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

HoraceAndSpider

@Hasslehogg i have tested a number of AGA games this morning without any problems.

Perhaps there is an issue with the version of Kickstart 3.1 you have selected?

The message that appears about updates, you can simply 'click' to go past.

AndersHP

@horaceandspider Does it make sense for me to follow the guide in post#1 and start installing Amiberry / WHDload on my pi, or should I wait for it to be updated, in order to test some key-mapping?

darknior

Hi guys, sorry no time to make more test from last week, but now i will found some and work here with you.
For the moment i only have one question, why do you use WHDLAOD games more than HDF games ?
I have problems i must solve and some games in WHDLOAD not working for me, and it is slower to launch.
The HDF games are working perfectly at first try, and are fast to launch.
The real problem for me will be to configure Joysticks for one player, 2 players and some games with mouse.
And some of the HDF games like WHDLOAD have CHEAT at start ! Very important for children, games are so hard :(
If there is a good reason to use WHDLAOAD i'm interested to know it :p
Thanks

HoraceAndSpider

@andershp it depends on what you want to do!
I would sugget you install it, and if need i can send you an updated binary to test for possible iPac support.

@darknior .. i assume you mean ADF games (Floppy disk files), not HDF? (hard disk files)

It is easy to explain:

WHDload will work with more 'generic' amiga settings

WHDLoad will add :

bug fixes
extra controls (e.g. CD32 buttons.. = less keyboard use)
saving highscores, and multiple saves where game may have only one
Faster loading times (not all ADFs work with turbo speeds) ... the slow-down on 'load' is caused by everything being loading into memory... this then removes ALL slow loading while playing.
More WHDLoad games have access to cheats than you maybe realise ;)

WHDLoad will remove:

Cracktros (i hate them)
Multiple Disks / Swapping

darknior

@horaceandspider No i speak about HDF Hard drive games, i know ADF floppy are crappy :(
I use HDF on xBox from 7 8 years ... @waal convert some games, we pay de HDLoader, and it works very fine.

HDF games are fast, etc ...
But why do you think with WHDLoad it will remove bugs ? You will not remake games ?
Same for CD 32 i don't understand ? How to add new controls ?
On HDF they already remove Crocktros and no swap it is an HDD :p

It's why i'm lost, what is better ?

I have try Flashback with WHDLAOD impossible to make i works after the boot, with HDF it works fine at first stat.
My only problem was you only have the US version and not the FR, and to jump we must change setting to use a button, it is impossible to use with UP :(
I can launch Speedball 2 CD32 and Flink, CD32 works fine for me.
On A1200 same, Heimdall 2 AGA works fine only with HDF! And now with your new setting system i can map the mouse for the game menu.

HoraceAndSpider

Oh, in that case... the HDF games you are uing probably already use WHDLoad.

Reading what waal has been involved in here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=834191&styleid=1 that seems very likely.

If you dont know about why WHDLoad removes bugs, add controls etc, then in short.... basically the WHDLoad 'slave' files makes modifications to the game, to work from Hard Drive, and change areas of the game's code. Most games you are playing from HDF require this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDLoad#How_WHDLoad_works

In short, WHDLoad is a program that allows (original) disk games to be installed to Hard Drive.... HDF, or Files (for emulation) or real Hard Drive for Amiga.

The difference you are talking about is probably HDF vs. Files.

I prefer the Files approach because it is easier to update the .slave files. This means that if a game is improved, it is easier to update. Games are also regularly updated in the 'files' format whereas HDF requires a conversion. (or they are 'fixed' at the point they are made)

I am fairly confident that if these games work with HDF, i would be able to make them work with files also ;) (There are a very few exceptions, which are caused by files with certain characters in them)

I would have no problem using HDFs as long as there is 'space' left in the HDFs for certain changes which my WHDload booter would apply.

darknior

@horaceandspider said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail - Amiberry's official thread:

The difference you are talking about is probably HDF vs. Files.

Yes it is :)
Yes HDF use WHDLAODER for sure ... i have buy it some years ago to help the project ... Now it is free but i have an official license :p ... sorry for my bad English :(
Ok, i understand it's to easily update games file when some one fix something.
I didn't know some guy's already fix games in 2017 : http://www.whdload.de/index.html

I think like you write it must work because the HDF work on my PI.
I take my games from the Ultimate Amiga for Raspberry Pie 3 v1.0 [Update Pack 2] and install all the stuff by hand from this image, and use also your Auto-Install to complete.
But some games that working on the image, don't work on my system on my PI. And i don't really understand why?
Some are starting, i can see the WHDLOADER but freeze at the end and never boot :(

Heimdall 2 [AGA] (WHDLAOD) not working, Heimdall 2 (AGA) [HDF] works fine for exemple.
Is there a way to debug and understand where is the problem ?
Thanks

g0nz0uk

Anyone have a .uae template for running HDF files please?

HoraceAndSpider

@darknior

i will not discuss the use of pre-loaded images - i can only comment on using the WHDLoad install packages. It should not matter if that is as Files or as HDF (with only a few exceptions)

However, I will look into Heimdall 2.

nemo93

Hello Guys,

@darknior

@HoraceAndSpider did answer your question in a very detailed manner! In short a HDF image is a WHDLoad package that has been converted into an image. Therefore no package available means no HDF (please keep me honest anyone). An awesome guy called @ransom1122 made many conversions (and many other cool stuff). At the very end there's no real advantage of using one over the other as it's ultimately the same thing. Feel free to use the setup you're most comfortable with. Just that WHDLoad packages tend to be updated quite regulary as you've mentioned earlier (check the Latest News section there).
With respect to Heimdall2 AGA package, it is working fine here. You may have issue either with the package version or with some uae parameters. FYI I'm using latest version version 1.6 (16.03.05) as of writing. An uae for that game could be found there.
To debug check within your package folder. There has to be a file named whdscript_debug. You must have launched the game at least once for this file to be created. If you open it with a text editor you should see few lines telling you what went wrong during last launch.

@g0nz0uk
To me there is no specific uae for HDF. Simply provide the correct path that should do the trick. You have to uncomment the following line I guess in the uae (@darknior feel free to correct me here if I'm wrong).

hardfile2=dir,rw,DH2:HDFGame:<path_to_your_game_folder>,32,1,2,512,50,,uae

@AndersHP
feel free to start installing Amiberry following the guidance from post #1. At least you'll familiarize yourself with the package concept. It's not difficult and you don't have to know anything about coding etc. Just follow the guide and don't hesitate to ask questions. You won't waste your time I promise :)

@HoraceAndSpider
Let me thank you again (and all people involved) for all support and code provided. Amazing to see the amount of work done. This is much appreciated !!!

Hope this helps.

AndersHP

Got to play a bit with Amiberry + WHDLoad yesterday and today, and I really appreciate the excellent work that's done in here to include more and more functions for us all.

I really mean no disrespect, and maybe it's just hardware limitations or something, but I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed in the Amiga Emulation, compared to NES, SNES, MAME, MegaDrive, pretty much everything else I've seen on RPi.

Here's some observations from a handful of my fave's:

Turrican 2 and 3: framerate is low and scrolling not very fluent. Also a lot of graphical glitches, especially in T2.
Disposable Hero and Z-out: framerate and scrolling are looking poor. Menusystem in DH with graphical errors.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old Amiga-die-hard-fan, with an upgraded A1200 in my basement, and with Amiga being my main home computer since my earliest childhood, I dunno. I just never noticed these things in SNES or MegaDrive games.

Anyone else noticing this? Or maybe I'm doing something wrong?

HoraceAndSpider

@andershp

Make sure to disable JIT and reduce the clock speed to 7mhz for ECS games. Also to improve scrolling you should change the default video mode for Amiberry to something appropriate for your display - if you can make this a 50hz mode to match PAL games all the better - this will vastly improve scrolling.

Also ensure that frameskip isn’t accidentally enabled.

I am a die hard Amigan and still own 6-7 machines myself, but have spent most of this evening testing things out and playing various games and found it most enjoyable!

I was particularly please at how much easier it is to setup something like Indy Heat for 3 players now.

Definitely there is room for improvement in terms of cpu accuracy, but then the Amiga chipset is a far more complex beast than any of the consoles of the same era... it always has been troublesome to emulate without a considerably powerful host machine!

psyke83

@andershp said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail - Amiberry's official thread:

Got to play a bit with Amiberry + WHDLoad yesterday and today, and I really appreciate the excellent work that's done in here to include more and more functions for us all.

I really mean no disrespect, and maybe it's just hardware limitations or something, but I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed in the Amiga Emulation, compared to NES, SNES, MAME, MegaDrive, pretty much everything else I've seen on RPi.

Here's some observations from a handful of my fave's:

Turrican 2 and 3: framerate is low and scrolling not very fluent. Also a lot of graphical glitches, especially in T2.
Disposable Hero and Z-out: framerate and scrolling are looking poor. Menusystem in DH with graphical errors.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old Amiga-die-hard-fan, with an upgraded A1200 in my basement, and with Amiga being my main home computer since my earliest childhood, I dunno. I just never noticed these things in SNES or MegaDrive games.

Anyone else noticing this? Or maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Enter the runcommand menu for your emulator and select a resolution with a 50Hz refresh. I can assure you that when it matches the PAL refresh rate, the emulation is 100% smooth, like native hardware.

N.B. I edited your post as it seemed to reference a collection related to piracy. Please avoid discussing this stuff on the official forums and stick to emulation aspect, thanks.

AndersHP

@horaceandspider Okay, cool. I will try out tinkering with these settings. It's fun how a machine of such age is still considered a "beast" to emulate.

I thought the uae files (since these are premade to different chipsets) were setup to max performance?

nemo93

Hi @AndersHP! I got no issue as far as I can tell with any Turrican games. By using the template uae shared above you should be able to play those games in good condition. For the sake of completeness let me share the uae for each Turrican hereafter.

Turrican - package version 2.0 (2016-01-09) => uae
Turrican 2 - package version 1.7 (09.07.09) => uae
Turrican 3 - package version 1.5 (14.07.2011)=> uae

Please give all the above a try and report back how it went.

Is anybody else able to confirm the issues reported by @AndersHP regarding Disposable Hero and Z-out please? I'll try to reproduce on my end but would be great to have more confirmation before adding those to the github list of issues :)

Packages latest versions:

Disposable Hero => version 1.5 (20.05.06)
Z-Out => version 3.4 (30.04.16)

Thanks!

maxbeanz

@nemo93 Disposable Hero works fine. There are a few lines flickering on the title screen but can be fixed by turning off 'fast copper', may give a bit of slowdown but only on the title screen. Z-Out works fine but I did notice a corrupted block here and there, but it happened at random, sometimes it was fine.

tuki_cat

@andershp

Hi,

I have done some testing on Turrican II and I can comfirm that if you turn off fast copper then the graphical glitches are no longer present.

You can do this in the Amiberry gui, or you can amend the config file manually to make the change permanent. To do this open the config file for Turrican II and go to the line that says "fast copper" and change this from "True" to "False"

darknior

@nemo93 said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail - Amiberry's official thread:

Sorry for the delay, i don't have time to respond and try Amiga before :(

@HoraceAndSpider did answer your question in a very detailed manner! In short a HDF image is a WHDLoad package that has been converted into an image. Therefore no package available means no HDF (please keep me honest anyone). An awesome guy called @ransom1122 made many conversions (and many other cool stuff). At the very end there's no real advantage of using one over the other as it's ultimately the same thing. Feel free to use the setup you're most comfortable with. Just that WHDLoad packages tend to be updated quite regulary as you've mentioned earlier (check the Latest News section there).

I already have install the last package.
And i also try this :https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/RetroPieAmigaSetup
Not this : https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/RetroPieAmigaSetup ?
And this : https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/UAEConfigMaker ?
I also use this excellent version that save me for gamepad and mouse :
https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/amiberry

With respect to Heimdall2 AGA package, it is working fine here. You may have issue either with the package version or with some uae parameters. FYI I'm using latest version version 1.6 (16.03.05) as of writing. An uae for that game could be found there.

I have the last version too.
And the game is a working fine on my friend PI with the Ultimate Amiga Pack from @ransom1122 . And on my PI with same settings, it don't. It's why it is very strange for me ? Same Game same UAE file same WHDload.

To debug check within your package folder. There has to be a file named whdscript_debug. You must have launched the game at least once for this file to be created. If you open it with a text editor you should see few lines telling you what went wrong during last launch.

Ok thanks i will read it.

Now it's my friend @waal that working on Amiga for me. He know better Amiga than me.
He read some where it can come because my games are on an USB drive !
And my WHDLoad too, have you make some test on USB Hard Drive too ?
Maybe it can be a good idea to copy only the WHDLoad to the SD Card ? ...

AndersHP

@horaceandspider said in [Amiga] Amiberry + WHDLoad = Holy Grail - Amiberry's official thread:

@andershp

Make sure to disable JIT and reduce the clock speed to 7mhz for ECS games. Also to improve scrolling you should change the default video mode for Amiberry to something appropriate for your display - if you can make this a 50hz mode to match PAL games all the better - this will vastly improve scrolling.

Also ensure that frameskip isn’t accidentally enabled.

I was a bit hurry to rant, my apologies. I thought the UAE files for the games was set-up for max performance.

The above mentioned was pretty much all set wrong, and these tips really helped. My monitor only allows 60Hz modes though..
I still feel the shaded look is a thorn in the eye, though. And controls are a bit more aggressive than with original hardware. I think especially in Disposable Hero, the ship moves too much, making it hard to place it precisely. This is especially needed in boss battles.

HoraceAndSpider

I know midwan is doing some looking into the NTSC/PAL performance, so perhaps in your scenario it would be best to emulate an NTSC amiga @ 60hz.

Unfortuantely this will cut off the bottom of the screen for some games, and affect speed (since games will run a little quicker) , although of course for a number of games there are NTSC specific versions available.

I agree with would be nice if all the UAE Config Maker files produce the optimum setup for each. The idea of the program was that users would submit their improved settings for each game, and therefore contribute to a collaborative effort to get as many games running as nicely as possible.

Unfortunately, users are majoritaivly (although not anyone here) greedy, and contribututions have been at a minimum. Because I have been working on Amiberry, my resource has moved from Config Maker to that, although i do plan some improvements quite soon!

Some of the things mentioned on this thread i will personally be looking into (like running from a USB!) but it all takes time. The good news is though, the 'controller' branch i created has now been merged into the main amiberry development branch, ready for the next release :)