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Outcast Beta Released For Caanoo!


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#1 skeezix

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 02:51 AM

This is a direct port of the last Wiz build of OutcaST, with some very minor improvements. (A couple more menus have better 'selection speed', so the selection isn't zooming around as much.. notably in the Control Mode menu.)

Hopefully it performs better than when run as a Wiz binary under Ginge; sound is probably still nasty as I was never really good at working out the ST sound hardware, but hopefully better than under Ginge again ;)

Get the emu here for now:
http://www.codejedi....-caanoo-104.zip

Unpack into your /game directory on your ST (ie: /game/outcast.ini and /game/outcast/random-stuff should exist.)

You'll want to read the README.txt, but in general..
Create /roms
Create /roms/atari-st
Stick your TOS.ROM Atari ST OS file into /roms/atari-st (it must be TOS.ROM, not ToS.RoM or TOS.IMG or anything other than TOS.ROM, case sensitive.)
Stick .ST or .MSA or .zip disk images into /roms/atari-st as well.

It should run nicely from your Caanoo menu, and the run-script will attempt to run the Caanoo menu on exit or crash. (You can edit this to be gmenu if you like, if you've not just replaced your Caanoo menuw ith gmenu :)

Please let me know how it goes, and..

Enjoy!

jeff

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#2 Luo=-_

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 03:02 AM

Great! Thx!

Luo=-_

#3 ruffnutts

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 06:26 AM

Great news... thanks for doing this skeesix, try this later ;)

#4 kayuz

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 09:58 AM

thanks  skeezix ;)
i will try it soo
EDIT: tried now, very good! run nicely and speedy, but if you can add the touchscreen support ;)
i have to test it more, but it looks very good jet

Edited by kayuz, 21 July 2011 - 11:37 AM.


#5 StreaK

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 11:16 AM

skeezix, how about update for pandora? [still like outcast / castaway more than hatari..]

#6 kayuz

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 11:38 AM

skeezix, how about update for pandora? [still like outcast / castaway more than hatari..]

why you talk in CAANOO forum about the pandora things??

#7 sebt3

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 12:02 PM

why you talk in CAANOO forum about the pandora things??

Because he own both device ? (the guy he is talking to does too)

#8 kayuz

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 12:17 PM

Because he own both device ? (the guy he is talking to does too)

excuse me, i don't know that ;) :(

#9 skeezix

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 02:45 PM

Re: Touchscreen -- touchscreen is always a big problem for Atari ST and Amiga emulators (but usually okay for DOS); even the big ticket ST/Amiga emus with years of dev work on a desktop commonly have issues. (ie: A _mouse_ can be simulated by a d-pad, since these old systems used a 'I'm moving left' type system, with no 'driver' separation to the OS; the mouse said its moving left 'right now' when the OS checks, and thats that. If the mouse 'teleports around' liek with a touchscreen, its difficult to get right -- you tap in bottom right, you tap in top left, how do we tell the OS to move 320 pixels over .. it _cannot_; it can 'mvoe left' at a certain speed for awhile, until we 'think' the OS has gotten it there. ie: each vertical blank, move over another pixel, 320 vertical blanks. But games do a lto of tricks.. changing resolution or screen paramaters every scanline. Look at the Magnetic Scrolls games, which are medium rez on the top half and low rez on the bottom. Dungeon Master plays with colours a lot, so it can have different top-inch versus the main display. So while the OS is switchign specs mid-scanline or jumping around ignoring the vertical blank (overscan etc), we're trying to 'guess' when tio push the mouse.

In DOS, you have a driver, so you can implement a virtualized driver that has a better idea, but even then.. it depends on a few things; usually works okay.

But Amiga and ST.. its a right pita, so touchscreen .. best avoided. Even Hatari has issues pulling it off .. you almost always get a 'drift' (tap, and the emulation thinkgs its an inch over).

--

Pandora -- if folks like OutcaST, then sure, I can build up a port for it. The code is nasty (descended from work I did like 10 years ago and never did a nice job with ;) , but since the Wiz its ported to SDL; the Caanoo port is leveraging the Wiz port plus overrides. I could likewise do a Pandora build .. its mostly overriding how the control inputs are taken, where to loko for files, etc.

So yeah, a Pandora port woudl probabyl only take a couple hours to put together.

Hatari has feature kill over OutcaST by far and is a much better emulation, so I'm surprised you prfer OutcaST (but yay, makes me happy ;) -- I imagine you maybe just prefer the onscreen keyboard or the menu that is controllable with dpad isntead of touchscreen.

--

I keep thinking it'd be cool to either integrate Hatari into OutcaST (I'd meant to with the gp2x and Wiz) or jsut write a minimal UI for Hatari .. use the Hatari core, but with a UI that fits on 320x240 and doesn't need a mouse/touchscreen; that'd rock. But its work, and these days, I've no time to just throw around too much .. I can slip in, do the quick job and out again :/

--

jeff

Does it run better than the gp2x or Wiz versions unger Ginge?

I should bring back my ST-like UI for the disk picker; I think I had that on the gp2x build.. the green background with white window with the ST font and such :)

#10 ruffnutts

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 02:47 PM

Woneder weather you could use cubase with this and use timidity as your midi instruments to compose a nice tune ...hmmm.

#11 skeezix

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 03:11 PM

Hatari can do stuff like that; I forget what MIDI I have in here.. more to point, doing _high res_ (Notator and Cubase and most MIDI apps were high res monochrome) is pretty much out -- we have 320x200 to play with for low rez, so a nice 1:1 display more or less. ST Medium is double the horizontal -- 640x200, so I just drop every other column to get it to display.. works passibly. But ST high rez is 640x400 .. dropping 75% of your pixels makes it almost totally unusable.

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#12 StreaK

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 03:15 PM

Pandora -- if folks like OutcaST, then sure, I can build up a port for it. The code is nasty (descended from work I did like 10 years ago and never did a nice job with ;) , but since the Wiz its ported to SDL; the Caanoo port is leveraging the Wiz port plus overrides. I could likewise do a Pandora build .. its mostly overriding how the control inputs are taken, where to loko for files, etc.

So yeah, a Pandora port woudl probabyl only take a couple hours to put together.


Of course i like :D


Hatari has feature kill over OutcaST by far and is a much better emulation, so I'm surprised you prfer OutcaST (but yay, makes me happy ;) -- I imagine you maybe just prefer the onscreen keyboard or the menu that is controllable with dpad isntead of touchscreen.


Yes, You're right, i prefer onscreen kbd, for example: in a bus. I hate to use touchscreen when im going somewhere by bus :P. .. and outcast is easier to use [only few clicks to start a game] than hatari..

#13 BAFelton

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 07:51 PM

Thanx Skeezix !

Tried Vroom and Dungeon Master on the two versions, it's a bit smoother on the new version. And the emu menu is faster.

Sound is quite the same I think.

#14 chocapic

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 07:55 PM

Hello Jeff !!

Thanks again for the port on the caanoo

Here's my first report :

very very good speed !

a problem with the numpad : ex some ST compilations ask an input number (1=Rick dangerous, 2=some other game, etc) and in fact if I put "1" it doesn't launch rick dangerous but the game after. To launch The game mapped to "1" key I have to click on the square to the left of the "1" touch on the numpad of the virtual keyboard. I'm with caanoo firmware 1.5.0

the main issue probably deals with sound : ie the Wahahahaaaa sound in Rick Dangerous is quite weird. And for instance no "motor" sound in Vroom (we have already spoke of that, it's a problem with long samples) .

You said outcast was first designed to run at 150mghz so it explains the optimizations for the sound, but with a caanoo that runs at 520-750 mghz wouldn't it be possible to use this power to enhance sound ?

Thanks again for this release !

#15 kayuz

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Posted 21 July 2011 - 08:23 PM

agree with chocapic, plaese add the overclock function :)