Post by jyamaha on Mar 26, 2019 1:39:12 GMT
I'm a few days in to having received my first THEC64. I'm not new to C64, in general, as many others are not. I've previously owned several C64/C64C/C128 systems along with the various printers, tape drives, disk drives, cartridges, modems, etc. I'm also not new to emulation of the C64 and other systems. I've previously compiled open source emulators for various systems and have, through the years, ran C64 (VICE and others) on various host hardware platforms. I'm familiar with the differences between the C64 emulation portion and the "hypervisor"/OS portion of the system firmware and how they are somewhat decoupled.
What I am not sure of here yet - not having participated previously - is how much the developers behind THEC64 monitor this site. Ideally, I would be providing feedback direct to them. Perhaps there is a better channel for that. However, it's also good to establish "critical mass" and see if any of my observations are universal, if I'm standing on an island, or somewhere between.
With that intro - here are my first impressions:
1) Out of the box, I plugged in everything (single joystick, power, HDMI) and started using the preloaded firmware. First impression was favorable - I liked the hypervisor's system to select the stock games and appreciated the original box artwork as well as a snapshot of gameplay. I gravitated towards the game out of the list I favored which was the original Impossible Mission. Playing this game - I noticed the screen flicker issue. When I left the unit running and sitting in the hypervisor (stock game selector, or anywhere) - I noticed the flicker issue was very frequent and borderline unusable. I reserved judgment until I upgraded to the latest firmware. Thankfully, latest firmware has - for me - eliminated the flicker issue. So far, so good.
2) I noticed that some games did not map to the correct joystick. More accurately stated, the default mapping of joystick port 2 did not always match what the game needed. I did manually change the joystick port by renaming the .d64 file with the appropriate "flags" in the filename. As easy as this is, I would much prefer an in-system method of changing the joystick port. I wish the onscreen keyboard mode had a configuration option to swap the port as an option in addition to what's already there. I have read another thread covering this type of request and do not agree that because there are other easy ways to swap joysticks - that such a feature is not needed or superfluous. There are times when you do not want to remove the USB stick, insert into another device, rename the file, and reinstall into THEC64 mini. Having a complete in-system method for accomplishing this does have its benefits. I also understand one could buy a second joystick. I'm not sure joystick sales are driving the lack of this feature (one cynical way of thinking about it). And I do not think that joystick expense is what is driving this request either. The development effort to add this feature is not monumental and benefit is another tool in the toolbox to effectively use THEC64. As a side note, I wouldn't mind if I could long-hold some combination of buttons or a button in order to swap the joystick to the other port as an option as well. No menu diving.
3) Multi-disk games. A real favorite of mine happens to be a multi-disk game. THEC64 Mini does not have a "front door" method of supporting multi-disk games. I was able to use the file-save method + name disk 1 the same image as disk 2 "trick" to get this working. However, again - I think the keyboard-on-screen mode would benefit from more config options to swap disks there. To select another D64 (or other valid format image file). This seems like a fairly universal request so I expect this probably has a chance of getting added.
4) Some disk images are distributed with the file extensions as comma delimited instead of period. Example: "disk image,d64". It would be mildly "nice" if THEC64 would parse these on its own. Unlike the joystick (which requires each file to be renamed differently depending on things a batch file cannot determine) - this is something that can be easily corrected once and for all on the PC with a simple script to swap "," for ".". So this is not a huge deal - or perhaps any deal. But its worth noting something that's dead simple to code and may help users in the future if the file loader would see ",ext" as ".ext".
5) Global configuration? The defaults for the 7 buttons on the packaged joystick are not exactly what I wish they would be. I'd probably have some Fn keys and the space bar mapped as the default. There's enough buttons to have the "real" fire button as the button I press and F1, F3, F5, F7, space bar, and return. I wish I could have a file that tells THEC64 how to default map the buttons and this would be used for all games without having to have multiple config files. Said more accurately - in the absence of a configuration file for each image - I wish I could have those images use a configured default configuration. Those images with their own associated configuration file would use the per-image configuration file.
6) On-screen keyboard doesn't seem to allow for "holding" a key. At least I haven't figured it out. What I mean is to hold run/stop while also pressing restore. Key combinations. It would be nice if one fire button was for a momentary press of the selected on-screen keyboard key while the opposite fire button was for toggling the key (holding it). This isn't the only way to do this - I think there's an unused macro button that could be used to indicate "hold". This isn't a huge deal and not really any deal breaker thus far from what I've tried to actually use.
7) 3rd party game controllers. I've got a basket of them - USB game controllers. I couldn't get any of the ones I've tested thus far to work although at least a few show up fine under Windows. The fact that these work under Windows is not why I expect them to work. I just mentioned this as a step I've used to make sure the controllers are not broken and are functional. I have a USB-to-X converter which has PS2, XBox, and Wii connectors on it. So I can plug in any of those controllers into THEC64 Mini - or the more native USB controllers. I'm not really sure what causes controllers to work or not work - and do appreciate this is not something easily solved due to the sheer number of possibilities. It's not reasonable to think that the developers would have access to a fraction of the controllers that exist. That said - maybe there's a more generic library/interface that would recognize more USB-connected controllers.
For documentation purposes - Philips SGC2909BB/27 and Logitech G-X2D11 did not work. Other controllers I haven't tested yet.
Still, I'm pretty happy overall with THEC64 Mini. I'm expecting, like perhaps others, that I will be purchasing the fullsize version when available (or after some market "soak time" - maybe not the first in line). That is part of why I didn't get two Mini systems just to get two joysticks. I'm guessing the larger model will have a joystick bundle and I'll "share" - or simply upgrade to the fullsize later.
What I am not sure of here yet - not having participated previously - is how much the developers behind THEC64 monitor this site. Ideally, I would be providing feedback direct to them. Perhaps there is a better channel for that. However, it's also good to establish "critical mass" and see if any of my observations are universal, if I'm standing on an island, or somewhere between.
With that intro - here are my first impressions:
1) Out of the box, I plugged in everything (single joystick, power, HDMI) and started using the preloaded firmware. First impression was favorable - I liked the hypervisor's system to select the stock games and appreciated the original box artwork as well as a snapshot of gameplay. I gravitated towards the game out of the list I favored which was the original Impossible Mission. Playing this game - I noticed the screen flicker issue. When I left the unit running and sitting in the hypervisor (stock game selector, or anywhere) - I noticed the flicker issue was very frequent and borderline unusable. I reserved judgment until I upgraded to the latest firmware. Thankfully, latest firmware has - for me - eliminated the flicker issue. So far, so good.
2) I noticed that some games did not map to the correct joystick. More accurately stated, the default mapping of joystick port 2 did not always match what the game needed. I did manually change the joystick port by renaming the .d64 file with the appropriate "flags" in the filename. As easy as this is, I would much prefer an in-system method of changing the joystick port. I wish the onscreen keyboard mode had a configuration option to swap the port as an option in addition to what's already there. I have read another thread covering this type of request and do not agree that because there are other easy ways to swap joysticks - that such a feature is not needed or superfluous. There are times when you do not want to remove the USB stick, insert into another device, rename the file, and reinstall into THEC64 mini. Having a complete in-system method for accomplishing this does have its benefits. I also understand one could buy a second joystick. I'm not sure joystick sales are driving the lack of this feature (one cynical way of thinking about it). And I do not think that joystick expense is what is driving this request either. The development effort to add this feature is not monumental and benefit is another tool in the toolbox to effectively use THEC64. As a side note, I wouldn't mind if I could long-hold some combination of buttons or a button in order to swap the joystick to the other port as an option as well. No menu diving.
3) Multi-disk games. A real favorite of mine happens to be a multi-disk game. THEC64 Mini does not have a "front door" method of supporting multi-disk games. I was able to use the file-save method + name disk 1 the same image as disk 2 "trick" to get this working. However, again - I think the keyboard-on-screen mode would benefit from more config options to swap disks there. To select another D64 (or other valid format image file). This seems like a fairly universal request so I expect this probably has a chance of getting added.
4) Some disk images are distributed with the file extensions as comma delimited instead of period. Example: "disk image,d64". It would be mildly "nice" if THEC64 would parse these on its own. Unlike the joystick (which requires each file to be renamed differently depending on things a batch file cannot determine) - this is something that can be easily corrected once and for all on the PC with a simple script to swap "," for ".". So this is not a huge deal - or perhaps any deal. But its worth noting something that's dead simple to code and may help users in the future if the file loader would see ",ext" as ".ext".
5) Global configuration? The defaults for the 7 buttons on the packaged joystick are not exactly what I wish they would be. I'd probably have some Fn keys and the space bar mapped as the default. There's enough buttons to have the "real" fire button as the button I press and F1, F3, F5, F7, space bar, and return. I wish I could have a file that tells THEC64 how to default map the buttons and this would be used for all games without having to have multiple config files. Said more accurately - in the absence of a configuration file for each image - I wish I could have those images use a configured default configuration. Those images with their own associated configuration file would use the per-image configuration file.
6) On-screen keyboard doesn't seem to allow for "holding" a key. At least I haven't figured it out. What I mean is to hold run/stop while also pressing restore. Key combinations. It would be nice if one fire button was for a momentary press of the selected on-screen keyboard key while the opposite fire button was for toggling the key (holding it). This isn't the only way to do this - I think there's an unused macro button that could be used to indicate "hold". This isn't a huge deal and not really any deal breaker thus far from what I've tried to actually use.
7) 3rd party game controllers. I've got a basket of them - USB game controllers. I couldn't get any of the ones I've tested thus far to work although at least a few show up fine under Windows. The fact that these work under Windows is not why I expect them to work. I just mentioned this as a step I've used to make sure the controllers are not broken and are functional. I have a USB-to-X converter which has PS2, XBox, and Wii connectors on it. So I can plug in any of those controllers into THEC64 Mini - or the more native USB controllers. I'm not really sure what causes controllers to work or not work - and do appreciate this is not something easily solved due to the sheer number of possibilities. It's not reasonable to think that the developers would have access to a fraction of the controllers that exist. That said - maybe there's a more generic library/interface that would recognize more USB-connected controllers.
For documentation purposes - Philips SGC2909BB/27 and Logitech G-X2D11 did not work. Other controllers I haven't tested yet.
Still, I'm pretty happy overall with THEC64 Mini. I'm expecting, like perhaps others, that I will be purchasing the fullsize version when available (or after some market "soak time" - maybe not the first in line). That is part of why I didn't get two Mini systems just to get two joysticks. I'm guessing the larger model will have a joystick bundle and I'll "share" - or simply upgrade to the fullsize later.
