AGA MK3 - Need a guide how to create profiles for games.

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • I successfully setup profile in workbench, but am struggling figuring out how to create profiles for games. I read the Wiki instructions, but still am lost. For workbench I configured workbench to use SuperPlus screen mode and configured Indivision to output to my monitor's native 1600x1200 mode - that works great. For games though, it seems every game uses different size of the screen, sometimes even within the same game. Can someone give me a step by step guide for "dummies" how to create multiple game profiles. For workbench I know the input resolution is set by the workbench screen mode, how do I determine it in games. If I use live mode in games how do I save the changes to a profile? Thank you.

  • Our of curiosity, does overscan affect mode selection?

    No, only the number of lines and the "select on" criteria that you set yourself affect mode selection (you did confirm reading the documentation, but did you read it all?).

  • Ok, so what I did was launch some games, use live edit to size the picture and observe the Nr Pixels and Nr Lines and Wait Pixels and Wait Lines. I did this on variety of games. I ended up seeing that I will need 4 different profiles. 640x512, 640x400 and then duplicate of those but allowing empty space around the borders for games that have overscan. I also have one profile for workbench at 800x600 resolution.


    I struggled with the profile creation at first as I couldn't figure out how to save the profiles. E.g. when I was editing Left, Top, Width, Height in the Adjustments window, after clicking Okay the entered values weren't persisted. It turns out that if I mouse click into the input boxes to enter the numeric values the values don't get persisted. They only get persisted if I tab out of the input boxes or if I use the left right onscreen buttons. This seems like a small bug that likely could be fixed.


    In games I'm able to use the X key in live mode to switch the profiles, which works nicely. Now, how can I use the Min, Max lines to automatically select 640x512 or 640x400? What range should I use?


    Also, how can I update/save profile settings directly from live edit adjustments so that I don't have to manually edit the profile after I exit a game.

  • It turns out that if I mouse click into the input boxes to enter the numeric values the values don't get persisted. They only get persisted if I tab out of the input boxes or if I use the left right onscreen buttons. This seems like a small bug that likely could be fixed.

    This is standard Amiga behaviour. Nothing that we can do anything about.


    Now, how can I use the Min, Max lines to automatically select 640x512 or 640x400? What range should I use?

    You're confusing "screenmode recognition" (which is looking at the input side of the flicker fixer) and "output resolution", which is referred to as "VGA" in the config tool (which might be misleading, because these modes also apply to the digital output).


    The min/max range is purely for the flicker fixer to identify what screen mode the Amiga has been set to. The problem is that there is no other criteria than the number of lines that the Amiga is sending out - most games will run lores or hires, so you can add "on SHires" for a screen mode that the WB uses, but games that set the screen off-center can't be identified with the limited information that the flicker fixer gets during normal operation. That's where the "X" key comes in - you control it manually, because there's no other way.

  • Thank you Jens. I just did some more testing and tried to look at the number at the lower left corner of the overlay display, the second number after "V:". I noticed for most games both PAL and NTSC it shows 313. So I guess this is the value the Indivision uses to identify screen mode?


    I also noticed few odd games:


    Ghost Busters 2 NTSC was showing value 263.


    Full Contact game was showing value 313 during initial credits, then it switched to 625 during the scene that scrolls the story line and then when it shows the martial artist animation against red sun I can't launch the Live Mode overlay at all, and then when the game finally starts Live Mode can be seen again and the value switches to 312.


    Is there a safe range of values for the number of lines to assign to the game profiles?

  • I noticed for most games both PAL and NTSC it shows 313.

    For PAL, the number appears correct. For NTSC, it should be 263. Note that this number is only the number of lines of the "longframe": PAL uses 625 lines interlaced, so one frame is 312, and the other is 313 lines. Likewise, NTSC has 525 lines, divided into 262 and 263 lines interlaced.


    One frame showing 625 lines in one go appears like a plain error. The Amiga chipset allows generating almost any screen mode, and with Indivision AGA MK3, you can even make them visible (like the HighGFX modes, which are totally impossible for any real monitor to display, but great with Indivision).


    Is there a safe range of values for the number of lines to assign to the game profiles?

    While there may be single games that alter the number of lines, I'd expect that 99.999% of them use the standard of PAL or NTSC. Worst thing that can happen is that the programmers went with the short frame instead of the long frame, so our standard is "min 262, max 263" for NTSC and "min 312, max 313" for PAL. If you want to account for more variation that a game might have (and that would be tolerated by almost any CRT monitor), you can widen the range by -/+ five or eight lines, which would be in the range of 2% error. Again, this would be unique to a certain game (which I don't know of!), and it would only widen the amount of games caught by the setting you've chosen. I understand you want to reach the opposite, but again, I am *very* sure that there are no unique numbers of lines to each game. The X key in live config mode is there for a reason :-)

  • The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.