Amiga emulator development

[mdwh2]

Gaidheal wrote:
Well, for a start the one click setup is not offered anywhere else I have seen :¬)

This can be done in WinUAE by just loading a relevant configuration file. I don't know if there's somewhere where you can download a set of configuration files for the various Amigas - if there isn't, then it would be pretty easy to do.

In fact, you can set up config files so that they load WinUAE automatically and boot without showing the GUI, when you doubleclick on them from Windows. And if it was really considered useful, it would be fairly trivial to write a wrapper application that displayed a set of buttons for various Amiga setups, that then loaded into WinUAE with the appropriate configuration when you clicked on it.

I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm - I hope your project goes well, but I don't think you can say that this feature is something that WinUAE doesn't offer, and writing a one-click application supplied with default configurations, if you wanted that particular behaviour, would be far far easier than writing an emulator from scratch.

On a possibly related note, I hear that the next WinUAE release will have a separate executable specifically for emulating an A500.

[mdwh2]

Gaidheal wrote:
@mdwh2:
The fact you are describing how it could be made to do it, by definition means it does not do it..

Doubleclicking on a config that defines a particular Amiga model, and lauches into WinUAE when you doubleclick on them (ie, it has the flag to switch the GUI off) is something that is already possible - it's just that off hand I don't know if anyone has put together a collection of such configurations. I shall have a look to see if I can find such a collection, and if not, I may have a go at putting it together myself.

If such a collection doesn't exist - and in the case of the 'wrapper application' that I talked about (though I'm not sure that such an application is any better than doubleclicking on config files - I described it as a way of being 100% exact to the behaviour you suggested), then yes, it's true that these are things which don't currently exist. But, with respect, your emulator doesn't exist either. In both cases we'd be talking about what *could* be done - and I was just pointing out how the behaviour could be done trivially, as opposed to having to write an entire emulator from scratch.

as for how useful it is.. in the software industry most companies tend to work to the lines of "Assume the user will never read the manual and is so stupid it is a miracle they found the ON switch"  which is to say that presenting someone with a screen that has buttons marked "A1000" "A2000" "A500" "A500+" etc, actually IS useful and probably welcomed by many less technical users who just want a "once click installation" type solution for their PC that will enable them to play all their old Amiga games.

I agree that such things would be useful. I believe that the next version of WinUAE will feature an A500-only executable - I'm not sure exactly what this means, but it's possible this is aimed at those who just want to run A500 games easily. A specific configuration for an A1200 would also be useful - other than the A500 and A1200, I'm not aware of any games or applications that were targetted at a specific Amiga model (ie, the remaining ones either would work on any Amiga, or have a general set of requirements of CPU/RAM etc which don't necessarily match with a single Amiga model).

[mdwh2]

Gaidheal wrote:
@mdwh2
Actually, you claimed I had proposed nothing which UAE does not already do.  I pointed out a couple of things that in fact show this is not so.

I never said this. Others did - when you replied with these two features, I talked about various ways of achieving one of those with WinUAE (either features that already exist, or by writing a simple wrapper application). I make no comment as to the other feature, so as far as I can see this will be something that WinUAE doesn't do.

To point out that my emulator does not exist is rather superfluous when we are discussing features that are to be present, as well.

Well, yes, I only said this in response to you saying WinUAE doesn't do this now - when it came to the "wrapper application", I was also talking about things that could be done.

I'd be pleased to see transparent emulation in AROS. In the past from what I remember, it had been said that they had no intention of doing any sort of emulation, but I think it would be a useful thing if it could be done.