[QUOTE=SkyHighGam3r;49465]This is great news! The 5200 is one of the few systems I haven’t gotten working because they use cores based on MAME/MESS which I absolutely can’t stand as emulators.
I’ll be integrating this into my HyperSpin system soon.
Now I just need an Intellivision, GX4000, & ColecoVision emulator and I think I can avoid MESS all-together. lol[/QUOTE]
I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you haven’t gotten around to it yet, and anyone else that wants to integrate Altirra into HyperSpin.
I spent hours trying to figure out how to make it work, but I figured it out. It turns out the module for Rocketlauncher was designed for Altirra 2.60. But you don’t want that version, because the analogs do not function correctly. Additionally, you do not want to use the latest version (2.81 as of this writing), because enough had changed in the emulator to where that wouldn’t work either.
Altirra 2.71 is the one you want. It is the most recent working version that will work with the Rocketlauncher module. The analogs worked fine with Super Breakout (the go-to game to test that), and all the numberpad buttons worked with Galaxian (the go to game to check the numberpad).
So a few tips on how to make it work for anyone who is interested. I’m not going to do it step by step because I am new to Rocketlauncher myself. I’m going to assume you know the basics, and if you don’t, you can learn like I did (and as you will have to if you want to get anything done with that interface).
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Add Altirra as an emulator.
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Make Altirra the default emulator for Atari 5200.
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In Rocketlauncher, go to the modules tab and highlight Altirra, and click the ‘open module folder in windows explorer’ button. There should be a file named Atari 5200 (Example).ini - rename it to Atari 5200.ini. You may have to open up the .ini file to make sure all the names referenced are the same names as your files. They follow the ‘No Intro’ standard, where for example, Super Breakout would be Super Breakout (USA).a52. Again, I’m not positive on this. Everything just worked for me, because all my 5200 games are already named according to that convention, but if you have problems, this would be the first place I would start.
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Open an Atari 5200 game in HyperSpin. It won’t load correctly, but you can now exit out of both the emulator and Hyperspin. Now that the module has loaded Altirra one time, Altirra is now using a special config file (or something along those lines, if I understand it correctly) that it was not using before.
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Open Altirra outside of Hyperspin, System/Firmware/Firmware images, point it to a working atari 5200 bios. I think mine was named a5200.rom, and it may very well be the same bios file that MESS uses, but I’m too lazy to confirm any of this.
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In the Altirra menu, System/Operation System/Atari 5200 OS (this option was not available before adding the BIOS). This will give you those nice Atari logos when you first load a game. Altirra has a built in OS that will load the game, but no Atari Logos.
Now you want to set up some controls. I’m assuming you want to use an Xbox 360 controller, or a PS3 controller pre-loaded with SCP drivers to make Windows think it’s an Xbox 360 controller.
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Input/Input Mappings/Add. Type the name of the controller profile (I put 5200 Controller 1).
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Check the checkmark to make it active.
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Highlight it, and click edit, add controller, and in the drop down ‘controller’ field, choose 5200 controller. ‘Add default mappings for this controller’ should already be checked. Port 1 should already be selected, choose Port 2, Port 3, and Port 4 if you are configuring players 2-4. Ports 3 and 4 have this next to them (800 only), don’t worry about it. I mapped three ps3 controllers and tested a 3 player game of Super Breakout and it worked fine. Click OK once you’ve configured all of this.
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Click the Rebind button, and Altirra will highlight each input on the 5200 controller, you just need to press a button or direction on the d-pads and analogs. If you’re using an Xbox or PS3 controller, you’re going to want the left analog for up/down/left/right. You will need to specify Axis 1 and Axis 2 - simply tap left for Axis 1 (the horizontal axis), and tap up for Axis 2 (the vertical axis).
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I have my inputs mapped to the following as an example (in terms of an xbox 360 controller), it works very well - All directions mapped to left analog, button 1= X, button 2 =A, *=Y, #=B, 1=right analog UP, 2 = right analog LEFT, 3= right analog press (R3 button), 4 = right analog RIGHT, 5= right analog DOWN, 6=d-pad UP, 7=d-pad LEFT, 8=d-pad RIGHT, 9=d-pad down, 0=left analog press (L3), reset=select, start=start, pause=right bumper (R1)
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In the Game Controller drop down menu, by default will be set to “Any.” I’m pretty sure that will work but if you have multiple controllers you will want to specify specifically which controller it is pointing to.
You should be good to go. Open up HyperSpin again and load a 5200 game, Altirra should load up and be the most awesome 5200 emulator in existence as of this writing. The menu at the top of the screen will be present for some reason, you can make it disappear by moving the mouse over it for a second, and then moving it away. If anyone figures out how to make Altirra load without the menu being present and having to go through that extra step, please post it here. I’ve invested too much time into this already - which is why I took the time to write all this.
Atari 5200 fans haven’t had too many options over the years… but this is the one you want. Hopefully it gets added into Retroarch at some point. That would be amazing.
