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skeezix
September 13th, 2005, 16:25
This is a sexy build if I do say so myself..

CHG: When in joystick-on-analog mode, sensitivity is reduced a bit.. ie: I
found when pulling left I'd often get up-and-left or down-and-left as my
thumb isn't accurate enough; so I've altered it so to indicate a direction
you need to be further to the edge of the analog zone, so it more often
would detect straight-left when I wanted it.

CHG: New font for user interface; built a font importer package so I could
suck in truetype fonts easily, and am using a variant of Arial 14px for now..
should be much more readable and smooth (a little bigger and rounder.) I'm
pleased with my 'auto kern' system.. seems to work well for nice dynamic
spacing.. I just need to add auto-anti-aliasing sometime :)
- For each dialog, title font is bold and with drop-shadow

NEW: In menus, up/down works as normal; left/right will quick-scroll up
and down, letting you move faster.

FIX: Repeat timer prevents 'cursor mode' from repeating 'too quickly' ..
so using cursor mode for playing Dungeon Master, Captive etc should work
pretty well now

FIX: In game-list (output from database lookup) it shouldn't sometimes have
garbage in game names

NEW: New PSP launcher artwork - backsplash and icon by parobolee - thanks mate!
o Looking good I think!

CHG: Increase game list height, to show more games if lots in database

NEW: ST Games database right in the disk picker
o Database look up is done each time disk picker comes up; sort of lame..
should at least be cached within the emu runtime, and ideally between emu
runs.. but maybe next version :)
o Draws first 25 characters from game-list descroiptions, starting about
1/3rds of the way over in the picker display; should fit pretty well. To
get the rest of the listing, pick the disk and hit "look up in database" to
get the full listing line by line

NEW: When analog is operating the ST mouse, there are now two speeds build in..
ie: far-left is 'left 2px per frame' while half-left is 'left 1px per frame'.
Let me know if more degrees of speed are needed..

NEW: Frameskip is supported (though mostly not needed!) -- in the runtime
[start] menu, frameskip options are available. Some math heavy operations
will slow things down a touch, but generally the emu is fast enough.

NEW: Throttling is supported; in the main runtime [start] menu you can now
enable or disable throttle -- enablingmeans the system is slowed down to
approximately a real ST (north american, anyway); if throttle is off, try
running as fast as possible. The default is throttle is _on_

Get it here:

http://www.codejedi.com/castaway

jeff

parabolee
September 13th, 2005, 16:51
Great work Jeff, I can't wait to go home and play with this :)

Full feedback to come later tonight. I think this is shaping up to be one of the best EMU's on PSP. I think it's in the top three already and is my personal favourite.

Mr.Modem
September 13th, 2005, 17:09
Nice update. Since I am home I can test it immediately!!!

skeezix
September 13th, 2005, 17:33
Hope she all works out.. I was cranking away far too much this morning, but she seems quite stable on my PSP so I figured it needed unleashing :P Still lots to be done, but I think 004 has everything most people would ever want. Still need to add some 'config file' magic to let keybinding happen per-game and the like, and some more finesee.. and fold in Hatari and some more compatability fixes I've got on the mind..

Anyway want to whip up artwork for the save-state keyboard screen? Its all just a black background right now.. functional, but ugly :)

jeff

Mr.Modem
September 13th, 2005, 17:42
Works good! In the next release I would like some graphics options like an ability to turn scaling off. And it would be nice to have an option to change the folder for the TOS image and the disk images to get rid of the corrupt data icon. Anyway keep up the good work! You will get my Click for Devs vote next month.

ultros
September 13th, 2005, 17:46
wow, thanks skeezix.

the 004 really "feels" better, ijust tested 2 games and i must say it's very usable :)

a key-configuration would be great, like you said and one little thing is a bit annoying:
the games in the gamelist are not sorted alphabetically, but in order of beeing copied there. so you have to search for the disk you want to load....
an alphabetically sort would be much easier.

and can you turn off the database lookup? it takes a lot of time, if you go back to the browser.

anyways, great progress. keep it up!

skeezix
September 13th, 2005, 17:50
I don't have my to-do list with me, and some of these are there.. but I made a note of these so far for today:

- New menu to set scaling options; ie: full-screen like now, or 1:1, or some others, and enable or disable bilinear filtering (smoothing) while scaling
- Move A-ST folder to within the CaSTaway folder
- Alpha / ascii sort
- Caching of the database lookups; ie: I'll make it so it scans as now on first entry to picker, but subsequent views will just use the cache; if I get time, I'll make it store the cache to MS, so that the big-hit will only occur once. I've got only about 20 or 30 disk images on MS right now, and it scans them in a second or two (pretty damned fast; took Palm and GP32 ages .. the MS bus on the PSP must be fast as hell)

jeff

Mr.Modem
September 13th, 2005, 17:50
Poor jeff. Just an hour after the realese of the new version we ask him to add new stuff. It can't be easy to be a dev!

parabolee
September 13th, 2005, 18:36
I know but this guy knows his shit! This is the fastest progress I've seen an Emu take. After 2 weeks and 4 versions it's really close to the quality of the best of them.

I've said it before, I only wish Christopher (the guy working on PSP UAE the Amiga emulator) was doing such a great job. Not to dismiss his work but it's been months since we saw an update (we were supposed to see one at the end of August) and it's still far from playable. But I do understand it's a lot harder to code an Amiga emulator.

Mr.Modem
September 13th, 2005, 18:57
Yeah this emu was even playable at full speed in the first release, that's just amazing. I wish Toni Wilen, the guy that develops WinUAE could make a good Amiga emulator for PSP. He's probably the person in the world that knows most about Amiga emulation. Or maybe a port of WinFellow is the solution. It's much faster that UAE and have rather good compatibility.

parabolee
September 13th, 2005, 19:00
Or better stil regular Fellow, because although it only had about 85% compatability, it ran like a charm on 150mhz pentium 1. It was easily the fastest of the Amiga emulators but as the PS's got faster less effort was on speed because it was already 100% and more effort went to compatability.

SKEEZIX, what are your favourite Atari ST games? And what will you be using caSTaway to play on your PSP?

Mr.Modem
September 13th, 2005, 19:47
I think regular Fellow is written in assembler so it's should be hard to port, but WinFellow is rewritten in C so it should be easier to port.

skeezix
September 13th, 2005, 20:47
The truth is I barely have time to play anything, with all the coding I do ;) (coding is fun, too, of course, even though I code for a living :P)

Theres a lot of great games I like .. hundreds. Some of the good ones ar ein my 'mega screenshot gallery', while theres some in there that were just good photos ;) But its a good place to get an idea.

Also check out the Atari Legends website and www.atari.st (the little green desktop site) to get some good ideas.

My screenshots (for Palm OS version):
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/castscreens.html

I'll have to add a screenshot tool to the PSP version :P

jeff

parabolee
September 13th, 2005, 22:04
Thats cool but I already know what are good games for myself to play :)

Just wondered what your favourite Atari St game were.

Here's is my list (ignoring superior Amiga versions) and in no paticular order other than the order I thought of them, if anyone is interested in what games they should try, here are my recommendations -

Sensible Soccer
Player Manager
Kick Off 2 Return to Europe
Adventures of Robin Hood
Populous 1 & 2
New Zealand Story
Rick Dangerous
Secret of Monkey Island
Turrican
Batman the Movie
1943
Future Wars
Addams family
Another World
APB
Boulderdash
Cannon Fodder
Chaos Engine
Mega Lo Mania
Supercars 2
Cruise for a Corpse
Defender of the Crown
Fernandez Must Die
Frontier Elite 2
Great Courts 2
Hard Drivin' 2: Drive Harder
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade The Adventure Game
Iron Lord
Lemmings 2 the Tribes
Maniac Mansion
MUDS Mean Ugly Dirty Sport
Operation Stealth
Pirates!
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Stunt Car Racer
The Kristal

Ok so I looked at a list to remember them all but these are just the ones I love, there are many other great games worth playing.

skeezix
September 13th, 2005, 23:28
So which of those are you finding play well on the PSP ;)

I expect a review of each on my desk by tomorrow ;)

jeff

ultros
September 13th, 2005, 23:45
one of my favourite games is "giana sisters", but there's a problem with castaway.
in version 003, the game didn't start at all. in 004, the game starts and seems to run ok, but then the screen "skips" during the game. it's really strange, i've never seen this before.

maybe there should be a thread with game related bugreports....

wraggster
September 13th, 2005, 23:51
this is the best thread for anything Castaway related :)

thanks for the bug reports, it enspires the developer to work more as he knows his work is being used ;)

parabolee
September 14th, 2005, 00:36
Yeah Great Guana Sisters is a great game (complete super mario rip off), I have a different problem, on mine it freezes on the title screen. Mine is the Pompay pirates version.

I'll do a compatability list of my fave games over the next few days :)

parabolee
September 14th, 2005, 02:23
Ok here's my first thoughts on this latest release.

The new font looks nicer for sure, But a smaller one would be better in the disk file manager as some of the names don't show up.

The database looking up is really cool but with over 100 disks on mine it takes over 1 minute to load! This can be VERY frustrating when wanting to quickly return to a save state! I took 50 disks off so it would run better but it still takes 30 seconds!

So the caching of the database look up is deeply needed for next release! I think it would be best if it only did the look up when told to do it and then loaded it from the cache at all other times. Or even better only when it detects there are new disks available.

The change in the analogue sensativity in both mouse and joystick is much better. I think giving more room for the slower speed (is a little hard to go slow intentionally) and maybe adding a slightly faster speed for a full push.

Here's my first compatability report -

PLAYER MANAGER -

Despite having to insert a virtual blank disk when you start a new game this works well. Only one BIG problem that is EASILY solved. As soon as you have finished playing a match you CAN NOT touch whatever you have set up as the joystick (anologue/d-pad) otherwise it will lock up! As long as you only use the mouse during the managment menu's and only use the joystick when the match has loaded it will play perfect as far as I can see.

Great game too, having a lot of fun with it

Other games that work perfectly -

Kick Off 2 Return to Europe
Adventures of Robin Hood
Populous 1 & 2
New Zealand Story
Rick Dangerous
Turrican
Batman the Movie
1943
Addams family
APB
Supercars 2
Defender of the Crown
Pirates!
Stunt Car Racer

havn't tested them all extensivly but have played them all for 10 minutes with version 03

Games that currently do not work that I would love to play -

Sensible Soccer
Future Wars
Cannon Fodder
Cruise for a Corpse
Hard Drivin' 2: Drive Harder
The Kristal

All other games in my list have not yet been tested.

skeezix
September 14th, 2005, 04:46
Alright, I need to cache that info fast. The disk lookup is driving me nuts :)

Don't forget to try out Simulcra -- one of the best unknown games imho ;)

jeff

skeezix
September 14th, 2005, 04:50
Millenium 2.2 is very good; I think I need a third mouse speed option.. too slow for an all mouse game :(

jeff

skeezix
September 14th, 2005, 04:52
Super Sprint is very playable. (Sorry, just randomly checking a gfew favourites ;)

jeff

Shannon
September 14th, 2005, 12:43
I know but this guy knows his shit! This is the fastest progress I've seen an Emu take. After 2 weeks and 4 versions it's really close to the quality of the best of them.

I agree... Unlike some other developers (who will remain nameless) who just port something over and then leave it at that. It is much better when a talented coder with an interest in improving the emu is involved.

Coders seem to avoid emu's that have already been ported for fear of stepping on toes and this can lead to stagnation for certain systems.

laxer3a
September 14th, 2005, 13:48
Hi guys...

Well, I would like to add a little counter opinion to this.
Yes, some do a porting and do not spend anymore time on it.
Some do not even release the ported code.

But,
1/ May be there is not real optimization work possible except whole rewriting in assembly or big changes in the architecture.

May be the author do not want to be involved in HUGE changes
(= lot of free time necessary, a lot of NOT FUN things to do)

Nor he may have the technical skills to do it.

2/ Do not mistake FUNDAMENTAL changes and "MAKE-UP" changes.

That's not because somebody release an emu three time a week that he is very active... Actually it is most likely that the person is working on "light" features, not "core" things.

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here, I am not talking about Skeezix. I am GENERALLY speaking.

3/ If the source code is available and the author is not working on it anymore, do not complain, do it. If you want your dream emu, do it.

That's what made us port the OpenSnes9xGP, that's what made us work on TYL.

4/ Free time : most of the talented coders I know have a job, a girlfriend, even a wife and sometimes even kids (yes, I must admit that the geek species contribute also to the expansion of the human kind even if we are too much on this planet).
When you work like 50 to 60 hours a week, motivation to work on such emu drops. People have obligation on their own... And you can not blame them for not working on the emu of your dream.

So to make it short :
Yes, people working on emu are not fair sometime, but you cant blame them for that.

skeezix
September 14th, 2005, 13:56
*g* Yep -- to sum up, sometimes you just want to play something, so you do a quick port and leave it as 'good enough'; but then someone else might realy love the system and 'do the hell out of it'; typically, when I port a Colecovision emulator, I do an 'okay' job of it .. it'll run great and look good and all, but I won't go for super-mega-pollish .. I like the Coleco, but its not top of myt books. But when I do Atari ST, its important to me so I go all out. To each their own, up to the limit of their commitments.

I work 50-80 hours a week and have a wife, but I've also been doing Atari ST emulatoin a long long time so I can pull from numerous past projects -- this PSP edition is moving fast because its mostly chunks of GP32 and Palm OS code from a half dozen previous works. Theres no way I could've done all this in two weeks from scratch -- though thanks for believing ;) Coding takes time, or we'd all be replaced very easily (well, outsourcing is hurting these days..) -- though I admit when you ram through this in two weeks, its a little on the sloppy side ;)

jeff

Buggy Boy!

skeezix
September 14th, 2005, 14:46
Posted an update..

http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/castaway.html

Caches the database now; no more long waits every time you go to disk picker. now you get hit just once, and it remembers forever.

jeff

ultros
September 14th, 2005, 15:02
cool, thank you very much!

it's really bad weather here today and i am so lazy.
perfect day for testing new games ;)

parabolee
September 14th, 2005, 16:13
AWESOME-O! Now I can put my ENTIRE Atari ST collection on my PSP!!!

I'm going to work on a better Icon and backsplash too in the next few days. I played the Adventures of Robin Hood fro hours last night :) I almost finished it perfectly but I think the dragon ate Friar Tuck so I didn't get every single item and all the merry men. I've finished this game with the best ending you can get a whole bunch of times but I still love it. For those that have never played it, imagine a cross between god games like Populous and an open ended role playing game. Sure the story is limited but the freedom to do what you want in Robin Hoods little world and become a hero to the people or a villian is lots of fun. Plus I'm english and a big fan of Robin Hood as a hero and legend. He resembles everything a hero should be for me. Him and Spider-man :)

Mr.Modem
September 14th, 2005, 16:52
Thats cool but I already know what are good games for myself to play :)

Just wondered what your favourite Atari St game were.

Here's is my list (ignoring superior Amiga versions) and in no paticular order other than the order I thought of them, if anyone is interested in what games they should try, here are my recommendations -

Sensible Soccer
Player Manager
Kick Off 2 Return to Europe
Adventures of Robin Hood
Populous 1 & 2
New Zealand Story
Rick Dangerous
Secret of Monkey Island
Turrican
Batman the Movie
1943
Future Wars
Addams family
Another World
APB
Boulderdash
Cannon Fodder
Chaos Engine
Mega Lo Mania
Supercars 2
Cruise for a Corpse
Defender of the Crown
Fernandez Must Die
Frontier Elite 2
Great Courts 2
Hard Drivin' 2: Drive Harder
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade The Adventure Game
Iron Lord
Lemmings 2 the Tribes
Maniac Mansion
MUDS Mean Ugly Dirty Sport
Operation Stealth
Pirates!
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Stunt Car Racer
The Kristal

Ok so I looked at a list to remember them all but these are just the ones I love, there are many other great games worth playing.

Wow your list is almost exactly like mine except for a few more games:
Rodland
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challange
Lotus Turbo Challange 2
Super Cars
Turrican 2

Skeezix:
These games work perfect in Castaway except that the sound is going a little bit fast in the Lotus games. Has this something to do with Pal / Ntsc? Also I've found that when you go into the menu the screen gets unscaled. It's not really a bug and it isn't annoying but if you have some time over, then fix it. It would also be nice if the sound would turn off when you go into the menu, it's very annoying to hear the same note play all the time. And finally Thank you for the disk cache version!!!

parabolee
September 14th, 2005, 20:32
Wow your list is almost exactly like mine except for a few more games:
Rodland
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challange
Lotus Turbo Challange 2
Super Cars
Turrican 2


Yeah Rodland was good too.

Lotus was good back then but car games from the 2D era aged really badly except top down ones like Supercars 2, 1 was really inferior to 2 so I only listed 2.

And I meant to put Turrican 1 & 2, my bad. Such Classics, as good as Metroid easily.

Mr.Modem
September 14th, 2005, 21:01
Well I think Super Cars is better than the sequel Super Cars 2. The weapons in the second game is nice but I think the driving experience is better in the first one. And I think the Lotus series is still very playable. I like the simplicity of these old racing games. It's a pity UAE isn't that good yet. I would really like to play Turrican series in full speed on my PSP. The Amiga version is just so much better than the ST version.

Shannon
September 15th, 2005, 07:42
My biggest concern about the unnamed authors is the fact that no one else seems interested in picking it up out of respect and since some of the programmers do this "to every single console" it gets a little annoying. That is all.

I'm well aware of the other issues.

It's kinda like the MAME factor. Few people invest time in standalone (read faster) arcade emu's because MAME already does it.

skeezix
September 15th, 2005, 14:10
I doubt its a respect issue, though it could in some cases.. leave the original author some space. But I imagine if someone sees a need, they'll fill it -- if a coleco emu has been out for awhile, but doesn't work well.. someone else will replace it with a better one. Theres a fair amount of devvers out there, but not a large number, so it might take awhile for one to notice :)

jeff

parabolee
September 16th, 2005, 16:41
Hey Skeezix which version of Dungeon Master works? I tried two version and both locked up.

What mhz is caSTaway currently running at? Because I haven't heard you mention that it's running at 333mhz but surely it can't be this fast at 222mhz!

skeezix
September 16th, 2005, 17:37
It runs at full 333; I intend to add a mhz setting panel sometime :)

Rips of DM's original disks work great; theres one right on my CaSTaway page, with accompany letter to the authors :P

jeff

parabolee
September 16th, 2005, 18:31
Thanks, I was sick of playing the Genesis version of it, the controls sucked.

Did you ever play Eye of the Beholder 1&2? I loved Dungeon Master but Eye 1 & 2 blew me away. They were two of my favorite Amiga games.

Mr.Modem
September 16th, 2005, 19:22
Yeah Eye of the Beholder was very nice. Another fine rpg was Black Crypt.

skeezix
September 16th, 2005, 19:59
I played through all 3 EoB's on the PC I think; only found out there was Amiga versions awhile ago, though UAE ports are always too slow to enjoy it anyway :/

jeff

parabolee
September 16th, 2005, 20:26
Runs great in WinUAE for the Xbox :)

CPhoenix
September 18th, 2005, 12:43
Errrr wheres the 1.00 rom release, it aint in the zip and it wont boot on mine.

Mr.Modem
September 18th, 2005, 17:42
You can convert 1.5 eboots to 1.0 using SeiPSP.

CPhoenix
September 19th, 2005, 23:21
You can convert 1.5 eboots to 1.0 using SeiPSP.

Nope still didnt work..... filesize 2.04mb

zorglub
February 17th, 2006, 16:49
Great work, :p I just try this emulator with my favourite get dexter isometric game, my only complain is the lack of key bindings to get this and some more games enjoyable...are you planning such "keymapping" release ? that just make it perfect.

Thx anyway..big up Jeff !!!

Sorry 4 my terrible english, i'm just Belgian :eek:

skeezix
February 17th, 2006, 17:01
Maybe :) I'm working on it for the GP2X version, but I worry about my PSP losing homebrew once Field Commander comes out :P

jeff

Elsid
February 17th, 2006, 17:07
you gotta give it to the guy man, come on people by the means of it it aint easy being a dev.

Eingang
May 29th, 2006, 19:51
@skeezix

thx for your great ST-Emu

just wanted to ask you if there would be possibility of changing the ATARI_ST folder adress up into Castaway folder ... so many emus and homebrew in a row but one single corrupted icon.... itīs a pity !! Maybe this wonīt be so much work for you ???

Thank you anyway
cheers

DavidStaerck
May 30th, 2006, 18:18
I was mucking about with the emu on the homepage last night as Atari St was my first computer given to me as a birthday present when i was bout 8 or 9 lol.

Anyone know if Cadaver will work on this emu?

Eingang
May 30th, 2006, 22:12
of course it works -