CaSTaway/PSP 003 released!

**skeezix** · September 6th, 2005, 20:04

(How to post to news?)

Alright, this is the hot and spicey one!

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

Tonnes of additions.. its really pulling together, and most anything you'd want is now present. Just need to fill in a few more little things, maybe flesh out the menu navigation options a bit, and add some config files.. but all the main goods like savestates and loadstates are all present now!

Alpha 003
---------
NEW: While emulation is running, hit [START] to bring up runtime options
o Disk Management -- lets you eject and insert a different floppy(s)
o Reset menu works -- lets you exit the emulator entirely, or do a
warm reset on the ST (ie: Try inserting some disks, then hitting
reset, and voila.. no need to exit emulator to swap disks.)
CHG: Turned brightness up a notch (shifted colour palette decoding)
o Med res and low res both
CHG: On-screen keyboard
o The 'selection' is alpha blended to darken the key; nicer than blacking
it out
o The keyboard itself will fade in and out rather than just toggling on
and off when you hit the [select] button
NEW: In addition to .ST disks, .MSA format disks are all supported; further,
either kind of disk can be in a .zip file and work fine. (As long as thats
the only file in the .zip) -- some .ST's will compress from 800k to 200k
in a zip file, so it could be worth it.
NEW: Added simple intro-screen so you know what version is coming up
NEW: Disk picker changes
o When you hit () to pick a disk, it'll ask you if you'd like to insert
it into drive A, or B, look it up in the database, or delete it.
o Insert into A, B, and delete now work
o Disk picker now allows you to have many disks -- it'll scroll; no more
than about a thousand disks for now (It shows .ST, .MSA, .ZIP and
.SS files)
o If no disk is chosen (like you hit X to many times), it'll warn you so
you know why nothing really exciting is going on
FIX: The mouse should work nicely; in 001/002 it might sometimes just not
work at all, but I've tried it in no-disks, and Dungeon Master and others
FIX: The key release and press mechanism has been fixed up a bit; when you
use the on-screen keyboard to press a key, it should get held down for
1/6th second and then released. If this is not sufficient, let me know
and I can increase its duration.. but that should be plenty.
NEW: Savestates/loadstates - you can now save a snapshot to SD card and
load it up later; far more useful than in-game-saving, and faster.
o Build a crude keyboard based interface to typing in a filename for SD card
o Savestate
- you name a filen "aaaa" and the emu compresses the system RAM (etc)
into a zipped file "aaaa.ss" (.ss denotes savestate)
o Loadstate (from the normal disk picker menu)
- pick a .ss file in the disk picker (as if it was any other disk); a
"load now" or "delete" menu will appear, so you can fire up the state
or just delete it
o Seems to work; I saved out a xenon2 savestate and loaded her back up;
use this to circumvent multi-disk or long loadtimes (Civilization and
Dungeon Master, I'm looking at you!)
NEW: Check for existance of TOS.ROM; if missing, show warning.
NEW: Games database
o When you pick a .msa, .st or .zip, it'll offer to insert it into the
drives; another option is to "look it up in the database", which calculates
a CRC on the disk and looks it up in a special database the GP32 users
helped create. If the CRC is found, a listing of games on that known
disk is shown.. otherwise, an error shows that its not in the database.

I hope you dig it!

Let me know what you think

jeff

**parabolee** · September 6th, 2005, 21:17

WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!!

this is the release I was waiting for!!!!

WOW

Best PSP EMU EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW

I only wish the Amiga EMU was as good as this. I can't wait for updates already! It looks amazing and runs great! So many awesome games to play! I'm so happy!

I donation is heading your way real soon! WOW~~~!!!!!

**parabolee** · September 6th, 2005, 21:21

Sound doesn't work in all games, is that right?

I had it working in some of the start up intro's

**skeezix** · September 6th, 2005, 21:40

Theres one goofup; going into and out of menus will disable sound :/

I'll post an update in a bit with a few more additions and no sound-losing.

jeff

**skeezix** · September 6th, 2005, 21:50

I've added another download .. versoin 003c! Not heavily tested, but it should remov the bug where audio gets killed by menus opening/closing. Further, it adds a control mode so you can use PSP analog to control joystick if you want.

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

jeff

**skeezix** · September 6th, 2005, 21:51

If you're looking for screenshots of piles of ST games, heres some shots from the Palm OS version of the emu.. piles of screenies to look at.

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

jeff

**parabolee** · September 6th, 2005, 21:59

Awesome work!!!!!!

**parabolee** · September 6th, 2005, 22:12

I made a REALLY quick EBOOT for 1.50 PSP's with an Atari logo and Atari ST background image.

Will do a better one tomorrow if I get the time. i'll include credits and other stuff.

I'll try and make it nice enough so you want to use it as the official one

But here it is for all who would like it -

EDIT - Just uploaded to my own PSP and LOL it is a little crappy (text covered by time and a line on the right of screen). But it's nicer than none and I'll do a real nice one for tomorrow I promise. How would you like to be credited Skeezix? Real name, nick name?

Thanks again.