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Amiga game menu

Python 15.28% E 2.99% Makefile 0.68% Euphoria 5.81% Eiffel 75.24%

amiga amigae

arcadegameselector's Introduction

ArcadeGameSelector 2

AGS2 is a joystick controlled menu program for the Amiga.

Download

Downloads are available on the releases page.

Discussion and Help

EAB Forum Thread

What's New

For users of version 1 a number of things have improved:

AGA and OCS support.
Subdirectory support, up to two levels deep.
Configurable screen layout.
Better control over colors.
Screenshots are loaded in a background task, keeping the interface responsive.
Support for screenshot slideshow.

System Requirements

The minimum requirements for for running AGS2 are:

68000 CPU
1 MB of RAM
OCS chipset
Kickstart 2.0
A hard drive or CD-ROM drive
iffparse.library and lowlevel.library

However, games compatibility with the minimum setup will be low. The recommended minimum is:

68020 CPU
4 MB of fast RAM
1 MB of chip RAM
WHDLoad

Installation

Copy AGS2, AGS2Helper, AGS2.conf, AGS2Background.iff, and Empty.iff into AGS:. Copy Startup-Sequence to S: for AGS to start automatically. For each game that you wish to run, create a script with the commands necessary to start it and give it a .run extension. You can also add a screenshot with a .iff extension and information with a .txt extension.

Place AGS:AGS2 in the Startup-Sequence after SetPatch, Assign AGS: and whatever customizations you need:

C:SetPatch >NIL:
C:NoClick NOCLICK
Assign AGS: SYS:AGS

AGS:AGS2

; Startup-Sequence continues here if no game is selected.

Usage

Joystick, gamepad, or cursor keys Up/Down to select.
Fire button, CD32 Red button, or Return key to start a game or enter a directory.
CD32 Blue button, Escape key, or RAmiga + Q to quit menu.

Subdirectories

Subdirectories that end with .ags are included at the top of the game list, and they can also have a .iff screenshot and a .txt info file. Subdirectories are currently limited to being two levels deep.

Screenshots and Colors

The menu's screenmode, depth, palette, and colors are configurable. By default the screenmode and depth are copied from the background image, and text is rendered with the last color of the palette (255) and the second to last color (254) is used for the text's background. All of these can be configured in AGS2.conf. When screenshots are loaded the palette is also loaded, so to keep the screenshots from changing the colors of the user interface you can use the lock_colors options to lock the last colors in the palette.

AGS2 also implements a slideshow feature which allows you to use multiple screenshot images for each entry. The format to use for the filenames is [ENTRY_NAME]-[X].iff, where [X] is the numerical index (e.g. Agony-1.iff, Agony-2.iff etc). If the slidehow feature is enabled, AGS2 will look for indexed images within the configured numerical range. If no matching indexed images are found, or the slideshow feature is disabled, then it will attempt to find a file with the standard naming of [ENTRY_NAME].iff (e.g. Agony.iff). For optimum performance, it is recommended to use non-compressed (non-RLE) images if storage space is not a primary concern. Furthermore, although AGS2 can support mixed resolution screenshots, having the images in a standardized resolution will also produce the best visual results.

Configuration

AGS2.conf allows you configure the following variables:

Background image and screen mode

background = AGS:AGS2Background.iff
mode = $29000
depth = 4
lock_colors = 4

By default depth and mode are automatically copied from the background image, only set them if you wish to override.

Font selection

font = topaz.font
font_size = 8
font_leading = 0

Menu layout

menu_x = 24
menu_y = 8
menu_height = 30

The menu's width is fixed at 26 characters, plus two characters of padding. With Topaz/8 the menu is 224 pixels wide.

Screenshots

screenshot_x = 304
screenshot_y = 8
empty_screenshot = AGS:Empty.iff

# Slideshow delay in seconds
# Set to zero to disable the slideshow feature
slideshow_delay_secs = 3

# Any image with an index greater than or equal to this value will be displayed
slideshow_start_index = 1

# Any image with an index less than or equal to this value will be displayed
slideshow_end_index = 7

Information text display

text_x = 304
text_y = 144
text_width = 40
text_height = 13
text_color = 255
text_background = 254

Miscellaneous

# Valid options are "quit" or "none".
blue_button_action = quit

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arcadegameselector's Issues

Autodetect NTSC or PAL mode

This is essentially a duplicate of this issue: #5 However, that report doesn't mention the specific issue in the OP and was therefore unable to be properly tested/verified.

Issue:

AGS2 will crash out unable to open the display on an NTSC system when started from Amiga Boot Selector as part of an hstWB install. The AGS2 configuration is set to defaults and does not specify a screen mode.

AGS2 will work properly on the same NTSC system when launched with the exact same script file and settings from Workbench.

The only difference between the two launching methods is that there is more Startup Sequence content when booting into full Workbench rather than Amiga Boot Selector.

Tested platforms:

Amiga OS 3.2.1
Amiga OS 3.1

Navigation too fast in RTG screenmodes

Slightest touch skips at least 2-3 entries with both keyboard or joystick.
Maybe add optional delay or wait for depress.

Binary availability (or build instructions)

Is it possible to download a binary rather than source code? Or if not, could you provide build instructions? I've never compiled anything on Amiga - I've no idea how to do it (although I've used make on linux).

Thank you. This looks amazing.

Handle using 320×2xx images in 640×2xx resolutions

Most game screenshots will be 320x200, whereas you probably want 640x256 (or 640x200) for your games launcher.

At the moment, I have to pixel-double every single image I want to use from 320x200 to 640x200 (using the full-size style graphics setup included in the AGS2 defaults).

Would be nice if it could automatically do this, since computers are less error prone than me doing it manually. 😄

Sorting is not case insensitive

For example, "SWIV" is sorted before "Sensible Soccer".

Can you use this with AGS 1.0

Can I use the start files from it or will I have to make them, I got AGS 1.0 from the Amiga CD32 Compilation CD that was made by Gary in 2003, I copied the files from it to a hdf file and fixed it in WinUAE so I could load it in Retroarch (P-UAE) in my THEC64 Maxi, it a hack I made for THEC64 called PCUAE.

scanning please games

Add support for automatic game scanning please.

NTSC support?

I can't find any setting to use AGS2 with NTSC. It crashes out on trying to load the display. is there a way to get it to work? Thanks

Screenshots with variable size corrupts the display

When building a launcher with screenshots that have variable sizes (e.g. 200px NTSC & 256px PAL, various overscan sizes), the display gets corrupted when flipping between the entries. Test case attached.

Variable screenshot size test.zip

Cycle through multiple screenshots per game

As part of the upgrade to the MegaAGS script, we started thinking of how we could improve the launcher even further.

The first thing that came to mind for me was to add the ability for the screenshot section of the page to cycle/fade between multiple screenshots for a given game — not a screenshot browser or anything, just a game-screenshot-1.iff → game-2game-screenshot-1.iff and then from the start again with e.g. a 3 second delay.

The problem this solves is that many games have great and memorable title screens, but just showing those isn't very representative of the game itself. There are also games that have multiple major parts, e.g. a shooter stage and a platform stage, and it would be great to show both when you're looking at a game.

Of course, care needs to be taken for performance here, I think lazy loading of the non-primary screenshot in the background when viewing an item can get it ready by the time it fades in the next image, etc.

Feature: Navigate by Keyboard

Would be great if hitting e.g. the “S” key on the keyboard would bring you to entries starting with “S”. I have a list of hand-picked favorites, all in one folder — and while it’s a manageable number, being able to navigate to a letter using the keyboard would be fantastic.

Does not work with OS 3.2 and OS 3.2.1

I´am unable to get it running on OS 3.2 or OS 3.2.1
It starts but it looks it stays in the background.. I can´t see it..

AGS does not release file locks

Steps to reproduce:

Launch AGS
Quit AGS
Try to delete a .txt file used by the menu from the file system

The OS will now complain that the file is in use, and you need to reboot if you want to delete the file.

Obviously not a huge issue, but a bit annoying when you’re working on setting up the files and testing your setup. 😊