Scorpion Engine

[earok]

Originally Posted by malko

IDE is win32 & win64 ?
or like FS-UAE win64 only ? (no more official win32 build)

Good question.

You need your own copy of FS-UAE installed - it should just work with whatever copy of FS-UAE you have setup. Under the hood, the editor just launches the FS-UAE executable with the command line switches to set the HDD path (I'll also look at making it so that you can choose which machine to emulate based on FS-UAE's default setups for A500, A1200, CDTV, CD32 etc).

I've currently got the editor compiling as x86, so I assume it'll work in win32 just fine (though I can't guarantee that, and I certainly can't guarantee if it'll work below Win10. It's possible though).

On a side note - commercial Amiga ROMs may not be a requirement for using FS-UAE, Scorpion mostly seems to work OK with AROS ROMs.

[malko]

^ I can do some testes under x86 Win 7 to help you.
None of my computers are x64.
Send you a PM.

[Clydos]

Very cool, @earok!

What do you use to create the editor? Is it a WPF application created in Visual Studio?

[earok]

Cheers @malko, I've got your email address

@clydos yes, that's correct! I'm using Visual Studio 2019 for the project, and it's based on Gemini WPF. I've never really written a desktop application before, let alone an IDE, but fortunately it's a fairly easy framework to work with (and it helps having some Silverlight experience from like, a decade ago).

[Clydos]

Originally Posted by earok

@clydos yes, that's correct! I'm using Visual Studio 2019 for the project, and it's based on Gemini WPF. I've never really written a desktop application before, let alone an IDE, but fortunately it's a fairly easy framework to work with (and it helps having some Silverlight experience from like, a decade ago).

Ok, nice. I guess using this helps a lot at least designing the UI and support through data binding.

Currently I am creating a programm with GUI using Hollywood and RapaGUI (just as I want to use Hollywood and be cross platform), and although it is really nice to have it, it is quite a heavy/time consuming part.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

Good question.

You need your own copy of FS-UAE installed - it should just work with whatever copy of FS-UAE you have setup. Under the hood, the editor just launches the FS-UAE executable with the command line switches to set the HDD path (I'll also look at making it so that you can choose which machine to emulate based on FS-UAE's default setups for A500, A1200, CDTV, CD32 etc).

I've currently got the editor compiling as x86, so I assume it'll work in win32 just fine (though I can't guarantee that, and I certainly can't guarantee if it'll work below Win10. It's possible though).

On a side note - commercial Amiga ROMs may not be a requirement for using FS-UAE, Scorpion mostly seems to work OK with AROS ROMs.

I'm sure you are going to but wouldn't it be better to add WinUAE; at least as an option?

This is most probably the more popular emulator and what FS-UAE is based on; and constantly playing catch up to.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Clydos

Ok, nice. I guess using this helps a lot at least designing the UI and support through data binding.

MVVM does help a fair bit!

Originally Posted by DamienD

I'm sure you are going to but wouldn't it be better to add WinUAE; at least as an option?

This is most probably the more popular emulator and what FS-UAE is based on; and constantly playing catch up to.

I could be wrong, but adding WinUAE support would be more complicated - with FS-UAE I can simply set a couple of command line parameters to launch it with the project output folder as the "hard drive" and set to emulate a specific common configuration of Amiga, but I'm not totally sure if I can do the same with WinUAE?

New video - Scorpion Editor has a "level importer" build in to import ripped maps (PNG) from other games, I go through a really quick and dirty import of the 007 game on Mega Drive to the Alex Kidd sample.

[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Does it work under windows 7?

[earok]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Does it work under windows 7?

I think so, but I don't have a Windows 7 machine to test with. I'll be posting the first alpha of the editor in the weekend.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

I could be wrong, but adding WinUAE support would be more complicated - with FS-UAE I can simply set a couple of command line parameters to launch it with the project output folder as the "hard drive" and set to emulate a specific common configuration of Amiga, but I'm not totally sure if I can do the same with WinUAE?

Adding WinUAE support should be virtually the same as with FS-UAE.

WinUAE can be launched from command line and you can add disks / hard drives / changes settings etc.

mcgeezer did this all the time with Rygar AGA

If you tell us what you need set / added we can assist with the required commad line / syntax

[earok]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Adding WinUAE support should be virtually the same as with FS-UAE.

WinUAE can be launched from command line and you can add disks / hard drives / changes settings etc.

mcgeezer did this all the time with Rygar AGA

If you tell us what you need set / added we can assist with the required commad line / syntax

All I really need is this:

With FS-UAE I can do this from the command line

fs-uae.exe --hard_drive_0=(HDD Path) --amiga_model=(Amiga model)

Where --hard_drive_0 is just the path to the Scorpion output project, and --amiga_model is one of these setups:

A500 – A standard Amiga 500 with 512 KB chip RAM and 512 KB slow RAM, defaulting to Kickstart 1.3.
A500+ – A standard Amiga 500+ with 1 MB chip RAM, defaulting to Kickstart 2.04.
A600 – A standard Amiga 600 with 1 MB chip RAM, defaulting to Kickstart 2.05.
A1000 – Since 1.3.27. An Amiga 1000 with 512 KB chip RAM, defaulting to Kickstart 1.2.
A1200 – A standard Amiga 1200 with 2 MB chip RAM, defaulting to Kickstart 3.1.
A1200/020 – Amiga 1200 but with 68020 processor instead of 68ec020 – allows the use of Zorro III RAM
A3000 – (Since 2.1.21) Amiga 3000 with 2 MB chip RAM, 8 MB fast RAM and a 68030 processor running as fast as possible, defaulting to Kickstart 3.1.
A4000/040 – Amiga 4000 with 2 MB chip RAM, 8 MB fast RAM and a 68040 processor running as fast as possible, defaulting to Kickstart 3.1.
CD32 – A standard CD32 unit.
CDTV – A standard Commodore CDTV unit.

If I can do exactly the same on WinUAE, I'll go ahead and set it up.

[LanceT]

Earok - thank you for this....

Here is how I got it to work from CMD/Batch. OUTPUT is the game DIRECTORY at cli prompt type "Game.exe"

winuae64_4300b3.exe -s use_gui=no -cfgparam=quickstart=A500 -M :OUTPUT
pause 10


Add to *** I guess you could script a s/startup-sequence to autoboot "Game.exe" when building/compiling?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by LanceT

winuae64_4300b3.exe -s use_gui=no -cfgparam=quickstart=A500 -M :OUTPUT

I definitely wouldn't be using / pointing to WinUAE beta versions and always use stable versions; so therefore just use either "winuae.exe" or "winuae64.exe".

Also, there's no real need to use the 64-bit version unless your games need 1GB+ of RAM.

On this webpage there are some command line usage explanations.

In these threads there are also examples:

... https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=40250
... https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=90620
... https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=89762
... https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=63719

Finally there are 2 ways in which you could do this:

First:
Set a Quickstart and add a hard drive in:

winuae -s use_gui=no quickstart=a1200,1 hardfile=rw,1,32,2,512,<harddrivefile path>\<name>.hdf


Second:
Have the user load WinUAE, set a Quickstart and add in the desired .hdf. Save the configuration file as say Scorpion.uae.

Now use this command line:

winuae -f "Scorpion.uae" -cfgparam use_gui=no

[LanceT]

As usual you are right. The Beta version happened to be the one that I had on my portable version winuae folder.

Anyone of these commands will have the same effect

winuae64.exe -s use_gui=no -cfgparam=quickstart=A500 -M :OUTPUT
or....
winuae.exe -s use_gui=no -cfgparam=quickstart=A500 -M :OUTPUT
or....
winuae64_4300b3.exe -s use_gui=no -cfgparam=quickstart=A500 -M :OUTPUT

I was just translating Earoks FS-UAE script to WinUAE so that it would load a folder as a drive (-M).

fs-uae.exe --hard_drive_0=(HDD Path) --amiga_model=(Amiga model)

<--hard_drive_0=(HDD Path)> = <-M :OUTPUT> OUTPUT=(HDD Path) because the "Scorpion Engine Editor" compiles to folder not an adf or hdf file.
The examples you give don't show DH0: as a windows folder in CMD.
Thank you for your comments DamienD, I am always learning and there is always a better way of doing things.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by LanceT

<--hard_drive_0=(HDD Path)> = <-M :OUTPUT> OUTPUT=(HDD Path) because the "Scorpion Engine Editor" compiles to folder not an adf or hdf file.
The examples you give don't show DH0: as a windows folder in CMD.

Gotcha

Then your command lines make perfect sense.

[LanceT]

Thanks...
Except i think I messed up the quickstart command?
I am getting a default of a500 ks1.3 no matter what quickstart I type.
It seems the "-cfgparam=quickstart=A500" can actually be omitted from the line.

Solved : -s is required.
-s quickstart=a1200,1

Update.

winuae.exe -s use_gui=no -s quickstart=a600,0 -M :OUTPUT

or

winuae.exe -s use_gui=no -s quickstart=a1200,1 -M :OUTPUT

etc....

[DamienD]

As far as I'm aware "-cfgparam" is only used in conjunction with "-f" and means to use the settings from the configuration file

[LanceT]

Yeah, I was going on the lines in win32.ccp of winuae source code.
So that explains it.

[earok]

Thanks guys Lance, I followed your instructions and it all works nicely. So both FS-UAE and WinUAE are options in the Scorpion Editor.

[earok]

Ok, so here's the thing.

I'm a little bit nervous about publishing the editor right now, mainly because I'm not sure what, if anything needs to be installed on the user's computer already (asides from the applicable version of .NET). And I don't really have a second computer to test it on.

This is the current build, as-is and not guaranteed to work. If anyone can confirm or deny that it works for them on their Windows machine (and if it doesn't, what errors etc are shown), that'd be really helpful.

http://earok.net/ScorpionEditorPrototype_3.zip