AppleWin: how to correctly import it in LB?

[legolas119]

Hi

i'm using AppleWin to emulate Apple II, but i have some issues, please can you help me?

1) i set up in this way the Input: 

But very often it doesn't work, my joypad isn't detected (i have the xbox one joypad). It works with Choplifter, Commando, Impossibile Mission, for example. But almost all others games don't detect the joypad...And i'm not able to clearly identify in the keyboard which are the commands. I see that directional button are mapped on the numerical keyboard buttons (8, 2, 4, 6), sometimes Q button works as an Action button...but sometimes it doesn't work. I it possible to use the xbox joypad with every game? If not, how can i know the mapping on the keyboard?

2) how can I correctly configure the emulator on LB? Here below my current default settings:

 

If i run a game, it only appears the emulator GUI but the games doesn't start automatically and it isn't automatically loaded in the DISK 1 slot.

3) how can i import multiple DISK games and automatically load them when i launch them with LB? Here below some examples:

how can i load them? Is it necessary to rename them in this way?

Bard's Tale, The (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 1)

Bard's Tale, The (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 2)

Bard's Tale, The (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 3)

Bard's Tale, The (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 4)

and then import them like mutiple disks games for PSX, for example? Here below a PSX mutiple disks game:

thank you very much!

[sundogak]

@legolas119

1) Such is the state of older computer programs like the Apple II.  A keyboard was the typical setup with some games having ability to use a joystick natively. Usually however, you have to use the keyboard to tell the game you want to use a joystick (i.e., pressing "J" to use joystick or "K" for keyboard). Thus, you are either going to have to have a keyboard around, or you will have to use something like xpadder or some other keyboard to joystick mapper.  I can tell you though, it is a lot of work and there are lots of different setups to where you can simply treat an Apple II game like you do a cartridge game. They just were not setup that way originally.  

2) my settings are below:

first part tells it to go full screen but with a height of 1080.  Second parts tell it to not register the printscreen button and not give warning (or it complains many times). Third is setting ram to 2 megs.  The last tells what disk to load in which drive via -d1 which tells AppleWin that it should be loaded as disc 1.  LB will take whatever file is in the "Rom File" listing and append it just after the -d1.  

-fs-height=1080 -noreg -no-printscreen-dlg -r 32 -d1

 

3) to load multiple disks you have to use the -d1 and -d2 commands to tell AppleWin which drive to place each disk.  So a command line (outside LB) to launch Ultima (substitute your path to AppleWin and games):

"G:\Emulators\Apple II\AppleWin\applewin.exe" -d1 "G:\Emulators\Apple II\roms\Ultima I (USA) (Disk 1).dsk" -d2 "G:\Emulators\Apple II\roms\Ultima I (USA) (Disk 2).dsk"

within LB you would have to do something like this where %romfile% tells LB to load whatever is the main "ROM" file listing but unfortunately you have to hard code any other disks for other drives in the custom command line parameters like:

-fs-height=1080 -noreg -no-printscreen-dlg -r 32 -d1 %romfile% -d2 "G:\Emulators\Apple II\roms\Ultima I (USA) (Disk 2).dsk"

LB doesn't have a variable for anything in the Additional Apps listing (i.e., %romfile2%, etc). I had bitbucketed it but doubt will ever raise to level of getting enough votes. Thus, that means you have to hard code EACH multi disk within each game. There is no way to generically setup AppleWin in LB to have it load multi-disks without customizing.  There is no "M3U" or playlist feature in AppleWin.  Once you have the disks loaded then you can use

• F5 Disk Swap
• F3 Drive 1
• F4 Drive 2

MAME via the hash files allows games to "auto load" disks 1 and 2 automatically but the problem you get there is you still need to toggle into the MAME UI to swap disks since MAME for whatever weird reason doesn't have a key command like "Disk Swap".  If they did, MAME would be the easier to use for multi disks.  With either MAME or AppleWin, you are at some point likely to still need to use a keyboard unless you go to a lot of effort to setup things.  Just the nature of those computers in that keyboard was first and foremost the input device, mouse and joystick secondary. 

For a few simple games (Choplifter, Lode Runner, Castle Wolfenstein) it isn't a big deal but once you get to games like Bard's Tale or Ultima you will be better situated to stick with keyboard/mouse.  For some others that tend to use (mostly) standard of arrow keys for directions you could map them. But again, there wasn't a lot of consistency initially in games...others used AWSD or some other keyboard combo for directional movement.  The other limitation you will hit is that you will only be able to load up 2 disks. So for games like Bard's Tale with 4 disks, you are swapping away no matter what you put in LB as command.  There are some hacky deals where folks have converted floppy disks over to an Apple II hard drive (so all load off HD) but it isn't as trivial as copying the DSK files to an HDV, particularly since most had some from of copy protection.  

Edited August 30, 2021 by sundogak

[legolas119]

thanks!

1) OK

2) I copied your string, it works perfectly!

3) I don't have a lot of games, i can configure them manually   But i haven't understood how to do that... for example i have imported these 2 games, in this way: 

and here both games imported:

Manian Mansion

and Bard's Tale:

Please, can you help me to configure them=

thanks!

[sundogak]

Well, the information is above on how to do it....but here is example of Bard's Tale. You will need to adjust your path's and disk names to your setup:

Edit the game and go to Emulation section. Check the box "Use Custom Command-Line Parameters".  Copy the command string like below but make sure to update the path/name of disk 2 specific to your setup for data after the -d2 command.  Everything before the -d2 command will be the same for other multi-disk games:

-noreg -no-printscreen-dlg -r 32 -d1 %romfile% -d2 "G:\Emulators\Apple II\roms\Bard's Tale, The (USA) (Disk 2) (Character).dsk"

You then have to use F5 (Disk Swap) to swap disks when asks for character disk (or use mouse if in Window mode, select icon circled in red).  In most cases, even though Disk 2 is in Drive 2, many Apple II games will not "look" for a disk in Drive 2 even though loaded (that is how a real Apple II worked). So you have to use F5 to swap from 2 to 1.  

If you hover over the disk icon it will show which disk is loaded if want to double check things are working as expected.  

Once you got working then can add command to go to full screen if you want that. For many computer games it is actually easier to keep in window format vs full screen (i.e., use the command above):

-fs-height=1080 -noreg -no-printscreen-dlg -r 32 -d1 %romfile% -d2 "G:\Emulators\Apple II\roms\Bard's Tale, The (USA) (Disk 2) (Character).dsk"

As said in prior post, you cannot load Discs 3 and 4 automatically within LB.  Plus, AppleWin is limited to two virtual drives so the emulator limits that anyway.  So when game asks for Disk 3 you have to use the F3 and F4 commands to bring up a File Manager dialog box in AppleWin to select Disk 3 and/or 4.  Thus, for games more than 2 disks, it is usually just quicker to just skip trying to setup command for disk 2 and just use F3 and F4 to load disks 2 through whatever.  

For your other game you do the exact same, but substitute the path for the B side disk after the -d2 command as noted above.  You will have to use F5 to swap the B side disk into drive 1 when asks for B side. AppleWin will not detect the B side in Disk 2 so it has to be swapped to drive 1 via F5......this is how a real Apple II worked in that you have to eject and flip the disk.  

[legolas119]

thanks, it's clear! But i tried in this way:

MANIAC MANSION

but the disk 2 isn't automatically loaded:

and same thing for Bard's Tale:

the disk 2 isn't loaded:

 

Is there something wrong?

[sundogak]

I somewhat doubt your path to your games is what you have listed.  Looks like you just copied my example but didn’t update the full path to you DSK file specific to your setup. Look at the path and verify.  

[legolas119]

yeah, great everything works correctly, many thanks!

 

Now i only need to configure an Apple GS emulator, i think that GSPlus could be oK. I downloaded it and added the ROM1 and ROM3 file needed. I have some games now but it seems that this emulator is really hard to configure...it seems that it is necessary to manually enter every time the command line to load a game??? Do you use it or do you suggest anything else?

thank you!

[sundogak]

2 minutes ago, legolas119 said:

yeah, great everything works correctly, many thanks!

 

Now i only need to configure an Apple GS emulator, i think that GSPlus could be oK. I downloaded it and added the ROM1 and ROM3 file needed. I have some games now but it seems that this emulator is really hard to configure...it seems that it is necessary to manually enter every time the command line to load a game??? Do you use it or do you suggest anything else?

thank you!

see here for Apple IIGS

 

[legolas119]

thanks! i'm following your great guide. 

STEP 1: i updated my mame.ini file in this way

and i put my zipped games in the software folder:

STEP 2: i unzipped the games in this test folder. In my opinion some files (in yellow) can be deleted:

and these files too, included in the Out of this world.zip file too, can be deleted, is that right? I suppose i have to keep only the 2 .dsk files of the game.

Note: usually when i update the MAMEUI, i reply "NO" to this pop up, as i don't use MAME to run emulators, i use it only for Arcade games. I have just updated it to 0.235 version and i replied "NO" as usual. Is that correct or does i need to reply YES if i want to emulate Apple II GS?

 

thanks!

[sundogak]

@legolas119

First off, there shouldn't be anything in the MAME software folder within the MAME folder structure that isn't formatted to MAME requirements, in MAME naming convention and checksums, and left ZIPPED (unless it is a CHD but they won't come zipped anyway).  MAME uses its hash file to figure out how to load the zip since there are multiple files within them.  Definitely those files you copied into software folder in screenshot #2 are not MAME formatted naming (see snaps below for Software set example for AppleII GS.  So remove those zips you have in the first screenshot so no conflicts if ever use a normal MAME software set as well as you are just duplicating files/space.

You don't appear to have a properly formatted MAME software set for IIGS, so skip whatever you were trying  to do in Step 1 and stick with Step 2 only. 

      

Second, you can use non-MAME software list disks like what you are trying to do in 3rd screenshot (or what you note as Step 2). You don't need to mess with the Mame.ini if you are doing it this way.  As long as you are giving MAME a full path to whatever file, then should still launch (if format it can read).  There are others, but the 2MG format MAME can read for IIGS.  

As to what you delete, that is up to you, but MAME Apple IIGS emulator can only read certain disk extensions/formats (as noted in the post I linked you to). The "Codes" file you have it won't know what to do with that since no extension and my guess is it is some readme type file.

On the last question, CMPRO is used to make MAME sets in properly formatted/named way by checking the checksums of each file.  It can also do this for Software List sets to put them in name format and zipped like I show in my screen shot.  But unless you have a software list set for MAME it won't make sense to run that on a non-MAME set or you will wind up with a mess (the checksums will be different and CMPRO will remove from set).  You don't have to run CMPRO to make the IIGS emulation work (assuming your main MAME arcade set is fully complete as verified by CMPRO) if using for non-MAME sets like you have in Step 2. 

Basically, stick with what you did in Step 2 only and import disks you want into LB.  My recommendation is to import selectively at first to make sure things are working the way you want.  

Edited September 6, 2021 by sundogak

[legolas119]

hi, thanks.

1) first, i have to find the folder i have to put in the "software" folder but currently i have't find it yet:

and i have already deleted all the .zip files. 

2) I removed all the NON- .2MG files from my Apple II GS rom folder and i removed also the Source Code ans Saves files, i think they are not necessary:

before to configure LB, is it necessary to configure MAME too in order to be sure that the games work also with MAME (and not only with LB)? I mean, is it necessary to configure the mame.ini file, in this way?

I suppose that now i can' follow your guide at step 4 because currently i still not have the apple2gs_flop_orig folder. When i will have find this folder, i could try to digit this command in my DOS window:

"D:\EMULATORI\MAME\mameui.exe" apple2gs -flop3 "D:\EMULATORI\ROM\Apple II GS\Arkanoid.2mg"

but starting from here:

i'm not able to reach the path: "D:\EMULATORI\MAME\mameui.exe" apple2gs -flop3 "D:\EMULATORI\ROM\Apple II GS\Arkanoid.2mg"

It says that the syntax of the file name, directory or volume isn't correct...

thank you

[sundogak]

In that last screenshot you put “CD” in the command it shouldn’t be there. 

[legolas119]

ah sorry!  i run it and it appears this:

i need to find the 2gs_flop_orig folder i think.

in order to run Apple II GS games with MAME, is it correct to set up mame.ini in this way?

https://postlmg.cc/XrD6MHpQ

thanks

[sundogak]

The command you are doing will not work unless you are in the MAME or MAMEUI directory where the EXE is located as noted in my writeup in prior post. 

 

[legolas119]

yes sure. I suppose i copied the correct command, as my mameui.exe file is in this path:

and the game is in this path:

 

so i suppose the right command, following your guide, should be: "D:\EMULATORI\MAME\mameui.exe" apple2gs -flop3 "D:\EMULATORI\ROM\Apple II GS\Arkanoid.2mg"

and if i copy/past this command here:

and if i push ENTER, i have this:

i don't know, probably this is because my "software" folder is still empty...

[sundogak]

No. You are not starting the command window in the MAME /MAMEUI directory.  You are trying to launch from the C:\User directory.  If you do that...it will NOT work. This issue has nothing to do with the software directory.  You must be in your ...\MAMEUI  or ...\MAME  (or wherever the executable for MAME is located) directory before you try to paste in that command to launch MAME.  

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by sundogak