WinApe (Amstrad) Save states

[JohnnyG]

HI folks,

Been quite a while but I'm getting back into the emulation scene again.

I've gotten MAME, Daphne and Stella all working perfectly with Gameex, and I'm trying to sort out WinApe (an Amstrad 464 emulator) now. I have it working fine by itself and within Gameex, but I'm wondering is there any way to launch a savestate instead of the game disk through Gameex?

Two big advantages to doing this:

1 Most of the game roms I have are cracked versions, so when loading they ask do you want infinite lives, etc. With a savestate, I have already selected my options so I don't need another keypress (which wouldn't be assigned anyway), the game will just launch.

2 Once I have configured the keys, I wont have to do it each time as they are already loaded in the savestate.

Also, I don't have a joystick and am going to use my X-Arcade dual stick for the time being until I get to build a cabinet. Do I select joystick or keyboard? Or do I select joystick and remap keys (some games don't let you, and some use ESC, which I want to bind to quit the emulator back to Gameex)?

Thanks in advance!

[DazzleHP]

Hi Johnny,

If WinApe lets you launch savestates using the commandline it should be doable. However, even if this is true, the tricky part comes in when you will need to determine which games get launched with a certain savestate, and which will not. If it's just may be one or two games that you require launching in this manner, then a feasible approach would be to setup these few games separately, likely individually, and then integrate them back into your main 464 list using the Groups Feature.

If you need more than a handful of games to be launched in this way though, it's very impractical and probably wouldn't be worth the effort on your part to take this approach.

Hmmm. I wonder if there is any type of launcher for the 464 that will do this for you? May be even a GameBase?

I'm not experienced with Amstrad stuff so may be someone else will have better insight for you.

[JohnnyG]

Hi Dazzle

I have about 30 or so games for the Amstrad, so the grouping would be too much. Its easy enough to load the savestates (F5) so I think I'll just set that as a separate button. Like I said I'm only getting back into the emulation scene: some of the stuff for Amstrad is seriously old! Dont think anybody but me will be playing them anyway (the kids might have a go in MAME but I get really funny looks when I try to explain how great Get Dexter! was).

Thanks for the info!