AmigaVision/MegaAGS 2023.06.06 Released with Favorites & Analogue Pocket Support

[lagerfeldt]

[...]
Hoping someone could run a quick test for me? Please load up Arkanoid (the original from Discovery) and see if the right-hand side is cut off at all. I have a feeling its an issue with just this game, but I'm trying to make sure I'm set up correctly so that games look the way they were intended.

Thank you in advance!

Arkanoid (Discovery - NTSC) loaded from AmigaVision is indeed cut off in the right hand side, as well as the lower part of the splash screen is missing. A few other games have similar behavior, like X-out, but it doesn't seem to affect playability.

Arkanoid (The Star Frontiers crack & PAL-fixed version) does not have this issue, but instead the usable part of the screen is a lot smaller.

[ShinAbo]

Hello I'm having a problem running the latest MegaAGS in mister. Starting games from the launcher gives the error "unable to open redirection file failed returncode 10"
Games works fine from wb. Never had this problem with April last year release.
Any help will be appreciated.

[Optiroc]

Hello I'm having a problem running the latest MegaAGS in mister. Starting games from the launcher gives the error "unable to open redirection file failed returncode 10"
Games works fine from wb. Never had this problem with April last year release.
Any help will be appreciated.

When starting games from the AGS launcher some more work is done to apply the correct game configuration and write metadata for the scaler and SAM/tty2oled integration. Judging from the error message it sounds like there are issues with the "shared" folder ("MiSTer:" on the AmigaOS side, "/media/fat/games/Amiga/shared/" on the MiSTer side).

First, make sure that the "/media/fat/games/Amiga/shared/" directory exists. Second, check that you can access "MiSTer:" from the AmigaOS side, and also if changes there are mirrored on both sides.

[Optiroc]

Arkanoid (Discovery - NTSC) loaded from AmigaVision is indeed cut off in the right hand side, as well as the lower part of the splash screen is missing. A few other games have similar behavior, like X-out, but it doesn't seem to affect playability.

Arkanoid (The Star Frontiers crack & PAL-fixed version) does not have this issue, but instead the usable part of the screen is a lot smaller.

Thanks for finding this. It's pretty rare to see the need for adjusting the horizontal shift, but this is indeed one such case. I pushed a change to the configuration of this title to fix this as well as possible.

We'd love to get PRs or issues posted on github for such findings, ideally with more correct viewport settings. The CSV can be quite hard to read and edit obviously, but an issue post with new values goes a long way.

One way to try out new viewport adjustments for a specific title is to exit to the Workbench, launch CygnusEd and open the launch script for the title in "AGS:Run/Game/<Title>". There will be a line that sets the viewport, that by default looks like this: "ags-vadjust s=0 v=0 h=0". The v and h settings move the viewport horizontally and vertically respectively. V is specified in lines, a higher value means the screen is pushed upwards. H is specified in "super hi-res pixels" (meaning a value of 4 will push the viewport by 1 lo-res pixel), and a higher value means the screen is pushed to the left.

After editing and saving the quickest way to try it out with the new settings is to open a shell and run "x AGS:Run/Game/<Title>".

[lagerfeldt]

Interesting, thanks for the detailed guide.

[ShinAbo]

Hello I'm having a problem running the latest MegaAGS in mister. Starting games from the launcher gives the error "unable to open redirection file failed returncode 10"
Games works fine from wb. Never had this problem with April last year release.
Any help will be appreciated.

When starting games from the AGS launcher some more work is done to apply the correct game configuration and write metadata for the scaler and SAM/tty2oled integration. Judging from the error message it sounds like there are issues with the "shared" folder ("MiSTer:" on the AmigaOS side, "/media/fat/games/Amiga/shared/" on the MiSTer side).

First, make sure that the "/media/fat/games/Amiga/shared/" directory exists. Second, check that you can access "MiSTer:" from the AmigaOS side, and also if changes there are mirrored on both sides.

Found the problem, deleted the "disk.info" file from shared folder Amiga side and now its working!
Thanks for the help

[Optiroc]

Found the problem, deleted the "disk.info" file from shared folder Amiga side and now its working!
Thanks for the help

Glad that it worked, but that’s an unexpected solution!

[allyourbasekris]

Great work everyone as usual.

[ifoo]

Quick question -

I noticed that the 4/5 release is also on archive.org. Is there going to be a build for the 06/06 version to go on here?

I have both a mister and an original amiga 1200. I take it that I can mount the mega ags drive onto the machine so I can use it on the stock amiga 1200 with the 3.2.2 OS?

This is, by far, my favorite amiga release I've ever seen. I love the 1200/600/500 hard drives as well. I sorta like it more than my original amiga. Thanks so much for doing this! (but still on the 4/5 release )

[jca]

Search the archive, it is there.

[limi]

I have both a mister and an original amiga 1200. I take it that I can mount the mega ags drive onto the machine so I can use it on the stock amiga 1200 with the 3.2.2 OS?

Yes, as long as you take some extra care and transfer the save files when upgrading:

https://amiga.vision/docs#setup-for-amiga-hardware

3.2 has been used by some, but we generally test with the last official version that Commodore released. This may be helpful:

https://amiga.vision/docs#does-amigavis ... ckstart-32

This is, by far, my favorite amiga release I've ever seen. I love the 1200/600/500 hard drives as well. I sorta like it more than my original amiga. Thanks so much for doing this! (but still on the 4/5 release )

Thanks!

[ifoo]

Thanks for the replies! I noticed that the 06/06 version is on archive.org. I was confused at first because there's no boot partition on the HDF image - so I'll just try to write it directly and not worry about that part. I was able to run this in an emulator running the 3.2.2 chipset. So I suspect it should work! I'll give this all a test today

[Optiroc]

I was confused at first because there's no boot partition on the HDF image

There should certainly be a boot partition on it… What tool/procedure did you use to conclude there isn’t?

[ifoo]

I was confused at first because there's no boot partition on the HDF image

There should certainly be a boot partition on it… What tool/procedure did you use to conclude there isn’t?

Balena - I unzipped the 06/06 release. I think I'm missing a step -

When it asks to select an image, I selected the HDF (which is what looks like the instructions say to do). When going to the next step, it said that I'm burning an image that has no bootable partition.

I guess I just need to understand how to properly convert the HDF image to a CF/SD card. I thought it was similar to an IMG fine, which would just burn the bits onto the card.

[ifoo]

Specifically speaking this is the instructions on the amiga vision website:

"Simply locate the games/Amiga/MegaAGS.hdf file, and load that in your disk imaging tool of choice, and write it to the SD/CF card."

I selected this file - and Belena says it doesn't have a bootable partition. I can include a screen shot if that helps. I'm sure I'll figure it out..

[limi]

I’d be very surprised if BalenaEtcher knew how to detect an Amiga bootable partition

I believe our CD32 testers used BalenaEtcher without issue, but let us know if it doesn’t work.

[ifoo]

OK cool - so I'll give it a whirl and test it out. I always thought that the "bootable" flag is something in the MBR but totally understand that it won't know wtf an amiga partition means.

Another dumb question - has anyone tested this running on PiStorm? I'm perfectly happy running it as-is - but I'm tempted to see how it revs up running on the PiStorm module.

Thanks again for this! I just got the pi mt-32 working with this build too. This hard drive is like my childhood dream hard drive.

[segamemister]

if you were to write the image to a real cf or sd card amiga wise what the recommand size gb wise?

[limi]

Just look at the size of whatever HDF file you are using, 16GB should be more than enough. For the Pocket, we made a configuration that fits within the 4GB limit on that platform, so that’s an option if you don’t have a card of sufficient size.

[SirLance]

Hi! Great work very much appreciated

I tried the new AmigaVision on my two Miser setups without problem. When trying the image on my A1200 it boot into Workbench but does not load the AGS GUI. It seems like there is an AGS volume not mounted or something when I click the MegaAGS icon in Workbenchch. Can it be because I have kickstart 3.0?

IMG_20230629_024212_1.jpg (6.37 MiB) Viewed 8115 times

[rsn8887]

Thanks for the new version!

Before this version, there was always some zoom/crop that got stuck when I switched from MegaAGS back to my own minimig config, forcing me to delete "minimig_vadjust.cfg" and some other configs manually to get back my own un-cropped setup. This is now fixed!

Now, when I boot "Amiga," I get the MegaAGS settings with the custom cropping and zoom depending on the game launched in MegaAGS. When I boot "Commodore Amiga" (or "Minimig" if I disable names.txt), then I retain my own settings and cropping for my own use of Workbench.

So it works great now to have your own settings co-exist independently of the MegaAGS settings.

I even renamed "Amiga.mgl" to "AmigaVision.mgl" to contrast it more with "Commodore Amiga" (which loads my own Workbench setting) in the menu.

Thanks for fixing this! (Or maybe I did something wrong before?)

[rsn8887]

One question: Does your system allow independent centering and crop per game, in principle? Or are all "4xPAL" games for example centered the same way, and then all "5x PAL" games are also centered in one single way? I am asking because I have some games in my own collection that draw to the very top of the screen, so they should be cropped differently than other games that draw with a border on the top, even though they all use the same number of lines. It would be cool to be able to center and zoom games on an individual per-game basis using just CLI commands.

If you allowed for per-game completely individual crop and centering settings, removed the perfect integer scale requirement, and enabled a filter such as "Interpolation (Medium)," you could crop some games like Chaos Engine a bit more to completely remove the borders on the top and bottom and fit them even better on a 16:9 screen. It would have to be pre-set on a game-per-game basis though, since each game has slightly different top and bottom borders.

It sounds like a small difference, but on screen it is quite striking how much bigger some games could become:

My suggestion (this is not perfect integer, requires "Interpolation (Medium)" or "Interpolation (Sharp)":

myidea.png (2.09 MiB) Viewed 8051 times

MegaAGS 2023.06.06:

megaags.png (2 MiB) Viewed 8051 times

Of course the perfect crop (first image) would not allow "nearest neighbour" for perfectly sharp pixels, since there would be shimmering. But it will look great with "Interpolation (Medium)". I always force-enable "Interpolation (Medium)" anyways to give a slight blur, since old machines never had perfectly sharp pixels.

Here is an example of the menu using the default "nearest neighbour:"

nearest neighbor.png (69.99 KiB) Viewed 8034 times

and one using "Interpolation (Medium):"

interpolation medium.png (207.93 KiB) Viewed 8034 times

I think MiSTer HDMI output always looks better with "Interpolation (Medium)," but maybe that's just me.

[Optiroc]

One question: Does your system allow independent centering and crop per game, in principle? Or are all "4xPAL" games for example centered the same way, and then all "5x PAL" games are also centered in one single way?

This is configurable per-game using three values: scale factor, vertical shift and horizontal shift. If you peep into AGS:Run/Game/gamename you will see how the launch script looks.

The scripts are rendered out by the image builder using this template, btw, and the values come from the database (specifically the scale, vshift and hshift fields).

If you allowed for per-game completely individual crop and centering settings, removed the perfect integer scale requirement, and enabled a filter such as "Interpolation (Medium)," you could crop some games like Chaos Engine a bit more to completely remove the borders on the top and bottom and fit them even better on a 16:9 screen. It would have to be pre-set on a game-per-game basis though, since each game has slightly different top and bottom borders.

This would be doable in theory, but it would require quite a bit of work for each title you want to apply it to. To hook up the functionality I suppose a new optional database field would be introduced, containing custom crop area settings which would override the current simplified scale+offsets values.

[limi]

I tried the new AmigaVision on my two Miser setups without problem. When trying the image on my A1200 it boot into Workbench but does not load the AGS GUI. It seems like there is an AGS volume not mounted or something when I click the MegaAGS icon in Workbenchch. Can it be because I have kickstart 3.0?

3.0 vs. 3.1 is unlikely to be causing this.

We see a fair amount of corrupted images depending on how you transferred your HDF file. I would start by verifying that the image is intact:

https://amiga.vision/docs#troubleshooting

[retrofun]

Hi! Great work very much appreciated

I tried the new AmigaVision on my two Miser setups without problem. When trying the image on my A1200 it boot into Workbench but does not load the AGS GUI. It seems like there is an AGS volume not mounted or something when I click the MegaAGS icon in Workbenchch. Can it be because I have kickstart 3.0?

IMG_20230629_024212_1.jpg

The same here for MiST (Kickstart 3.1).

Solution:

• insert Install Disk of OS 3.1.4 or OS 3.2 and start HDToolBox

• check the Direct SCSI Transfer option for the PDS\03 file system on DH1

• save changes to disk

• reboot

20230630_192012.jpg (1.18 MiB) Viewed 7912 times

[Optiroc]

[*]check the Direct SCSI Transfer option for the PDS\03 file system on DH1

Good catch! I’ll have the build script set that flag going forward.

[SirLance]

Hi! Great work very much appreciated

I tried the new AmigaVision on my two Miser setups without problem. When trying the image on my A1200 it boot into Workbench but does not load the AGS GUI. It seems like there is an AGS volume not mounted or something when I click the MegaAGS icon in Workbenchch. Can it be because I have kickstart 3.0?

IMG_20230629_024212_1.jpg

The same here for MiST (Kickstart 3.1).

Solution:

• insert Install Disk of OS 3.1.4 or OS 3.2 and start HDToolBox

• check the Direct SCSI Transfer option for the PDS\03 file system on DH1

• save changes to disk

• reboot

20230630_192012.jpg

Thanks for the solution
I also found a alterative solution. First I installed kickstart 3.1 as a software solution(MapROM) on my added memory card (ACA1211). Then I installed SCSI-v43.45 from Aminet and now the second drive is recognized and everything work as expected.

Cheers

[limi]

Solution:

• insert Install Disk of OS 3.1.4 or OS 3.2 and start HDToolBox

• check the Direct SCSI Transfer option for the PDS\03 file system on DH1

• save changes to disk

• reboot

This is now the default in 2023.07.07. Thanks!