[Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail - Amiberry's official thread

nemo93

Hello Guys,

UPDATE: Amiberry v5 is there and it's awesome as usual! @Midwan and @HoraceAndSpider thanks again for all the work. It's now even simpler than ever to play your old favorites Amiga games!

About WHDLoad (and Amiberry). If you don't know what purpose it does serve or what it is all about please just take a few minutes to follow that link, not a waste of time for sure.

To put it simply: this is amazing. No more hassle finding the right disks or versions, you just manipulate "packages" a bit like ISO images or .zip archives. Just copy the .lha files into the "amiga" roms directory of Retropie and boom! It works. And it works fast as there is no loading time or intense disk swapping given games are being emulated from a virtual hard drive.

NOTES:

Ensure to always run the latest versions of the WHD packages. These are being updated quite regularly with fixes, new "custom" settings, etc.
If you got the Setpatch Not found message no worries. It means your game is not part of the whdload_db.xml file or not with a proper sha1/name. This sometimes occur whenever a package has been recently updated. Wait for a couple of days to get that .xml file updated or you can download the latest version from Amiberry GUI directly. If you still have issue feel free to contribute to improve that XML file (please ensure to read wiki).
If you have troubles running Barbarian (Palace) please check below for recommended fix.
For Battle Isle (and datadisk) please check that ticket. It's a package issue.
For Future Wars/Voyageurs du Temps please refer here or there.
Since v3.3, Amiberry does support trainers/cheats automatically. This will display a (Workbench) page just before the game is loaded allowing you to pick the trainers you want (eg. unlimited lives, energy, etc). Not all games trainers will be properly detected. If that's the case you could always enforce trainers by following that short guide. The official documentation can be handy as well!
Debug: there's a logging checkbox available in Amiberry GUI (F12) from the Configurations panel. By default the log file will be created under your amiga/conf directory.

Enjoy and thanks again to Amiberry and WHDLoad people for their hard work. It really makes easy the Amiga emulation on Raspberry Pi.
Have fun!

EctoOne

@nemo93 I'm not sure, but from what i've seen on that linked page, it might contain not free available games. So you might remove that, because of rules n' stuff.

nemo93

Oh My! Thanks for spotting this on @EctoOne. I was so much excited by this discovery that I didn't pay attention to the fact that there is non-free material on the site as well ;( Apologize and definitely not my intention.

However I do insist WHDLoad with Amiberry for Retropie is the best thing we could have hoped for Amiga emulation.

chizzer

Thanks man, I'm away to give this a try

Danorak1981

Thanks for posting this-the whole WHD Load is a little intimidating, and loading times for Amiga games can sometimes be a little off putting so i'll skip to a console game instead-but this looks really easy to follow and will speed loading times up drastically.

Thanks for the post, much appreciated!

nemo93

You welcome :) Please don't let yourself intimidated. Really the installation is a no-brainer especially if you found the site I was mentioning in my initial post. At the very end, it's as simple as copying a directory in the right place and here you go.

In addition to the faster loading times and ease of install let me add that it's also the best way to find working games/demos/apps right away. Before that I was spending days trying to find the proper version for a game and the associated disks. No need for that here. WHDLoad packages are versioned so just get the last version (or any version in fact) and you are sure the program is going to run for sure.

Enjoy and if you need assistance raise your hand!

msheehan79

Thanks for the post!

Has anyone been able to get this working with .zip files instead of the uncompressed games?
Just trying to save a little disk space but the WHDloader script doesn't seem to find the slave file when I try zipped versions of the games.

maxbeanz

With the current emulation status of Amiberry/UAE4Arm, a lot of WHDLoad games run too fast or crash because they need 'Cycle Accuracy' which hasn't been implemented yet. That pack that @nemo93 mentioned, a lot of the games aren't even the latest version. Very outdated. There's a guy called ransom1122 that has made a far superior pack that has constant fix updates and also has HDF files (so all games are 1 file each instead of thousands of files littered all over the SD card). You can find him on the English Amiga Board. But really we need to wait for Amiberry to get 'Cycle Accuracy' or use ADF floppy versions of the games as these work at the correct intended speed.

AndersHP

So, is UAE4ARM still the way to go, with these speed issues?
I still haven't touched Amiga emulation yet, because it seems like such a hassle - but would love to get into it!

maxbeanz

A lot of the incorrect speed issues are when using WHDLoad games. ADF games play at the correct speed. TomB, the current maintainer of UAE4Arm has been releasing a few new Beta versions for the Pandora handheld with lots of new features and said a new Stable version will be soon. We then have to wait for Midwan or Chips to port it to the Raspberry Pi.

AndersHP

What about controller config - I couldn't really find anything about this.. Is it easy to map keys to use an iPac, just like the retroarch.cfg files?

maxbeanz

@andershp Unfortunately, custom controls are still not possible yet and the porters of the Raspberry Pi version haven't made any progress in several months :-(

(On a side note, the Android version works great!)

AndersHP

So.. keyboard is necessary, or?

EctoOne

@andershp depends on the games. you can map some keys to your pad with xboxdrv, but setting up different mappings for each game requires some work.

AndersHP

I'd really love a retroarch based Amiga emulator.

ballboff

@nemo93 said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail:

button_for_menu=9
button_for_quit=11

Hi, where can I find a full list of what these numbers are? I need to re-set up my controls for buttons 0 and 9 on the keyboard and i, and w and things like that. My machine uses a keyboard encoder so I'm having trouble getting amiberry to recognise my fire buttons...

nemo93

@ballboff : you could use the utility "jstest" on the command line to find out your button ID number. Just log to your Retropie via SSH and type in jstest /dev/<your joypad>.

@AndersHP : I'd love to see one in Retroarch too! For the time being, keyboard/mouse is only necessary for a small set of games which rely intensively on these devices (ie. Populous 1 & 2, Worms, LucasArts games, etc). No need to have these to have fun with Speedball2 or any Bitmap Bros amazing games for instance though.

@maxbeanz & all: I do slightly disagree with you on one thing. Games run at normal speed with this method. At least I didn't notice anything that would make the games completely unplayable. To be on the safe side there's a parameter you must enforce in the .uae files. It is this one => gfx_framerate=0. Just make sure it's there with a 0-value and you should be good to go. Of course it will be perfect when 'Cycle Accuracy' you mentioned will be implemented within Amiberry.

@maxbeanz: the link I'm refering to definitely contain outdated packages however my goal was not to direct users to a site with the latest packages available. First it's against rules of this forum as @EctoOne pointed out. Second people could find these without my help :) I was just willing to share this WHDLoad discovery with the community and give the people a few hints about it. After that people, like I did, could find the latest/newest packages (tip: find the latest updates on WHDLoad for your game then... Google is still your friend). With the WHDLoad method to update a game is as simple as deleting old files from a game directory and copying over the new ones and you're sure it's going to work.

I've tested with nearly 130+ games and I have no troubles except the ones listed -mostly AGA- in this Github report. By the way, Midwan is still around and looking after the Amiberry project (yay!). Look at the comment in the aforementioned report.

Amiberry (UAE4ARM based) and WHDLoad truly are your best friends if you want to emulate Amiga on a Pi in the easiest way possible. Really. Just give it a try and if you have any issue, post them here.

maxbeanz

@nemo93 The gfx_framerate=0 command you're referring to just turns off Frameskip. You should never have frameskip on in the first place as it halves the framerate to 25fps. Not sure why anyone would have this set on as default, thats just sillyness. There are lots of WHDLoad games that run too fast. I haven't used them for a while now as nearly all ADF versions play at the correct speed, and the games I like to play don't take long to load with floppy speed 400 (which is safe for all games). For example, one game that I remember was Barbarian The Ultimate Warrior, try playing that in WHDLoad !

Aphex

I tried to give the Amiberry + WHDLoad combo a shot and managed to get my hands on some auto-install scrips that allows you to automatically create .uae config file of each of your games, with folders for standard games, AGA, CD32, etc.. It does work nice for some games, but also fails for some others. I've found a romset with its specific .uae config file set but like @maxbeanz pointed out, it might be an outdated pack. Still i feel very enthusiast about it since it does provide a fast "1-click to play" solution right from the ES menu, with a ready-to-scrape list.

Now i just have to find that better pack :)

Whenever the best solution has been found (or the best middle-ground, i mean), a step-by-step tutorial video might be VERY helpful for non-expert users like my sorry-self.

maxbeanz

@aphex said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail:

Still i feel very enthusiast about it since it does provide a fast "1-click to play" solution

Did you know that you can start ADF games from the ES menu with 1-click ? Multi disk games are a bit hit or miss though. I like using ADF's as that was the original back in the day. Hardly anyone had HardDrives and WHDLoad wasn't even invented, and nearly all ADF games have a trainer cheat menu ! There are tons of games that I had about 25 years ago that I never even got past the second level (but never bothered cheating at the time because I had better things to do) !

At the end of the day the Amiga is a computer so you should really use/need a keyboard. CD32 games would be best for a Joypad only experience but currently custom controls on Amiberry don't work and it's only hacked to use a PS3 controller. 'RecalBox' has a fully working CD32 addon with working controls.