AmigaVision/MegaAGS 2023.04.05 Released!

[limi]

We are happy to announce that the latest release of AmigaVision/MegaAGS is available!

AmigaVision is the ultimate, open source Amiga setup for MiSTer FPGA, emulators, and real hardware.

This is a major update with a lot of new features, especially on the MiSTer side, so definitely make sure you do a full reinstall to make the most of the exciting new capabilities instead of just dropping in a new HDF file. Full installation details are in the documentation section of the AmigaVision site, as well as the included ReadMe file.

New web site, new name

Back when MegaAGS started in 2019, it was one of the first setups that used Arcade Game Selector (AGS) as a launcher, and the name was simply chosen to be MegaAGS. It has since grown to be the de-facto standard Amiga setup for MiSTer, and to a large extent for emulators and real hardware alike.

Lots of other projects have sprung up that also use this launcher, and we have seen a fair amount of confusion around the naming of these projects. We decided to rename MegaAGS to AmigaVision, and publish a web site at amiga.vision where you can stay updated on new releases.

It's the same great setup you know and love, maintained by the same team, but we thought it would be a good idea to clean up the naming/branding to reduce confusion.

What's new in the 2023.04.05 release?

• This new version makes use of MiSTer's recently introduced MGL support to supply convenient, dedicated Amiga and Amiga 500 configuration setups for ease of switching on MiSTer. This lets you have the best of both worlds: An everyday, easy HD-based games/demo setup, as well as a cycle-accurate floppy-based Amiga 500 for running ADF games and demos when necessary. No need for separate configurations deep inside the menus anymore, you now have them at the top level.
• New, optional Amiga 500HD and Amiga 600HD configuration settings are included for those of you looking to explore Workbench 1.3 and 2.x as period-accurate HD setups — these both support the MiSTer shared drive and use the PFS file system for robustness. See the Extras part if you are interested in these.
• Hand-tuned CRT filters for scan lines and shadow masks to give you a great look on modern displays.
• Up to date with the latest WHDLoad recipes for games and demos as of 2023.03.03.
• Lots of new disk magazines and demos.
• Significantly faster load times when entering lists in the launcher.
• Jump-to-letter using keyboard in the launcher.
• Launcher now supports going to the parent list using secondary/blue/B button from a gamepad/joystick, or using backspace on the keyboard. You can enable the old behaviour with an explicit "Back" entry in Options if you prefer the old behavior.
• Launcher supports chronological sorting, pre-set in certain lists like "Disk magazines, by release date", which is a great way to follow the history of the Amiga demo scene in the 90s, as written by the demo scene members.
• Natural sorting — the launcher will now sort e.g. Turrican, Turrican II, Turrican 3 in that order instead of a straight ASCII sort.
• New "look and feel" for the launcher.
• MiSTer Super Attract Mode integration added.
• MegaAGS-Extras added, with alternative MGL based configs for Amiga 500HD and Amiga 600HD as well as some convenient PFS-formatted Saves HDF images in various sizes. See the dedicated documentation included for more detail.

What's coming next?

Some of the planned improvements in the next release are:

• New, high-resolution launcher with 1:1 pixel screenshots (photo of an early preview with existing branding running on an OLED TV below) and some other surprises we will unveil when the time comes. This will give you an incredible launcher experience that works great on modern HDMI displays, as well as still being compatible with 15kHz CRTs.
• Analogue Pocket support is in the works — the system still has limitations that we need to adjust for, and HDF support is still being worked on for the core — but we aim to be able to deliver the best Amiga experience on this handheld FPGA device as soon as possible.
• The usual updates to game settings and demos to stay current with new and improved releases.

Stay updated, and help us make AmigaVision even better

If you find any bugs or settings that need improvements, file a ticket on the AmigaVision web site.

AmigaVision is an open source project, and we welcome contributions from the community. GitHub Pull Requests are very welcome!

You can follow us on Mastodon, Twitter or via RSS, and updates will be posted when new releases happen.

Enjoy the best of what the Amiga platform has to offer!

Videos

A great little review by local forum member allyourbasekris:

And a great setup tutorial from Pixel Cherry Ninja:

[limi]

Extras

In addition to the main setup, we include some additional images and convenience functions that may be of interest to the Amiga connoisseur.

Custom MiSTer background image

A rendering of a classic wood-paneled teenager's room with the legendary Commodore 1084 monitor, joystick and some computer manuals and floppies as a frame for the MiSTer menu. Drop menu.png into to the root of your MiSTer file system for maximum nostalgia when booting up your device. Rendering by Ralf Ostertag (2010), licensed under Creative Commons.

Custom fonts for the MiSTer OSD

To complete the Amiga look using the menu background above, we have included fonts to match.

Amiga 500HD Setup

This hard disk setup aims to recreate an Amiga 500 with Kickstart/Workbench 1.3, the setup of an Amiga 500/1000/2000 power user from around 1989. Think Amiga 500 with a GVP HD8+ or A590 attached, supplying a hard disk and memory expansion.

This is implemented as a separate MGL file and directory setup for MiSTer, letting you have a separate setup that doesn't affect the main MegaAGS game/demo image.

It aims to recreate the setups that were common before the Amiga 600/1200 were released with hard disk support and a more modern OS.

Common applications like Directory Opus, ProTracker, music players and graphics/audio applications are already included in the Apps menu in Workbench, giving you a great starting point for your own custom setup.

In addition, the image includes:

• MiSTer shared/ directory support to facilitate easy sharing of files between MiSTer's file system and the Amiga file system
• Custom patch for Kickstart 1.3 for HD support
• PFS file system that protects against accidental file system corruption if restarted during a write operation
• Launch menu in Workbench for common applications

We default this setup to NTSC for compatibility reasons, but you can easily change it to PAL in MiSTer's Audio & Video settings menu for the Amiga core if you prefer that.

We recommend using the separate, dedicated Amiga 500 setup for ADF format game disks and demo disks, this setup is for people interested in running a Workbench setup.

Amiga 600HD Setup

This hard disk setup aims to recreate an Amiga 600HD (or an Amiga 500 Plus or Amiga 3000) with Kickstart 2.0 and Workbench 2.1. This would be the setup of an Amiga 500+/600/3000 user with a hard drive, memory expansion (and possibly an accelerator card) from around 1991-1992, common before the Amiga 1200/4000 computers that included the newer AGA graphics chipset and AmigaOS 3.0/3.1.

This is implemented as a separate MGL file and directory setup for MiSTer, letting you have a separate setup that doesn't affect the main MegaAGS game/demo image.

In addition, the image includes:

• MiSTer shared/ directory support to facilitate easy sharing of files between MiSTer's file system and the Amiga file system
• PFS file system that protects against accidental file system corruption if restarted during a write operation
• Launch menu in Workbench for common applications

We default this setup to NTSC for compatibility reasons, but you can easily change it to PAL in the Workbench ScreenMode Preferences if you prefer that.

Common applications like Directory Opus, ProTracker, music players and graphics/audio applications are already included in the Apps menu in Workbench, giving you a great starting point for your own custom setup.

This setup enables the faster CPU by default since this setup isn't really meant to be used for games that require cycle accurate CPU compatibility. You can switch the CPU to 68000 in the MiSTer core menu for the Amiga core if you want the orignal A500+/A600 speed instead of something that resembles an Amiga 3000.

We recommend using the separate, dedicated Amiga 500 setup for ADF format game disks and demo disks, this setup is for people interested in running a Workbench setup.

Empty PFS Save Images

We have included several larger sizes of pre-formatted PFS MegaAGS-Saves.hdf files, should you want to create your own custom setup based on MegaAGS without having to re-do your customizations every time. The reason it's important to use PFS instead of creating your own FFS-based Amiga HD images is that PFS protects against accidental corruption of the HD if you reset the computer during a write operation. It's also faster than an FFS image, and the rest of the MegaAGS setup uses PFS everywhere for that same reason.

[ericgus09]

This is awesome but .. rrrgg now I have to totally redo my existing Amiga setups, I like this better and fantastic version then what I have going .. but seriously looks worth the work for me to retrofit my existing HDFs/configs around this (dont know if ill go full bore and use PFS but ty for including the blanks), might need to explore the MGL stuff and see if I can back-fit my existing setups to that system .. nice work!

[allyourbasekris]

Amazing work guys, I'm stuck at work but once I'm home, I'm giving it a proper play.

[rickdangerous]

Awesome... Should be called Amiga Dream
Congratulations,
Ricardo

[HerrBerzerk]

One Image that I discovered on the week-end is also not bad. Aminimiga for Mister:
https://www.aminimiga.com

Plenty of stuff, I just don't get why it is so huge.

[hitm4n]

Brilliant. D/Loading now...

[TuffyDK]

Nice work - I'll check it out ASAP

[Krypto]

Originally bought my MiSTer for Neo Geo and Amiga games. Great to see the Amiga is so well supported with this project!

As someone who used an A500 and then A1200 as my primary computer back in the day, using the MiSTer is so much less aggravating compared to the real hardware when I just feel the need for a bit of retro-computer reminiscing.

[limi]

Oh, and the usual reminder: the team does not build or distribute the software, we just maintain a script that can build an image, given a set of games and demos. We cannot take responsibility for what people feed to the script, nor for any HDF images produced.

This came up over on Reddit, since one of the images people had downloaded contained a couple of 1990-era viruses in some of the games and demos (not in the toolchain used to build it). So if you worry about this, run the included VirusZ scanner on any image you get off the internet. It’s included in the Amiga → Tools folder.

(Reddit thread removed because it is not worth engaging with well-known trolls from this forum over there too)

[desdrl]

Is following the setup instructions going to mess up any of my saved Amiga configurations?
Asking before I dive in.

[jca]

Thanks for your work.
Now I have a question regarding configuration files:
I am not a fan of scanlines and want to remove this setting.
config/Amiga_shmask.cfg points to Shadow_Masks/MegaAGS.txt which contains

MG Stripe (Magenta Green)

v2
2,1
53d,23d

How do I change that? Thanks.

Another question:
The forum editor does not like the pound sign -> Big bold characters.
It also does not like the underscore character.
Is there a way to change the settings and be able to type these characters?

[jca]

The _Computer folder for Amiga600HD contains Amiga.mgl. I suppose this is an error and should not be there.

[limi]

I am not a fan of scanlines and want to remove this setting.

You can control Video Processing from the MiSTer OSD, you can select any preset you prefer. Save the configuration, and it will stay like that.

[Admiral-Pepsi]

Hi all, I originally posted this under the impression that Amiga viruses can escape WHDLoad containers. I have been told they cannot, however I could do with some verification from the community to see whether that is true, can anyone verify that?

I've left my original post below in a quote.

Warning: It would seem that there are viruses on the image being linked to from the AmigaVision website.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MiSTerFPGA/com ... =8&depth=9

Having done a virus scan on the images myself I found the following:

X26qClh.png (22.89 KiB) Viewed 21947 times

This completely aligns with those of the OP in that thread.

Using that virus scanner, I can remedy the HappyNewYear96 virus infections, however that still leaves eight infection which I lack the knowledge to remedy nor delete.

[heinzgruber]

Thanks!

Coming from an older version and did the the reinstall as on the Amiga bison website mentioned. Now I’ve two Amiga Entries in my core menu. One entry is without a date. Any idea?

[limi]

Is following the setup instructions going to mess up any of my saved Amiga configurations?
Asking before I dive in.

If you replace the Minimig configuration with ours, it will obviously overwrite the config.

We use separate MGL configs as our default setup, so if you copy those instead (essentially, skip anything with Minimig in the file name), it will co-exist as a separate setup called “Amiga”, with its own settings. That way, you can use the Minimig entry for your setup, and have the “Amiga” entry be AmigaVision/MegaAGS.

(Note that the default directory for both setups is still /games/Amiga, but they keep separate config settings because of the MGL)

[limi]

Another question:
The forum editor does not like the pound sign -> Big bold characters.
It also does not like the underscore character.
Is there a way to change the settings and be able to type these characters?

If you check “Disable Markdown” when posting, it will not parse it as Markdown syntax.

(It should probably be opt-in instead of opt-out by default, but I’m not sure if the Markdown plugin for phpBB supports that)

[jca]

Thanks for the help. I have not been using mgl until now so it was what confused me. If I understand it correctly when using a mgl the setname in the mgl becomes an alias to the real core name, it is like running a different rbf and the settings are saved using this alias name.
Now testing Disable Markdown:
#_

[limi]

If I understand it correctly when using a mgl the setname in the mgl becomes an alias to the real core name, it is like running a different rbf and the settings are saved using this alias name.

Correct. The only thing that can be a bit confusing in this particular case is that both the Minimig and Amiga will default to the /games/Amiga (because there is no /games/Minimig) directory when e.g. trying to load an ADF. The configuration settings stay separate, however.

[allyourbasekris]

Just tried it on a modded ps3. Yup. It works. AMIGA ALL THE THINGS.

[jca]

The only thing that can be a bit confusing in this particular case is that both the Minimig and Amiga will default to the /games/Amiga (because there is no /games/Minimig) directory when e.g. trying to load an ADF. The configuration settings stay separate, however.

Thanks, I already understood that. The Minimig is a strange beast: it is the only core for which the game directory is not the core name, in the past you could also name the different configurations but at some point someone decided to change that and although the configuration names are technically correct they are not very useful for the user. In any case mgl files are way better as there is no need to switch configuration.
I have the ShapeShifter package for Minimig and will make a mgl for that.

[limi]

Nice. Yes, I have 7 different MGL-based Amiga setups for various purposes (including Shapeshifter), it’s quite nice to have everything at the top level and not have to muck around with selecting configurations in the Minimig OSD.

[limi]

The _Computer folder for Amiga600HD contains Amiga.mgl. I suppose this is an error and should not be there.

Good catch. We’ll fix it in the next release. It does no harm — it’s the same file as the main Amiga.mgl, but of course confusing that it’s there.

[limi]

Hi all, I originally posted this under the impression that Amiga viruses can escape WHDLoad containers. I have been told they cannot, however I could do with some verification from the community to see whether that is true, can anyone verify that?

I added this in the FAQ section, since I’m sure it will come up again:

https://amiga.vision/docs#should-i-worr ... ga-viruses

Of course, if anyone can demonstrate a virus that can break out of WHDLoad containers, I will update my priors!

Note that we were responsible for a harmless joke virus accidentally making it into our toolchain (as opposed to WHDL containers) in earlier versions of MegaAGS, you can read the details here.

[jca]

The _Computer folder for Amiga600HD contains Amiga.mgl. I suppose this is an error and should not be there.

Good catch. We’ll fix it in the next release. It does no harm — it’s the same file as the main Amiga.mgl, but of course confusing that it’s there.

No big deal as long as they are identical. When I did the install I copied the files from directory to directory instead of copying the directories just to see what was inside. Whwn I saw the Amiga.mgl I did not copy it just to play safe.
I also noticed that the Amiga500 comes with 4 configurations: Amiga500, Amiga5001, Amiga5001 and Amiga5003. What is the difference?

[limi]

One file for each config inside the “core” (in this case, MGL) for each of the Amiga 500 variants:

• Amiga 500 (1.2/512K)
• Amiga 500 (1.3/512K+512K) ← Default
• Amiga 500 Plus (2.0/2MB)

[jca]

Thanks, I was too lazy to load each one and see what was the difference.

[jca]

I was just browsing the archive.org and saw that HTGDB Gamepacks contains an AmigaVision pack dated 04/05. I will check if this one is cleaner.

Edit:
Due to the fact that the dates are the same I did not expect much and this is exactly what happened: a binary compare indicates that the hdf are identical.

[gamingarena]

I dont see any Config files for 500HD and 600HD, under_Computer there are only two mgl files Amiga 500.mgl and Amiga.mgl

Where can i get the 500hd and 600HD config files?