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FFS! how the heck do I use commodore 64?????


ResidentEvul13

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LOL I'm just about to dive into it myself and it's freaking intimidating ?.

I got the No intro set and now at least i might think  understand the difference between the different folders it comes with (pp), Tapes and all that good stuff.  

But then I was told No intro games often wasn't playable out a key or something?  Now im really confused. 

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18 minutes ago, ALIE said:

LOL I'm just about to dive into it myself and it's freaking intimidating ?.

I got the No intro set and now at least i might think  understand the difference between the different folders it comes with (pp), Tapes and all that good stuff.  

But then I was told No intro games often wasn't playable out a key or something?  Now im really confused. 

I was able to separate the disks games from the tape images... then i got security certificates and some files called ''TAP'' in all its over 17k games but i guess besides running them on my original modded xbox i won't be able to get it to work in launchbox... 

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There are a couple problems with that tutorial.

1) It doesn't make any mention of cartridge format games (honestly this isn't a huge deal but the video seems to imply that your choices are just tape or disk, which isn't accurate)

2) "PP" stands for Preservation Project. These are 1-to-1 dumps of original, official C64 disks, including all of the original copy protection. The intended purpose of these files is to have a backup of the original game disks which can be duplicated onto new physical diskettes via transfer tools that were simultaneously released for that purpose.

Nib files do not work in emulators (edit: other than micro64, and only some of them even then). I have no idea why you would want these in your library. They do nothing within this setting. I know these are commonly distributed on a number of well-known emulation sites, but I've never understood why - unless you plan on breaking out your spare 1541 disk drive and some blank 5 1/4 floppy disks, this isn't going to help you much. There are conversion tools (called Nibtools) that will convert them into an emulator-usable format (G64) but even if you do that only 30-40% of them will actually be usable because of the copy-protection.

These are the supported file formats for VICE, Hoxs64, and CCS64; the three most common/best C64 emulators out there. You'll notice that .nib isn't supported by any of them. To my knowledge, no emulator does (edit: other than micro64).

VICE Supported File Formats

X64 (preferred) or D64 disk image files; Used by the 1541, 2031, 3040, 4040 drives.
G64 GCR-encoded 1541 disk image files
P64 NRZI flux pulse disk image files
D67 CBM2040 (DOS1) disk image format
D71 VC1571 disk image format
D81 VC1581 disk image format
D80 CBM8050 disk image format
D82 CBM8250/1001 disk image format
D1M FD2000/FD4000 DD disk image format
D2M FD2000/FD4000 HD disk image format
D4M FD4000 ED disk image format
T64 tape image files (read-only)
P00 program files
CRT C64 cartridge image files

Hoxs64 Supported File Formats

FDI
D64
G64
T64
TAP
P00
PRG
CRT


CCS64 Supported File Formats

CRT
PRG
P00
T64
D64

TAP
G41
G64

The format that I would recommend people use is D64 or G64 (disk formats) followed by TAP or T64 (tape formats). Disks formats are definitely preferable if you're using CCS64 because of the (really awesome) Maximum 1541 Speed feature, which only works on disk formats, but it doesn't really matter one way or the other on VICE or Hoxs64. 

Beyond that, I'm not sure why you'd want to split them up into separate platforms in your LB library considering they're going to be directed to the same emulator with the same command-line parameters regardless, but it's not going to hurt anything I suppose.

I've been in the process of working on a CCS64 tutorial video for the last couple days, but it's probably still a week off at this point.

 

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@Zombeaver

not sure if you have much experience with the no intro set. but i do have a few questions :D.

now my understanding is that 

Commodore - Amiga. - Commodor  Plus-4.-  & Commodore - VIC-20.

are essentially 3 seprete machines and should be impoted like that into LB like ps1&ps2 and such.

but what about those 3 sets?

Commodore - 64

Commodore - 64 (PP)

Commodore - 64 (Tapes)

is the 64 and the pp essentially the same . do i just mass import those 3 together or will it be duplicate hell :) 

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They're just different file formatted for the most part, or some games were only released on one format and not the other. If the list is the same on one, then choose one or the other.

Edit: I did it this way in the tutorial to show what can happen with custom platforms, not so much that it HAS to be that way.

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9 minutes ago, ALIE said:

but what about those 3 sets?

Commodore - 64

Commodore - 64 (PP)

Commodore - 64 (Tapes)

Well as I said, I don't know why you'd split them into separate platforms - they're all going to the same emulator, with the same command line parameters, and they're all C64 games. I'm not sure why you'd need/want them split up, in any practical sense.

9 minutes ago, ALIE said:

is the 64 and the pp essentially the same . do i just mass import those 3 together or will it be duplicate hell :) 

Again, in case I wasn't explicit enough about it - do not import PP (nib) files into your library. They DO NOT work in emulators. You can delete them or use Nibtools to convert them to G64 and test them out (and you'll find most of them don't work).

I would dump all the C64 and C64 (Tapes) into your library at the same time, and indicate that both of them are Commodore 64 games. You can make them separate platforms, but as I said I don't know why you would. There might be some duplicates (typically No Intro is good for avoiding that but I'm not sure if they have duplicate versions of the games in both disk and tape format). This might be something that the new auto-combining feature will help with. It'll depend on how they're named.

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Starting to make sense of it. 

So I will import 

Commodore - Amiga.

Commodor  Plus-4.

Commodore - VIC-20.  

As 3 separate platforms.

And as Commandore 64 I will merge & import 

C64 and C64 (Tapes) together... 

 

Huh this is gonna be interesting☺️ I'll worry about emulators and such after.  for now  I just want import and understand the systems better :).    If what I said sounds totally retarded please say.  Anyway thank you so much @Zombeaver & @SentaiBrad  and @ResidentEvul13  sorry if I hijacked your post hopefully you got something from the answers as well. 

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37 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

That all sounds fine although... how are you planning on handling the Amiga stuff? Those aren't as simple as just dumping everything in like the other platforms.

If you need help on Amiga, take a look at the tutorial I did over here.

i have over 2500 amiga games and 17k+ c64 i at least wanted all my amiga on lb and 6k of m c64 as well. this sounds ugh man... i did better when i made emus to run amiga/c64/tbfx16 etc on my xbox... wasn't this difficult at all actually just came to me... just now tamed Mame! and got it working gah...

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10 minutes ago, ResidentEvul13 said:

i have over 2500 amiga games and 17k+ c64 i at least wanted all my amiga on lb and 6k of m c64 as well. this sounds ugh man... i did better when i made emus to run amiga/c64/tbfx16 etc on my xbox... wasn't this difficult at all actually just came to me... just now tamed Mame! and got it working gah...

You'll get out of it proportionately to what you put into it, like anything else.

I've already done the actually hard work of researching, testing, experimenting, more researching, more testing, digging through obscure multi-page forum posts and Github and Amiga programming wikis until the wee hours of the morning... and then assembled all of that in a precise, step-by-step package that walks you through everything you need to know and do, including all the things that you might need to know and do even if you don't realize it yet. Short of me coming over to people's houses and setting it up for them, there's not a whole lot more I can do. If watching and following instructions in a video is too much work, then by all means don't. Only you can determine whether or not it's worth it to you.

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