Arcade Game Selector screenshot

Arcage Game Selector

AGS is a joystick controlled menu program for the Amiga. It requires a joystick in port 2 and an AGA Amiga.

Installation

Put the ArcadeGameSelector somewhere in the path, like in C:. Assign AGS: to a directory where you intend to keep your start scripts, or alternatively assign it to RAM:AGS and copy the scripts there. Oh yeah, start scripts -- all AGS does is search AGS: for a bunch of files ending with .start, and then displays them in a menu. When the user selects something it copies the relevant script to AGS:.run and quits. A small script like this should do the necessary magic:
  C:SetPatch >NIL:
  MakeDir RAM:AGS
  Assign AGS: RAM:AGS
  ; Substitute SYS:AGS to wherever you keep your AGS scripts
  Copy SYS:AGS/#? AGS: ALL QUIET

  Lab loop
  ArcadeGameSelector
  IF EXISTS AGS:.run
    Execute AGS:.run
    Delete AGS:.run
    Skip loop
  EndIf
Save the script to S:Startup-Sequence and you have a dedicated game machine.

Scripts, Screenshots, and Info

As just a list of filenames would be a bit too bland AGS loads a background image called AGS:SelectorBKG.iff. It should be a 640x256x8 bit ILBM. For each game AGS looks for a .txt and a .iff file with the same base name. name.iff should be a 320x128x8 bits image using the same palette as the background image. name.txt should be a text file with max 40 characters per line and 12 lines of text. The first line will appear by itself and should contain the full title of the entry. The 11 following lines are printed in the info box below.

Download

ags101.lha, 44 kB LhA archive
AGS 1.0.1 and some example files. Double-click on AGS to run the test script.

To do

Make it OCS/ECS compatible, ability to choose a different screenmode, arbitrary placement and size of screen elements, config file. Oh, and get a real screenshot instead of that old mockup up there.

Troubleshooting

History

Version 1.01
Fixed wrong game being selected when you had more than 30 entries.
Fixed lockup when having more then one start script starting with the same letter.

Version 1.0
Initial release

Source

AGS is written in AmigaE. The source needs to be cleaned up and commented but in case you want to look at it anyway, here it is: arcadegameselector.e.