Process of creating 'quick & nasty' .dat fix.
I have created a .dat using Clrmamepro dir2dat utility of my current Gamebase Amiga Game folder.
Checked it against the OLD Gamebase Amiga v1.6 .dat downloaded from internet.
My created .dat is 100% correct and the setup/formatting is exactly the same.
I will keep a copy of this to be used as an UNINSTALL if someone wanted to UNDO my QuickFix.
Now I will start modifying my created .dat to put multi disk games into combined game disks ZIP aka QuickFix.
Edit1:
Ok, my QuickFix .dat modifies games up to letter B at the moment so I will stop now and run some tests to make sure everything is working as hoped before continuing on.
My scripts will be all shot to hell but I'll try and quickly patch something together based on what .Mad. posted earlier in the thread. (Thanks for that).
Edit2:
Alright, I got scripts for WinUAE, FsUAE, and WinFellow working great.
FsUAE and WinFellow I think are restricted to 4 floppy disks at a time using the 4 floppy drives which some games may have problems with?
WinUAE using the diskswapper feature you can use atleast 20 floppy disks and all from 1 floppy drive so won't have any problems with games.
Everything is working great so far, so I will resume work on the .dat for the rest of the games. There are just a few filenaming issues I have come across half of which would also be a problem if you were 'sending ZIPs' instead. These would need to be fixed in the .mdb which I am not touching at this stage with my 'quick & nasty' fix.
Edit3:
I'm up to G now, it takes a while, I am going through the list manually, don't think there is a quicker way. Will put a few hours in here and there as my free time persists and see how I go...
Edit4:
I'm up to O now, so past the half way mark.
Edit5:
Now on T so pretty much the home stretch... Got some real life things to do but might finish this up tonight.
Edit6:
Ok, all done. Install and uninstall .dats are finished. I am in the process of writing up documentation/instructions then I'll do some testing and put a package together which I plan to post tomorrow if no interruptions.
Edit7:
Documentation and testing is taking longer than expected. I am about half way through it and will keep chipping away... should release in next 24 hours.
Edit8:
Been away from the computer today. Documentation nearly finished, one lot of tests left to do, and then I got about three scripts to finalise (might need some more but that's a start anyway) so should be released within next 12 hours.
Edit9:
Documentation about 90% finished, one last complete test run to do, FS-UAE script finished (can load up to 20 floppy disks at a time), two more other emulator scripts to finish, might be another 24 hours before release as I maybe away from the computer again.
Hopefully I will be able to post U.R.L's without the error message? <JIMBO>
(I still can't post U.R.L's at the moment).
When I first run a multi disk game Gamebase Amiga will ask me which adf inside the zip file is disk 1. This is also because I have not modified the mdb. This only happens the first time you run a multi disk game and from then on it will be recorded in the mdb.
My observations so far going through the file names, which maybe helpful information for someone working on creating a new Gamebase Amiga:
* Might be good idea to put at end of filenames disk01 disk02 disk03 etc or diskA diskB diskC etc only as disk1 disk2 disk3 could possibly create problems when Gamebase extracts and sends files to emulators. IE; disk1 disk10 disk11 disk2 disk3 etc... They are then out of order. <Edit: This might not be a problem since I can do some reordering while manually modifying the .dat which seems to work fine so far.> I would suggest diskA diskB diskC etc since I don't think any game has more than 26 disks?
* Also using underscores instead of spaces in filenames could be a good idea.
* Amberstar seems to have both installer disks and game disks. Gamebase Amiga is linked to the installer disks. Honestly no idea how this game works as I have never launched it but maybe something might need to be looked at here?
* WinUAE feature called 'diskswapper' is really what you want to be using for multi disks. Unfortunately this means you cannot have , (commas) in your filenames. This means some game files currently in Gamebase Amiga need renaming.