Where can I find WHDLoad installed games ?

[arkpandora]

Hello everyone,

Can someone tell me where I could find WHDLoad-installed games ?

I would like to test (on a real Amiga) some games of which I don't have any working original, which may have not been released by the SPS yet (for example "Elvira - The Arcade Game"), and without having to make use of floppy disks.

Thank you for any link !

[arkpandora]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies !

Actually I have already installed - and I am using - my originals with WHDLoad.  But some of my original disks don't work anymore.  Whenever IPF files are available, the WHDLoad installer can (sometimes) use them instead of the original disks, but in some cases no IPF files have been released yet.  In that case, the only way to play an original version is to download pre-installed games.  That's why I wanted to know if it is possible to find pre-installed games for download.  I have found a few websites until now, but the main one is not available anymore, and the others don't offer many games.

When using IPF files or a pre-installed game, a floppy drive is not needed to run the game.

Against Amiga.org policy ?  Well, I'm sorry, thank you for the link.  I didn't realize that since I'm not against policy copyright, but trying to find replacements for my originals which are not working anymore.  As for the games I mentioned, I don't have the originals, since I want to "test" them.  But since numerous originals have now become unusable, I won't try to find one only to find out that it does not work, since I only want to test them, in other - copyright - words, determinate if the original is worth buying.  If those Amiga games were on CD, all I would have to do is buy them.  But copyright is overcome by physics, so overcoming physics is the first way to protect copyright, and that's what I am doing.

[arkpandora]

Thanks !  I didn't know this site.

But it seems to offer ADF files only, which are disk images of non-original (basically cracked) disks, not installed originals.

WHDLoad installers usually offer the same convenience as cracked copies, that is no more software protection and sometimes trainers, with more accuracy (since the original disks are used) and more comfort (quit key, built-in degrader, etc.)  Actually F/a-18 Interceptor's codewheel protection is removed by the installer, so since you have a 68020+, KS 2.0+ and a hard drive, just see http://www.whdload.de/games/F.html ...

Since my initial question seemed to be somewhat taboo, I will reword it (just replace the games list by "Rody & Mastico", English version) : is there a legal solution for someone who wants to go on using an original game which has become unusable, if no original disk image of this game exists yet, or if the latter can't be used on a real Amiga ?

[arkpandora]

Hi,

Thanks for your advices, but yes most of my originals come from eBay or online shops.  Buying another copy doesn't solve the problem, since any other original is on floppy disk too, hence perishable.  If my original copy does not work anymore, so may do another one.  If you find another copy for an affordable price, you can take the risk, but some games can't even be found anymore, or for a price that doesn't justify that risk.  Anyway, almost every game on floppy has now gone past its life expectancy, so even games which are still in working order won't soon work anymore.  So buying another copy of a game is not a solution.

Yes, I do use WHDLoad : that's why I am looking for WHDLoad-installed games.  And I have registered it, of course.  But WHDLoad alone doesn't solve the problem either, since it needs working original disks, or the SPS' IPF disk images of them (which too have to be downloaded somewhere if they aren't provided by the SPS themselves).

That's why my initial question is relevant, and not infringing any copyright.

[arkpandora]

Hi,

if you wanting to find these sites then I guess you better start asking Google!

Ah! the kind friendship of Amiga.org members... ;-)  I did ask Google, but the latter wasn't more helpful.

OK, to Nasty :

I would agree with you if we were talking about comercially available games, and if we were I wouldn't have started this thread, since I would have bought the games I was asking for.  However, not only are numerous (if not most) Amiga games not available anymore, but even available games are perishable, hence unusable, soon if not already.

So let's consider three kinds of players.  To date, downloading an original's replacement copy may be the only available solution to the problem of game owners, which nowadays is the problem of every honest person who plays floppy disks games.  A person who does not own a game but wants to buy it, is or will soon be in one of the two following situations : he is unable to find the game he wants to buy, or there is no point in him purchasing the game since he knows it is or will soon be unusable.  Those remaining people who wouldn't buy the games they play won't be able to make the situation worse since no Amiga game is still on the market, so today no Amiga game can suffer from their behaviour.

So what must we do ?  In this situation, we have to choose between relying on people's honesty and preventing them to use what they own ; the first option is the most natural one.  Since the third kind of person does not change anything to this situation, the second option isn't even justified.  Anyway, honesty is not the result of adult prohibition but of child education.

In order to protect artists's interests and copyrights (which is a daily struggle as far as I'm concerned), to my knowledge only two solutions exist : to authorize a game's owner to download a replacement copy of his perishable game if one is available, or to re-release the game.  Since no re-release is scheduled, I am entitled to download a replacement copy if one is available.  And whenever I don't already own a game, I have to test it before trying to buy it, in case it would not be worth the hassle of years of eBay research (when it would be normal to order it from a computer shop), and deception of finally getting something unusable (but sometimes pleasant on a bookshelf).

By the way, the reason why I don't want ADF files is that they are not copies of the original game, but hacked-cracked ones, which mostly have altered the originals and are not compatible with WHDLoad installers.  And since my floppy drives are getting old and shaking, I prefer not to use floppies at all whenever possible.  Amiga floppy drives aren't manufactured anymore either.

Well, do you still believe I am wrong ?

[arkpandora]

Hi,

To Coldfish :

"People are still hypersensitive to piracy" : you're probably right.  Even when it's not about piracy, but on the contrary attempts to perpetuate works of art.  The music industry knows the problem very well... *sigh*

I tried WinUAE a few years ago, but it seemed awful to me, because it does (did ?) not include any software algorithm that could adapt the emulated screen refresh rate to the emulator's refresh rate.  Since no VGA refresh rate is an exact multiple of a PAL or NTSC refresh rate, animations can't be displayed normally : some original video signals are displayed more times than others.  Have current versions of WinUAE found a solution to this problem ?  It concerns every Amiga or C64 emulator I have tried.  Connecting the graphic card to a TV is not a solution, because its video signal is a conversion of the VGA signal, not a direct video signal.

To Orange :

Thanks, you are right, I learned that SPS can send IPF files to the owner even if the game has already been released.  I can do that for some games, but not all since my games have not all been released by the SPS (but some of my dumps have not been sent yet).  And not anyone can do that, since you have to depart from your original disks or own a 68020+ (etc.) Amiga in order to dump them before sending them to the SPS.  Anyway, not every IPF image can be used on a real Amiga with WHDLoad, and it can't be transferred back to a disk.  So this is not a solution to our problem.

Most copy-protected disks can't be copied nor read by any software copy-program.  I know that X-Copy sometimes succeeds in duplicating some copy-protections, but only in rare cases obviously, and whenever it does, the result is another - perishable - floppy.  So I'm afraid this is not a solution either.

Trying to share floppy disks tracks between copy-protected disks and between game players who haven't any technical knowledge, when the whole HD-installed package is available on the Web, is absurd, isn't it ?

To Nasty :

Well, I guess I have now understood that giving a link to copyrighted material is against the policy of Amiga.org.  But my thread was not more about my needs than about the needs of any Amiga games owner, hence the interests of the Amiga community, hence the interests of this site.  Moreover, the purpose of this policy is to protect copyright ; and the purpose of copyright is to avoid piracy.  Yet, if one doesn't have the opportunity to find a replacement copy of a game he owns, or the opportunity to test a game he can't find for sale, piracy is his only solution.  And as I said in my previous post through my "third kind of people", in this particular situation (unavailable or unusable games), there is no point in avoiding piracy.  So in this situation, I think that this policy is not justified, and is harmful in the eyes of the artists, who are the finality of copyrights.

I agree this would have to be discussed with the copyright holder too, but I won't discuss with every copyright owner, and anyway I doubt he will be more receptive than you or Amiga.org's policy can be...

As I explained, any solution that implies finding another old copy of the same age is not a solution to our problem since numerous games can't be found anymore, and anyway not one will still be in working order in a short while.

You'll understand that my aim now is not to have my initial question answered, but to find a solution to the problem this Amiga.org policy has raised.

[arkpandora]

Hi,

To Coldfish :

Is WinUAE's quality of the animation really like on a real Amiga ?  Scrollings, or the mouse pointer movement (in the Amiga native screen modes) for example, are they absolutely perfect, without jumps ?

The problem I am talking about is not a framedrop : every frame is displayed.  It is not a problem of emulation quality or speed, but a limitation of any modern computer, since all of them use different screen refresh rates than the original video screens.

Let me take an example.  You are emulating an Amiga default PAL screen, whose original refresh rate is 50.12 Hz, on your WinUAE using a 120 Hz (for example) screen mode on your PC monitor.  It means that the emulated screen (the Amiga) displays 50.12 frames a second, whereas the emulator screen (the screen mode you use on your PC) displays 120 frames a second.  A condition of the Amiga's quality of animation is that the frame rate of the animation is adapted to the screen refresh rate.  A graphic object that makes a one pixel move 50.12 times a second is an example of a perfect animation on a 50.12 Hz screen, since the computer makes the same move on every monitor signal.  If the display's refresh rate is an exact multiple of 50.12 Hz (for example 100.24 or 150.36 Hz), this animation remains perfect : the only difference is that every state of the move is displayed more than one time (two times in 100.24 Hz, three times in 150.36 Hz).  But every state of the move is still displayed the same number of times.  Now, if your screen's refresh rate is not an exact multiple of 50.12, every state of the move will _not_ be displayed the same number of times.  In our example, a PC screen of 120 Hz, some states of the move will be displayed two times, some others three times.  The result is that your animation is not smooth anymore : it slows down when a state of the animation is displayed three times, and speeds up again while the following states are displayed two times, making animations look like epileptic.  To my knowledge, there isn't any VGA refresh rate that is an exact multiple of the PAL or NTSC refresh rate, so that displaying a good Amiga animation on a PC is impossible (a Commodore 64 emulator for example will suffer the same problem).  Unless some software comes in between the emulator's output and the video output, which rescales the emulated refresh rate in order to adapt it to the PC refresh rate.  This would involve some graphic "anti-aliasing" techniques that would create an illusion of continuity by drawing on each VGA signal what the user would see at the same moment on a real Amiga video screen.  At the same moment, that is between two frames of the original signal, so this software would have to know the following step of the animation in order to display one in the appropriate way, so that such a software must be added to the code of the emulated machine.  Being not a coder, I can't be sure of that, but it seems to be a difficult task.  Not to mention that it needs a good knowledge of the human visual sense and perception.

I have just tried out the latest WinUAE : on my Windows 98 Pentium 3 at 500 MHz, as expected the problem shows itself.  If it doesn't manifest itself on your faster PC, then it could mean that WinUAE does include such an aglorithm and needs a certain power in order to run it.  However, I did not find any mention of such a function in the docs.  The only thing I find is a function called "Vsync", which for PAL involves selecting a 50 or 100 Hz refresh rate.  I don't what this produces, and can't test it because it doesn't work on Windows 98.  But this function seems to be more simple than what is required, and is about skipping frames, not scaling animations, so I doubt it solves the problem, nor if it is the purpose.

Any opinion about this mystery is very welcome.


To Skilgannon :

Thanks for for the help !  I have just e-mailed you.

[arkpandora]

Unfortunately not (it's even worse !), probably because the TV-Out signal is a conversion of the VGA signal, not a direct video signal.

Maybe emulating an Amiga on an XBox or another console would give better results than UAE, but I don't know if such an emulator exists as I don't have any modern console.

[arkpandora]

Well, mind you don't mix up copyright defence and policy application.  After all, that's what this thread is about ; not mixing human and machine.

Well, I don't like your avatar.

[arkpandora]

Thanks Coldfish and Piru for your help.

But the newbie in me is getting confused.

Is there a real difference between the original Amiga's 50.12 fps rate and the WinUAE-emulated Amiga's 50 fps rate, or is the latter simply rounded down in WinUAE's texts (docs and menu) to make it clear ?

If there is a difference, then how do you change WinUAE's timing in order to display perfect animations on a PAL TV, which displays 50.12 Hz (or 100.24 Hz) and not exactly 50 Hz (or 100 Hz) ?

If there is no difference, then I assume that external tools like TVTool are enough to go round the Windows or graphics rate refresh rate, and display the emulated 50 Hz Amiga directly on a PAL TV.  As I have not used external tools yet, this is the problem I have not managed to solve until now.  For example, CCS64 (the Commodore 64 emulator I use) emulates a PAL C64's exact 50.12 HZ clock, but animation on a 50 Hz TV is much worse than on a 100 Hz VGA screen mode.  Now, how can WinUAE be configured in order to display 60 fps instead of 50 on my 60 Hz LCD monitor ?  I am trying to adjust the timing levels I find in the Properties menu, but it doesn't change anything.  Here too it's possible that Windows is a bad intermediary that prevents the 60 fps from being displayed directly to the 60 Hz monitor ; I don't know.  There is also a "FPS adj." level that matches the Amiga frequency, but obviously it doesn't change the timing, just adds or skips frames.

"Found life a lot simpler with WinUAE", eh ?

[arkpandora]

To Coldfish :

At present, I can't test WinUAE on a TV or video monitor, as I need to move my PC for that purpose.  But I know WinUAE alone won't be able to solve the problem, as no other emulator I tested on my TV, including CCS64 which is an almost perfect emulator and doesn't even need as much as my PC's 500 MHz, can't solve it either.  That's the main reason why to date no emulator can replace my Commodore 64 either.

So for the moment I am testing WinUAE on my 60 Hz LCD monitor.  To this end I use the least CPU-demanding Amiga configuration possible : 68000, KS 1.3, OCS, no sound, no hard drive, etc., starting from the default settings of my freshly installed WinUAE, the latest version.  "Drive speed" therefore is definitely "100%", and CPU is on "match A500 speed".  What you call "frameskipping" (I suppose it is the "refresh" option) can't be changed, for whatever reason.  As it is not intended to re-scale the frame rate, I doubt it would help anyway.  I use two disks : a WB 1.3 disk in order to test the mouse pointer, and the demo "Deadly Jammin II" in order to test some scrollings that are perfect on a real A500, mainly a simple text scrolling.

I have now tried every possible option in order to improve the quality, but not one changes anything.  The animations remain awful, like on any other emulator I have seen.  As far as a scrolling is concerned, the problem caused by the refresh rate difference is obvious, and WinUAE behaves here like CCS64 on the same screen frequencies : scrollings are rough and make regular jumps.  Speeding up WinUAE to 60 fps in order to make it match the monitor frequency doesn't change anything, but it seems that this option has no effect if the frame rate is increased beyond the normal rate (50 fps).  When it comes to the mouse pointer, it seems to me that it isn't only a matter of gap between frequencies : the pointer is moved like Windows' mouse pointer, as if it was drawn pixel per pixel instead of being moved as a whole graphic sprite.  For example, as in Windows until W98, you can see several mouse pointers at the same time during motion.  By the way, 2000 or XP's mouse pointer moves slightly better, but still much worse than a real Amiga pointer on a native Agnus or Alice screen mode.

The only WinUAE setting that might have a chance to change something is the "Vertical sync" function in the Display menu, provided (according to the docs) that the screen mode is changed to a real 50 or 100 Hz.  Here it doesn't change anything, but I can't switch my LCD to 100 Mhz, and according to the docs this option needs a fast PC.  But in order to be effective, this option would have to change the 50.12 fps into an exact 50 fps, because a 100 Hz screen is exactly 100 and not 2 x 50.12 Hz ; I kind of made sure of that using CCS64 on my previous CRT monitor, whose 100 Hz modes provided the best animation (although still jumping).

I guess an earlier version of WinUAE would not help, since at least it would be necessary to bring the emulation to the same rate as the screen refresh rate.  Anyway the last WinUAE version I tested (on another Pentium 3) was earlier than 1.0.  I also tested the "Fellow" emulator, which brings the same results.

What's the model of your graphic card ?  As Leirbag28 confirms, maybe only some cards are able to output a TV signal without that scrambling of the input's frame rate.  Mine is a 1999 Guillemot Xentor 32, with nVidia TNT2 Ultra processor.

About your side note : you are right, but I don't use PC's at work, so I am pretty sure your hypothesis won't explain every situation !  There are even more people that binned their Amiga because they wanted that same PC they were used to work (and get bored) with.


To Leirbag28 :

Thank you !  I don't feel alone anymore either.

"The Mac users seemed to do fine most of the time" : how do you explain that ?  Did these Mac use special TV outputs, or a standard graphic card's TV-Out ?  If their outputs were the same as the PC's, then maybe the operating system is at stake.  Or Mac users were able in some way to preview the video result.


To _ThEcRoW :

I guess EAB has nothing to do with Amiga.org.  TjLazer was in fact referring to the Games download links, not another copyright policy.

[arkpandora]

Or maybe it is me who doesn't want to play with it.  After all, I thought WinUAE was useless to any Amiga owner until you found life easier with it !

Thank you for your informations.  Your PC seems to be rather standard, or I don't understand what you mean by "vivo".

Yes, I will try TVTool... when my Amiga is unusable.  Maybe I will also have bought a more powerful computer for UAE in the meantime.

What puzzles me is this paradox : you must have a very specific system (TV or video monitor, tweaking tools such as TVTool, etc.) in order to make UAE resemble a real Amiga, and yet most people, including former and present Amiga users, claim that WinUAE can replace a real Amiga.

Well, I must conclude that the mystery remains.

[arkpandora]

Is the TV-in of your GF2 card a factory feature, or a do-it-yourself ?  Would it be possible that your TV-out is different from the standard TV-out of any other GF2 ?

As for me, I don't have any tinkering skills (so far I'm even unable to unsolder anything - just to burn irons), and I don't like that,  which is a handicap when it comes to (old) computers.  Actually I have several Amigas, but most of them are out of order because I haven't ever managed to learn how to fix them...

[arkpandora]

Thank you, I have to bet on TVTool then.  I will let you know what the results are.