Amiga Per-Game List and Launch in Emulationstation - WHD version?
-
This topic is being written to avoid bumping a 10-month old thread:
Launching Amiga savestates from Emulationstation?There are plenty of tutorials out there showing how to set up per-game listing and launching of Amiga (uae4arm) games from within EmulationStation, rather than launching the uae4arm GUI and choosing your games from there. This allows Amiga to look and function ::somewhat:: more like the console and handheld emulators. But even the more advanced methods which can launch multi-disk games from a single menu item still suffer from the same affliction - some multi-disk games do not seem to be able to "see" the other disks loaded into the multiple virtual disk drives. This means at some point in the game, it will ask you to "insert disk 2", and you are forced to exit the game into the GUI, swap disks, and return to the game to continue.
Yes, this is a small price to pay for being able to play these great games on the Pi! But there was something very tantalizing in the thread I linked above. If I am interpreting the post correctly, @xFlesk seems to have a way to accomplish per-game launching using hdf files instead of uae files. These are Amiga hard drive images. They load super-fast, and they eliminate disk swapping completely. @xFlesk does give instructions in the original post, but he hinted at the possibility of creating a step by step tutorial...
My hope is that with the passage of time, maybe such a tutorial has been created in the interim? If so, I am hoping that someone would be willing to share. it is also completely possible that I misinterpreted the post, and these WHD games are still launched from the GUI. I was hoping to get these questions clarified, and I am hopeful to get some of these answers because I see that after a long hiatus, @xFlesk is actively posting again :)
Any info on launching Amiga hdf games straight from EmulationStation / AttractMode would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-Dave -
This does indeed sound awesome. I've been messing with the system of creating configs from adf files over the past few days. Whilst it's got me up-and-running, I still find myself having to change the config of a few games.
EDIT: I found a guide that details how to do this, but it also contains a link to the games themselves, which I doubt the forum moderators would be cool with
So basically you have the same system of uae4arm recognising .uae files, but the uae files point to WHD load files themselves
-
Hey @Yorkie,
Thanks for the reply. Definitely not interested in ROM links of any kind, but what are the chances you would copy/paste the portion of the text detailing the WHD launch method itself?
By the way, I recognized your name right away because I have previously taken detailed notes on YOUR method from back in January 2016 on petRockBlog. I've found no less than six distinct writeups on how to do this, including the "Yorkie method", but none of them are specifically for WHD files.
If would be willing to present a portion of this guide that you found, with game links omitted, it would be GREATLY appreciated!
-Dave -
That's me. Thanks for remembering :) Good to hear the method is still doing the rounds. I must say that the steps described on the wiki are quite an improvement
You need 3 things to be able to load WHDLoad games
- The WHDLoad Boot Program which should sit in a folder called /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/_BootWHD.
Latest version can be download from here:-
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4272ME-kTRMT2wwbzUxb29UMVk
- A config maker to create uae files which should sit in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/_Config Maker
Latest version
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4272ME-kTRMSURZUkxFOThIaDQThis is an amiga program, so I guess you have to run it through uae4arm?
- A set of WHDLoad games which sit in home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/Games_WHDLoad
The configuration maker will apparently scan the Games_WHDLoad folder and make uae files for you. However, I was able to find pre-built uae files, so didn't actually run this.
As before (and as you'll have already done), you setup EmulationStation to recognise .uae as a file extension for uae4arm, and modify the uae4arm executable to accept a config file as a parameter.
The difference in the config files is rather than specifying floppy drives, you specify the path to the directory containing the WHDLoad file for the game, and the Boot Loader.
Here's the bottom of the file for Addams Family:-
filesystem2=rw,DH1:games:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/Games_WHDLoad/AddamsFamily/,0
uaehf0=dir,rw,DH1:games:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/Games_WHDLoad/AddamsFamily/,0
filesystem2=rw,DH0:DH0:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/_BootWHD/,10
uaehf1=dir,rw,DH0:DH0:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/_BootWHD/,10Hope that helps. As I say, I didn't actually run this _Config Maker tool myself, or haven't got the faintest idea what these WHDLoad directories actually are. A quick search on running WHDload games through Retropie should lead you to the full picture.
It works a charm though, and is a real game-changer for me. Only issues I've had are having to select my joypad through the GUI, and the display resolution on some games not being correct.
-
Good stuff, Yorkie, appreciate the writeup very much, thank you! After reading it I did a little snooping around... by any chance, the site where you found the write up... is the major color scheme of the site... Red? :)
You got me past the roadblock, much appreciated sir!
For others trying to figure out this method, Yorkie spells out the main steps, and it should be enough to allow you to find even more details and fill in the gaps with a little searching.
I've been toying with the idea of creating some content for YouTube... if I get this set up and working properly, I intend to make it my first how-to video. We'll see if I have as much luck as Mr. Yorkie has.
Thanks,
-Dave -
@EVEGames Did you managed to get it running? I found the "red" site as well, followed the steps there but now when I start a game it goes to command line and back to emulation station.
Edit: Nvm, i had a typo in one of the files. i had retropi instead of retropie. -.-
-
@EctoOne Good to hear, sounds like you're up and running! You're ahead of me, I've taken a lot of time reading through Facebook posts, taking notes etc. Plan on trying to implement this tomorrow.
-
@EVEGames Yeah, happy about that. Although i still need to figure out a way to use my controller as mouse. Also some other games i tried as whdload didn't work. Looks like the premade pack from that red site contained all games that worked right away.
Now i'm trying to create small hdf files instead of multiple adf files. Hopefully that somehow works. -
@EctoOne said in Amiga Per-Game List and Launch in Emulationstation - WHD version?:
@EVEGames Yeah, happy about that. Although i still need to figure out a way to use my controller as mouse.
There is a detailed guide on the FB Group which you can follow that works to achieve this goal. I did it with my PS3 Dualshock Bluetooth controller and it works.
Check this post and the following comments for the detailed guide.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1854320841462593/permalink/1932961256931884/ -
@Freakadude Thanks for the link, i'll look into it and hope it works. Are you using the normal UAE4ARM or the amiberry version? I'm just asking because i just noticed that my USB Mouse isn't working in games, it works in the GUI tho. Thought it might be either setting i missed or because of amiberry. Anyway, first i need a break, just finished cleaning up my gamelist and creating all missing images.
-
@EctoOne I use the latest Amiberry v2.1 version.
-
hello there,im going to help as soon as possible ;) i just start making my first tutorial how to get amiga games runing nice on rpi using the emulation station gui. just give me little bit of time, i want to make tutorial which guide you step by step (with pictures, sample files etc...).
hope my english will be good enough ;)
cheers -
Just fyi - the latest retropie (update all packages) includes launching adfs directly from emulation station via uae4arm. Also zipped disk sets.
-
@BuZz sounds interesting. I still prefer the uae files because of the different settings. If you set the config folder in the uae4arm gui to the rom folder you can easily edit all the files that were created automatically from one of the scripts afterwards. And they show up in Emulation Station right away if you add games with the gui. If uae files are added to the es_system.cfg that is of course. But for starters it's a good way.
-
@EctoOne you can still use uae files with the new method - although in that case it's best to move the games so they don't show up in the list too. But if you launch a .uae file it will use it automatically.
-
@BuZz ye, I would have guessed so. I just wanted to say that uae files are more configurable than starting adf. Adf are more convenient tho.
And I will not update in the near future because it took me a whole weekend to set it up how i wanted it (and there is still one thing I need to figure out). In that process I replaced uae4arm with amiberry as well and as long as it works I'm happy. -
i've made a tutorial. hope it'll be helpful. enjoy
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.