AmigaVision (MegaAGS) 2023.12.25 Released with Updated Game Configurations

[syntax_x]

Ill take a look, but it would help the search if I knew how it was decided which PAL games would be patched to 60.
Puzznic for example has no NTSC release as far as I am aware.

EDIT

After reading over some threads
viewtopic.php?t=3048
it became clear this project is nearing the end of the sorting phase for NTSC patched PAL titles.

I see the first approach was patch everything and keep what worked, then unpatch Euro dev based games, then pretty much tailor each game as people spoke up.

Happy to contribute and have a look thru what has been patched and check if speeds are correct

[limi]

Great, much appreciated. And yes, Puzznic definitely seems to have the wrong configuration. File bugs, and we will get it fixed.

[syntax_x]

What is the fastest way to switch between video modes?
Opening and editing files in the RUN directory takes forever

[rsn8887]

It is not enough to check if games were PAL only. You need to check if the developers were US devs or European devs. European devs made only "lazy" ports from PAL to NTSC that ran too fast on NTSC, including music running too fast. Just because such a port exists doesn't mean the game should be run in NTSC.

So what matters is not if it was PAL only. What matters is if the original, "definitive" version that was developed was PAL. If a bad NTSC port was done later or as an afterthought, the game should still be run in PAL, not NTSC.

IMO, the correct procedure would be to simply set ALL games to PAL. Then go in and choose selectively only the few games like Wings or Defenders of the Crown that were made by US devs on NTSC machines, and set only those to NTSC. As it stands, it is Sysiphus work to change single games here and there back to PAL, because way too many games were set to PAL60/NTSC in the very beginning of the project. There is not a single Amiga game I am aware of that ever used PAL60, by the way, so that option could probably be completely eliminated, it just complicates things even further.

Nicky Boom 1 and 2 and Hybris are three more examples that should run in PAL. Faster is not automatically better.

There is already a workaround, because you can go to Options in AmigaVision and select "Force PAL" to force games to PAL. The option will reset itself on reboot though.

[limi]

What is the fastest way to switch between video modes?

In the launcher: Options → Force PAL/NTSC

[heinzgruber]

It is not enough to check if games were PAL only. You need to check if the developers were US devs or European devs. European devs made only "lazy" ports from PAL to NTSC that ran too fast on NTSC, including music running too fast. Just because such a port exists doesn't mean the game should be run in NTSC.

thats a good point. Recently checked Bill's Tomato Game and music was way to fast. Now i know the reason. I think that approach is not true to the original. Why was it done this way?

[rhester72]

thats a good point. Recently checked Bill's Tomato Game and music was way to fast. Now i know the reason. I think that approach is not true to the original. Why was it done this way?

I'm speculating a bit, but I suspect it was to achieve maximum display compatibility with monitors that can't sync to PAL.

Whatever the case, I agree with the masses it may have gone too far, as one of the beauties of MiSTer is that it can display proper PAL, and even dynamically switch between PAL and NTSC signaling with Fat Agnus and above just like real hardware.

I'd far prefer a more original/authentic experience.

[Optiroc]

thats a good point. Recently checked Bill's Tomato Game and music was way to fast. Now i know the reason. I think that approach is not true to the original. Why was it done this way?

I'm speculating a bit, but I suspect it was to achieve maximum display compatibility with monitors that can't sync to PAL.

Whatever the case, I agree with the masses it may have gone too far, as one of the beauties of MiSTer is that it can display proper PAL, and even dynamically switch between PAL and NTSC signaling with Fat Agnus and above just like real hardware.

I'd far prefer a more original/authentic experience.

That was the secondary bonus reason actually. The initial reason was twofold:

• Before “dynamic viewport” functionality was added the output options were fixed to 5x for NTSC with a 216 lines crop or 4x for PAL with 270 lines. So the tradeoff was between “slow and huge borders” or “fast with small or no borders” for the huge majority of PAL-native titles that renders between 200 and 220 or so lines.
• I always enjoyed running as much as possible at 60Hz back in the day when I had upgraded to an A1200 and that was a software toggle, so to me that’s the preferable options for games that are NTSC compatible.

Now both reasons are kind of moot and the configurations have slowly but surely moved towards something more objectively correct.

[limi]

IMO, the correct procedure would be to simply set ALL games to PAL. Then go in and choose selectively only the few games like Wings or Defenders of the Crown that were made by US devs on NTSC machines, and set only those to NTSC. As it stands, it is Sysiphus work to change single games here and there back to PAL, because way too many games were set to PAL60/NTSC in the very beginning of the project. There is not a single Amiga game I am aware of that ever used PAL60, by the way, so that option could probably be completely eliminated, it just complicates things even further.

As Optiroc mentioned, it has historical reasons for being the way it is. So, let’s fix it! If you or anyone else (rhrester72 and heinzgruber) want to help out, we can make it better.

So let’s go through the list and fix up whatever games are erroneously marked as NTSC/PAL60 at the moment, and find good 5×PAL crops for them where applicable. If you are willing to help test games in that lists, I will commit to finding good offset/zoom settings for them once I have a list I can go through a list of games that are not currently configured correctly.

We have a developer Discord to coordinate tasks like this, so just send me a DM with your Discord ID, and I am more than happy to address this if you are willing to put in the testing work.

[rhester72]

@limi Is there any way of doing so without necessarily being familiar with the games? I'm afraid I grew up in NTSC-land and wouldn't necessarily know whether music is correct at PAL timings. (For example, the way I remember the Powermonger opening theme is WAY different than my European brethren!)

[limi]

If you grew up with the NTSC versions, I’m guessing your best bet would be to look up the games on YouTube and make sure the music is not playing too fast. I can take care of identifying graphical glitches, as I know most of the Amiga library.

[rhester72]

I was working up a list of NTSC-only titles for years, so I may work backward and derive things from there.

That being said...what is the current intention for PAL titles? Will/should they be run at 50Hz? What about scaling?

[heinzgruber]

As Optiroc mentioned, it has historical reasons for being the way it is. So, let’s fix it! If you or anyone else (rhrester72 and heinzgruber) want to help out, we can make it better.

hi,
i'm so busy at work and with my family that unfortunately i can't contribute anything. otherwise, burnout is not far away. Sorry!

[limi]

No problem at all! rsn8887 is helping out, I will reconfigure the list of games we can discover. And as usual, even if you only find a single game that runs at the wrong speed, report it at https://amiga.vision, and we will get to it.

[heinzgruber]

I stumbled across this. maybe it will help.

Amiga Games at 50 fps
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=80207

[limi]

I stumbled across this. maybe it will help.

Amiga Games at 50 fps
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=80207

Just for the record, this has nothing to do with 50hz/60hz as default, this is a list of games running at full frame rate (whether it is 50 or 60 fps), as opposed to what many games did, which was to run at 25/30 fps.

Interesting list, of course — just not useful for this particular purpose :)

[danytyler]

I think like my colleagues here, the Amiga catalog is mostly PAL, with some minor exceptions.
I already reported this problem of speed and stretched images in a previous version of MegaAGS, "Lemmings 2" had been the example in that message, where this effect is very clearly seen.

This is why I prefer to set the system to PAL and then we´ll be free to look for specific fixes to the few NTSC minorities, I think it´s a better starting point than doing it the other way around.

My favorite solution to do this is to force PAL, but the problem is that rebooting removes the option, and what we want is to simply set all games to PAL permanently. That´s why I´d found a fix for this that works the same for this version of MegaAGS, and I´m sharing it here in case someone else wants to use it:

It´s just copying the whdlvmode once PAL is selected in the image, and it remains permanent.

So first, we select the PAL option in the MegaAGS image with the menu option for this purpose, then we press ESC to exit to the workbench, we open Diropus, go to this path "RAM:ENV/ "and we copy the file "whdlmode" located there to "DH0:PREFS/ ENV-ARCHIVE/".
And after that our PAL compilation is safe from reboots.

Cheers!

[limi]

This will be addressed in the upcoming AmigaVision release, for the record. PAL60 has generally been reset to PAL50, and I will selectively apply PAL60 or NTSC settings where it makes sense (DOS ports, Atari ST ports, US game studios), as well as 5×PAL scaling presets for games that were previously PAL60.

PAL60 removal commit on GitHub

[rhester72]

This will be addressed in the upcoming AmigaVision release, for the record. PAL60 has generally been reset to PAL50, and I will selectively apply PAL60 or NTSC settings where it makes sense (DOS ports, Atari ST ports, US game studios), as well as 5×PAL scaling presets for games that were previously PAL60.

PAL60 removal commit on GitHub

God bless...absolutely a step in the right direction. Thank you!

[syntax_x]

https://amiga.vision/2024.04.04

That was stupid fast! Had to come here and thank everyone for the all the work that has gone into sorting the PAL titles over the past few months.
Will be testing it out today.

Awesome project and team right here! Thanks again.