Floppy games

All Amigas come with one floppy drive as standard equipment, but they can be optionally expanded with up to four drives. The first floppy drive is called DF0: (Drive Floppy 0), the second DF1:, the third DF2:, and the fourth DF3:.

Most floppy games are in the IPF format (Interchangeable Presentation Format), and some are in the RAW (KryoFlux CT-RAW) format. These are accurate representations of the original disks with the copy protection intact.

A handful of games might be only provided as regular ADF files (Amiga Disk File). These games either don’t use disk-based copy protection or are only available in cracked form at the time being.

Single-disk games

All floppy game configurations have the first floppy pre-inserted in drive DF0: (the first floppy drive). For single-disk games, that’s all you need (e.g., Dungeon Master, Midwinter and Exile (OCS)).

Speeding up loading times

You can speed up floppy loading times considerably by entering “warp mode”. You can toggle warp mode with End+Pause. This “time-warps” the speed of the emulation to the maximum your computer can handle, so you are going “faster than real-time”. There is no sound if warp mode is engaged and the emulated CPU speed meter is pegged to 100% in the on-screen display.

Warning

Note for people who know enough about WinUAE to be dangerous: never increase the floppy emulation speed of WinUAE as that will break most disk-based copy protections. It might initially seem that all is fine, but many games do not advertise when they fail the protection checks! They will casually let you keep playing but put the game silently into an unwinnable state.

Warp mode works 100% reliably because it speeds up the whole emulated computer, not just the floppy drive separately from the rest of the system.

ProTip™

If you know what you’re doing, you can create a Save states right after the game finishes loading. You can save this as a new config and use it to start the game instantaneously.

Multi-disk games

Multi-disk games fall into two categories: some support multiple floppy drives, some only a single drive. The best-case scenario is when a game supports as many drives as the number of disks it comes on. Such games are configured with the game disks pre-inserted into the drives (e.g., the two-disk game Lemmings, or the four-disk games Perihelion, Hook, and Soccer Kid (OCS)).

The other scenario is that the game supports fewer drives than the number of disks it has (e.g., a two-disk game supporting a single drive, or a four-disk game supporting two drives). In these games, you’ll need to swap the disks when the game prompts you. Fortunately, WinUAE has a convenient disk swapper feature to make this easy:

• Press End+1 to 9 to insert floppy number 1 to 9 into drive DF0: (the first floppy drive).

• By default, the disk swapper targets the first floppy drive. To insert a floppy into one of the other three drives, you’ll need to select the target drive with End+Left Ctrl+1 to 4 first.

For example:

• To insert the second game disk into drive DF0: (first drive), press End+2.

• To insert the third game disk into drive DF1: (second drive) next, press End+Left Ctrl+2 to select the second drive as the target for the disk swapper, then End+3 to insert the third disk.

• To insert the fourth game edisk into DF0: again, press End+Left Ctrl+1 followed by End+4 .

You can view the disk swapper configuration for the currently loaded game config in the Host / Disk swapper configuration tab of the WinUAE settings window.

Patience is still a virtue

Usually, you’ll need to wait about two seconds after inserting a disk into a floppy drive until the Amiga recognises it. So, for example, if a game instructs you to insert “disk 2” into DF0:, press End+2, then wait a few seconds until the floppy drive makes the recognisable “floppy acknowledged” sound. Pay attention to the emulated floppy drive sounds—you’ll learn what to listen for in no time.

Not all keyboards are created equal

You might not be able to use some of the drive selection shortcuts (End+Left Ctrl+1 to 4) if you do not have a 3-key rollover (3KRO) or better keyboard.

Workbench

Most floppy games start automatically when you launch their configs, but some need to be started manually from the Workbench screen.

See the Workbench section of hard drive installed games for further details (most of the information applies to floppy games as well).

Saving your progress

Some games give you continuation codes at certain checkpoints, while others let you save your progress to disk whenever you want. Some other games don’t have any built-in continuation or save support—luckily, you can use WinUAE Save states with these.

Save disks

Many floppy games support saving your progress to disk. Usually, you need to prepare a special save disk for this purpose, and the instructions to do so vary per game. For your convenience, all games that support saving your progress to disk include a blank save disk in the 9^th disk swapper slot (so you can insert it by pressing End+9).

If you want to reset your save disk, a blank save disk is also included in a ZIP archive in the Savedisk subfolder within the game folder. Just extract this ZIP file into the Disks folder, overwriting the existing disk image, and your save disk will be reset (of course, only do this when WinUAE is not running).

Some games ask you to enter a full path of your save file, e.g., DF0:MySave1, or you might need to enter DF0: and press enter to list the save games on the floppy in the first drive. Make sure not to leave the colon off from DF0: in such scenarios. The trailing colon signals that we’re dealing with a drive, not just a file called DF0. This is similar to the C: drive in Windows.

Not all blank disks are created equal

Always use the save disk included with the game. A regular empty AmigaDOS ADF disk image won’t work with games that use special encoding schemes (e.g., Cannon Fodder (OCS)). If you want to reset your save disk, use the included blank save disk from the ZIP archive in the Savedisk folder.

ProTip™

If you know what you’re doing, you can create your own save disks. You’ll probably need to consult the game’s manual to do so as the exact steps vary per game (e.g., you might need to set a specific disk label).

Always use Extended ADF images save disks. These images are about 2 MB in size. The regular 880 KB ADF images will give you problems in some games, and you’ll invariably only realise this when it’s already too late and you’ve lost your progress…

Saving to the game disk

Some games save your progress or high scores directly to the game disk (e.g., Pinball Dreams and Rogue: The Adventure Game). These games are configured to never modify the original floppy images, but create a so-called save image instead which contains the changes compared to the original disk. Save images have the .save_adf file extension and are located in the Disks folder within the game folder.

Do the following if you wish to revert a such “virtually modified” game disk to its pristine original state:

• First, make sure the game is not running (restarting WinUAE is the safest bet).
• Go to the Hardware / Floppy drives configuration tab in the WinUAE settings window.
• Click on the Delete save image button (usually next to the DF0: button).
• Make sure to untick the Write protected checkbox on the same drive to recreate a blank save image.

Warning

Don’t forget to untick the Write protected checkbox after deleting the save image! Some games won’t even start if the game disk is write-protected.

ProTip™

Of course, the resourceful among you can create several copies of these save images to emulate multiple save points in games that only support a single save slot. Make sure to only make copies of the save images or restore them from your backups when WinUAE is shut down (so never while the game is running).