KGLoad Beta released
 

Hi,

With the aid of TCD, I've decided to resurrect my WHDLoad Games launcher/loader/frontend "KGLoad".

It loads WHDLoad games from a simple menu system, with screenshots and boxart displayed.

There's been a lot of changes since the previous beta, and I'm really happy with how it's progressing.

I would be grateful if people could give it a whirl and let me have your feedback.

It should auto-detect PAL/NTSC and AGA/ECS and adjust accordingly.

I have no idea how much RAM you'll need but I'd guess that if you're running WHDLoad you should be fine :)

NOTE: DO NOT DISABLE StoreInfo or StorePath in the profile.ini for now, it WILL crash kgload

Download v1.0b6 HERE

AGA:
http://s14.postimage.org/b7jopgutp/KGLoad_AGA.jpghttp://s12.postimage.org/9ptl659ex/KGLoad_AGANTSC.jpg

ECS:
http://s16.postimage.org/59ge4z8ap/KGLoad_ECS.jpghttp://s8.postimage.org/68du90fq9/KGLoad_ECSNTSC.jpg

Edit the Profile.ini file stored in KGLoad/Profiles/Default and set your GameDir(s) to point to where your whdload games are stored.

The game scanner recognises everything in my packs, it will support Retroplay's packs in the near future but there is more I want to get finished first.

Just go to Options > Scan Games.

The demos database is not included at the moment, again this'll come in a future version.

There are some screenshots and ONE boxart in the zip at the moment, I've included these to aid testing, but they'll be fully updated later.

I'll sort out some kind of full feature list later but for now, here's the controls.

Joystick Controls

Fire / Red: Load item
Button 2 / Blue: Back out of a menu
Rewind / Forward: Scroll a page up / down
Play: Quit

Keyboard Controls:

Return: Load item
Escape: Back out of a menu
Up / Down: Scroll up / down
Ctrl-Up / Ctrl-Down: Scroll to top / bottom
Shift-Up / Shift-Down: Scroll a page up / down
Ctrl-F1 > Ctrl-F5: Rate a game
Ctrl-Del: Clear rating
F6: Previous screenshot
F7: Next screenshot
F8: Previous boxart
F9: Next boxart
F10: Quit
Numbers/Letters: Search to nearest match
Backspace: Remove letter from search
Delete: clear search
Tab: Start search (if SearchAsYouType is not enabled)

It was my pleasure to be of service :)

Hopefully by the end of the month all screenshots for KG's game packs will be available.

Cool thanks, I'll give it a wirl on my 1200 :)

Good news, thanks KG & TCD!

Nice, will have to try this soon :)

What a nice surprise. :)

TCD found an error in the original beta, so I've rebuilt and updated the link.

Please download it again if you've already downloaded it :)

W00h00!!! I was waiting for the ECS version for a long time!
Awesome job guys, I'll surely give it a go KG mate! \o/

Btw KG, isn't the an option in the future to make an update pack based on Retroplay's packs?
I find it a lot easier to have an update pack as in the past :)

I've not spoken to Retroplay about it yet, but once we start adding support for the updated installs it's certainly something I'd like to do.

Tried 1.0b1 and I see the following:
- I have ClassicWB from Bloodwych that has the SYS:Games path (with 0_9-Z subfolders inside) which is assigned by default to A-Games: if putted in profile.ini doesn't scan the games.
- If I copy a game to the Games folder inside KGLoad it scans it just fine.
- If I run the game, nothing happens (KGLoad logo appears and menu appears again)

Gonna try 1.02b now

There is no subdir scanning...

You'll just have to add GameDir=Path/A, GameDir=Path/B etc. etc.

Thanks for the clarification KG mate :)
Added all 25 folders in seperate GameDir entries and they work ok. It's just plain slow to scan but that's ok for WinUAE for the initial scan.

Just tested 1.02b which fixes the problem with WHDLoad loading. Game runs just fine now :)
Can't wait for future versions

Ah excellent news, thanks for testing it :)

I'd left a bug in the 1.0b2 version which meant it'd render incorrectly in NTSC, this has been fixed and I've uploaded 1.0b3 above.

great news..

KG mate are you using the default system font for KGLoad's displaying font?
I realized it cause I felt it was not displaying ok (I have XEN as default system font) and it looks like this (under WinUAE)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Pics/kg1.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Pics/kg2.png

If I change the default system font to topaz 8 then it's looking exactly like your screenshots.
Can't you just make the usage of topaz 8 build into sourcecode by default instead of using the default system font?

It's not that a big deal but I kinda dislike having to use topaz 8 for CLI :P

Good call! Easy enough to fix. Will be updated in the next couple of days.

Again, thanks for testing it.

Beta 4 is now online (see the link in the first post).

The default font is now set to topaz.font size 8.

Font settings have now been added to the skin.ini file so you can choose your own fonts.

Example usage:

http://i.imgur.com/yGnk7.png

Looking good KG mate cheers :)
Just a thought... Is it possible to use Rebel's 16 colors palette for ECS systems so we can see better coloring than the Red White combination?

Rebel's palette is really nice having lotsa colors for environment to look like the AGA one :)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Pics/RebelPalette.png

To help, I can convert ALL AGA artwork via scripting in ImageStudio to match this palette! Results can be really awesome imho :)

For example... Turrican 3 screenshot from iGame archive can turn from it's original colors
to 16 like this:

Original image (from 256 colors iGame archive)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Pics/T2_256.png

Converted image to Rebel's palette (16 colors)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/939939/Pics/T2_16.png