ADF FIle support
The Media select screen now shows adf files and playlists in addition to WHDLoad lha files.
Adf files are chosen in the usual way by navigating to them with the 
and selecting them with 
.
To play multi-disk games, you choose the adf files before launching the game and then flip between them while the game is running.
When you select a file (lha or adf) with , the behaviour is
to replace the previously selected file. To select multiple adf files (for example Disk 1 of 3, Disk 2 of 3 and
Disk 3 of 3) you first select disk 1 by pressing and then
add the additional disks 2 and 3 by pressing 
.
The tool-tips at the bottom of the screen will indicate when additional files can be added.
Launch the game in the ususal way by pressing the 
button.
When prompted to change disks by the game, press and hold
and then press . This will advance the “inserted”
disk to disk 2, then to disk 3, then back to disk 1, and so on.
You can choose a maximum of three adf files at once through this method, so for games with four or more disks, a playlist
file is required.
Playlists
A playlist makes choosing multi-disk games a quick single click and avoids issues with miss-selecting files, and are required for games having more than three disks, though they can be created for games with three or less if you want.
A playlist is a text file with an m3u extension, and it merely lists all the adf files for the game.
The filenames can also contain file path relative to the playlist file location, which gives you the flexibility to place the
adf files in a different directory to keep the playlist directory uncluttered.
For example, you could place your adf files in an ADF Files directory, and then create playlists at the same level:
/USB stick/ADF Files/Game A Disk 1 of 2.adf
/USB stick/ADF Files/Game A Disk 2 of 2.adf
/USB stick/ADF Files/Game B Disk 1 of 2.adf
/USB stick/ADF Files/Game B Disk 2 of 2.adf
/USB stick/Game A.m3u
/USB stick/Game B.m3u
The playlist file Game A.m3u contains two lines as follows (note that the file paths are relative, so there is no leading file
separator ‘/’), as follows:
ADF Files/Game A Disk 1 of 2.adf
ADF Files/Game A Disk 2 of 2.adf
Being relative paths, you can move this around easily so long as the Floppies folder stays at the same level as the playlist file.
Note that playlist file paths use the UNIX file separator of forward-slash (/) and not the Windows backslash.
To launch a game through its playlist, choose it in the usual way by navigating to it with
, select it with
and then launch the game with
.
Choosing the Amiga model
The Game settings screen for an adf game has additional setting for Amiga model, allowing you to choose between an
A500, A500+ and A1200. If you have Expert Mode enabled you will be able to choose between two Kickstart versions per model,
though it is usually safer to select the highest Kickstart version of a machine.
Hot-Crop
If you are playing a game and wish to zoom the image, you can press and hold
and then press
. This will perform a crop and zoom of the image without
you needing to exit back to the Game settings screen to change the crop setting there. However, when you do a hot-crop, the
resulting image size is not stored, so if you want it to persist you need to configure it in the Game Settings screen.
Virtual keyboard
The virtual keyboard can be accessed withough having first to map its activation function to a Gamepad button. To activate the
Virtual keyboard you can press hold and then press
.
To close the virtual keyboard, press on its own.
Physical controller swap
This feature aims to allow users to play games with a two or four button joystick such as a USB Competition Pro, which cannot
launch games from Media select because it does not have the required buttons. With this feature, you launch the game with
THEGAMEPAD as usual, and then switch to the button-limited joystick by pressing and holding
and then press
.
This will swap the controller in hand (THEGAMEPAD used to launch the game) with the next controller THEA500 Mini has detected. Invoking the controller swap function a second time will swap the joystick back.
Note: If you have more than two controllers or joysticks plugged in, it is not defined which controller or joystick will get swapped in place of the one that launched the game.
Keyboard control
THEA500 Mini now allows the user interface to be controlled using the keyboard. The cursor keys act as the DPAD, keys A, B, X, Y, R and L act as the buttons of the same name on THEGAMEPAD with H and M acting as HOME and MENU.
THEJoystick (THEC64 joystick) fire buttons
The default mapping of the fire buttons for THEJoystick have been swapped, so
is left fire,
is right fire,
is left triangle,
is right triangle.