Quick Instructions for Amiga Forever 2008 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 2008 expert in no time. Be sure to also read the new Quick Start section of the Amiga Forever documentation.

For 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 2008 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 Demos section of the player (they used to be part of the default 1.3 Workbench configuration)