Altirra 2.30 with Gamebase and Gameex

[repetto74]

Hi guys,

I am using Altirra emulator through Gamebase for the Atari 800 and XL 8-bit computers. The Emulator is playing fine but I do not know how to force it to run in full screen mode when a game is selected.

There was no Gemus DAT file with the gamebases packages so I did edit manually the emulators INI files pointing them to the Altirra.exe path.

Is there a way to do a batch file with the full screen command?

Secondly I do not know how to remap keys for the Select,Start and Reset keys from the Altirra menu??

Thanks

Rick

[nullPointer]

This is not an emulator I run personally, and I have yet to configure Gamebase (it's been on my todo list forever) ... but according to the Altirra command line documentation you can start the emulator in full screen by adding the /f flag to your command line.

...
/f - start full screen
...

I imagine this will need to be done via Gamebase, since I believe GameEx will defer to Gamebase settings in this case. I suppose your choice of DirectDraw, OpenGL. or GDI may play a role here as well, but this should provide a good starting point. At any rate I don't think you'll need to resort to a batch file in order to pull this off.

FWIW you can view all available command line switches for Altirra by running the following command:

Altirra.exe /?

Edit:

Also refer to page 9 of the document seen here. That may prove to be helpful as Gamebase may already have a setting for Altirra allowing you to "auto-magically" start the emulator in fullscreen.

Edited October 9, 2013 by nullPointer
Additional Gamebase info

[repetto74]

Hi Nullpointer

Many thanks for your clear help on this.

There is unfortunately no way to add this command into gamebase. Gamebase can normally autosetup an emulator via GEMUS wizard but a Gemus dat file is needed and this was missing in the Atari800 gamebase package. There is a script for Altirra I can view but is it that one I need to edit?

The document you are pointing is the tutorial for setting up Steem. Altirra do not have an option where you can set fullscreen mode by default...

[Frankybabes]

Please keep this topic running ! this is the heart of gaming the world over "8 Bit ATARI 400/800 is where it all started (not counting consoles).I posted a topic asking for an emulator on GameEx for an Atari 8 bit long ago (you can check!) . At present I have just discovered "Altirra and am using it to run my 200+ roms with no problem except Joypad control (Logitech Wingman Cordless Rumble) this works with everything except Altirra! cant figure out how to set it up?. To end this blog I would just like to say that I think that this 8 bit emulator should be the heart of GameEx ,as previously stated this is where it all began for all those early pc gamers out there, keep up the good work. Regards

PS. I still have my Atari 800 and some carts but I was stupid and sold my happy drive and disk based games in the late eighties (wish I had NOT)

[Draco1962]

Have you considered checking on the Gamebase forums or with the authors for the Atari 8-bit Gamebase setup? While there may be someone that uses a similar setup here, keep in mind that GameEx is a front end for emulators and questions regarding the running the emulators themselves (command line options, running at different resolutions (i.e. full screen), etc. are best fielded by the authors of the respective emulator.

You may also need to look into a 3rd party gamepad program (joy2key, xpadder, etc.) as a solution to translating your gamepad/joystick outputs to a keypad format that the program will understand. My experience has been that, other than programs written with a gamepad or joystick as the primary controller, quite a few early PC emulators tend to suffer when using those controllers exclusively.

[hansolo77]

Wow this takes me way back. It's been a LONG time since I messed with the Atari 800 and the GameBase stuff. It took me a bit to figure out what I did and where, but I think I've figured it out.

GameBase uses scripts to control how games are played. Somebody painstakingly went through each and every game and figured out what the best emulator would be for each game. 99% of the time, Altirra was the best, so in the GameBase configurations it has Altirra listed as the #1 choice. There are like 4 others available to GameBase as needed, but in my experience, all the ones I've tried end up using Altirra. Now that being said, somebody painstakingly again went through and categorized each and every game as having specific game types, versions, and TV capabilities (NTSC/PAL). They wrote a script that runs top to bottom with if/then statements. EXAMPLE: If the game is a cassette, then add the command line to configure Altirra to run the game as a cassette, etc. All I did in this case was go down to the very bottom of the script and add the /f (full screen) flag to the last bits of the command line where it identifies if it's NTSC or PAL. Since the script is ran from top to bottom, eventually it would reach this part and have to say what format it is in, so I chose to add the flag there.

If you want to change yours, you can do it a couple of different ways. The first way is to access the GEMUS script directly from within GameBase. After you have the Atari 800 GameBase loaded, go up to GEMUS and chose Altirra. That will open the script properties window. You can make the changes directly from there. I, however, would advise doing it a different way as to make sure you don't screw something up. Go into your /GameBase/Atari 800/ folder on the computer. You should see a folder called /Scripts/. In that folder there is a file called Altirra.txt. Make a backup copy of this (I called it "Original_Altirra.txt"). Now whatever you do to the Altirra.txt file can be fixed by replacing the original contents. Open Altirra.txt in Notepad and make your changes there. Here's the entire contents of MY Altirra.txt that you can copy/paste into your's if it's easier.

If GameType CONTAINS(cas)
If Key_basic CONTAINS(yes)
If Key_tape CONTAINS(manual)
Add_CLP( /nocasautoboot /basic /siopatch %gamepathfile%)

Else
Add_CLP( /casautoboot /basic /siopatch %gamepathfile%)

End If



Else
Add_CLP( /casautoboot /siopatch /nobasic %gamepathfile%)

End If

End If



If GameType CONTAINS(atx)
Add_CLP( /noburstio /siopatch %gamepathfile%)
End If

;If GameType CONTAINS(atr)

; Add_CLP( /siopatch /noburstio %gamepathfile%)




;End If

If GameType CONTAINS(bin||rom)
Add_CLP(/nobasic %gamepathfile%)

End If

If Key_basic CONTAINS(true||on||yes||1)
Add_CLP( /basic %gamepathfile%)
Else
Add_CLP( /nobasic %gamepathfile%)
End If

If Key_model CONTAINS(osb)
Add_CLP( /hardware:800 /kernel:osb /memsize:48k %gamepathfile%)



ElseIf Key_model CONTAINS(XL)
Add_CLP( /hardware:800xl /kernel:xl /memsize:64k %gamepathfile%)

Else
Add_CLP( /hardware:800xl /kernel:xl /memsize:320k %gamepathfile%)
End If


If Key_siopatch CONTAINS(no)
Add_CLP( /nosiopatch /noburstio %gamepathfile%)
End If

If PalNTSC = PAL
Add_CLP( /f /pal)
ElseIf PalNTSC = NTSC
Add_CLP( /f /ntsc)

Else
Add_CLP( /f /ntsc)

End If





Run_Emulator()

Now you should be able to run (as I said) 99% of the GameBase Atari 800 games in full screen. It was important for me to write this out as I did so it would help other people (myself included) in the future should others fall into this same situation. To make thing even easier, here is the exact file you can use to replace the Atirra.txt in your /Scripts/ folder.

Altirra.txt

I hope this helps you out!

[Draco1962]

Very informative, Han! Thanks for sharing!