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Help a puir wee Luddite... Amiga emulating on a PC

Jack The Bodiless

11:30 / 08.01.04

OK - I'm utterly shite at all things techie or to do with 'pooters. I have to go check up on the threads about it in the Policy before I can post links. It took me six weeks to set up my PC after we moved house. I am the ultimate lazy Luddite - and no doubt I could do a little research, play around a bit and figure this out for myself.

But help me anyway. I want to play this old Commodore Amiga game that I used to be addicted to again, and don't have the game or the machine. Apparently I can download it for free and play it on my PC - if I run it through an emulator? Now, I'm reasonably sure I know what one of those is, and I've seen a few here, a couple of which look like they might be useful - but I have no idea which to go for, what else I'll need to download/install, how to do that or how to run the damned thing once I've done all that...

Like I said. Luddite.

So - can anyone help me out? An idiot's guide would not be considered patronising at all - possibly weirdly appropriate...

11:41 / 08.01.04

I imagine it'll be the same as most emulators - so I would just pick one of those from the site you posted and install it on your pc - then get the game (ROM) and it should be pretty straight forward - using the new program File/Open that sort of thing and point to the ROM. I've never used an Amiga( I was a C64 guy then moved to the Megadrive) emulator though but I imagine it's the same....

Maybe someone can advise on the best emulator...

12:02 / 08.01.04

Do you want to be able to read old Amiga disks, or will you just be downloading games? If you're just going to be downloading them, then it should be simpler than if you want to read old Amiga disks.

You can buy an old Amiga for about £10 on Ebay, so if the emulators are seeming too complicated, I'd recommend just getting a real Amiga. I still have a real functional Amiga (although some parts of it are mine and some parts are my housemate's).

What game is it anyway?

Jack The Bodiless

15:46 / 08.01.04

I was just going to be downloading the game itself, since I don't rate my chances of finding a working second hand version.

It's... oh, hell. I've got a craving to play the original Bard's Tale game, and the Amiga version was better than the PC version. I had it on the C64 originally... just a bit of a nostalgia trip originally, but it's started to become an obsession. And a geeky one at that. Perhaps I'm pregnant. Or a geek. Perhaps I'm a pregnant geek.

19:15 / 08.01.04

I use WinUAE, Jack - it can be a bit of a shitter to get your head around the frontend, though. Nothing that a few minutes playing around won't sort out.

The big problem with Amiga emulation is that Kickstart isn't included and the emu won't run without it. There are instructions here about how to get the file without crossing any iffy legal boundaries. The other option is to search Google for kick.rom. I've got a feeling you also need to grab the Workbench files separately.

09:50 / 09.01.04

I contemplated emulators for a while too, but never actually got around to trying any. Maybe I should, although I'd miss my lovely glowing Amiga trackball.

Jack The Bodiless

10:37 / 09.01.04

Hmmm... I know all of those words, but they don't make sense in that order...

So basically I've got to download the emulator (ie, WinUAE), find meself kick.rom and download/transfer that... then what?

Honest, I'm really fumbling my way through the basics, here...

12:52 / 09.01.04

Ok, Jack. Firstly, download and install WinUAE from this site. Select Downloads from the menu on the left, then download the Installer for the latest version from the window on the right. Once done, install on your system.

Now check your email, where I'm sure some kind person has sent you a copy of the kick.rom you need to run games. Download it, and stick it in the same directory as WinUAE.

Now go here and download the game(s) you want. Unzip them into the same directory as WinUAE.

Start WinUAE, and click the ROM tag. kick.rom should be automatically listed there, so click OK to view the old familiar Amiga boot screen. Now press F12, select the 'Floppies' tag, then - on the first line - click the elipse button (just to the left of the 'Eject' button). Use this new window to navigate to where the game you want to play is located, and click on either the single game file or disk one of the game (in the case of Bard's Tale, there are two files so you'll click on Bards_Tale_1.adf). Now click OK. The game should now load.

You may need to play around with some of the settings to get everything working properly, but those are the basics.

13:35 / 21.03.04

also some kind person may send me on at email address pleasssssssssssssssss

13:58 / 21.03.04

Dude. Google. It's not difficult.

But, in case it is, this web page might be able to help you.

17:30 / 23.03.04

God, its hard work. I couldn't get it up and running because - I think - the ram was set too high. I bumped it down to what I remember my amiga having and I got a few games to work. Not easy.

Now I have things working, I'd like to be able to save games. I *think* I need the workbench to format the floppy disks that winuae can make. I think. Buggered if I can find it though.

17:41 / 23.03.04

OK, found it. Now to see if it works...

Jack The Bodiless

11:14 / 24.03.04

Is tricky, this. Will be trying again at weekend when my ISP stops fannying around being a womble.

11:40 / 24.03.04

I'm getting the hang of it. More or less. You have to use the right kickstart rom for the game, though most seem ok with 1.3. And you sometiems have to be careful with disk changes. You have to tell the emulator to eject the disk and wait for the program to realise that, before you insert another disk.

Oh, the fuss and the fiddle. It sure does take me back.

12:08 / 24.03.04

I still can't get the damn thing to display a full-screen image. It's also got a habit of reverting to its original settings every time you close it down.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:10 / 24.03.04

I'm so gonna try this when I'm not drunk... I have BOXES AND BOXES of Amiga games, and really can't be arsed to find where me old Amigas actually are...

12:23 / 24.03.04

Randy - Somewhere in the labyrinthine menu there is a full window option. Doesn't it work? Also, you can save configurations of the machine to be loaded up when you want. I'm not sure if you can get one to automatically load. That would be an obvious feature to include, if you ask me, but what do I know about computers?

Anyway, what are people playing? Remind of those old amiga games, even if I never played them.

I'm enjoying Another World. Great game. These days I can complete a game with little effort but in those days, you had to sweat blood. Stayed still for a second? Dead. Wondered what that worm creature was? Dead. Finger slipped after a ten minute sequence with no chance of saving? Missed on the first shot? Looked at a broken bottle? Failed to sell your soul to the Amiga Deities? Dead, dead, dead, dead.

12:35 / 24.03.04

Full screen sort of works, in that it opens the emu in, er, full screen, but the actual display only takes up a section of it. Huge black borders surround it. Cheers, by the way - I'd forgotten all about being able to save different configs.

Xenon's pretty much all I'm using it for. I got hold of Captain Blood, but after five minutes I was just as frustrated with it as ever. Need to grab images of all the old shooters I used to own - I'm all about 2D shooters at the moment - and want to revisit the Cinemaware games to find out if they've aged as badly as I suspect.

Another World still trial-and-error-tastic, then?

14:25 / 24.03.04

Oh my goodness. I nearly wept when I saw the hand with the disk in it again...