Amiberry end of March update
Published on March 28, 2022 by Dimitris Panokostas
Hi everyone!
It's been a while since the last update, but I have a lot of exciting new things to share with you below. As mentioned in the previous update, the next Amiberry version will be v5.0, due to the large amount of changes since the last release. A lot of testing has been going on, especially with the people from the Pimiga community, to ensure that we isolate any bugs and unexpected behavior, trying to make this next release as good as possible.
Here's the list of changes since the previous update, in historical order:
It's been a while since the last update, but I have a lot of exciting new things to share with you below. As mentioned in the previous update, the next Amiberry version will be v5.0, due to the large amount of changes since the last release. A lot of testing has been going on, especially with the people from the Pimiga community, to ensure that we isolate any bugs and unexpected behavior, trying to make this next release as good as possible.
Here's the list of changes since the previous update, in historical order:
- Optimized internal handling of custom controls.
- Get both Controller and Joystick names during joystick initialization. This helps to show the correct name in the correct field, and also use the Joystick name as a fallback when searching for mapping files.
- If Retroarch is used, always show the Joystick name in the Custom Controls panel. Retroarch is used in RetroPie, and RetroPie always uses the Joystick name to create a mapping, so this should reduce any confusion and problems picking up the right config file.
- Fixed bug where Retroarch mappings would always invalidate the LeftY axis.
- Bumped version to v5.0, updated Copyright years.
- Improved various areas in the Input handling, including more detailed log output for cases something went wrong.
- Fixed a rare crash when running WHDLoad titles and switching between GUI/Emulation multiple times.
- Improved handling of "data" path. It's no longer hardcoded to be expected under the binary startup location, but it will be instead picked up from the configured path in amiberry.conf - old configs are automatically updated during startup.
- Various improvements in the macOS platforms (x86 and M1), including various bug fixes with the packaging.
- GUI: Fixed bug where JIT FPU could no longer be selected, or showing enabled when it wasn't.
- WHDBooter: moved temp files from /tmp/ to /tmp/amiberry, for a more clean approach.
- Ensure multithreaded drawing option is updated if changed in the GUI.
- Speed up timings when not using frameskip (massive boost at Lightwave rendering speed, which had slowed down in recent updates). This fixes several other apps that had timing issues after a while, also.
- Minor improvements when warping mouse in window (only applicable when using X11 and windowed mode).
- CPU/chipset cycle access timing fix, from WinUAE.
- Second 1MB ROM bank divided into 2x512k banks, from WinUAE.
- Remember previous screen mode, when switching from Full-Screen to another mode and back.
- Updated readcpu from WInUAE, added missing table68k file.
- Performance improvement: disabled genlock-related line operations, gains a few FPS more.
- Added new Custom Control event: Auto-Crop. More on this below...
- Added uae_pragmas header from host-run.
- Removed assembly routines that were no longer being used.
- Fixed bug where the Controller D-Pad wasn't mapped, until the GUI was opened once.
- Updated WHDLoad XML to latest version.
- GUI: Implemented support for Shift + Numeric and Symbol keys, in Textboxes and Textfields.
- New feature: Auto-Height is now replaced by Auto-Crop. This option not only calculates and adjusts the Height, but also the Width of the frame drawn on screen. Additionally, the performance is vastly improved, and it no longer closes/opens the screen to apply the crop. To work properly, when this feature is enabled the Width and Height values must be set to the default maximum for PAL (720x568) and Auto-Center options disabled (they are not useful with Auto-Crop, as it will center the output anyway). These options are automatically disabled from the GUI when you enable Auto-Crop. If you load a .uae config file with conflicting options, they will also be adapted/fixed on the fly for you.
- The Custom Control Auto-Crop event is a toggle that enables/disables auto-crop on the fly, with a controller button. This can come in handy for cases where you may only want to enable auto-crop at a certain stage, and/or disable it quickly.
In parallel with the above, I've started implementing a virtual keyboard feature, but since that still needs work it will probably not make it in the v5.0 release. For now, the focus is to make sure the existing features are working without glitches, especially the auto-crop one which is new (and fixes some bugs with auto-height). If you'd like to help test, your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Thanks again for your support, it means a lot! :)
Thanks again for your support, it means a lot! :)