Quick Instructions for Amiga Forever Upgraders

TOPIC

Q: I am upgrading from a previous version. Do you have some tips to get me up and running as an expert really fast?

DISCUSSION

A: If you are already familiar with previous versions of Amiga Forever, here are some focused tips to make you an Amiga Forever 2010 (2010.1) expert in no time. Be sure to also read the Quick Start section of the Amiga Forever documentation. If you don't like reading manuals, the "Tip of the Day" feature provides tips about features that may not always be obvious.

Upgrading to Amiga Forever 2010:

• Amiga Forever 2010 contains significant changes under the hood (e.g. to support the new RP9 editable XML data, to manage CD media, etc.), but generally preserves the familiar aspects of the 2009 interface and settings.
• Note the new little arrow (triangle) symbols under the disks, camera and other symbols in the playback window. These give quick access to useful features (change virtual disk, insert blank disk, mount CD image or physical CD drive, etc.)
• To quickly configure printing, set and configure the EpsonQ driver on the Amiga side, and then set the Windows printer under Tools/Options in Amiga Forever. The EpsonQ driver is already preset in the Amiga Forever 2010 integrated Workbench configurations.
• The WinUAE manual configuration option was moved from the Applications tab into the Tools/Launch Plugin menu. The Applications tab now only contains preset emulation environments.
• In Tools/Options it is now possible to change the Workbench 3.X RAM, to specify additional drives, and to edit other settings. See the context help for additional information.
• When mounting a CD in the CDTV and CD³² configurations, please note that the Amiga system may need to be rebooted in order to autostart a game. This is normal (the original hardware had the same behavior). Use the menu arrow under the power LED to reboot the emulated system.
• Improved screen capture: now saves as PNG instead of BMP (no need to convert file format to use as preview), and has a menu to save, copy to clipboard or open the folder containing the saved files.
• Improved thumbnail drag-and-drop (no need to manually resize images any longer): if the image is not in a supported size (4:3 square pixels: 160x120, 320x240 or 640x480), it is processed automatically (recognizes popular formats like GameBase, TOSEC and HOL double-barrel images).
• For additional information on the RP9 file format, including RP9 editors, see the RetroPlatform Reference and Links pages.

Upgrading from Amiga Forever 2008:

• All games and demoscene productions are now included in RP9 format. To access a file in the player, right-click a title and select Open File Location. If you add or remove files manually, press F5 to refresh the list.
• RP9 Manager (in the Tools menu) exposes new features to import and export games, demoscene productions and other content. If an item is not yet recognized by RetroPlatform Library, it can still be identified and grouped automatically with other disk images in a set by way of its TOSEC file name.
• You can drag-and-drop PNG images and text or PDF files to add thumbnails and documentation to RP9 files. The recommended format for thumbnails is 160x120 (or a multiple), true color, square pixels, but other sizes will work as well.
• The Check for Updates function now also checks for updates to RetroPlatform Library, which is used to recognize and configure games and demoscene productions.
• The "Tip of the Day" balloon contains a multitude of useful tips. If you turned this feature off, you can open the balloon manually from the Help menu.
• Content that doesn't fall under the Games or Demoscene categories is now grouped in the Applications tab (this was formerly named System).
• The Applications tab features new downloadable content, e.g. the popular AmiKit and AmigaSYS add-ons. Click the Download button to download the content, then Play to run it normally. The first time the item runs, it will self-configure based on your choices.
• To set up AmiKit or AmigaSYS go to the Applications tab, click the desired item, then click the Download button. Amiga Forever will download and extract the files automatically to the correct location (which you can access yourself, inside Amiga Files/Shared). When the download is complete, the item is ready for playback. When AmiKit or AmigaSYS are run for the first time, they will ask you a few questions about the preferred setup. If you encounter difficulties during the download/extraction, disable any antivirus software you may have, and retry.
• An existing AmiKit or AmigaSYS installation that you may already have (e.g. in "C:\AmiKit") will not be affected in any way by the new deployment as integrated in Amiga Forever (and which is installed inside "Amiga Files").
• You may also want to explore some new options (Tools menu), which include: Check for updates on startup, Message dialogs, TV video modes, new file type associations, Media Recognition Scores. Click the "?" button in the dialog title bar and then the desired option for context-specific help.

Previous Versions - Windows systems:

• Explore the various settings in the Tools/Options dialog, and their context help
• When previewing a game or demoscene production, click the Help button for additional information on that item
• The Esc (Escape) key has an important function in the new player: press and hold it down for a few seconds to release the mouse (if captured by the Amiga) or to switch from full-screen to windowed mode; a quick press has no effect on the player (if pressed briefly, the key works normally inside the Amiga)
• Recently-launched configurations are listed in the File/Recent menu of the player
• Get familiar with the new player controls: click Previous or Next to swap disks, hold down Previous to reboot, etc.
• Use the Keyboard and Joystick player controls to change your preferred input mode (joystick is enabled automatically, if a joystick is detected)
• To "insert" an unused joystick during a game, simply press its Fire button
• All emulation configurations now run in a slim windowed mode (overscan is automatically reduced, if possible), whereas in previous versions they would take over the entire screen by default
• If you have two monitors, you may want to check the "Use secondary monitor" option
• Full-screen mode now goes in "full window" mode by default, which is compatible with desktop settings (icons are not moved), but may be slower on some systems; to restore the behavior of previous versions, set the "Use hardware full-screen modes" option
• Windowed mode and "full window" modes are slower than the hardware-based full-screen mode which was the default on previous versions of Amiga Forever; while this is usually not noticeable on faster machines, where the emulation always runs in real time, you may want to revert to the faster hardware full-screen settings if using an older PC
• All Amiga Forever configurations that use ADF, ADZ, HDF or HDZ disk images support the option to commit disk changes, or undo them when closing the session; this means you are free to experiment when running games that write to disk, etc.; the one notable configuration that doesn't use undo-enabled drives is the Workbench 3.X environment, which is more productivity-oriented and mounts two directories, rather than disk images
• For any configuration, you can save the state to resume it later; just close the playback window and choose the option to save the state (you don't even need to commit disk changes, you can do that later too, if you wish)
• You can press the Pause button in the player controls or on the keyboard to pause a configuration; in this case the state is not saved to disk, it is simply paused (the window remains open)
• Under the hoods, the player still supports and relies on familiar emulation engines; to access and use emulation configurations which you may wish to retain from previous versions of Amiga Forever, go to the System tab of the player and select WinUAE Configuration
• Drives to be mounted in the Workbench 3.X configuration are now set in the Options dialog (in previous versions, they used to be set at installation time)
• You can now double-click ADF, ADZ, HDF or HDZ disk image files to open (play) them, or open the images from the File menu in the player; once the Manual Playback Options dialog is open, you can drag-and-drop additional disks, and rearrange them in different drives as necessary
• You can install the upgrade version of Amiga Forever even without the previous software installed, however you will need to enter your previous non-upgrade license key (see this page if you lost it)

Additional content:

• There are tons of new games, demoscene productions and gallery documents to enjoy
• KX Light is completely new, and supports additional hardware, as well as hard disk installation
• The Plus Edition contains preconfigured Mac OS X universal binaries and Linux binaries in the "Private" directory at the root of the CD
• The original "First Demos" (Boing, Juggler, Robo-City, etc.) are in the Demoscene section of the player (they used to be part of the default 1.3 Workbench configuration)