be shown. I have looked at various forums and there is talk of WHDLOAD.prefs. But where is it? I also read about a WHDLOAD folder in the same folder as FS-UAE but I've never seen it. How does FS-UAE work for WHDLOAD files?
I know it is more of a "matter of appearance" but I would like to start the games in the most real way possible as when I had the real Commodore Amiga.
Thank you!