An Amiga week full of surprises! - Mr Nutz, Team 17 and WinUAE

It's always the way isn't it, whenever you take time off either through illness or like last week a much needed break, along comes a news story that makes you feel a bit down beat that you didn't get it done. So what better way to make up for that, than to mention not just one Amiga news story, but three! An Amiga CD32 release from Earok and team ' Mr Nutz ', Team 17 : The Complete Amiga Works by AmigaJay, and a new Amiga emulator beta version ' WinUAE 3.3.0 beta 11 ' from Toni Wilen.

The first release is of course Mr Nutz, an arcade platformer from the Amiga 500 which is a huge game spanning around seven levels per each of the four worlds. It offers rich parallax, rain effects, 3D tunnels and SNES mode seven like scaling - all at a super slick framerate. What's more according to Earok it is an Amiga 500 game that puts most AGA games to shame, so the type of game that makes you think WOW when you play it. The only downside according to Earok is the game is only available up until May. As for the good news thanks to the magic of CD32Load, the game is fully gamepad compatible AND OS Flash free.

Links : 1) Source & Credits 2) Download

The next incredible release, of which I'm seriously missing out on without an Amiga CD32, although I could use an emulator. Is the fantastic ' Unofficial CD32 Release - Team 17 : The Complete Amiga Works' from AmigaJay. What makes this release so.....Good Is the fact that it doesn't just have that classic platformer ' Superfrog ' but it also has Project-X, Body Blows, Alien Breed, Worms and one of the coolest Amiga shooters ' Apidya '.

Further details can be found on the main site HERE including the discussion , with a download available through the EAB FTP located HERE (~Uploads/cd32/)

And finally away from the Amiga CD32 games, it's another Amiga emulator beta release from Toni Wilen, as ' WinUAE 3.3.0 beta 11 '. Although this was released yesterday it does contain a rather long list of change log details, with one of them being CD32 emulation updates, with previously unknown undocumented features. Just perfect for all those games we mentioned above, so rather than fill this article with even more of my ramblings, here's the change log and download links listed below.

Beta 11:

- Screenshot/capture without "before filtering" ticked now uses much faster GetRenderTargetData() function in D3D mode to capture the output.
- Ticked 68060 unimplemented CPU emu checkbox also enabled 68030 MMU instructions.
- Terminate indirect UAE Boot ROM trap threads before unmapping Amiga side memory to prevent random crashes when exiting emulator with traps active.
- Debugger il mask is now accepted in two 32-bit parts, 64-bit values are not supported by debugger input.
- Added gfx_black_frame_insertion_ratio config entry, sets timing between normal and black frames in adaptive sync mode. Default is 50 (50%, normal and black frames have same duration).
- CD32 emulation updates, mostly previously unknown undocumented features:
* - It seems unmapped addresses don't "float", all invalid reads seem to always return zeros.
* - CIA chip select, address bits 12 and 13 are CIA selects. Gary: 0=none,1=A,2=B,3=A+B, Gayle: 0=none,1=A,2=B,3=none, Akiko: 0=A,1=A,2=B,3=B (Very unexpected)
* - CIA address space: Gary: $A00000-$BFFFFF, Gayle: $BFDxxx and $BFExxx, Akiko: $BFE000-$BFFFFF.
* - Custom register mirror at $B90000-$B9FFFF! (This is really weird..)
* - Usual custom register mirror at $C00000-$CFFFFF.
* - Akiko addresses are mapped from $B80000 to $B87FFF (was $B8FFFF) and has 64 byte mirroring (was no mirroring)
* - Akiko ID at $B80000.l is $C0CACAFE (was only $CAFE at $B80002.w, KS checks this address for $CAFE)
* - All write-only registers seem to read same data as nearby read-only register.
* - Interrupt registers only have bits 24 to 31 writable, other bits always read as zeros.
* - Config ($B80024) register has bits 23 to 31 writable, other bits always read as zeros.
* - Subchannel arrived interrupt bit is set at boot for some unknown reason, subchannel index register ($B80018) works strangely and has unexpected value at boot ($C2).
* - Match Akiko C2P behavior with real hardware when reading bytes/words or when doing multiple read passes.
* - When booted with CD inserted: first packet from CD MCU is always "media inserted" packet.
* - $B80028.b reads last received command packet byte.
* - Writing to $B80028.b sends command bytes to CD MCU. (This is not emulated yet and no program uses it)
* - Akiko internal CIAs don't have external TOD input pins. CIA-A TOD which normally counts vsyncs or power supply ticks count rate is selected with $B80020 bit 23 (0=50Hz, 1=60Hz). CIA-B (hsync) timing logic is not known yet but it is also internally generated.
* - Old interrupt request set/clear hacks removed.
* - All CD status return codes (including errors) include door status (open/closed) in bit 0.
* - Contents of unused TOC entry bytes now contain real hardware matching values.

Links : 1) Source 2) Download 32bit 3) Download 64bit