OutcaST

OutcaST
Download(s)	(archive)
Developer(s)
Porting; developer(s)	skeezix
Version	Beta 010
Status	Released and playable
Webpage	OutcaST Homepage

From wiki.gp2x.org

Outcast is an emulator of the Atari ST created by ATARI.

Installation

Copy OutcaST.gpe to your GP2X's SD card -- the root of the card, or anywhere you deem appropriate.
Create a directory on your SD card: /roms/atari-st - all lowercase! Copy .ST and .MSA disk images to this location; .zip versions of these files should be okay as well (though I'm not sure if they work in the first alpha of the emulator :)
The Atari ST has an operating system - this file could be of various versions so we're looking for TOS 1.02 (sometimes called 1.20) ideally, the American or UK versions would be best. TOS 1.04 (1.40) may work, as should 1.0 -- but 1.02 is the best. It might be called TOS.ROM or TOS.IMG or any number of variations, but for our needs, call it TOS.ROM and drop it into your /roms/atari-st folder on your SD card.

Controls

Controls vary by control mode; some things to note..

Menus

Joystick up/down - move selection bar up and down Joystick left/right - page selection bar up and down X - usually means cancel, though varies by menu B - usually means select option, though can vary Read the menus and screens for details.

Gameplay

Default control mode is "Both" Joystick and Mouse at the same time; works pretty well in most cases, but you may need to use other modes sometimes depending on the game/application.

In both-mode, gp2x joystick operates mouse and joystick simultaneously, while

X is fire and A/B are left/right mouse buttons.

In joystick mode, only the joystick is operated and thus X is fire.
In mouse mode, only the mouse is operated and thus A/B are left/right click.
In cursor mode, the gp2x joystick and shoulder buttons operate the ST

cursor keys -- handy for games like Captive and Dungeon Master.

Custom mode is not yet built.
SELECT brings up and dismisses the virtual keyboard; use it for entering

keys or typing into the ST.

START toggles the main runtime options menu.. very important!

Public Domain Roms

You can get games, demos, and utilities on GameBaseST in all legality.

Compatibility List

PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU PLAN TO EDIT COMPATIBILITY LISTS
Please use the new compatibility pages. The continued use of the lists on individual emulator pages will result in a temporary ban!
Thank you for your cooperation.

Status Levels:

Status Level:	Description:
Untested	Has not yet been tested.
Works	Full speed, no noticeable problems.
Mostly Works	Playable, but with noticeable glitches, or not playable because of speed, with no glitches.
Barely Works	Glitches or speed make game unplayable, but it will boot.
Doesn't Work	Will not boot, or crashes on boot.

Version: Version of the emulator used.

Comment: General comments on how well the game worked (or not)

Cracked/Trained By: Who cracked and or trained the game. Because there are a ton of different versions of the games, it's helpful to know which version was used, so if one version doesn't work it would be helpful if you could test another so that other people will know which is a good version to use. Don't use the tosec filename as people could be using different tosec sets and the names could have been changed.

Game:	Status:	Version:	Comment:	Cracked/Trained:
Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh	Mostly Works	0.08	Sound isn't perfect, game runs perfectly otherwise.	L.S.D
Baby Jo	Works	0.08	Sound volume can't get high enough, otherwise game runs perfectly.	Replicants
Goal	Mostly Works	0.10	No in-game sound but works fine otherwise.	Vectronix
International Karate +	Barely Works	0.08	Loads and play perfectly for moment then joystick doesn't work anymore.	Replicants
Kick Off	Mostly Works	0.10	No sound, appears to run perfectly otherwise.	L.S.D
Kick Off 2	Mostly Works	0.10	No sound but works fine otherwise.	Replicants
Lord of Chaos	Barely Works	0.08	After little loading screen stays black and (intro?)music starts playing.	Empire
Magic Pockets	Mostly Works	0.08	Works well, some sound problems. Controls are too sensitive.	Lethal of Hotline
Rainbow Islands	Mostly Works	0.08	Some issues with sound otherwise the controls work perfectly.	The Alien
Sensible Soccer	Barely Works	0.08	Loads to language select, then only flashes colors.	Vmax
Stunt Car Racer	Works	0.08	Sound volume can't get high enough, otherwise game runs perfectly.	no info
Switch Blade	Works	0.08	Game runs perfectly.	Replicants
Turrican 1	Works	0.08	Game runs perfectly.	Empire
Turrican 2	Works	0.08	Game runs perfectly.	no info
Xenon II : Megablast	Works	0.10	Game runs perfectly.	no info

Screenshots

Developer's Notes

Version History

Beta 008 - Hope I didn't break anything

CHG: When you 'queue up' some menu movement (such as hitting 'right' to scroll a page down in the disk listing), hitting a A/X/Y/B will clear the queue so that entering a submenu won't accidentally scroll somewhere unintended
FIX: In A/B/remove submenu after picking disk image, hitting 'X' just exits as it was meant to (B activates); used to also activate so there was no cancel option, which could lead to accidental disk deletions :/
NEW: Mouse+Cursor control mode; when you are in this mode, the joystick operates the mouse and the shoulder buttons are left/right mouse-click. The A/B/X/Y buttons are the 4 cursor keys, and the volume up/down buttons do Insert/Home -- this should make Dungeon Master and similar games much more playable .. mouse and cursor all at once!

Changes for Beta 007 - really getting sweet :)

REM: Sampled audio was not half bad (not half good) in 006, so the stretching or playback frequency is definately a way to go; perhaps theres clipping too -- not in the shifter code of the audio, but in the ST emulation itself and not the GP2x-feeder.. hmm..
CHG: Futtled with the balance between YM and sampled-playback and I think I've gotten it much better (though still not perfect for samples.) Xenon 2 loader, Starglider 1 loader, Turrican 2 intro, all sound not too too bad and no crashing. Xenon 2 YM demo and such all sound great, so things are much better.

StarGlider sounds amazing :)
Spherical.. love that game :)

FIX: If the filename would overlap into the database display column, truncate the display of the filename so as not to cause too much trouble
NEW: Added fullscreen scaling (disabled by default); the runtime menu has the option to toggle this on and off. Scaling is temporarily disabled while virtual keyboard is present
REM: Yes, I'll add config files soon, so that you can specify to default to fullscreen ;) <-- For non-DaveC I bet ;)
NEW: Floppy access indicators; when a floppy drive (A or B) is read, an indicator will show in the bottom right so you know what happened; this can help .. some games might take forever to load, so if you see a disk indicator up, you know its not crashed.. its just loading :)

Fullscreen scaling is disabled while the indicators are showing, so if you have scaling on, and disking is going on, the screen will jump up to make room for the indicator

NEW: Floppy Drive menu; its in the runtime menu (not the Disk Management menu), which you mind find confusing at first..
NEW: In floppy menu, you can now 'eject A:' or 'eject B:'; ie: Pull up runtime menu, hit Floppy menu.

Naturally, inserting a floppy while one is already in, implicitly ejects it as it always has.
This is really just in case you want to eject a disk and reboot, say.. normally you'd never use this option

NEW: In floppy menu, you can now save drive A: or drive B: to a disk image file on your SD card; ie: pull up the runtime menu, hit the floppy menu; if you save the current disk it'll get named FILENAME-save.ST -- if you had loaded GAU_11.MSA and then save it out, it'll be GAU_11-save.ST when saved.

if disk name already has "-save" in it, don't append that; so you don't get GAU_11-save-save-save.st :)

NEW: Changed menu key-repeat handling; right/left on joystick still queue's up a page up/down, and those work pretty quickly; normal up/down on joystick will do key-repeat so that you can scroll up and down quickly, but not as quick as the right/left paging (ie: so that you can still pick disks accurately without sliding all around the one you want.)
NEW: In mouse-mode (or both-mode), the mouse-speed can be double by holding down the left-trigger while using the gp2x joystick to maneuver

perhaps this should be a toggle, so you don't have to hold it down?

NEW: Mouse speed menu; use it to set the default mouse-speed, that gets doubled when you hold left-trigger down

Changes for Beta 005

ToDo: Occasional shimmering displays .. the Pawn loader, Time Bandits player
Known issue: sample playback bad; YM audio pretty good
Known issue: CPU clock speed not yet settable
FIX: Medium resolution now displays with correct colours
CHG: Using DaveC's type-2 control scheme to map 16-way control to 8-way

Joystick Mapping

ie: No dead zones; ordinals count as ordinals always; only a pure diagonal counts as a diagonal.
Added a runtime menu to select which bias mode you want

Changes for Beta 004

NEW: Volume buttons now actually work
FIX: .MSA (ST-compressed) disk images now work fine; took hours to bloody find it, and its one of those stupid-but-invisible buglets :/
FIX: Medium resolution should now work
NEW: In joystick mode, 'Y' is now keyboard SPACEBAR, so that Turrican Xenon 1 are happier ;)
NEW: Sorts the disk picker display (by filename)
NEW: The games database is now auto-scanned and the results cached; ie: when it loads up the picker, it scans the cache and looks up all the games for you; uncached files are scanned and cached. A second column shows the gamenames in the picker. I've got a few hundred disks, and the first load took a minute or two, but subsequent scans (from the cache) took only 2s or so.. a win I think.
NEW: Quitting the emu via the runtime (START) menu will return to the gp2x launcher properly.

Changes for alpha 003

With the virtual keyboard working now, the emu shoud be getting really quite useful! Now if only I get a moment to clean up sound and add some more finesse..

NEW: Virtual keyboard -- needed for entering text or function keys etc of course, but also to get into a lot of games; the crack groups often put loader demos, or multiple games on a disk, and so you sometimes need to hit spacebar, or a number, of function key. Of course, some games require keyboard controls, too.

hit SELECT to toggle keyboard mode on and off
in live mode keyboard will show only 3 rows at a time; scroll the key press selection up or down to scroll the keyboard display!
hit 'X' to pick a key; while the keyboard is active, the mouse and joystick are disabled, but the emu runs along full speed

NEW: Input modes a little more defined

Select a mode using the runtime menu (hit START to bring it up)
Joystick mode - for using the ST joystick with gp2x stick
X for fire
Mouse mode - for using the ST mouse with gp2x stick
A and B for left and right mouse clicking
Both mode - for using both ST mouse and joystick at once using gp2x stick
Cursor mode - for operating ST cursor keys using gp2x stick
Custom mode - for customizing all the buttons; to be done.
While keyboard is active, most modes will be disabled

FIX: YM chipmusic is pretty good now, though sample playback is still asshat; I'll work on that more. Always running out of time ;)
NOTE: Most of the START runtime menu should work fine now; CPU Mhz setting isn't yet available, but throttle and frameskip and disk management and savestates and control modes should all be working!
CHG: Welcome screen text

Changes for alpha 002

FIX: Flicker in the menus nolonger exists. the real display after each draw. Not efficient or using hardware buffering, but hell with it.. menus can be slow.
CHG: Clears the screen and shows a message when firing up the emu, so you know to wait a moment and whats going on, and no junk at bottom
NEW: Enabled throttling by default, to approximately 60Hz though the menu lets you specify 60, or 50 Hz, or even 30Hz to slow things down.. to no throttle at all for max speed (like in alpha 001 default)
CHG: Added a lame comment to loader to make it feel more authentic; I really need to add a sin-boncey-text intro for the real deal :)
NEW: Theres an operational ST keyboard for entering text, that is used for the Make a Savestate operation in the menu, and a few other spots
NEW: Savestates and loadstates should work; while in the emu, hit START to bring up the runtime menu, and hit Make a Savestate; there you can enter a filename with the ST keyboard, and save out the state. You can load the savestate (.ss file) from the Disk Picker just like loading a floppy into the machine is done.

Remember, the run-time menu is toggled on and off with the START button. Use that menu to swap floppies during runtime, play with frameskip, drop out savestates, etc; the disk picker in there can also load savestates and look up what games are on most floppies, etc.