@database Nostalgia.guide @$VER: Nostalgia.guide 1.8 (03/09/2000) @(C) 1999-2000 Melina Softworks @wordwrap @node Main "Nostalgia" @{b} #### #### ## #### ## ## ## ###### ## #### ## ###### ## ####### ### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ####### #### ### ### ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## ####### ###### ### ### ## ## ## ### ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ### ## ### ## ###### ## ### ### ## ###### ## #### ### ## ### ### ###### ## #### ## ## ###### ## ### ###### ##### ### ## ## ## ###### ## ## ## ## ## ### #### ### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## ## ## @{ub} @{i}"More than just a GUI..."@{ui} @{" Introduction " link INTRODUCTION} @{"System requirement" link REQUIREMENTS} @{" Installation " link INSTALLATION} @{" Usage " link USAGE} @{" Emulation tips " link TIPS} @{" Greets " link GREETS} @{" Contact " link CONTACT} @{" History " link HISTORY} @{" Known bugs " link BUGS} @{" To Do... " link TODO} @{i}(c) 1999-2000 Melina Softworks@{ui} @endnode @node MENUS "The menus" @{b}@{u}NoStAlGiA@{uu}@{ub} : - @{b}About@{ub} : display the about box. - @{b}Quit@{ub} : Close Nostalgia! @{b}@{u}List@{uu}@{ub} : - @{b}xxx games@{ub} : Lists only the games of the xxx console. - @{b}All games@{ub} : List all the available games. @endnode @node KEYCUT "Keyboard shortcuts" @{b}ESC@{ub} : Close a window or quit Nostalgia! @{b}SPACE@{ub} : Display/Close the full sized display of the preview. @{b}ENTER@{ub} : Run the selected emulation. @endnode @node REQUIREMENTS "Requirements" @{b}@{u}Minimal requirements :@{uu}@{ub} - an Amiga :o) - AmigaOS 3.x - at least a 68020 - High resolution screen (at least 640*480) - some Fast RAM (4Mb should be enough...) @{b}@{u}Recommended :@{uu}@{ub} - 040 or 060 and PPC (not needed by Nostalgia! but by the emulators...) - a GFX board (any WB emulation) - 8Mb Fast RAM - Some roms :o) - these emulators : AmiGenerator, DarcNes, Handy, GBE, WarpSNES, WarpNeoMAME. @endnode @node BUGS "Known bugs" I spent a lot of time for the debugging so I hope there is no more bugs. There is actually no known bugs but if you encountered one, please @{"contact" link CONTACT} me. @endnode @node INSTALLATION "Installation" @{b}@{u}For Nostalgia! itself :@{uu}@{ub} - Simply double click on the installation script. - To uninstall Nostalgia!, simply delete the Nostalgia directory, all the preferences files are kept within. @{b}@{u}For the emulators :@{uu}@{ub} @{b}!!! we assume that "Nostalgia:" is the complete path of the installed Nostalgia! system !!! @{ub} - @{b}AmiGenerator@{ub} : get the archive, uncompress it and copy the executable file in "Nostalgia:bin/. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "amigenerator". - @{b}DarcNes@{ub} : idem but also, copy the file "COLECO.ROM" in the same directory as the executable file. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "darcnes". - @{b}GBE@{ub} : idem. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "gbe". - @{b}Handy@{ub} : idem but also copy the file "lynxboot.img" in the same directory as the executable file. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "handy". - @{b}WarpSNES@{ub} : idem. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "warpsnes". - @{b}WarpNeoMAME@{ub} : idem but the file "NEOGEO.ZIP" must be copied in Nostalgia:roms/NeoGeo. The name @{b}MUST@{ub} be "warpneomame" and "warpkickstart". @{b}@{u}For the roms :@{uu}@{ub} - They must all be copied in their corresponding directories in "Nostalgia:roms/". @{b}NEVER@{ub} put a rom in the roms/ path otherwise it will never appear, place them in their correspondig sub-directory (roms/Nes or roms/ColecoVisio for example). - The roms @{b}MUST@{ub} have the good extension. The actual supported extensions are : - .bin, .smd for Megadrive/Genesis roms - .col for ColecoVision roms @{b}<=== VERY IMPORTANT@{ub} - .sms for MasterSystem roms - .gg for GameGear roms - .nes for NES roms - .pce for PCEngine roms - .gb for GameBoy and GameBoyColor roms - .lnx for Lynx roms - .smc, .swc, .fig, .sfc for SNES roms - .zip for NeoGeo roms @endnode @node TODO "To Do..." Nostalgia! is quite complete but it can be completed a lot : - More emulators support (N64 for ex.) - Resizeable window - Cleaner "running from WB" procedure... - Selectable ROMPATH - Customizable ROM list - More keyboard shortcuts @endnode @node HISTORY "History" @{b}@{u}1.8@{uu}@{ub} : - Version check utility which let you know the version of the installed emulators and possibility now to download the latest release of each emulator directly from Nostalgia, no need to seek for them anymore :o) - Support for WarpSNES 5.0 and WarpNeoMAME 0.5 (needed as ver. 0.4 support is dropped out) - ChunkyPPC.library settings incorporated. (for WarpSNES) - removed the auto-preview after using cursor keys and leaving emulation as it was crashy, will be corrected later. - added cursor key shortcut - a little faster. @{b}@{u}1.75@{uu}@{ub} : - Minor update in order to support latest release of Handy (1.05) @{b}@{u}1.7@{uu}@{ub} : - *Working sorting list menu, you can now display games of one type only.* - Smaller and faster - fixed some bugs and cleaned up the code a lot (thank you Farid) @{b}@{u}1.6ß@{uu}@{ub} : - NeoGeo support added (WarpNeoMAME) - Added some keyboard shortcuts - Added some menus preparing next release (list sorting) @{b}@{u}1.25@{uu}@{ub} : - little update to support new AmiGenerator features - some little corrections @{b}@{u}1.2@{uu}@{ub} : - Many bug fixes - Fixed the stack problem with DarcNES, now the sample saving option is possible :o) - GUI rewritten to kill latest bugs - Found a workaround for the "running from WB" problem - Display preview option added - Smaller and faster execution - Corrected the bad refresh problem @{b}@{u}1.0@{uu}@{ub} : Localisation added. Fixed the bug that made Nes and Lynx roms using GBE... silly one ! Fixed a bug due to some extension in lower case (such as .bin) Lynx emulation working correctly now ! No more stack problems @{b}@{u}0.9ß@{uu}@{ub} : first Aminet release. Lots of bugfixes, normally everything should be ok now. WarpSNES support added. @{b}@{u}0.8ß@{uu}@{ub} : Never released. Working but still very buggy. @endnode @node CONTACT "Contact" All the universe of Melina Softworks there : @{b}http://perso.club-internet.fr/wmoghrab@{ub} You can contact me via e-mail or snail-mail : @{u}e-mail@{uu} : @{i}wmoghrab@club-internet.fr@{ui} @{u}snail@{uu} : @{i}Walid MOGHRABI 28 Square Michelet 13009 MARSEILLE - FRANCE@{ui} @endnode @node GREETS "Greets" @{b}Many greetings to those wonderful people :@{ub} - AmiDog for his emulators. - Steffen Haeuser for WarpSNES. - Timm S. Muller for his wonderful GuiGFX.library. - BadMax, Titan, Lanza, Tcheko, Kakace and the whole Artbas guys for their help. - Kaiser/iGlOo and FlyBuSt/iGlOo for the moral support. - Farid for his precious help. - The BlackSNESGui author for the icon I stole (sorry guy but this is a very nice one :op) - All the people who send me bug reports.... @endnode @node TIPS "Tips" - If you have a fast PPC, set the frameskip to 0 for DarcNes, it will be smoother. - A lot of features are "by default" in the emulators so sometimes, it is better to let them choose for you. - Nostalgia! may have some slowdowns while launching/changing prefs/exiting. This is because Nostalgia! do some internal stuff on the hard drive such as loading/saving prefs or listing the roms. This is not a bug and the slowdown will depend a lot of how far your HD is and how much roms you have. - Currently, there is only one emulator that is able to save a preview of the games but I contacted the authors and they are working on it. By the way, if you want to do your own preview (with a screen grabber for ex.), you can do it, simply call the preview like "gamename.smp" and put it in the samples/ directory of Nostalgia!. Don't bother about the file format, the datatypes are used to read it... By the way, you should prefer IFF for speed and compatibility reasons. - WarpSNES is slow for roms loading, be patient, this is NOT a bug from Nostalgia! - WarpSNES is using RTGMaster.library, the first time you launch it, it pops up a screenmode requester. If you encounter difficulties to run it with a 8bit screen, try with a 15/16 bit one. - Actually, Handy, DarcNES, WarpSNES, WarpNeoMAME and AmiGenerator are able to save preview if you press HELP in game. @endnode @node USAGE "Usage" It couldn't be simplier ! Run Nostalgia! by double clicking on it's icon. The rom files will be listed and sorted by type, just select one and click on the "GO !" button. That's all ! If there is a preview available, it will be displayed. You can modify somme settings in the "Emulator settings..." menu. While clicking on the "About" button, you will be sent to the Version Check utility that will let you verify all the versions of the installed emulators. For that purpose, Nostalgia will check every emulators installed, it takes a lot of time as many of them are big executables (more than 1Mb) but don't worry, this action is done once only so that you can access the Version check utility as soon as you wish without doing the whole procedure each time. From there you'll be able to directly download the latest release of these emulators. @{"Keyboard shortcuts" link keycut} @{"Menus " link menus} @endnode @node INTRODUCTION "Introduction" What is Nostalgia! ???? Well..., I wasn't satisfied when using using some GUIs for some emulators as I was fed up to use the shell sometimes... What I wanted to do is a very intuitive system that let me launch any game I had without having any command line to type or having to know a huge list of parameters. I didn't want also to care about the name of the emulators such, for example, having to know that if I want to play to a SMS rom, I must use DarcNes... I wanted also a system that was able to show me a preview of the game I want to play. So I did Nostalgia! With Nostalgia!, the only thing you have is the possibility to choose a game and launch it without having to think to anything else. @{b}@{u}Here is the features list of Nostalgia! :@{uu}@{ub} - simple nice and intuitive GUI - support for many emulators which cover a lot of consoles, more to be added (PSX for ex.) - saves all the options for each emulators (you don't have to change them all the time) - preview of game (if available) - auto scaling/dithering of previews and pictures (yes! you can use Nostalgia! on an AGA screen with few colors) - auto loading/saving of the preferences - easy to install and easy to remove (no assign added, no files copied to the system) - sortable list for a better reading. - Version check utility and direct download center. - FREE !!! @endnode