vAmiga

4.0

Enhancements:

• Workspaces (#870, #872)
• Quick Look support (#873)
• Additional screenshot options (#863)
• Improved snapshot compression (#867)
• LZ4 snapshot compression (#877)
• Improved gamepad detection (#888)
• ASR (Adaptive Sample Rate) (#879)
• Resizable audio buffer (#879)
• Negative run-ahead frames („run-behind“) (#879)
• The emulator core natively supports the ADZ / HDZ format now (#877).
• Media files can be saved in compressed form (ADZ / HDZ) in workspaces.
• gzip can be selected as snapshot compression format.

Bug fixes:

• The audio fast-path was sometimes taken too early (#875).
• ExtendedADF support was broken (#884).
• Folder import was broken.
• vAmiga no longer boots from unbootable hard-drives (#876).
• Fixed a hard-drive boot issue (#882)
• „Insert…“ from the df0 menu does no longer crash (#875).

Code quality:

• All enums were replaced by strongly typed enum classes (#868).
• Safer and more reliable multi-threading (#865)
• Prepared the codebase for Swift 6 (#859)

3.2

Enhancenemts:

• Improved Dashboard (#856)
• User-selectable number formats in inspector (#862)
• Auto-completion for enum-like options in RetroShell (#861)
• Framebuffer screenshots (#863)

Bug fixes:

• The emulator does no longer crash when a dropdown menu in a shrinked toolbar is selected.

Internal changes:

• Switched Swift interoperability from C to C++.
• Encapsulated more data structures and types in the vAmiga namespace.

3.1.1

Fixed an event scheduling bug introduced in v3.1 (#857)

3.1

• vAmiga 3.1 requires macOS 13.5 or above.

Enhancements:

• Build-in 6-channel logic analyzer (#855).
• New dashboard window (#856).
• Multiple inspectors side by side (#854).
• New debug features „finish line“ and „finish frame“ (#853).

Bug fixes:

• Released the handbreak (#857).
• Fixed an NTSC overscan bug (#852).
• Last line in the emulator texture is drawn again (commit fc4c222).

Changes:

• Removed RetroShell debugger command ? host as it listed nothing.
• Added ? thread for inspecting the current thread state.
• Reworked the internal suspend / resume mechanism (9d78747).

3.0

I’m proud to announce that vAmiga is now available as version 3.0! This update introduces run-ahead support (#836), a functionality that had recently been integrated into VirtualC64.

When run-ahead is enabled, two emulator instances run side by side: the primary instance and the run-ahead instance. The primary instance emulates the Amiga as usual, while the run-ahead instance runs several frames ahead and generates the image texture. Both emulator instances stay in sync with a time delay, and any changes in the primary instance, e.g., triggered by a joystick event, forces the run-ahead instance to be recreated. Run-ahead mode is meant for gaming as it considerably decreases the lag between an external event, e.g., a gamepad or keyboard event, and its recognition inside the emulator.

Accommodating this feature required significant changes to vAmiga’s architecture, resulting in a major update to the codebase. While these improvements have streamlined the internal workings of the emulator, they’ve also introduced some bugs - an expected outcome with such a substantial change.

Other enhancements:

• Snapshot compression (#840)
• Loading and saving memory contents (#823)
• Improved Headless app (#839)
• RetroShell as as serial port device (#820)
• Beamtrap debug feature (#817)
• RetroShell commands via the command line (-"<Command>")
• vAmiga can parse SDL controller descriptions, thus supporting a much broader variety of gamepads now (#843).
• Prometheus support (#850)

Bug fixed:

• Fixed a crash when saving a machine state (#833)
• Fixed a bug in the CIA sleep logic (#819)
• Inserting floppy disks failed to work for some file formats such as EXE files (#842).
• Fixed a bug that routed some key events to the Amiga keyboard instead of RetroShell (#842).
• The CIA panel occasionally reported idle times exceeding 100%.
• Fixed a write-protection bug related to hard drives (#844).
• Resuming the emulator in warp mode no longer unmutes audio (#849).
• Fixed an ECS PAL/NTSC switching bug (#851)

2.6.2

• Some config panels crashed when pressing "Revert to…" or "Use as default".
• RetroShell Command amiga defaults was broken in 2.6.1.

2.6.1

• The emulator no longer crashes when loading snapshots via the Open... menu.

2.6

This release is the first of several that mainly contain changes to the internal architecture. My longer-term goal is to port the new emulator architecture from VirtualC64 v5.0 to vAmiga, eventually enabling neat features like run-ahead. Since the architectural changes are considerable, several intermediate releases will be part of this project. The most noticeable changes of this release are related to RetroShell, as the syntax of some commands has changed.