This information (and the screenshots) is quite out of date. The good news is that the current procedure is much more streamlined 🙂
FS-UAE Launcher with many game entries from the Open Amiga Game Database
FS-UAE Launcher works great with the Open Amiga Game Database. When you enable the game database feature in FS-UAE Launcher, the following nice things will happen:
- FS-UAE Launcher downloads game information from the online database.
- Game entries appear automatically in your FS-UAE Launcher, provided you have recognized game files on your system.
- You’ll automatically get nice screenshots and covers in FS-UAE Launcher.
- The games are correctly set up in advance, and you can just click “Start” to start the games without fiddling with Amiga configuration.
No games are stored / distributed via the database. You need to have recognized floppy images, CD-ROM images and/or WHDLoad installations on your system to use the database in a meaningful way.
This page will guide you through enabling the database (When the feature is out of beta, the setup process will be smoother).
Step 1 – Install FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher
Download and install the most recent version of FS-UAE for your system from https://fs-uae.net/download.
FS-UAE is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and OpenBSD 🙂
Step 2 – Scan your system for recognized game media
In order for the online database to find your games, you need to let FS-UAE Launcher build a local database of your Amiga files (ADF disk images, etc).
Start FS-UAE Launcher, and open “Scan Files and Configuration”, like this:
The following dialog should then appear:
You must then ensure your .adf files (etc) are somewhere within one of the listed folders. You can of course add additional folders to the list of folders to scan. Note: FS-UAE will also find .adf files inside .zip archives.
Click on the scan button to perform a scan of the listed folders (including subfolders).
Step 3 – Get yourself an oagd.net username and password
If you have not already registered, go to https://oagd.net/user/register to register for a new account. (In the future, you’ll likely be able to use the database without having an account, but a user registration is required during the beta).
Once you have got your username and password, continue to the next step.
Step 4 – Enable the database feature in FS-UAE Launcher
Start FS-UAE Launcher, if not already running, and open “Preferences”.
Select Experimental Features” in the list to the left, and change “Enable online database support” to “On”, like this:
Close the dialog, and then you need to re-start FS-UAE Launcher for the change to be applied.
Step 5 – Enter username and password
Open Preferences again, and click on the new Game Database entry. Here you must type your registered username and password:
Close the dialog when you have entered your username and password.
Step 6 – Refresh the game database
Simply click on the highlighted button to get the latest updates from the online database.
When this is done, you’ll automatically get game entries in your game list based on what games were found on your system 🙂
Step 7 – Enjoy 🙂
Have fun with the system! – and please do report any problems 🙂
Contributing to the Database
For the initial version, users can contribute changes from the web interface at http://oagd.net/. For more information about how the configurations work, and how to correct games which are not set up correctly, see online database editing. I have also created some guidelines for contributing images. If you are interested, please see how to contribute for more information on how you can help make the database better 🙂
Troubleshooting
It is possible some game variants are not configured correctly (yet). If you encounter a problem, please either try to fix it (and submit a fix on oagd.net), or report the problem in a comment (you need to log in to the web interface with your username and password first).
If a game does not appear as expected, this may be due to one or more disk files being modified. The database will only recognized unmodified ADF files.
Another reason a game may not appear is that you have a set of ADF files which are not in the database. TOSEC for example has often several different version of each disks, and not *all combinations* of disks for a multi-disk game will appear in the database.
If everything else fails, please feel free to join the live channel and ask your question there. We’ll try to help you as good as we can 🙂
Hey Frode – Would it be possible for you to provide some details regarding the API which you’ve developed for the OpenGames Database?
I sent you an email some time back but it mustn’t have got through. Just drop me an email if you want some more info, instead of clogging up this thread.
Thanks.
Apologies for forgetting about your e-mail, sent you a response now
Thank you for devoting your time to this project! I’m 39, and though I didn’t own an amiga back in the 90s, it left quite an impression just to witness the power of that machine and the community around it.
Is there a possibility of you working together with frontend devs (Launchbox, Hyperspin, etc) to let them sync amiga games media?
Or… is there a tool that lets me export the media from FS-UAE?
Hi, I’m positive to that. There is an (unpublished) API already that is useful for syncing the entire database offline. I’m open to creating new APIs for other needs, if necessary. I do not have any contact with any of those devs however.
Also, yes. The information can be extracted from the .sqlite databases maintained by FS-UAE Launcher (Amiga.sqlite, CDTV.sqlite, etc). The format isn’t publicly documented, but it’s not secret either, as the source code for FS-UAE Launcher demonstrates how to read data from them 🙂
I’m using this launcher with an emulator frontend. When running Launcher (or even start /wait Launcher) is not possible to detect when did I close the emulator as it seems that it runs in background. I basically want to run a batch file with something like this:
start /wait Launcher
do some stuff when finished
Is it possible?
Hi, Launcher.exe in the portable folder is just a minimal executable starting the real executable. Check Programs/Windows/x86(_64) and use fs-uae-launcher.exe found there instead!
About whd versions, what about the implementation of the scan of lha/lzh archive inside the zip file?
I’m not that interested in the added complexity. How about just extracting the .lha files from zip manually? Is there a good reason to have the lha(s) in zip file(s)?
The original collection on the Pleasuredome began life as “Amiga Zip archive within a DOS Zip archive” to try and preserve certain special characters used by the Amiga. This made it impractical to use with programs such as ClrMAMEpro and RomVault.
The whole collection has been now been re-processed as “Amiga LhA archive within a DOS Zip archive” making it more friendly to ROM management tools and, more importantly, to the Amiga environment these games are intended to be run on! 🙂
I still don’t see the point of wrapping the lha inside a zip file… 🙂 Why not simple use lha and skip the final zipping?
I am using v2.6.2 on OSX. The screens look very different than on your site. Perhaps it’s time to update it.
Also, was unable download updates after login. Scan starts, and then when it goes into the 3rd scan update on the alert box, it returns a “DatabaseRefreshTask fail with Exception: a02169f6-38d5-55e4-90a8-ba2608229693”. And just crashes FS-UAE showing this message in the alert box “Scanning game variants (1 scanned)”.
Thanks
Hi, I agree, the information is outdated and should be updated 🙂
About the refresh error, this should be fixed long ago (shortly after you reported it). It not, please report back!
I am more and more amazed about the ridiculous amount of work you put into this. I must say, it really shows. FS-UAE is getting more and more polished by the day.
Anyways, in troubleshooting section you say:
“If a game does not appear as expected, this may be due to one or more disk files being modified. The database will only recognized unmodified ADF files.
Another reason a game may not appear is that you have a set of ADF files which are not in the database. TOSEC for example has often several different version of each disks, and not *all combinations* of disks for a multi-disk game will appear in the database.”
Is it still possible to link a configuration from the online database with a working set of files for a game, even if they are a different version or altered?
Hi, at this point, no it is not possible. I’m focusing mostly on getting the database working better, and “offline variants” would steal development time from that. Such a feature could arrive in the future, but I’m not working on it right now.
Hi,
on FS 2.4.1 OS X, there is no settings entry which allows to type in user and password.
The only way to enter these is to click on the LogIn button on the top right of the main FS-UAE Launcher page.
Cheers.
You are right, I really need to update the guide 😉
I recently compiled FS-UAE Launcher 2.4.3 for OSX 10.5.8 Leopard but I am unable to connect to the Database using that old version. Is there any way I can bypass that limitation – maybe by adding a Custom game database server address in the Launcher settings?
I tried compiling newer releases but Qt5 is required which does not work on 10.5.8.
regards
Old Launcher versions will not be able to use the database, no 🙁
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