I've recently installed E_UAE and AmiKit on my Linux machine (openSUSE 11.3). I would like to fix some issues and fine-tune the E-UAE config to have the best possible experience out of this new (emulated) Amiga environment.
There is no activity on Richard Drummond's web site nor on sourceforge since the last 2-3 years, and I'm not sure the E-UAE mailing list is still alife. I hope it's ok to discuss those issues here.

Keyboard:

My keyboard is a PC-AT104 with Belgian layout.
The closest option in .uaerc is kbd_lang=fr , but a lot of keys are missing, like all the num. keys above the alphabetical ones (Rem.: the arrow keys are working).
With sdl.map_raw_keys=true in .uaerc , the missing keys are back, and I can use a fr layout keyboard. I created a be keymap for the Amiga based on the f one and modified with KeyMapEd from Aminet.
The problem now is that the cursor keys (arrow keys) are not working. This is not something that can be fixed on the Amiga side, it's more a problem between E-UAE and SDL.

On Linux, the command showkey allows to display the key code of a key pressed, but that is the code returned by x11.
Is there a way I can check what is the code returned by SDL ?
(As to try to remap those keys from .uaerc with something like input.1.keyboard.0.button.??=KEY_CURSOR_UP etc...)


Speed:

I'm very pleased by the desktop created by AmiKit, however a bit (too) slow on my system.
- > PIII 550Mhz, 768Mb RAM, 600Mb swap.

I have the best display results with the following settings in E_UAE:
- 32Mb Z3, 32Mb Picasso
- JIT to "direct"
- Framerate 1:2 (for the AGA screens)
- NO sound emulation

All the home office applications are comfortable to use, and games like Deluxe Galaga are running at full speed. But games without sound are not as fun...

If I enable the sound emulation (accurate, stereo 16bits, 44100Mhz), the Workbench display (Picasso) is significantly slower (even without any sound output), but still usable; Poing (OS-friendly bat'n'ball game) is running fine with the right sound (although with some hicup from time to time), but all other games are unplayable (awful and jerky sound and display).

Whatever I try to change for the sound setting in .uaerc fails and make E-UAE to fall back to not emulate sound at all.

Can I expect, with my "slow" system, a better compromise between sound and display so that I can try to play some of my old games like Hired Guns, Breathless, AB3D-TKG, Genetic Species, Gloom, Nemac IV, ... ... ...


Edit: I also tried the sdl.use_gl=true in .uaerc , but it failed with an error like "cannot allocate texture".
I acknowledge that SDL and OpenGl support are still a WIP (Work In Progress), but I'm curious to know if OpenGl support work under Linux (it seems to work on MacOSX IIRC).

Last edited by AmigaPhil on 12-Feb-2011 at 09:19 PM.
Last edited by AmigaPhil on 12-Feb-2011 at 09:09 PM.

@AmigaPhil

Try use smaller display for games:
400x300 screen, lowres, no double lines.

I think plain AmigaForever enviroment would be better for your configuration than AmiKit.

Last edited by pavlor on 12-Feb-2011 at 09:18 PM.

@pavlor

Quote:

Try use smaller display for games

Yes, but most of the games open their own screen, so changing the screen size in .uaerc won't affect the resolution of eg. Deluxe Galaga (I use to launch this one to quickly test the results of my config tweaking).

Note: Home office usage is correct with the current Workbench screen (Picasso 1024x768).

@AmigaPhil

I mean something like this:
gfx_framerate=2
gfx_width=320
gfx_height=200
gfx_width_windowed=320
gfx_height_windowed=200
gfx_width_fullscreen=320
gfx_height_fullscreen=200
gfx_lores=true
gfx_linemode=none


I don´t know if all these settings are valid in Linux version of E-UAE (I use E-UAE for AmigaOS 3 68k). For most games screen resolution 360x283 will be probably better than 320x200.

Last edited by pavlor on 12-Feb-2011 at 11:43 PM.

Quote:

AmigaPhil wrote: On Linux, the command showkey allows to display the key code of a key pressed, but that is the code returned by x11. Is there a way I can check what is the code returned by SDL ? (As to try to remap those keys from .uaerc with something like input.1.keyboard.0.button.??=KEY_CURSOR_UP etc...)

I posted this reply in the amikit forum, and now here as well. Note that this only applies when 'sdl_map_raw_keys=true' is used.

Try adding these lines to your .uaerc file:

input.1.keyboard.0.button.111=KEY_CURSOR_UP.0
input.1.keyboard.0.button.113=KEY_CURSOR_LEFT.0
input.1.keyboard.0.button.114=KEY_CURSOR_RIGHT.0
input.1.keyboard.0.button.116=KEY_CURSOR_DOWN.0

If these keys fail (111,113,114,116), you can check SDL key codes by compiling this C source code:

http://www.eurasia.nu/images/submitted/sdl_test_key.c

Use this command to compile:

gcc sdl_test_key.c -o sdl_test_key -lSDL

Run ./sdl_test_key and click on the window that opens, the output from your key presses will look like this example:

Press:- Scancode: 0x6F (111), Name: up, Unicode: ? (0x0000)

The decimal code in this case is 111 for the cursor "up" key, so that means the line should be like this in .uaerc:

input.1.keyboard.0.button.111=KEY_CURSOR_UP.0

Note the '111' part on the line above.