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OG Xbox Forums => Software Forums => Emulators => Topic started by: hcf on May 25, 2010, 02:53:00 AM

Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: hcf on May 25, 2010, 02:53:00 AM
As there is only silence, I guess that nobody has managed to make the ArnoldX emulator work  sad.gif

Well, in this case, I am going to post here the things that I am discovering. If anyone wants to join the investigation, feel free to come here!  biggrin.gif

I see that there are games in several formats (disk, tape, cartridge) and I guess that you must load the file of the game in the correct slot of the emulator. The most of the times, the emulator itself guesses where you must load the image. For example, if the game is a tape game, ArnoldX loads it in the "tape" slot.

At this point, sometimes the emulator writes the command needed to run the game. Many times it is RUN"NAME_OF_THE_GAME although you can change this string in the configuration options of the game

At this point, there are different problems in the different types of games. Let's see the first problem: tape games load correctly, and the emulator says something like "Press PLAY and then press any key". And this is a problem, because the PLAY button is not a key of the keyboard, so it is not in the virtual keyboard neither. The PLAY button is the button that makes the cassette play!! I have searched in the mapping options but I don't find any way to map a button of the Xbox joystick to the PLAY button of the Amstrad CPC. Is there any way to do it?

In the disk games, the problem is different. My first approaches say that the game MUST be zipped in order to work, but I am not totally sure of this point.

As far as cartridge games, I have not been able to progress in any way  unsure.gif
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: xyteam on May 25, 2010, 03:23:00 AM
as i remember the cartridge games should work as likklebaer released a skin for the gx4000 a while back IIRC.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: madmab on May 25, 2010, 05:33:00 AM
I think x-port included some documentation that covers the basics of getting some of this stuff.  Can't remember if I copied it over for my release.

Either that or you can go to a Arnold forum and they have tutorials that cover most of this stuff.

Ultimately we would just like to make an Xtra's set for this emu with a configuration database and pre-config controller settings.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: Likklebaer on May 25, 2010, 11:04:00 AM
Disk and cartridge games work fine. The GX-4000 cartridges are in .cpr format and Arnoldx should automatically put them in the cartridge slot. Never tried tape or program files.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: Likklebaer on May 26, 2010, 02:31:00 AM
A disk version of Fruity Frank is available in the GoodCPC set which consists entirely of disk and cartridge images, no tape files to mess about with and I'm pretty sure every other game is there.

Not that I'm advocating the downloading of illegal ROMs of course I'm merely citing it as proof that this game and others were actually released on disk and not just on tape.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: madmab on May 26, 2010, 04:31:00 PM
Do you have a real keyboard that you can attach to your xbox?  If so, do me a favor and try hitting a key on that and let me know if it works.  It's possible my keypress routine needs some tweaking.

You could probably also assign a xbox button to a key (like space) and see if that does the trick.

If I get a chance I'll take a look myself.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: hcf on May 27, 2010, 02:33:00 AM
In fact, there are some buttons of the Xbox joystick that are assigned to keys of the keyboard yet (I don't have my Xbox here at the moment, but I remember that Space and Enter are mapped). In any case, I will do the test this weekend and I will tell you, because I have a USB adapter. If I understand well, you want me to disconnect the Xbox joystick from port 1, and after that (in the middle of the game) plug the keyboard. Is this correct? I didn't know that this was possible   biggrin.gif
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: madmab on May 27, 2010, 01:24:00 PM
Yes you can plug a USB keyboard into any of the ports (doesn't matter) and any x-port PC based emu will recognize it.
Title: Help With Arnoldx
Post by: hcf on May 28, 2010, 04:33:00 AM
I have tried to plug an USB keyboard in the port 2 of my Xbox, and you were right: ArnoldX recognizes it, and I was able to type letters in the blue screen.

I tried to load a tape game and, when I got the "Press PLAY and then press any key" message, I pressed a key in the keyboard. The key was recognized (I know it because the cursor disappeared) but the game did not run. I waited several minutes and after that, I pressed Esc and I exit. So, it seems that the problem is not as simple as the key press recognizion.

In any case, I am going to test a DSK game as Likklebaer pointed. If she is right, I think that we can focus in DSK games and make all the xtras with them, ignoring tape games. Of course, repairing the tape functionality is cool, but if we can run the DSK games properly, and every tape game can be in DSK format too, in my opinion  there are lots of things more interesting that require madmab's attention, like the other Xtras emulators  smile.gif  I think that we can survive without having the tape funcionality. Yes, I have lost some time and a couple of DVDs creating my tape collection, but I am not going to cry for it. There is people in the Madmab-Xtras team who has dedicated lots of time to this marvelous project, so I think that I can repeat a bit of my work  wink.gif