Puppy Arcade v5 - new files (29 Dec 2009)

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sc0ttman
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Amiga - Definitely worth inclusion

#16 Post by sc0ttman »

Dingo wrote:Tried Puppy Arcade and played to several games with much fun

I think adding an Amiga Emulator (E-UAE)
http://puppylover.netsons.org/dokupuppy ... :emulators
could be a good thing
I agree.. When I update the ISOs (after a few more improvements have been made) I will definitely include this one in the new ISOs. It's a bit idiotic that I missed it, actually.. Also ScummVM could be added... Although as far as I know, DosBox will handle most games that ScummVM can play.. But please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone.. I may replace DosBOX with ScummVM in future, but am unsure...

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#17 Post by Makoto »

Use both, if you can. They're not the same thing.

DOSbox provides a working DOS environment for certain older games and programs to run. ScummVM is an interpreter, and is only capable of running the data files of certain games (there should be an up-to-date list on the ScummVM Sourceforge site), using the SCUMM engine (mostly LucasArts games), plus some others (like the SpaceQuest/Kings Quest/etc. games).

ScummVM won't support running DOS games, and DOSbox will only run the games ScummVM will if they ran under DOS to begin with, and still have the executable engine to run under DOS - ScummVM doesn't need that, and just runs on the data files from the games it supports. :)

Edit: Why not include a PC Engine/TG-16 emu? :D (Though I don't know if the Linux PCE/TG emulators currently have support for CD games...)

You might want to replace VBA with VBA-M - VBA-M is being actively worked on, unlike VBA (as Forgotten's not working on it, anymore). I'm not sure of the project's webpage offhand, but you can read discussions about it at http://forums.ngemu.com/vba-m-discussion/ . If I can find the proper webpage, I'll update this post. Edit #3: It's possibly http://vba-m.com/ .

Edit #2: Forgot - here's a place that might have links/downloads to some emulators of interest: http://www.zophar.net/linux.html Their VBA-M page leads back to the above URL, though.
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#18 Post by sc0ttman »

Makoto wrote:Use both, if you can. They're not the same thing. Why not include a PC Engine/TG-16 emu? And you might want to replace VBA with VBA-M
Thanks for the reply.. I'll include both ScummVM and DOSBox in the next versions.. I just thought that DosBox could be used for Scumm games... And I've just tested Hu-Go! (312KB, working fine) for PCE/TG-16 - no frontend, drag and drop roms onto the icon.. It apparently supports CD games...

As usual, I've had no luck at all compiling stuff from source or using .deb packages etc, and that includes VBA-M and quite a few other emulators from zophars domain, all of which I tried a while back.. I personally don't find VBA lacking in any way (except having no GUI), don't know if anyone disagrees...

I have to confess, I'm not old enough to have played some of these systems (pre 1990ish), so haven't looked into their emulators or roms much (there's classic and just plain old!! :))..

But I checked out E-UAE as suggested by Dingo.. It works great, but does anyone know a smaller Amiga emulator? E-UAE is quiet large - I'm being fussy though, I know... But I'm trying to keep the smallest version of Puppy Arcade (without office) around 100MB or so, if possible.. So if anyoen can recommend some 'fat' to remove, such as drivers that nearly nobody needs, then I'd love to know..

I may also add NeoCD, which needs a NeoGeo CD inserted and mounted, then it'll work fine once loaded (it's 1524KB inc bios), but only if its games are good (I don't know) and if XMAME doesn't already do NeoGeo CDs :shock: (I think it doesn't!)

And possibly a GameCube emulator would be nice, if anyone knows which is the best... TuxCube? Dolphin? I've no idea..

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#19 Post by Makoto »

Well, DOSBox can be used to play games ScummVM supports (and were loadable in pure DOS), but only if you have the complete game (DOS executable and the data files). :)

I think there were a few binaries of VBA-M appaearing now and then - but I'm not sure about that, because I think they're still in pre-official release status. It might not hurt to either email the devs or post on the ngemu forum (the one I linked to, above).
I'm not entirely sure, but VBA-M may also have higher requirements than VBA.

Personally, I don't really know of many Amiga emus outside UAE. You might also look into MESS to possibly support a number of systems, including the Amiga, but I'm not sure how well it does support the Amiga, or even how well it runs under Linux. (Like the MAME team, the MESS team (their code is primarily based on the MAME architecture) prefers working on accuracy over all else, so MESS may not always run as well on the older systems. I haven't tried it in years. :oops: )

I can't account for the NeoCDs - never saw them in a store, actually (though I did see the regular Neo-Geo carts... it's a shame, because I did want to try the Samurai Spirits RPG and... what was the name of that one SS game, again? Samurai Spirits 64? :D ) I don't recall MAME ever announcing support for NGCDs, either.

I don't know about TuxCube, but Dolphin's supposed to be fairly decent. Some problems:
-- New builds are being posted all the time, and things can easily break in one release and be fixed in the next.
-- Not many drives support direct reading of GameCube/Wii discs, so only image support is more or less possible (anyone using it had better have a large HD ready, in other words)
-- Wii support is even more of a work in progress than the GameCube support. (How well does Puppy support Bluetooth? I think Dolphin only supports the Wiimote through BT.)
-- ...and of course, Cube emulation (much less the Wii emulation) will require a very powerful system.
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#20 Post by sc0ttman »

Makoto wrote:Personally, I don't really know of many Amiga emus outside UAE.
I don't even know anything about Amigas other than the name! Does it even have any good games?? I couldn't find one (IMHO).
Makoto wrote:You might also look into MESS to possibly support a number of systems.
I checked out MESS and decided I could find a collection of smaller emulators, with lower diskpace and system requirements. I only want to emulate the systems with great games, and leave out the others - real enthusiasts can add them if they like.
Makoto wrote:I can't account for the NeoCDs - never saw them in a store... I don't recall MAME ever announcing support for NGCDs, either.
So I'll add support for NGCDs if the games are worth playing, as I also know nothing about NGCD - maybe I'm too young but I don't think NGCDs ever took off in the UK..
Makoto wrote:Dolphin's has some problems and of course Cube emulation (much less the Wii emulation) will require a very powerful system.
Would be nice to get a dolphin that doesn't include Wii emulation - the list of dependencies is so big, I couldn't even find all of them! But the high system requirements would make it unsuitable/undesirable for most Puppy users I guess. So I guess NGC emulation is asking too much.

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#21 Post by Dingo »

Many good games are available for Amiga. Some games on the top are

pinball (a.k.a flipper)
Pinball Dreams
Pinball Fantasies (also in AGA version, with improved graphics)
Pinball Illusions

ultra-cool pinball games. never made pinball better than these

graphic adventures
The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2
Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis


Sensible Soccer
Civilization

and so on...

see this site for reviews about Amiga games: http://www.lemonamiga.com/
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#22 Post by sc0ttman »

Dingo wrote:Many good games are available for Amiga.
Thanks for the link, most enlightening... But aren't most of these games already emulated in Puppy Arcade, using other emulators that are or will be included, such as ScummVM, DosBox and a few (admittedly dodgy) 16-bit conversions (eg Cannon Fodder, Civ on SNES)??

If so, are they better on the Amiga? I've no idea the kind of 'power' the system had... But the Amiga seems to be clearly a better system than Commodore64 and Atari... Did they have mostly the same games?? Because it appears to me that there's not much need to emulate C64 and Atari roms, if you have an Amiga emulator.. Am I correct?

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#23 Post by Dingo »

Speaking in terms of quality graphics and music there are games originally created for amiga hardware (chipset AGA and ECS AGNUS) that lose more or less something in conversions for other systems or console, let's play to pinball fantasies to have a valid proof

in my experience, even being products from same computer-factory, Amiga games and commodore's games are not compatibles, but I have tried few commodore games

last, but not least, there are a lot of amiga fans
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#24 Post by sc0ttman »

Dingo wrote:there are a lot of amiga fans
Well that is reason enough to include Amiga emulation in the next Puppy Arcade, I guess..

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#25 Post by Makoto »

Heh. Yeah, there's a lot of good games on the Amiga and NGCD, as far as I know. :)

The Amiga was a considerable jump from the Commodore 64/128. I couldn't say by how much, offhand, though. However, it's not really backward-compatible, IIRC. So, you'd still need something to handle C64/128 (and possibly the Commodore systems before that, if you wanted to go that far). Atari is a different company, so the Amiga wouldn't cover their consoles/computers, anyway. :D

Yeah, I'd say Dolphin is probably better left out for the time being. Besides, even if you did manage to compile a version without the Wii support, there would probably be people demanding you put it back in. :roll:

I thought WINE might also be a consideration, for some of those ROM utilities/catalogers/etc. that don't have a Linux version, and some have claimed to have some success running Windows-based emulators through WINE. But that'd probably add another 100MB to the package. :shock:
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Re: Any Feedback?

#26 Post by Feel »

sc0ttman wrote:There's not been much feedback left on this thread - either noone is interested or you're having no problems.. I'll assume the former for now, until I hear otherwise. Please let me know how this puplet works for you and how you would like to see it improve, if you're using it and have any suggestions. Thanks.

It's not lack of interest, it's lack of time to play with games! But I think there are really minor bugs, they should be fixed but they must not obsess us. This puplet is already a milestone because there are not other LiveCd distros that work this well with emulators. I tried another one some time ago but it was not well built, and it just crashed.
I think it would be a good idea to add an Amiga emulator, but I also think that you should keep DosBox, 'cause there are so many programs that can be used with it.

Scottman, what do you think of setting up a webpage just about PuppyArcade? It can boost new users into using this puplet and into the larger Puppy Linux Universe.

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#27 Post by sc0ttman »

Makoto wrote:you'd still need something to handle C64/128 (and older.. if you wanted to go that far). Atari is a different company, so the Amiga wouldn't cover their consoles/computers.
I realise that these systems are not cross-compatible and are totally separate systems needing totally different roms, but I was wondering if the games released for these systems were mostly just different ports of the same titles.. For example if all the good C64 games were later released on Amiga, there's little point including a C64 emulator - I'd only include emulation of the stronger system, Amiga.
Makoto wrote:I thought WINE might also be a consideration, ..but that'd probably add another 100MB to the package. :shock: (runs)
I also though about adding WINE, but it'll take up a LOAD of space, as you said already.. I think if anyone wants WINE, then they'll know how to add it themselves.. I've found that Linux emulators are good enough not to need WINE, IMHO..

I want to keep Puppy Arcade as small as possible, making it work for as many people as possible - this means keeping it slim and letting people add any extras they want.

But I do want to include a good ROM manager.. No idea which are good ones.. But I will also include a Multi emulator frontend - so that all roms can be loaded easily from one place.. Something like 'pLauncher 1.2' - which if it works OK when I test it, will be included.

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Re: Any Feedback?

#28 Post by sc0ttman »

Thanks a lot Feel.. Glad you appreciate it..
Feel wrote:Scottman, what do you think of setting up a webpage just about PuppyArcade? It can boost new users into using this puplet and into the larger Puppy Linux Universe.
It's in the pipeline.. I'm gonna use this page until it get's another one (if it needs it)

http://cms.web-seller.co.uk/page65.htm

Ignore the weird address, the page above is just one of many on my CMS site - PetchCMS (BLATANT plug)... But actually, if anyone needed a CMS it's a good one, if I don't say so myself.

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#29 Post by Makoto »

sc0ttman wrote:I realise that these systems are not cross-compatible and are totally separate systems needing totally different roms, but I was wondering if the games released for these systems were mostly just different ports of the same titles.. For example if all the good C64 games were later released on Amiga, there's little point including a C64 emulator - I'd only include emulation of the stronger system, Amiga.
I don't think there were many ports of C64 games to the Amiga. :) (I could be wrong.)

Seriously, though, every system has its fans (I was a C64 user, you know :D), and just because a game may have a port (theoretically speaking) on the Amiga, that doesn't mean people are going to abandon the C64 version. What about those games that aren't on the Amiga? Are those of us with C64 programs going to be unable to run anything in Puppy Arcade? ...etc.
sc0ttman wrote:I also though about adding WINE, but it'll take up a LOAD of space, as you said already.. I think if anyone wants WINE, then they'll know how to add it themselves.. I've found that Linux emulators are good enough not to need WINE, IMHO..
Well, it was more a matter of the editing utilities, and those emulators here and there that may not have a Linux/Mac equivalent (for some of the more obscure hardware emus). Plus, some devs' primary environment is Windows, and there are cases where their other-system versions (if they do have them) can be not up-to-date with the Windows version, or have fewer features, etc. Not saying it happens often, but I've seen it happen. :( And, like I said, there are those that think running a Windows emu for something in WINE works better than any of the Linux emus for the same thing. (shrugs)

I'm not trying to argue for definitely including WINE in Arcade, of course. :D
sc0ttman wrote:I want to keep Puppy Arcade as small as possible, making it work for as many people as possible - this means keeping it slim and letting people add any extras they want.
Right, and I know that's your intent (and behind Puppy as well, as we know). It's just hard to include support for everything (MSX and X68000 support, anyone? :P Or even the PocketStation/Dreamcast VMU emus... now that's pushing it. :) ) without risking ballooning Arcade's size.
sc0ttman wrote:But I do want to include a good ROM manager.. No idea which are good ones.. But I will also include a Multi emulator frontend - so that all roms can be loaded easily from one place.. Something like 'pLauncher 1.2' - which if it works OK when I test it, will be included.
I can't say I know which are good (the managers), myself. :oops:
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#30 Post by sc0ttman »

Makoto wrote:every system has its fans... just because a game may have a port .. doesn't mean people are going to abandon [another] version. It's just hard to include support for everything... without risking ballooning Arcade's size.
Yes, I agree (with the paraphrase that I've created!! :wink:) .. And as Puppy Arcade is intended to run on low end systems, I decided the best approach would be to include emulators of only the most popular systems, as long as:
1. The system has lots of good, unique games (if it's popular, it will have..)
2. The emulator has relatively low system requirements
3. The emulator does not take up much diskspace
4. The emulation is accurate and works well

Basically, this means, for future versions, if an emulator is too large, too slow or all the games are crap (or if they're all found on other systems) then that emulator is likely to be left out. Hopefully this will be enough to keep Puppy Arcade small, good on low-spec systems while still playing most of best games ever made!

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#31 Post by Makoto »

Hmm... wonder where that line would be drawn, exactly, in terms of years. :)

That means the more recent systems are out - GameCube/Wii, Dreamcast, and maybe the PS2... their emulators tend to require fairly powerful systems. I don't think there's anything out for the X-Box/360 that actually plays games (but that'd probably still have high requirements, anyway).

But, the emulators themselves, for all the older game systems and computers, don't really take up too much space, do they? Unless the dependencies rack up...
I'd rather see most of the older systems covered, than someone deciding the games available for it are too lousy for it to be included. :P
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#32 Post by sc0ttman »

Makoto wrote:I'd rather see most of the older systems covered, than someone deciding the games available for it are too lousy for it to be included. :P
I realise there's a lot of systems out there that people love which I don't even remember - as you said, most of these older systems have small emulators so they will be included where possible..

However, there's a few older systems that I know nothing about but are undoubtably very popular - C64, Amiga, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari - and these will be included, if possible..

If anyone has already compiled these emulators for puppy then I'd love to know!
Last edited by sc0ttman on Tue 29 Sep 2009, 12:47, edited 1 time in total.

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#33 Post by sc0ttman »

I plan to release a new (and totally final) version within in the next month or so.. So for the next release, I want to make Puppy Arcade as easy as possible for the average user, and as small as possible too. I may remove SCSI drivers and a few others things (if possible), to save even more space. And so far, I have these emulators working, and will include these in the next version: Hugo (PCE), Frodo 4.1b (C64), NeoCD, Hatari 1.0.1 (Atari), UAE (Amiga).

I have decided to replace FakeNES with iNES as it works well, is much smaller, and much faster - in my tests at least.

Also I think I will use UAE (gkt1), not E-UAE (suggested by Dingo) - the big difference seems to be the filesize - both emulated well for me, but UAE is a little faster and smaller. But thanks anyway Dingo, as I wouldn't have found UAE without your help. NOTE: If UAE is much worse than E-UAE (for some reason) let me know - space allowing I will include E-UAE instead.

pLauncher cannot be added as it needs PERL, PERL Gtk and a few other libs!! Too big! If you know a good launcher let me know.

I also still need to find a small, efficient ROM manager - so that users can fix any ROMs that are not working by downloading the files missing in their romsets... anyone know a good one???

All emulators will have a frontend (of sorts) - thanks to dejan555 who created the iNes .pet file. Using his script a ROM can be passed to each emulator without the need for the terminal, or the need to drag-and-drop ROMs.. Below is an example for VBA - the GBA emulator used in Puppy Arcade:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
ROM=`Xdialog --title "Choose a ROM to run" --fselect / 0 0 2>&1`
if [ -e "$ROM" ]; then
  vba "$ROM"
else
  echo Canceled
fi
Adding the ability to remember the last-used directory would be fantastic, but I don't know how.. Anyway, that some info about what's coming in the next Puppy Arcade.. Please let me know of any bugs or fixes you've found so I include them as well..

If you can help me out with any of the above, please do so soon, or the final release of Puppy Arcade may not include what you want!! :(
Last edited by sc0ttman on Mon 28 Sep 2009, 18:41, edited 1 time in total.

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#34 Post by TomRhymer »

Is there a .pet for the Hugo emulator? I can't really use this Puplet due to a problem with my hardware, but I'd like to try that emulator in another Puppy.

The problem with 4.2 on my netbook doesn't seem to be a driver issue, but a problem with the kernal. I have no problems with 4.3 or with the upup alpha, but the same issues with the dpup alphas.

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#35 Post by Makoto »

Heh. A couple of the rare systems that I had (actually still have, but I'm not trying to brag... more like (carbon) dating myself. :shock: ) include the Atari 5200 and the TI-99/4A computer. Not that I intend to ask for either of those. :P

To be honest, I probably wouldn't vote in favor of iNES - it's a bit dated, if I remember correctly, and probably doesn't support all of the NES games out there (=mapper support), as well as the Famicom Disk System games (*.fds).

I've been trying to get RockNES to work, but haven't had any success so far. Maybe someone else might be able to get it to work...

How did the VICE Commodore emulators look, to you? Just curious.

I haven't tried any of the Linux managers, unfortunately.
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