CPCEC a new emulator from cngsoft

[hakorec]

Well, what you say is very nice, but it is not "quick". I have never seen such a tedious and confusing method in any emulator before. What could be the explanation for your choosing such a method? For example, by default in Retroarch, F2 is quick save and F4 is quick load. This is it. Very simply. The emulator must create in the background a save file that is the same as the installed game file but has a different extension. In this way, we can upload even days later when we play the same game. I shouldn't bother giving the file name. If you want, you can change this ridiculous method in later versions by not being lazy and writing some code. respects.

Long answer: ergonomy dictates that no single-keystroke operation must destroy the state of the programme or overwrite any files. Thus all single-keystroke operations should do either harmless actions (for example toggling the sound on and off) or show dialogs that let the user cancel the action before they can have any consequences (f.e. selecting the snapshot you want to overwrite). Requiring two keys to perform an immediate reset or save a new snapshot (just to mention another pair of examples) reduces the risk of accidentally hitting the wrong keys. Besides, the Amstrad CPC isn't a videogame console (a field where your reference Retroarch focuses the most) but a full-blown computer, so there's much more user input than inserting a cartridge, waggling the joystick and mashing the buttons: there's a whole keyboard to emulate, as well as many devices (tapes that you can play, record, stop and eject, discs that you can insert and remove, etc.) that benefit from keyboard shortcuts. Alas, twelve function keys can't do everything, so combinations with Control and Shift become necessary.
Short answer: CPCEC and its siblings are tedious, confusing, ridiculous and lazy, but they're also open source softwares, so feel free to edit their sources to your heart's desire.

We call the save process before any dialogue appears on the screen Quick save, this is what it is for. Programs that ask "Are you sure" for everything are not considered user-friendly. I understand you, you increase the limited number of keys by pressing shift or ctrl. I am using an Xbox controller, so we can at least create a key setting section and assign not only the joystick keys but also features such as quick save to the Xbox controller. If you examine the Ares emulator, you can see what has been done. However, as you know, such small nuances determine the line between the user rejecting the emulator. In this way, your emulator will attack from the lower rows to the upper rows.

[walterg74]

And the idiocy continues...

[McArti0]

However, as you know, such small nuances determine the line between the user rejecting the emulator. In this way, your emulator will attack from the lower rows to the upper rows.

Do you know any other emulator with Double interlace and Blend Scanlines working so well?
You know, this is the BIG WALL determine the ABYSS for me between rejection and choosing CPCEC.

[hakorec]

It has a weird name, "snapshot". What is snapshot? At first I thought it would save a jpg image. This is called savestate in the emulator world.



This is the snapshot.


Brothers, your program has many good aspects, I strive to make it better. If the program was bad, what would I be doing here, why would I waste my time here?

[robcfg]

Just as a note, screen captures are called "screenshots" while the state of the machine is called a "snapshot".

You are showing screenshots, while the emulator saves snapshots.

I hope this helps.

[walterg74]

It has a weird name, "snapshot". What is snapshot? At first I thought it would save a jpg image. This is called savestate in the emulator world.



This is the snapshot.


Brothers, your program has many good aspects, I strive to make it better. If the program was bad, what would I be doing here, why would I waste my time here?

You do not even know proper english and you are questioning the use of a word you are clearly wrong on..?

Yes, you are right, stop wasting your time here (and more importantly other people's time), and go search for aj emulatornfor dumbasses which will be more for you....

Adding one to ignore list...

[hakorec]

Brothers, my first computer in the 80's when I was little was Amstrad CPC 464. I don't have a working Amstrad computer now. Today, I can only use this computer, which has a large library, through the emulator. I tried all the emulators that emulate Amstrad, your program is good but incomplete.

Now, I am posting screenshots of places that are easy to use from other robust emulators, you know whether you can do it or not.


msx computer emulation, this is a computer, not a console. The joystick adjustment is set to my Xbox controller.


Quick save and quick load. Tuned to the Xbox controller. with one click no questions asked.

[McArti0]

I tried all the emulators that emulate Amstrad

which one is the best?

[Nich]

It has a weird name, "snapshot". What is snapshot? At first I thought it would save a jpg image. This is called savestate in the emulator world.

I have been using Amstrad CPC emulators since 1997, and every single one of them that I've tested has always used the term 'snapshot' in this context. I'm pretty sure that every ZX Spectrum emulator uses 'snapshot' in the same context as well. I don't see any reason for the CPC emulation community to change our terminology after nearly 30 years.

[pelrun]

Wow. That's got to be some sort of elaborate troll, surely?

[Gryzor]

Wish I'd seen this earlier, I'd have stepped in. I don't buy it the it was a bad translation. Next time, @hakorec , just use your native language and we'll translate it ourselves. 

[Prodatron]

From my experience:

Emulators, which are using the term "snapshot":
- all CPC emulators I know (because Marco Vieth introduced this in the mid-1990ies with the SNA format for CPCEmu, which is used by all emulators until today)
- ZX Spectrum emulator "ZesaruX"
- Enterprise 64/128 Emulator "EP128Emu"
- PCW Emulator "CPMBox" and PCW16 emulator "Ana Rosa"
- C64 Emulator "Vice"


Emulators, which are using the term "state":
- BlueMSX MSX emulator ("CPU state"; illogical; in fact it means it dumps the complete system content with all sub components)
- OpenMSX MSX emulator ("state", but it mentions both "state" and "snapshot" in the help)
- SdlTrs TRS-80 emulator ("emulator state")

IMHO "state" is much more exotic than "snapshot", at least in the homecomputer emulator world.

[robcfg]

The Dragon and CoCo emulator XRoar uses "Snapshot" for the machine state and "Screenshot" for the image capture.
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say... 

[8tpercent]

Not sure if it's just me but using the current cpcec when the loading of Manic Miner tape finishes, the title screen is skipped and goes straight into the
game... and the major issue being Willy just jumps by himself and the screen/colours are odd.

Tried various CDTs eg.. Manic Miner Software Projects.cdt and all the same issues.

Oddly, if you use the disk version, it's totally fine... eg. Manic Miner Software Projects.dsk

[Jean-Marie]

On CPC-Power, it is reported that the tape version only works on 464 :
manic miner © software projects (1984) (cpc-power.com)
"On CPC 664 & 6128, the character will keep on jumping."

[cngsoft]

Alright, it looks like all the implicit signed chars are gone at last. So let's release a new package:

20240414 -- minor patch fixing unexpected bugs in systems where "unsigned char" is the default setting (reported by CPCbegin on his Raspberry Pi 400), some of them big (for example, 48K cartridge mapping was completely wrong in MSXEC), some of them small (for example, pressing LEFT in the debug screen when the cursor was on the left edge of the register panel would wrap it to the right, instead of staying still as it does when pressing RIGHT on the right edge). The extended AY chip and Z80 interfaces got reworked to allow finer control of audio clocks and memory-mapped I/O, respectively. MSXEC fixes bugs in the MSX cartridge mappers (for example Konami 8K cartridges react to the whole $6000-$BFFF area rather than just to $6000, $8000 and $A000) and the V9938 (the "flash" bit is ignored when the active VRAM page is below the 32K boundary, as in the water scenes of "Maze of Galious" for MSX2), emulates the DAC in "Konami's Synthesizer" and allows patching the current virtual cartridge through IPS files.

[cpcitor]

Hi everyone,

20240414 -- minor patch fixing unexpected bugs in systems where "unsigned char" is the default setting (reported by CPCbegin on his Raspberry Pi 400), some of them big (for example, 48K cartridge mapping was completely wrong in MSXEC), some of them small (for example, pressing LEFT in the debug screen when the cursor was on the left edge of the register panel would wrap it to the right, instead of staying still as it does when pressing RIGHT on the right edge). The extended AY chip and Z80 interfaces got reworked to allow finer control of audio clocks and memory-mapped I/O, respectively. MSXEC fixes bugs in the MSX cartridge mappers (for example Konami 8K cartridges react to the whole $6000-$BFFF area rather than just to $6000, $8000 and $A000) and the V9938 (the "flash" bit is ignored when the active VRAM page is below the 32K boundary, as in the water scenes of "Maze of Galious" for MSX2), emulates the DAC in "Konami's Synthesizer" and allows patching the current virtual cartridge through IPS files.

Propagated to https://github.com/cpcitor/cpcec