New games database for emulator users

By Chris Williams. Published: 24th May 2006, 23:39:01 | Permalink | Printable

Never lose a virtual floppy again

A retro-Acorn games website has set up a database of popular titles and linked it with Archimedes emulator Arculator. Frank Wockenfuss's Wocki website is hosting ArcGB, an application to store and manage disc images - copies of floppy discs.

Frank said: "I've released a frontend called ArcGB for running any game discimages with Acorn emulators on Windows - it currently only works with Arculator.

"The goal of ArcGB is to gather all available game discimages for Acorn Archimedes emulators in one database for easy access to the content. With ArcGB it is very easy to play the game of your choice in your Acorn emulator."

The database includes thumbnails of the games in action, and was designed to take away the hassle of installing ADF images and configuring an emulator to find them.

He added: "Clicking the game of your choice will start the configured emulator. All you need to do is to wait until the bootup sequence is over, and then click on the floppy icon for drive 0:. This will open the correct disc image."

A punter on the Wocki site forums was recently stung after he purchased a dubious CD of game disc images, as he needed RISC OS 3.10 to run the titles. However in amongst the software piracy are people returning to RISC OS after reading about Acorn emulation, including one Windows and Linux software developer.

• Arculator is now up to version 0.7. The latest release includes an updated ArculFS, improved emulation of the video system to include multisync mode support, and a few other tweaks and bug fixes. Disc writing, for example, now works again.

Links

ArcGB software

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Discussion

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Erm that thread about the developer is from 2002

Not really a recent return is it?

highlandcattle on 25/5/06 9:37AM
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I wonder how many hundred people have come back to using RISC OS because of emulation.

Hmm..

Any?

Oh well.

Spriteman on 25/5/06 12:19PM
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I wonder how many people have come back to RISC OS and bought any legitimate software to run on under emulatation?

Just like for Speccy and C64 emulators, people think "they obviosuly aren't around any more", and then consider its ok buy a CD of every ripped off comercial program for 2 quid, because its not hurting anyone.

druck on 25/5/06 12:34PM
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I bought datapower2 from rcomp because of emulation. I would not without emmulation.

I write my own now so I dont buy software.

Cheers Bob

nijinsky on 25/5/06 2:08PM
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These are all EX-commercial games though aren't they?

AW on 25/5/06 8:43PM
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There are almost no ex-commercial games around, because all the old games are now sold for mobile phones.

JGZimmerle on 26/5/06 11:11AM
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spriteman: as you are so anti risc os these days why to you bother coming to this potty website to leave your boring pointless comments?

nex on 26/5/06 11:55AM
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Some people seem to have trouble letting go

fwibbler on 26/5/06 12:15PM
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JGZimmerle:

Not sure how you'd play elite on a mobile...

But if you can then *cool* :-D

ROHC on 26/5/06 12:38PM
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You could run easiwriter on an ipaq 5 years ago. So I don't see how a game could not run on a similar poweered phone. I dont have the source but it WAS done.

Cheers Bob

nijinsky on 26/5/06 1:50PM
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I don't think RISC OS games are sold for mobiles are they?!

AW on 26/5/06 7:36PM
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I've some experience with the Amiga world and the effects of emulation there. I have to say it's been on the whole positive. Initially I was quite annoyed by the whole affair, thousands of people requesting "ROMS" etc. However, a few years in, there's another group of people who have most definately come back to the Amiga scene as a result of emulation whetting their appetite. The Amiga.org forums reguarly detail people who are trying to get their new EBay purchases up and running after cutting their teeth on emulation. Although some people have bought hardware for a more authentic game playing experience, others have got in to coding, fiddling, general internet usage, with their "new" machines. It seems to have encouraged an increasing band of loyal users, who seem very willing to open their purses and are very active in the debate about next generation Amiga systems, OS 4 etc.

Ginger2 on 26/5/06 8:53PM
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I do not use a mobile nor do I play games on a computer, so I would not really know.

An interesting thought what you asked "AW".

If RISC OS game are sold to mobiles, then they would be well known and popular?

Wouldn't that be great if mobile now saw these game on a real RISC OS computer? :-)

Steve.

--

Sawadee on 26/5/06 8:55PM
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They can see BBC games on mobiles "Sawadee"

AW on 26/5/06 11:34PM
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Nex: I'm just sad to see emulators out-performing native hardware. It's really a sign of how far we've slipped behind the competition. In fact, do we compete anymore? :-(

-- Sprite

Spriteman on 1/6/06 1:15PM
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