A new development version has been released. Changes in FS-UAE 2.5.20dev:
Starting with this development version, packages will also be available for Ubuntu 14.10 and openSUSE 13.2.
A short update on what binary builds I publish for FS-UAE dev (now, and in the near future):
Support for older Linux distribution releases is removed due to not having recent enough libraries. (*) Later Mac OS X builds will probably revert to the previous system requirements (10.6+).
Builds for other Linux distributions (and BSDs) may or may not be available from your favourite contributor package system / ports tree 🙂
A new development version has been released. Changes in FS-UAE 2.5.0dev:
Changes in FS-UAE Launcher 2.5.0dev:
I have pushed a future branch to GitHub. This contains work which will be part of the 2.5.x development series once 2.4.0 is released. There will be no official builds for this future branch, instead I’ll focus on the 2.3.x versions and getting 2.4.0 out of the door. But if you are impatient, capable, and curious, you can check out the future branch 🙂
I have had a few of requests for a public git repo on GitHub, and now there is one at https://github.com/FrodeSolheim/fs-uae. Note, this repo only contains FS-UAE itself. If it proves useful, a repo for the “Python bits” (FS-UAE Launcher & Arcade) may follow later.
A new development version has been released. Changes in FS-UAE 2.3.9dev:
A while ago, I applied for and got a free license for PyCharm from JetBrains (through their Open Source licensing program). It is now my preferred coding environment when working on FS-UAE Launcher and FS-UAE Game Center, I’m generally very satisfied with the code inspection and refactoring options (certainly the best I have seen in a Python IDE). So I just wanted to say thanks 🙂
Updated development packages for Fedora, openSUSE and Debian should once more be available, built via openSUSE build service. See the devel download page (“Other Linux”) for downloads.
(Packages for FS-UAE Game Center is not available for Fedora and openSUSE yet).
There has been some structural changes which affects those who create installable packages for operating systems, or build FS-UAE and related projects from source.
Please see the following forum post for more information: http://eab.abime.net/support-fs-uae/70475-packaging-changes-2-3-x-information-packagers.html.
I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 a while ago, and were curious to see how well FS-UAE runs on the current version of Unity (the default desktop in Ubuntu). Unfortunately, it does not run that well by default (same as 12.10).
The problem is really only in windowed mode. FS-UAE syncs to vblank by default, and in combination with the Unity compositing / indirect rendering, the performance is bad, with laggy / choppy rendering (1). When using video_sync = off, the performance is “normal”. On the bright side, full-screen performance seems to be improved when syncing to vblank.
Let’s hope Ubuntu / Canonical manage to fix the OpenGL support with Mir (though I would rather see them joining forces with Wayland). For the time being, I’m using the MATE desktop on Ubuntu. Without any compositing / desktop effects, OpenGL performance is nice, and FS-UAE frame rates are as smooth as can be (2) 🙂
(1) With official closed-source Nvidia drivers.
(2) With monitor running @50Hz of course.
FS-UAE for Ubuntu 13.04 is available from a PPA.
For live support, you can connect to the IRC support channel directly from your web browser: Enter live support channel. The most likely time to get help is during the evening (UTC+1), but there may be people around to help at other times as well.
You can also use a regular IRC client – join channel #FS-UAE on server irc.abime.net.
A new development version has been released. Changes in FS-UAE 2.1.20dev:
Since upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10 (with upgraded nVIDIA drivers), I have no longer been able to use 1920×1080 @ 50 Hz. I can run xrandr -r 50 without errors -and the screen turns off/on again, but the screen is still running at 60 Hz afterwards (and xrandr itself confirms this). I could of course (probably) have downgraded the drivers, but I didn’t..
I have however just now found a workaround, I can successfully switch to my defined 50 Hz mode with the nvidia-settings program, like this:
nvidia-settings -a CurrentMetaMode=1920x1080_50_0
And to switch back to 60 Hz:
nvidia-settings -a CurrentMetaMode=1920x1080_60_0
This requires that valid modelines are defined with the names 1920x1080_50_0 and 1920x1080_60_0. See 50Hz Display Modes on Linux with nVIDIA Drivers fore more information.
My original problem is also reported by someone else:
“When trying to change refresh rate the screen goes blank for a second as it usually does but rate is not changed. Both xrandr and nvidia-settings show the old refresh rate still.”
The report got the following response:
“Thanks for reporting this. I can confirm that, at least on my system, the –rate option seems to be ineffective on a recent 304 driver. I’ve filed NVIDIA bug 1054623. Feel free to use this bug number in future inquiries about this issue.”
A new development version has been released. Changes in FS-UAE 2.1.16dev:
FS-UAE user “Treco” has translated FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher to Portuguese 🙂 . The new translations will appear in the next development release (2.1.5).
FS-UAE user “albconde” has translated FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher to Spanish :). The new translations will appear in the next development release (2.1.4).
FS-UAE Launcher Database
FS-UAE Launcher currently supports using a game database to automatically find games you have by scanning your directories for known disk images and/or WHDLoad games, but it is currently a bit difficult for people to contribute to this database -this needs to be much easier!
You should vote here if you would like to see this feature developed further -or if you think this is a waste of time!
Current features include:
Thousands of game entries have been automatically created by an algorithm looking at (among other sources) the TOSEC dat files to get a starting point. But of course, not all these configurations work out of the box. Special configuration may be needed. So to get a quality database, humans must test and improve the entries.
I propose a system where the launcher automatically synchronizes game entries from a central server, and where anyone can make modifications to game entries in the FS-UAE Launcher GUI, register an account on the server, and have FS-UAE Launcher submit the fixes to the central server so everyone will benefit from the improvements. This includes specifying custom configuration (if needed) and submitting images.
The database includes many variations of the same games (for instance multiple cracked versions from the TOSEC set). I propose some kind of voting/rating/like system, so only the most popular variants are showed in the launcher by default if you have many variants available (configurable by the user, of course).
The license for the database should be a quite liberal license (a Creative Commons variant?) to allow other projects to use the information as well. It does not make sense (IMO) to build such a database and then try to limit the usability.
It only makes sense to build infrastructure for this if people are interested in contributing.
You should vote if you would like to see this feature developed (and also perhaps subscribe to the thread if you want to follow the discussion)
Repository paths have change a bit, as i wanted to by able to have non-fs-uae-specific repositories for future projects, and better to change this now than later, before more people are affected. Development packages for Ubuntu is now located in:
ppa:fengestad/devel
And repositories managed by OpenSUSE build service is now located here:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/FrodeSolheim:/devel/
Sorry for the inconvenience. I don’t plan to change this again (except that stable packages will be published in corresponding stable repositories).
The public git repository was recently updated to reflect my own development environment better. Version numbers are now not updated in all places on version number bump, only the VERSION file is updated. Run “make dist” to get a new sub-dir with clean source and version numbers correctly updated in all files, or you can use windows.mk, macosx.mk, debian.mk etc to build releases. Building the workspace with “make” works just fine, but the version number is then fixed as “9.8.7”.
This repo update is also related to the fact that the official releases are from now on automatically built from the repo on google code (branch “release-devel”) using build slaves connected to a jenkins instance.
Please note that the repository URLs on opensuse build service will change (for a proper split between stable / devel releases once 2.0 is out). New repository base for the development releases is: http://download.opensuse.org/reposit…/fs-uae-devel/. Similarly, if some of you track directory content; devel releases on fengestad.no will be put in http://fengestad.no/fs-uae/devel/
I’m also experimenting with PPA builds for Ubuntu: development version PPA is available at https://launchpad.net/~fengestad/+archive/devel (not all amd64 packages are done building yet).
All this just means that I can spent a little less time pushing out releases and more time coding. Also, occasionally forgetting to push the source code or publish update for a given platform should not be a problem any more 😉
I am now planning a new stable release. There is too much good stuff in 1.3.x which is not available in 1.2.x – especially the launcher, since this is very useful for casual setup and especially for beginners. The reason I’m thinking of bumping the version number to 2.0 instead of 1.4 is because I feel the inclusion of the launcher represents a great leap in functionality (for those interested).
I’m quite happy with the state of FS-UAE itself for 2.0, but I think the launcher needs some more work and polish before it should be heavily promoted to newcomers to FS-UAE.
I have assembled a list of stuff I think should be done before 2.0 can be released. I would very much like feedback if you know something of else which should be fixed or implemented first.