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It's been a while since I focused on Amiga emulation with GameEx, and I decided recently to throw some energy at it, to see if I could fine tune my setup. I noticed also that there are occasionally people posting for help with Amiga emulation on this board, but often there is very little response. I think the main reason for this is because it's so complicated, and therefore almost no one is doing it any more. The good news is that some recent developments in the Amiga emulation scene are changing all that, and I'm pretty sure that this means with GameEx, too. But first, some observations: Even for a fairly skilled person, trying to set up the Amiga on GameEx is hard. There are about 3-4 ways to do it, and even when you have something set up, it never seems to work properly for all games. The issue is that, unlike a ROM dump from MAME or a cartridge system which works easily with just a mouse click, the Amiga "ROMs" are in a whole different category. For any one game there can be a number of versions, some with copy protection, some "cracked", some for different hardware. These games often require totally different setup specifications in order to run correctly. And the main emulation software WINUAE, is incredibly powerful, but also quite complex as far as its interface. There are some solutions which have organized the Amiga catalogue and make it easier to emulate (in theory), although they are not easy to set up. One of these is Gamebase Amiga which is kind of a front end database which runs a huge pile of Amiga software via WINUAE, and luckily there is a way to import this info into GameEx. I was excited to set this up this again because there has been a revised version of Gamebase Amiga (V2.1) that has over 5000 games in it. However, even after a few hours of trying to find the right files in various places on the internet, and getting it all set up with GameEx, I couldn't get it to work properly, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. I thought to myself that there must be a better way... Before I go on, there is one more important point to make about Amiga emulation and an exciting change that is now possible. Even when a person manages to get Amiga emulation set up via GameEx or otherwise, the process of running a game has one major drawback - load time. Accurately emulating Amiga software (which usually ran off floppies) often means boot times of 1-2 minutes. Compared to the speedy ROM boot times of other emulators, this often means that the Amiga emulation is just too much of a pain in the ass due to to the wait. The solution is WHDLoad. In laymen's terms, this is a special version of an Amiga game which boots in just a few seconds, and it feels like a cartridge. There are currently 2369 WHDLoad versions of Amiga games, which means that the vast majority of the best games have been converted to this format. Another benefit of the WHDLoad games is that they have stripped away most of the crack demos and modifications that the majority of other Amiga game dumps (Like TOSEC) have. This means that you can enjoy the games in the original manner that they were presented. The WHDLoad method of emulating Amiga is so slick that it makes running Amiga games finally as easy as the best systems you are emulating now. Interestingly, Gamebase has WHDLoad support, but because Gamebase supports multiple versions of the game, there is no way that I am aware of to select the WHDLoad version from GameEx. This is something that would be great to implement in GameEx, if possible, but there may be something even smarter... WHDLoad aside, I was hinting that might be a better way to make Amiga emulation happen on GameEx. I think that solution is FS-UAE. FS-UAE is a port of WinUAE with a focus on emulating Amiga games, featuring a new on-screen GUI and cross-platform online play. The Amiga emulation community has embraced this software for a number of really great reasons, and I believe that it's a truly exciting development that we should definitely work towards integrating into GameEx. I was able to set up FS-UAE seperately from GameEx with a mimimum of effort. It supports WHDLoad which means that you can run the best games almost instantly. It has a great interface which is much easier to use than WinUAE. It uses the OpenRetro Game Database - a clever online database of Amiga games which is updated constantly and means that the software is continually synchronized with the latest WHDLoad ports and includes all configuration details so that your games automatically run with proper configuration (!). It has solid Gamepad support. Some folks have already got FS-UAE working with other front ends such as Launchbox. THIS is what Amiga emulation should be. Okay, here's where I need your help. I am having a few issues getting this software to work with Gamex. I mentioned the OpenRetro Game Database. This is a key element used when getting other front ends to automatically integrate with FS-UAE. In the OpenRetro Game Database there is a value for each game called an UUID. This is a unique identifier which allows you to run FS-UAE and have it automatically configure the emulation for that specific version of the game, and load the game ROM automatically. For example, for the game Populous, the UUID from the OpenRetro Game Database of the WHDLoad version of this game is 41848a06-d4ab-53b0-a122-48903ec67ce5. After configuring FS-UAE properly, it is now possible for a front end like Launchbox to launch FS-UAE via command line and reference the WHDLoad Populous UUID for example, and the game just starts up, almost instantly. Not only that, you can export all of the UUIDs from FS-UAE, import those into Launchbox, and have all your games (and snaps) show up in that front end. So this seems very doable on GameEx. Here is a quick summary of where I am at, and where I'm having trouble. I am using the very latest developer version 2.9.6 of FS-UAE because it has some important features regarding WHDLoad etc. A fantastic, super detailed video on installing and setting up FS-UAE is located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VNsisdSJNI This video also shows how to integrate the Launchbox front end which I think will give us the roadmap to implement this into GameEx. For Launchbox, there is a utility that exports all of the UUIDs into subdirectories. The subdirectory is the name of the game, and the long UUID files are inside. GameEx seems to hang when scanning these directories, and also I'm not even sure that it's possible for Gameex to take the name of the ROM from the subdirectory name instead of the file (since the UUID files are gobbledegook). Any suggestions on next steps? I have everything working smooth as butter inside FS-UAE, and would love to see easy Amiga emulation finally integrated into GameEx! Many thanks for feedback and ideas! Regards, MacGuyver

SOLVED OK, after much trial and error, finally got hings working. My advice to newbs like me is thus: 1. Go through the setup and install the Win UAE emulator. 2. Go to this page : http://headsoft.com.au/index.php?category=winuaeloader 3. Download one of the romsets there (I used the WHDLoad ones - but be warned - registration required to remove nag screen on emulator - £15) 4. Download and install WHSUAE Loader 5. Follow the instructions on the page - you'll need some bios's - install as instructed 6. Use GE emu installer to install WHSUAE loader 7. (optional) if you want your game names pretty, use the "create mapfile" on UAELoader (file will be under the WULoader folder somewhere 8. Install this map file to gameex map folder 9. Under advance emu config - point to the mapfile in gameex Great work to the chap who made WinUAE Launcher Steve ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OK, my usual request! Need to set up Amiga emulation via Winuae. Did the usual - downloaded this via GameEx - didn't work. I have: Romset + bios of format: [gamename] ([Region]).zip As usual, ended up going round in circles, downloading extra software (WinUAE Loader + GameBase) - just ended up getting more confused! Could anybody please assist with a simple guide on how to get this set up? Many Thanks Steve