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

[Zombeaver]

I'm not aware of a way to hide the splash screen.

You can find the WHDLoad.prefs file here.

[FrodeSolheim]

FS-UAE Launcher has a whdload_splash_delay option which you can set to 0.

[Colorman3605]

 

I copied the file .prefs to the FS-UAE folder and it actually affects the functioning of the program (see key to exit) but as far as the splash screen is concerned, it is now always displayed. I tried to change several values:
; SplashDelay = 0; time to display splash window (1/50 seconds)

; ConfigDelay = 0; wait to select options in splash window (1/50 seconds)

  but in practice nothing changes even if, if I don't remember correctly between these keys there is some relationship in this regard

The whdload_splash_delay option doesn't work if i use the WHDLOAD.prefs file. In fact, if I delete the * .prefs file the option of FS-UAE returns to work and the splash screen is no longer displayed, at least for games that do not offer options to choose from or cheats.

[Colorman3605]

In the file Settings.ini (in Data Folder in FS-UAE main folder) there are the entries that are also in WHDLoad.prefs. I looked on the WHDLOAD website to see the various voices, their meaning and their settings, but too many voices are related to each other. I did not understand much and in the end (by varying the various values in various combinations) I always arrive at not displaying the splah screen if there are no buttons that can be clicked.

[luk]

@Zombeaver this tutorial is very useful, thanks! ?

I can't say which is better, WinUAE or FS-UAE...I think they're very different and for different purposes, and maybe FS-UAE is better for LaunchBox.

I have 2 questions about FS-UAE, and I hope someone can help me:

1)

is there a way to set custom action inputs for controller different for different games?
I usually use "advanced" settings and in this case I'm using:
XInput_Controller_button_1 = action_key_return
It works fine but in this way all the games have this setting. Is there any way to set it for different games?

 

2)

is there any way to automatically pause the emulation opening FS-UAE Menu (action_menu) ?

 

Thanks so much, bye

luk

 

[Zombeaver]

@luk 1) if you click on a config and then click the Additional Configuration button on the middle-right and then click the cog icon, you can add in custom parameters just like in the "advanced" section, but for a specific game. This can only be saved permanently with custom configs, however, because otherwise the parameters will just be removed as soon as you change games. 2) I'm not sure on this one. There might be, but I haven't found it if so. Sounds like a good idea though.

@Pixelpiper I'm not sure. I know that FS-UAE uses the emulation code from WinUAE but I don't know about the scaling/display aspect - I would assume not. I normally just set it to Crop: Auto / Keep Aspect Ratio: On and call it close. The end result basically looks like it's 16:10 / 8:5 which, as you said, isn't quite right. You might want to ask Frode, he's always seemed open to suggestions.

[Zombeaver]

2 minutes ago, Pixelpiper said:

There are a lot of discussions about the (lack of) ease of creating overrides per title, namely the fact that FS-UAE resets all current options, including the game name and disk/source when you press the New config button.  I'd personally like to see the ability to simply SAVE/override the OpenRetro settings with a single button.

Yes, I know this has been talked about quite a bit. I would definitely like to see this myself. It would certainly make things much easier. I believe Frode said a while back that that's planned.

4 minutes ago, Pixelpiper said:

For testing, most of the settings can be adjusted and the game started with those settings - they're not lost so long as you don't switch games. However, that's not possible with the Custom Configuration text box as any changes to its contents are immediately lost when its window is closed.

Only if the string you enter isn't considered valid.

As an example, for my config for After The War:

This (shader = ) is a valid string and is kept. If you just enter some gibberish or whatever, anything it doesn't recognize, it will be discarded on closing the window.

[Zombeaver]

It comes from whatever is specified on OpenRetro just like the rest of the config. Ordinarily you'd really only be messing with that field on custom configs, as you can add in/save whatever you want.

[Zombeaver]

57 minutes ago, Pixelpiper said:

Can't figure out a way to hide the WHDLoad splash screen like I can in RA/PUAE (timeout 0 didn't work)

According to Frode you can:

On 3/21/2020 at 3:28 PM, FrodeSolheim said:

FS-UAE Launcher has a whdload_splash_delay option which you can set to 0.

I just tried that though and it doesn't seem to do anything for me. It still displays the splash.

[luk]

On 4/14/2020 at 9:23 PM, Zombeaver said:

@luk 1) if you click on a config and then click the Additional Configuration button on the middle-right and then click the cog icon, you can add in custom parameters just like in the "advanced" section, but for a specific game. This can only be saved permanently with custom configs, however, because otherwise the parameters will just be removed as soon as you change games. 2) I'm not sure on this one. There might be, but I haven't found it if so. Sounds like a good idea though.

1) ok I didn't see that..testing now, thanks so much!

2) yeah, they've put a configurable option on the todo list

 

[legolas119]

hi guys, 

please, i need your help. I have configured FS-UAE and now i can play my .adf and WHLOAD games with Model = Amiga1200 and my AmigaCD 32 games with Model = CD32.  After that, I imported the FS-UAE.exe emulator on LB, without any issue: I'm albel to play all y .adf and WHLOAD games. 

Now I imported Amiga CD32 in LB, using the same FS-UAE installation (I mean, same Launcher.exe used for Amiga emualation).  I tried to import 2 AmigaCD32 games: one of them in folder format, with bin, cue, img, sub files: I added the .cue file in LB.  The other one is in .zip format (it included .wav files, .cue and .bin).  LB correctly detected them, but if i run them, the emulator starts but:

1) when i play the game in folder format, it appear a blue screen, with AMIGA DOS information. I think that I have understood the issue: if I play this game, the emulator doesn't start with Amiga CD32 model. If I push START on my joypad, it appears at the upper left side: Amiga 500".

2) when i play the game in zip format, it appears only the AMIGA CD 2 logo. Here if I push START, it doesn't happen anything

I suppose that I have to do something of particular in order to correctly start the FC-UAE emulator for CD 32 games... can you help me, please?

thank you very much

[IcedFreon]

Hey this video is huge. A lot of information that doesn't really apply to what I'm trying to do. Can anyone guide me to where in the video it explains how to make the WHDload packs scrapeable for Launchbox?

[Le joueur francais]

Hi,

Great work!! This is one of the best tutorial I have seen in a long time (video + files + text + forum!). It has helped me to understand the logic of FS-UAE and to make it work properly.

For Launchbox however, I am still a little bit confused. You see, I have downloaded several lha / WHDLoad files. They ALL run perfectly when launched from FS-UAE.

I have imported the same files in Launchbox - but I run into the following problem:

- for some files, I can launch them from Launchbox without any issue.

- for some other files, I get a "Guru meditation" error message saying "Error: Exception Message: Did not find the specified WHDLoad slave 'name_of_the_game'. Check WHDLoad arguments".

I have spent some time looking for an answer with no success. This is frustrating because, again, for some files everything runs perfectly from LB, for others I run into this dead-end.

Did I miss something here? Any idea where that might come from?

Or, do I actually need to use the UUID method described in the video for ALL WHDLoad files? I thought I did not need to do that for files that are automatically recognized by FS-UAE. And I wish I don't have to... Please let me know.

[Zombeaver]

I use UUIDs for everything that I'm able to. The only scenario where I'm not using UUIDs is when there isn't an existing automatic config or that config has a problem, in which case I'm creating a config manually and importing them into Launchbox.

9 hours ago, Le joueur francais said:

I thought I did not need to do that for files that are automatically recognized by FS-UAE.

That's literally the opposite of what's in the video. If it's not recognized, you won't have a UUID to export to begin with. In that scenario I make manual configs.

Technically in the newest dev builds you shouldn't need to use UUIDs as it's supposed to use the correct config when you direct the WHDLoad game to FS-UAE automatically (or at the very least use the parameters listed in the game's .info file which is usually enough in and of itself). Whether or not that's going to work 100% of the time or not I don't know because I don't do that. Personally I still use the UUIDs anyway. It literally takes about a minute to generate them, gives you a nice group of correctly named folders that are easy to import into Launchbox, and I've never had any problems from using them.

[Le joueur francais]

1 hour ago, Zombeaver said:

That's literally the opposite of what's in the video. If it's not recognized, you won't have a UUID to export to begin with. In that scenario I make manual configs.

? ... of course. For some reason, I thought UUID was revelant only for games that I would download from within FS-UAE Launcher, not for games I manually downloaded and scanned... Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my uber-noob question and sorry for another case of https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pbcak

I might try and use the latest dev builds of FS-UAE, wait for a new stable version that does not require to use UUIDs, or follow the tutorial to setup FS-UAE UUID. I'll have a lot of fun in any case. ?

Thanks again Zombeaver.

[GarbonZoni]

Just in case you still read this thread. Thanks in a very big way. was struggling a lot with this, but your tutorial vid was really easy to follow and really well done. Got everything working.

Thanks a bunch Zombeaver :). 

Now if you could do one for pinball arcade........?

[DroneSA]

A bit of thread necromancy here, but this is a great topic and has been really helpful for me!

I've got all of my UUID's from the Retroplay WHDLoad set all set up and they seem to be working fine, however I'm running into two (related?) issues:

1.) None of my F-keys work in-game. This is a bit annoying for titles that have a menu screen that require you to e.g. press F1 for One Player, F2 for Two player, etc.

2.) Likewise, I'm having trouble figuring out how to define a global close emulator key (for keyboard, not using a controller) in FS-UAE 3.0.5. Under Launcher Settings -> WHDLoad there is an option to set an Override WHDLoad quit key, but the info button says that this option is deprecated and may have conflicts with a newer solution that I have no idea how to use:

Deprecation warning: This option somewhat conflicts with the new
whdload_quit_key option in FS-UAE, so this launcher option might go
away.

[Zombeaver]

4 hours ago, DroneSA said:

1.) None of my F-keys work in-game. This is a bit annoying for titles that have a menu screen that require you to e.g. press F1 for One Player, F2 for Two player, etc.

No idea on this one, never experienced that. You should probably talk to Frode about that.

4 hours ago, DroneSA said:

2.) Likewise, I'm having trouble figuring out how to define a global close emulator key (for keyboard, not using a controller) in FS-UAE 3.0.5. Under Launcher Settings -> WHDLoad there is an option to set an Override WHDLoad quit key, but the info button says that this option is deprecated and may have conflicts with a newer solution that I have no idea how to use

I'm not sure what that would be in reference to. It's always worked fine for me.

[boon]

I fiddled around with all this last week and realized that you now can launch WHDLoad ("fixed" amiga games) with Retroarch by just point to the lha (archive format) and run it. Since they fixed the games so much over these years, with speeds and all, i wonder if your "Hostages" game test even works @Zombeaver ? Maybe time to make a quick guide aswell?

[TheCodeMan]

I've been playing with the exporter and I have run into some issues. I notice that not all of my games that have custom configs are exported and I am unable to determine why.  I also have been unable to get the games once imported into Launchbox, to run with FS-UAE UUID emulator that I created based on the video.

So with no luck on these options, I tested a couple of things after reading through the forum here and I wanted some opinions on it. Basically I deleted the FS-UAE UUID emulator so I am only using FS-UAE. I directly copied a config file into the Launchbox window and imported it as a rom.  I am able to run the games correctly from Launchbox and they seem to work correctly with the config file intact. A couple of examples are Midnight Resistance with the atari shader fix and Goblins 3 which required a custom command to start in English correctly.

So my games are running correctly, though I haven't tested saving yet but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. One other thing, I'm creating a custom favorites setup and I want it to be drive letter independent so it can be portable. I've had issued getting FS-UAE to work without drive letters. I read some documentation that indicated it can be done but I haven't been able to figure it out. I tested the modification of one of the FS-UAE configuration files directly with notepad. I removed the drive letter but left the full path to the rom intact. It seems to work fine with Launchbox this way. I further tested by changing my drive letter and running custom config games from Launchbox. Works with no problem.

So unless I'm missing something, I can't see a reason to configure an FS-UAE UUID emulator under Launchbox. I'm hoping an expert can chime in here and tell me what I'm overlooking.

Edited February 22, 2021 by TheCodeMan
Fixed mistake