Hatari on tablet device

[kevcal;]

@Catmando re the UI on the original Hatari:
I have always found the mouse capture a bit weird.. don't know how it could be improved; hard to describe but I often run out of room depending where the mouse was relevant to the window. Think Steem had a way better UI, but Hatari wins in every other feature.
Also generally the gui looks dated, guess it's because it's using SDL and not native dialog boxes..?

Don't get me wrong, wish I was clever enough to write emulators!

@Squall
Yeah whatever you want to work on is great, I'm just happy that someone's ported it over.
Looks like I need to play around with hataroid a bit more then
Thanks for your work so far!

Actually just played a single hole of microprose golf on hataroid.. forgotten how much fun it was..

[MeowZedong]

Another thing: I'd like to see a "keep screen awake" option. Useful for watching demos.

[Eero Tamminen]

I have always found the mouse capture a bit weird.. don't know how it could be improved; hard to describe but I often run out of room depending where the mouse was relevant to the window.

Steem does mouse grab when you click its window. It suits better to Windows mode of needing mouse click to (keyboard) focus a window.

On Linux key-focus-follows-mouse windowing policy is more common and with that mouse grabbing in windowed mode is mostly a nuisance.

You can in Hatari toggle mouse grab with AltGr+M (on Linux), but IMHO better is just to go to fullscreen with F11 (fullscreen has implicit mouse grab).

[squall]

Thanks for helping test guys,
I've pushed a new version onto the play store (give it a couple of hours to propagate through).

There's a new full screen stretch option, fixes for the border and status bar options and fix for the audio crash.

I'll add an option for keeping the screen awake in the next build, but it'll require another android permission.

[catmando]

catmando - I forgot to mention last time, try changing the joystick size and see if that helps the diagonals. I'm going to work on a second on screen joystick style soon.


As for the ui,
- for functionality, I really need feedback from users on what they want to see (even mockups would be good), it currently does what I need, but might not be for everyone
- visually, I really need an artist/designer to help out with that since my coder art is never going to cut it

Thanks I'll give the joystick another go.

As for the UI, personally I think it should be as ST-like as you can make it. I think it makes the emulator easier to use, especially to those who are familiar with the real machines. I'd possibly be able to help you with some of the design elements if they needed changing or finessing.

[MeowZedong]

squall:
This is not terribly important, but is it possible to support KitKat's new immersive mode? The screen is already quite stuffed with all the GUI elements and getting rid of the navigation bar would increase the precious screen real estate, especially on smaller tablets. (I understand that there are more pressing matters on your to-do list and I have no idea how hard it would be to implement this. This is more like a "nice to have" feature…)

[Greyfox™]

An image I had that was originally been designed for a mug, was an Atari ST keyboard layout in pixel form, I could with no problems, conform this for a keyboard layout display for the Hataroid if you liked? below is a preview of it, see what you think and message me to go further with it

Keyboard Preview.



Mapping Keys to the image I suspect wouldn't be difficult to do, but you have all the necessary keys on the gfx here to do it with ease. not need for second set, the Atari Castaway Emulator using a similar thing.

http://castaway.sourceforge.net/index.html

and here:

http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/castaway.html

I run the Castaway Emulator on my PSP with not issues with keyboard inputs hope this helps

[squall]

@MeowZedong - I'll investigate if it's possible to access newer android functionality, but still be compatible with the min spec 2.3.3.

@Greyfox - Thanks for the image. I had no idea you did the original picture! It's actually perfect for what I wanted to do and was actually the first thing I put in hataroid when I did the initial port a couple of years ago. But I got the picture from this link and thought it was someone else who did it:

http://atari-forum.com/wiki/index.php?t ... een_Menace

If you haven't had a chance to try the android port out yet, here's how it looks (you can pinch zoom to change the scale and move it around to where you want it on the screen on the device)

[Hippy Dave]

I noticed that Atari and the Fuji symbol are displayed on the keyboard. To avoid legal hassles, these should be removed. Also EmuTOS is the only legal ROM that Hatariod can be distributed with. I don't have a tablet, but will be looking at Hataroid source code because I look at Hatari source code, and because I like looking at source code.

BTW I find myself pronouncing Hataroid as 'a toroid'

[squall]

@HippyDave

- I'll remove the logo and text in the next version to be safe.
- I don't bundle any tos roms with the app (not even EmuTOS). It's up to the user to put it on their device themselves.
- Some of the code is a bit hacky and messy since it was thrown in quickly so don't look too hard Feel free to ask if you have any questions about the source.

[Eero Tamminen]

Also EmuTOS is the only legal ROM that Hatariod can be distributed with.

For best compatibility, latest CVS snapshot of EmuTOS should be used: http://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/snapshots/

Since the last 0.9.1 release, I've contributed support for old line-A functions to it, which fixes several old games, maybe demos too.

One should just remember to use 192k images for ST emulation, 256k images for STE emulation and 512k EmuTOS images for TT/Falcon.

I normally use 512k images for everything, but not everything works with them as they take more RAM and old things expect stuff to be at certain addresses. For TT, EmuTOS supports only ST-resolutions, for Falcon it supports also 256-color resolutions. HiColor and DSP support are missing from EmuTOS, but Hatari's DSP emulation would anyway be too heavy for tablet as it needs > 2Ghz CPU to run well.

[squall]

I've pushed a new version of Hataroid, should come through the store soon.
Main changes are support for turbo (fast forward), keep screen awake option and lots of bug fixes.

@MeowZedong - I'm updating my android sdk's so will put in the immersive feature in a later update (will probably need to get you to help test it out privately when I add it since I can't easily test it myself).

@Eero Tamminen - Thanks for the info, I'll see how big EmuTOS is compressed and look at adding it to the apk if it's not too big.

[MeowZedong]

I've pushed a new version of Hataroid, should come through the store soon.
Main changes are support for turbo (fast forward), keep screen awake option and lots of bug fixes.

Great. Keep screen awake and fast forward are very welcome additions. Btw, the fast floppy mode does not make any noticeable difference, is this correct?

@MeowZedong - I'm updating my android sdk's so will put in the immersive feature in a later update (will probably need to get you to help test it out privately when I add it since I can't easily test it myself).

Sure. I will gladly do this.

[squall]

Opps yeah fast floppy mode wasn't getting set correctly. I've fixed that now, but I'll push it once I do some more changes (don't want to annoy people with so many updates all the time).

[squall]

New version with hard disk support and the fix for the fast floppy access has been pushed to the store.

[Greyfox™]

great work mate..many thanks for such work

I have a simple question maybe you can answer/

with different versions of TOS out there , I found in order to run certain software (old) I have to rename the e.g. Tos_1.62.rom file to "tos.rom" each time I wish to change to a certain tos file in order to make certain software compatible (The B.I.G. Demo, uses TOS 1.04) in order to run, so I had to rename the "Tos1.04.rom to Tos_rom in order to get it working, but had to remove it to change to another Tos rom, will there be option implemented that you can select a different TOS roms, from a list in the one directory, again..e.g of this Hataroid/Tos/*.rom where it will detect all TOS rom files and allowed them to be selected from the Systems tab..rather then having to rename each one every time to Tos.Img or Tos.rom etc.. I can live with it, but would know it would make it easier to get straight in there to the untrained eye

again amazing work and really loving this emulator, you've done it proud

p.s. Another possible thing to consider for later releases, the ability to have Scanline modes and CRT modes in the display tab, and if possible created a Stretch mode or 16.9 mode..would be epic.. I know I'm ranting on about it..just a few suggestions for you

All the best

Grey.

[squall]

@Greyfox:
Just wondering are you using the version posted here or the one on the google play store?

- You don't need to do any renaming of TOS roms on the play store version. You just select the one you want to use from the file browser.
There's currently an ST rom and an STE rom option so you don't have to keep switching, but I can store the last folder you used for the TOS rom and you can pick the rom from there (pretty much like a list option, but with one extra click - and it's quick for me to put in as well)

- Yeah, I'm planning to add different screen filtering modes (like scanlines at some stage).

- There is already a "full screen" option which will stretch the output to the full screen (image will be squished though if you're on a 16:9 device). It sounds like you're using an older version

The more suggestions, the better we can make the emulator

[Hippy Dave]

The more suggestions, the better we can make the emulator

Hi, I was looking at the source code. You certainly have done much work.

I noticed in preferences.xml that pref_sound_playbackquality_entries is defaulted
to 22050 Hz sample rate (Hatari is normally 44100 Hz). A sound sample rate of
44100 Hz or 48000 Hz will sound the best and may actually boost the tablet
performance ( lowering Hatari sample rate saves less than 1% cpu load if at all ).

To get even better sound one can... sound_synchronize_enabled

To get Low Latency sound one can launch Hatari from the command line:
hatari --sound-buffer-size 20
or what I use on my 1GHz Pentium3
hatari --sound-buffer-size 10
(Maybe this could be a Hataroid default)

To get the best video performance for most games and demos (low resolution mode):
hatari --max-width 416 --max-height 312 --statusbar off --drive-led off --monitor tv

Note that I don't have any sound, video, or performance issues with
Hatari on my slow 12 year old computer. No compromises.

My compilation tweaks:
cmake -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING="-march=native -O3 -pipe" -DCMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING="--as-needed --strip-all" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/user/hatari ..

[squall]

@Hippy Dave

- I originally had 22050Hz as the default as my phone wasn't that fast when I first started this and the fact that most phones have terrible speakers so most people wouldn't hear the difference. I'll do some tests with the higher rates and see how much effect it has (especially since the driver usually needs to convert it back to the device's native sample rate).

- Thanks for the latency tips, I'll try those out. The only thing that's unfortunate is that the Android OS (and the hardware drivers) has always had bad latency so the changes might not make much difference (there's talk every new android release about improving audio latency, but there's still issues).

- Thanks for the compilation flags. I have most of those set already. I've never seen pipe before, but seems like it helps compilation times so I might try that too.

[Greyfox™]

Hi Squall, Yes I was using the version you released here and have since downloaded from the Play Store, it seems to much much better now, so Thank you very much, I've given it a nice review for you also

love the new release cheers

Ps any plans to include "zip" support for ST disks rather than the .st unpack of disks? Before play?

[Cyprian]

Hi squall, thanks for that update.
Below you can find my improvement request:
- Pause emulation button - to pause emulation without closing App;
- "Ctl" button beside "Alt", "LShft" buttons. "Ctrl" + Mouse is used to move files between folders/drivers;
- "Enter" button beside "Y", "N", "1", "2" buttons - to quick close GEM dialog boxes;

Zoom mode:
- When "Full Screen" option in Settings-->Display is ticked, there is no full screen icon.
- new button - Reset zoom settings - to quick restore initial screen zoom/position when user has mess with size/scaling screen
- In that mode would be cool to have a screen without any GUI elements (they could be hidden after e.g. 5 seconds). It would improve the user experience during watching Demos

Joystick mode:
- In that mode would be cool to have a screen without any GUI elements besides the arrows and fire button. It would improve the user experience during playing Games

Mouse mode:
- would be cool to have a feature: double tap on the screen interpreted as double left mouse button click.


thanks and keep doing great job

[squall]

@Greyfox
- I'll add an option in the file browser (either long press or a select button) to pass the zip file directly rather than select a file within it (it currently autodetects if there is only one st disc in the zip file, it'll use the zip, otherwise it'll let the user choose a st disc inside the zip)

@Cyprian
- I'll add a pause button (do you want this on screen or in the action menu since the screen is already so cluttered)?
- I'll add an option to toggle the extra buttons you've requested (since there's so many buttons on screen already)
- I'm planning to do a complete overhaul of the UI in a later version. I'm thinking of having slide out panels so people can easily hide/show buttons as well as being able to assign keys and functions to any of the ui buttons.

- Full screen icon - Yeah, I disable the icon since full screen is meant to completely fill the screen, so the user can't move or scale it themselves.
- If you want a mode that uses the device's aspect ratio, but still allow you to move and scale, I can add something like that.
- Reset zoom - this is something I've wanted as well I also want to put in a button to toggle between some common presets.
- I'll have a look at the best way to toggle complete hiding the of the UI

- I'll put an option to just show joystick and fire button.

Mouse mode:
- can you try "Mouse Buttons (direct)" in the options? That mode is better for GEM applications and allows you to double click by double tapping. (I think it still requires some tweaking to improve it though)
- tap -> left
- double tap -> double click
- tap and hold two fingers, one after another in quick succession, then release (same as on an apple notebook) -> right click
- tap two fingers -> left + right click

There's another mouse mode I've been wanting to implement when I get some time, and it works like the mouse in PocketCloud (remote desktop) on android.

[squall]

deleted accidental double post

[Cyprian]

- I'll add a pause button (do you want this on screen or in the action menu since the screen is already so cluttered)?

good question, it can be on the screen or in the menu - somewhere between "Disk", "Reset", "Settings", "Quit", "Help" options.

- I'll add an option to toggle the extra buttons you've requested (since there's so many buttons on screen already)
- I'm planning to do a complete overhaul of the UI in a later version. I'm thinking of having slide out panels so people can easily hide/show buttons as well as being able to assign keys and functions to any of the ui buttons.

that's a cool idea

- Full screen icon - Yeah, I disable the icon since full screen is meant to completely fill the screen, so the user can't move or scale it themselves.
- If you want a mode that uses the device's aspect ratio, but still allow you to move and scale, I can add something like that.

Actually current setup, when ones either can scale/zoom the screen (Full screen icon) or desktop is stretch to the screen ("Full Screen" option in Settings-->Display) is fine for me. I just would like to have a mode for watching Demos - when the screen is not covered by any GUI icons (they can be hidden as you mentioned).

- Reset zoom - this is something I've wanted as well I also want to put in a button to toggle between some common presets.
- I'll have a look at the best way to toggle complete hiding the of the UI
- I'll put an option to just show joystick and fire button.

that's a cool idea

Mouse mode:
- can you try "Mouse Buttons (direct)" in the options? That mode is better for GEM applications and allows you to double click by double tapping. (I think it still requires some tweaking to improve it though)
- tap -> left
- double tap -> double click
- tap and hold two fingers, one after another in quick succession, then release (same as on an apple notebook) -> right click
- tap two fingers -> left + right click

that is exactly what I need thanks

There's another mouse mode I've been wanting to implement when I get some time, and it works like the mouse in PocketCloud (remote desktop) on android.

unfortunately I don't know how it works but nice to see additional options

[JLsoft]

squall, registered here -just- to thank you so much for working on this and filling a needed 'Great emulators on Android' gap

While I'm more of an Atari 8-bit guy, I've had a ton of fun the last few days playing random games, along with the few games I originally had for my ST, in this emu. I really like how you've handled the onscreen keyboard, and really wish more emulators would do a similar thing of actually having the original layout shown (and useable). I was also really surprised how speedy it can be on my old-ish devices. Also, even though it doesn't support hardware controls/key/button mapping (yet?), using bluetooth gamepads (with apps to map them to touchscreen touches) has been working great, since the overlay UI is nicely laid out and uncluttered so far.


Thanks so much again for doing this (and also making it a free port )