Amiga MegaBall for iPhone

[Art]

Hi Guys,
An Amiga for iPhone with UAE4All, bound to a single 1991 game & A500 OCS:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/megaball/id662086959?ls=1&mt=8

I'm sure you've never seen this before:


There are some tricks in the iPhone settings menu & do a 360 rotate to save hi scores.

I still owe this app some work, it's not a first and final.

Obviously, thanks goes to Mike too
Cheers, Art.

[Art]

Android version?

?

There already are Amiga emus for Android.
Several of them from my understanding....
Or Cloanto wouldn't have made the Kickstart pack available...

[Art]

Hi,
It must remain non-commercial, and I must not receive any money from this one.
Your comment here (and your potential App Review.. hint!) is your donation and it is appreciated.

There is a small update that will arrive quickly, but after that I don't want to
trickle them...
I get annoyed as the end user myself with heaps of updates with small improvements.
The UAE branch also does need work.
Thanks again

EDIT,,
would you prefer that stuff to actual work on the emulator?

[Art]

So a level editor for Droid and everyone is happy

Throughout the day, I'm finding it less acceptable that a level editor is absent.
It should at least look for board files created with a real Amiga.

The versions of MBall that require an AGA Amiga are a bit hopeful for now,
but there are better branches of UAE around.. just need to investigate where
iOS jailbreak and Droid are up to with Amigas.
If they aren't doing AGA Amigas, then it might not be easy.

Since the game uses no special keys, I was just going to look at the iOS
keyboard to get the player name for the hi score table.

[Art]

I think that is because you are looking with an iPad.

It's only for lack of testing that iPads are disqualified currently,
and should't be long before I can test them.

If it's an iPhone 4, 4S, or 5, let me know. It's still fine in Aus.

[Art]

I read that one, and sent an email to both before using their game.

I have seen a tweet from Ed reposting the App Store link,
and it was cool that he liked it (I know he must have played it)

Played DX Ball as well, but I do think it was inspired by MBall, (if not the same author).

I'm a long time Breakout fan and did my own for two platforms.
I have gone a little bit further with my native iOS one.
There are spinning wheels and teleporters, etc on the play field,
that interact with the ball.. was trying to make it feel like a pinball machine.
No drop down power ups, they are all from hitting targets.

But I do not yet have the bricks that interact with each other
exploding bricks in patterns that cause the chain reaction, are something
you look forward to in MBall.

[Art]

I can't pretend I wouldn't like it, but there isn't a loader.

I know it seems unlikely, but it really has to be that way for this one.
Whatever non-game specific work I put into this can easily apply to another iOS Amiga emulator,
and the longer this one is in there, can only be better for future Amiga in iOS.

Don't get me wrong, I raced to download Gridlee (hidden MAME loader)
before it was deleted, but I wouldn't have been the one to distribute it,
and (specifically with iOS) don't think it helps in the long term.

I don't want to own the Amiga in Apple's App Store either,
I want to potentially make it easier for others.
So long as Apple are playing ball when it's done properly, I'm more than happy.

[Art]

Apple's dev portal is having problems with new apps being created,
so updates to existing apps are getting reviewed faster. My last one was 3 days.
An update for this should arrive soon if that's anything to go by.

Did fixes to UAE to improve dropped samples, and stability.
An option called Level Rotation that rotates the board list each time
the app is started, so you always start on a new game board for each session.
(MegaBall game program is oblivious to this an numbers the levels correctly).
Still an iPhone app, but also works with later iPads now
(iPad has it's own custom level 2 game board that says "iPad").
Input sequence to invoke Guru Meditation for the emulated Amiga.
App is ready to receive a single user-created custom game board,
although the program to create them hasn't been written.
Cheers, Art.

[Art]

Sound is much improved on this version and performance seems improved, too. Nice work! Any further thoughts on building the emulation around Megaball 2, 3, or 4?

Hi Matt, still not perfect, and still needs work, but I'm feeling better about it.
Another version is due about today that is another step with UAE,
and also gives away where I was going with the intro screen.

I wish I'd discovered early that the first MB lacks the exploding brick type.
My only hesitation is having to do the settings menu again.. I claimed on
another forum to be able to do it quickly, but perhaps it's not as interesting as
some other things at the moment.

A board editor is partially implemented now.
The populated game board is a 20x20 grid of bricks, where each brick type is
represented with a single byte of value from 0x00 - 0x0A (00 means no brick).
It is possible to create a 400 byte file in a hex editor, name it custom.brd,
and the app currently recognises that file for the first level, so long as all
of it's byte values are within the correct 0x00 - 0x0A range.
I would have to call that "unofficial" for now, because there has to be an
Apple friendly way to upload it, and an actual board editor program
before it can be listed as a feature.
I'm hoping that someone else will write a level editor before I have to

[Art]

Hi Art,

Thank for your release, it's always fun to play something from our memories on nowadays devices in a faithful way.

Just by curiosity, are you the same Art that in the past did hombrew for PSP with an account on (now in the limbo) ps2dev.org forums?

Hi, yes that is me.
I used one of my PSP programs to look at an Amiga memory dump,
to produce the settings related to game boards in this distribution

I am also curious about the UAE version you're using. Is it a version that you are coding?

I aim to contribute, but don't claim to have done that yet,
only what I consider corrections to the iPhone implementation.
It's an old version of UAE4All, last touched by Toni before being picked up by Chui of DCemu AFAIK.

Is there any UAE version that whose license clashes with Apple's?

Any version with a significant contributor who objects to it's presence in the App Store as
demonstrated with VLC (to the best of my knowledge).
I did my best to contact as many contributors as possible.
Noone so far (including Toni) asserts that permission is required to use it, no matter where it is used,
as long as the entire project is open source, and void of copyright components.
Either way, as the person who's taken responsibility for it currently,
Toni's permission was a personal requirement.
Being under Cloanto's banner might also help. They apparently have some licence arangement.

I am using the FAME 68000 core, which requires it's own licence if it were used commercially.

I'm making an effort to find an author who will give up licence for a commercial game for free.
It's difficult to contact many of the authors nowadays though

[Art]

Nice to know.
If it is GPL, does it clashes with Apple license/AppStore licensing? I may be asking a silly question.

Again, depends who you ask, and it might help being under Cloanto's banner.
I presume there is some agreement in place with contributors prior to UAE becoming GPL.
I'm sure you're not allowed to redistribute their complete product, although it contains UAE.

Some game companies had/have some of their games available in ADF format right from their site. Still, must they give its permission additionally for your use in the emulator?

Not in the case of MegaBall. It has been given up under an open licence that
allows it's modification and re-distribution,
but I was able to contact Ed & Al to obtain permission out of courtesy.

Those sites such as Team 17 are giving them away for personal use.
You still can't redistribute, or host them on another site legally.
It's probably mentioned somewhere on their download page.
I tried to get permission to use Project X prior to MegaBall.

It's difficult. The authors of Cannon Fodder and Stunt Car Racer are both
on Facebook, but doesn't mean they will accept messages from strangers,
or accept stranger's friend requests, which is fair enough, but frustrating

[Art]

I am also curious about the UAE version you're using. Is it a version that you are coding? Is there any UAE version that whose license clashes with Apple's?

I have learned more about GPL code, and it's author, and we will find out.

GPL either ensures a programmer's freedom to express him/herself creatively,
contribute, and distribute on the platform of their choice, or it does the opposite,
which I find prejudice, and restrictive, which does not encourage me
to pick up any GPL project, or GPL any of my own projects, which are all free.
I find it extremely insulting.

The next update credits all authors in the kind of document scroller in the
Settings menu that Apple uses for their apps such as GarageBand.
(I only just sorted out how to do that kind of document scroller).
47 authors from the main UAE site, and more since the branch went to mobile platforms.

It boldly states that UAE is a GPL project, so it's quite possible that it's never
seen by Apple's customers.

[Art]

Well since the update only got 17 minutes review time,
I doubt they read it

It does seem the VNC debacle was largely political.
Turns ou the project contributor that complained worked for Nokia.