Homebrew RELEASE [RELEASE] Amiga Emulator UAE4All2 for Switch

[royvedas]

Thanks to those giving me links

 

[hippy dave]

Concerning bezels: I really like the idea. I will try to make it work with an option to select bezel or none.

Bonus points for an option to make it look like one of those old Commodore monitors

Thanks for the nice features in the update, I was going to ask about swapping the menu controls from Sony-style to Nintendo-style, will make things much less confusing on the muscle-memory when going between uae and horizon

 

[mrdude]

@rsn8887

Setting the floppy speed higher than 1x for floppies crashes the switch if you save that as a config and run the game. If you change the floppy speed once the game is running - the console doesn't crash.

 

[rsn8887]

@rsn8887

Setting the floppy speed higher than 1x for floppies crashes the switch if you save that as a config and run the game. If you change the floppy speed once the game is running - the console doesn't crash.

Thanks for the bug report, I will look into it.

EDIT: I can reproduce the bug on 1.74 Switch, but it also seems to happen very similarly on 1.72 Vita, but on Vita only with "8x". Looks like it has always been there in some form, and might be related to host speed.

EDIT2: I found the fix, so this bug will be fixed in the next release, both on Vita AND Switch.

 

[mrdude]

Thanks for the bug report, I will look into it.

EDIT: I can reproduce the bug on 1.74 Switch, but it also seems to happen very similarly on 1.72 Vita, but on Vita only with "8x". Looks like it has always been there in some form, and might be related to host speed.

EDIT2: I found the fix, so this bug will be fixed in the next release, both on Vita AND Switch.

Thanks, I have a vita as well so this will be good .

On another note is it possible to stretch the screen width so the full screen can be used in games? See screenshot for what I'm talking about - where the arrows are (can that be stretched?).

I know how to do it for game height - just not the width.

 

[rsn8887]

Thanks, I have a vita as well so this will be good .

On another note is it possible to stretch the screen width so the full screen can be used in games? See screenshot for what I'm talking about - where the arrows are (can that be stretched?).

I know how to do it for game height - just not the width.

Currently, the screen can not be stretched horizontally, because it would distort the image. The horizontal size is automatically calculated from the vertical scale factor.

The number of pixels in a horizontal line can be increased with the Preset Width option in display menu. There are only a few choices, 320, 640, 356 etc. This changes the width of the image a bit. Some games use the borders to display something, so then adjusting the width is helpful to make that stuff appear. But if the game does not display anything in those overscan borders, I am afraid they will just remain black for now.

 

[mrdude]

Currently, the screen can not be stretched horizontally, because it would distort the image. The horizontal size is automatically calculated from the vertical scale factor.

The number of pixels in a horizontal line can be increased with the Preset Width option in display menu. There are only a few choices, 320, 640, 356 etc. This changes the size of the image a bit. Some games use the borders to display something, then adjusting the width is helpful. But if the game does not display anything in those borders, I am afraid they will just remain black, like on a real Amiga.

OK thanks, that's what I thought - but thought I'd ask just to be sure. Thanks for fixing the floppy speed BTW - that makes game loading much faster and saves needing to convert my games to hard disk images as speed wise it's ok loading at 8x.

 

[Connorsdad]

When I hinted at shaders (crt etc), I was thinking more along the lines of scan lines, is this a possibility

 

[rsn8887]

When I hinted at shaders (crt etc), I was thinking more along the lines of scan lines, is this a possibility

In principle yes. I was able to get that sharp_bilinear_simple scaling to work because SDL2 has a function for it which does that. Scanlines etc. will require to inject some real shader programs into the underlying OpenGL layer.

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OK thanks, that's what I thought - but thought I'd ask just to be sure. Thanks for fixing the floppy speed BTW - that makes game loading much faster and saves needing to convert my games to hard disk images as speed wise it's ok loading at 8x.

Although I should warn you that the >1x floppy speed settings are not very compatible. Many games work fine only with 1x floppy speed but hang during loading or have other problems when loaded with >1x floppy speed. The programmers of those games did a lot of tricks with fastloaders etc, and those tricks rely on the floppy speed being 1x.

 

[qskint]

Love this emulator, runs everything beautifully!

Does anyone have the link to Ransoms HDF files please? Been trying to find them, even started looking into creating my own.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Although I should warn you that the >1x floppy speed settings are not very compatible. Many games work fine only with 1x floppy speed but hang during loading or have other problems when loaded with >1x floppy speed. The programmers of those games did a lot of tricks with fastloaders etc, and those tricks rely on the floppy speed being 1x.

Found this out the hard way. For many games your best bet is just making a savestate after the title loads so you can skip the disk in the future.

 

[CrashMidnick]

@rsn8887

Could you please explain the 7mhz; 14mhz; 28 mhz settings ? I mean are they speed hacks or real 68k emulation at different speeds ?

I am asking because 28mhz speed leads to many incompatibilities which does not appear on real hardware or emulated amigas on other well known emulators. The main incompatibilty is sound (loosing some channels sometimes or seems to be almost mute), switching back to 14mhz fixes the problem 99% of the time.

Do you think that other CPU options can be implemented in the future ? Such as 68030; 68040, 68060 ? Or this is something too difficult or pointless ?

 

[sj33]

An actual unexpanded Amiga is either 7MHz for A1000/500 and variants, and 14MHz for the A1200/4000/CD32, which use the 68000 and 68020 respectively. However, the 68020 CPU itself does support up to 28MHz.

 

[CrashMidnick]

I Know about that, what I would like to know : Is uae4all is based on cycle exact emulation or increase CPU rate with speed hack only ? If it is cycle exact there is an issue somewhere, if it is speed hacks, incompatibilities are normal as the amiga chipset will be fooled.

 

[sh0wst0pper]

Anyone have issues with supercars2 hdf? The game doesnt load at all for me. I use the collection version which does run, but then i dont have the screen that shows me my damage and place etc in race.

 

[CrashMidnick]

The standard whdload version is working for me (v1.0 from 2005). I do not know what is the collection version.

 

[sh0wst0pper]

The standard whdload version is working for me (v1.0 from 2005). I do not know what is the collection version.

How do you run the whdload games? i thought it was only adf or hdf files?

 

[sj33]

Quick question about CD32 software. I’ve noticed that most of the CD32 games in WHDLoad actually work fine on this emulator. Is it simply the case that the WHDLoad versions don’t use the Akiko chip and thus are essentially A1200 games, or does the emulator actually emulate Akiko?

 

[rsn8887]

I Know about that, what I would like to know : Is uae4all is based on cycle exact emulation or increase CPU rate with speed hack only ? If it is cycle exact there is an issue somewhere, if it is speed hacks, incompatibilities are normal as the amiga chipset will be fooled.

It is not cycle exact. I think the CPU cycle counts are quite accurate, but I am not sure how accurate the custom chip cycle counts are. It uses the optimized famec core for the cpu which only emulates 68000 and 68020. The 28 MHz option is a speed hack.

You’ll notice that there are no sound fx in IK+ and no doors in Nebulus 2. Those require checking the “cycle exact” option even in WinUAE. This option does not exist in UAE4All2.

The Switch could handle cycle exact emulation in terms of speed, but it would be easier to port another emulator that is already cycle exact, like Amiberry, than to make UAE4All2 cycle exact. All these emulators are based on various versions of UAE, and UAE4All2 is based on quite an old one, before cycle exact was implemented. Amiberry is based on a very recent version of a WinUAE where Toni Wilen has perfected cycle exact emulation already.

I briefly looked at Amiberry, which is cycle exact. But it uses so many Linux OS functions (including process signaling etc.), which makes it quite hard to port. Also it still doesn’t even have an onscreen keyboard.

Another option would be to port UaE4Arm, Lubomyr’s latest Android version. It is based on an older WinUAE than Amiberry, but it is also cycle exact. I think that would be easier to port, I can look into it. But it also has some additional dependencies like the guichan library that need to be ported first.

 

[CrashMidnick]

It is not cycle exact. I think the CPU cycle counts are quite accurate, but I am not sure how accurate the custom chip cycle counts are. It uses the optimized famec core for the cpu which only emulates 68000 and 68020. The 28 MHz option is a speed hack.

You’ll notice that there are no sound fx in IK+ and no doors in Nebulus 2. Those require checking the “cycle exact” option even in WinUAE. This option does not exist in UAE4All2.

The Switch could handle cycle exact emulation in terms of speed, but it would be easier to port another emulator that is already cycle exact, like Amiberry, than to make UAE4All2 cycle exact. All these emulators are based on various versions of UAE, and UAE4All2 is based on quite an old one, before cycle exact was implemented. Amiberry is based on a very recent version of a WinUAE where Toni Wilen has perfected cycle exact emulation already.

I briefly looked at Amiberry, which is cycle exact. But it uses so many Linux OS functions (including process signaling etc.), which makes it quite hard to port. Also it still doesn’t even have an onscreen keyboard.

Another option would be to port UaE4Arm, Lubomyr’s latest Android version. It is based on an older WinUAE than Amiberry, but it is also cycle exact. I think that would be easier to port, I can look into it. But it also has some additional dependencies like the guichan library that need to be ported first.

Thanks mate, that makes sense. IMHO, I do not think that porting another emulator is worth it. This emu is about 90% in terms of compatibility (OCS/ECS/AGA 020) not too bad For problematic games, maybe slaves should be updated (i.e. Nebulus 2 is 20 years old as per the whdload page !)

How do you run the whdload games? i thought it was only adf or hdf files?

Whdload is a software, not a device (HDF = HDD image)/floppy disk (ADF = floppy disk image). See documentation here : http://whdload.de/docs/WHDLoad.html