Post WinUAE 3.5 feature suggestions/comments

[Locutus]

WinUAE might be buildable against Winelib, the biggest hassle there is likely rewriting its msvc build stuff to something more unixy.

In all honesty, just running WinUAE in WINE works good enough so the motivation for this is 0.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by ztronzo

Hello Toni,
If you proceed with NetPlay in the future, I would gladly share the servers I use for the amigalive project if required... (currently running Debian Linux)

What do you mean by servers?

If netplay gets implemented, it will be simple command line based feature ("start listening", "connect to master"). Not much more. At least in first "version".

Any plans for an OSX Compatible version of WinUAE?
This was be the first question half of the people I met asked for when interested in playing multiplayer through NetPlay.

No. There is far too much Windows specific code (whole GUI for example) and I personally hate most multiplatform programs because they generally are "lowest common denominator" programs (only features, or worse, are available that all operating systems support easily) and always look alien.

Just use wine

[B14ck W01f]

Originally Posted by ztronzo

Any plans for an OSX Compatible version of WinUAE?
This was be the first question half of the people I met asked for when interested in playing multiplayer through NetPlay.

There used to be a thing called MacUAE, but the developer got sick of coding and the project died.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

There used to be a thing called MacUAE, but the developer got sick of coding and the project died.

Or sick of Macs, more likely ;-)

[ztronzo]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

What do you mean by servers?

If netplay gets implemented, it will be simple command line based feature ("start listening", "connect to master"). Not much more. At least in first "version".

Depending on what approach you would take for netplay, as under my speculation that you may use the same method as FS-UAE netplay uses. To have an idea, FS-UAE does a full emulation and shares all ROM and input changes with the clients and the master, as host and clients all emulate the same exact Amiga machine with the same hardware and peripherals and synchronizes all peripheral inputs (This method allows for synchronization to be lost if differences in the emulation are found).
Another way would be to just share the screen and allow remote joy/key input from the clients, but this method may require a steady upload bandwidth from the master. (as done with the PSNet/Shareplay)
Will you be using any of these methods?

Below I mention some of the benefits for a remote server to run as a master-host (by having a dedicated WinUAE listening), but again it all depends on what approach you would prefer to take for netplay.

1) Eliminates the need for the user to allow forwarding of specific ports on their router or anti-virus firewall (By my experience, over 2/3 of the users still have trouble with applying these settings.)

2) Allows a steady bandwidth for 2 or more clients connecting (players/spectators), depending on their location and ping responses times. (Most users to my experience do not have the ideal setup for acting as a host and upload speeds are saturated over their WiFi connections. I also strongly suggest to everyone not to use WiFi for netplay over fast paced games.)

So to answer your question, I have a few servers running Debian Linux and acting as dedicated hosts running fs-uae-netplay (master) currently in UK, Germany, Italy, US and Bulgaria.
So just for you to know, Whenever you have something ready, I would gladly add WinUAE dedicated master hosts on every one of them if your netplay method allows or requires this. :-)


Keep up the good work!!!

[Romanujan]

If it is not too late for requests - would it be possible to emulate the ROMY mod (4MB additional ROM space in $1000000-$13FFFFF range)? See here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1176767.

This could be very useful for ROMDisk (https://github.com/cnvogelg/romdisk) users - for us the 1MB ROM space is not really that much.

Or, maybe some more advanced configuration would be possible - like allowing the user to put any ROM image any size at any specified location? This would allow to emulate other mods, like the 2MB ROM: http://leblogdecosmos.blogspot.com/2...-mo-a1200.html.

[Toni Wilen]

I don't think anyone will find any real world use for >2M ROMs.. (or even 2M) and 2M ROM image files have been supported for ages.

Anyway, it is always GUI which is the annoying part. config-file only rom whatever size in whatever address is trivial.

[Romanujan]

My use case: I want a small rescue system embedded in ROM (drivers for CompactFlash in PCMCIA reader, network stack, filesystem salvage tools, some convenient ASCII editor like CED or GoldED, etc.) - the compressed image of such system might easily cross the 1MB (maximum current continuous ROM block).

it is always GUI which is the annoying part

Besides error popups you just need 2 or 3 widgets - ROM start address ($1000000 could be the default one), a file selector, maybe additionally a 'tick' to enable the feature. Size can be taken from the rom image size.

I rather expected problems due to possible conflicts with other emulated hardware.

[Toni Wilen]

No, GUI isn't that simple and 10000000 address is also used by UAE mode Z3 or "32-bit chip" so it really isn't that simple..

Also, "not enough information": what part of ROM appear at address zero when rom overlay is active? What appears at normal ROM regions?

[Romanujan]

That's what I meant by problems due to possible conflicts with other emulated hardware. Unfortunately, I don't have A4000, so I can't answer these questions

[hyperlogos]

It would be nice if something rational would happen when I resize the window.

[Dunny]

Boot camp isn't a terribly good solution though - you have to reboot to switch to Windows, and Apple's practice of disallowing driver updates from vendors (AMD in my case) means that updating graphics drivers is a PITA to get around it.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by hyperlogos

It would be nice if something rational would happen when I resize the window.

???

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by PeterK

WinUAE is getting better and better and more complex with every new release!

But it's also getting slower and slower with every additional feature. Not that much, but step by step, a little bit slower.

https://www.c64forever.com/log/

For example same happened with VICE 3.0 version, it runs so slow on my PentiumM @2.13Ghz that was almost impossible to use it, but they somehow manage to improve the speed in newer VICE 3.1 version that it runs now between 1/4 till 1/2 of my PC cpu usage?!

I wonder how/what they did to achieve this speed improvement ?

Ps. Tested versions from here: https://www.c64forever.com/sourcecode/


EDIT:
Cloanto VICE 3.1 version seems better optimized than the Official VICE 3.1 version ?! (see on attached picture)
(regarding the previous VICE 3.0 version, both Cloanto or Official version uses whole CPU usage)

So, its not always "buy a new PC" the only solution for a problem.

[Ian]

Optimisation, or fixing bugs would be my guess.

[chip]

There are two kind of disk images which are not supported by WinUAE
They are .cop and .zom files

Any chance to include those ?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by chip

There are two kind of disk images which are not supported by WinUAE
They are .cop and .zom files

Any chance to include those ?

No one has reverse-engineered them or created portable version of decompressor.

[mark_k]

Zoom was developed by Olaf Barthel who is still around. The program is written in C, but it looks like the (de)compression routines are in assembler. Maybe he still has equivalent C source for those routines though?

[chip]

Any infos on .cop ?

[Playaveli]

Originally Posted by Python1

N E T P L A Y so that Amiga and WinUAE fans can finally play and compete online against each other.

Come on, we are in 2017 AD and we still can't play Amiga games online within WinUAE.

Messing around with real machines and/or emulators is great. Relaxing in the forums is cool. But Amiga gaming is even greater and cooler. It's all about sensations.

Amiga gamers, where are you?

P.S.: Please don't say there already exist FS-UAE or amigalive.com. This comment is about Amiga online gaming through WinUAE. Thanks.

Would be about time.

Winuaexp (version from 2002!!) works so great with server/p2p client of Kaillera. Today's internet connections are so fast, you can play p2p across Europe with only 1-2 frames skipped.

I cannot understand why Winuae still doesn't support Kaillera, or some other netplay client.