Like every 6th of January, the three 'Reyes Magos' traverse the world to give gifts to those who have behaved well during the previous year. It seems we were good in 2023, as this time we received this gift: Update All 2.1
What's new in Update All 2.1
In a nutshell we received:
- New menu structure
- Analogue Pocket menu
- New databases
- Other tweaks
New Menu Structure
As you may guess, with all these news databases and tools coming in, we had to make space in the old cramped UI.
The Other Cores menu replaces the previous Unofficial Cores menu. The only difference is that the Coin-Op Collection shows now in the main menu, as it's on by default (it has always been).
Tools & Scripts simply replaces the old Unofficial Scripts, and it's also where other tools such as the Arcade Organizer and the Names TXT db are now located.
Extra Content is a brand new menu that may contain any kind of content that's useful in MiSTer. The Arcade ROMs DB, the BIOS DB, and the RannySnice Wallpapers are now located there.
The Analogue Pocket is also a new menu that we'll discuss later.
And to finalize, System Options menu has most of the options the old Misc menu had.
Analogue Pocket menu
The Analogue Pocket may be connected to a MiSTer (or any other device) via USB. This feature allows us to modify the contents of its SD right from the MiSTer, turning it into an interesting docking station of sorts if we write the right utilities for it.
Since many Pocket users also have a MiSTer, exploring this connection could be quite beneficial for the community.
With that in mind, we have created a couple of utilities so far:
- Firmware Update: To update Analogue Pocket to the latest version of its firmware. This tool was developed by me.
- Pocket Backup: To back up saves, savestates, and other important files from your Pocket to your MiSTer. Developed by wizzo.
We are also developing a utility to sync saves between Pocket & MiSTer that will be released soon, but it's not ready yet. With this, I feel that the MiSTer will become a pretty awesome unofficial Analogue Pocket Dock somehow.
All utilities can be run on demand, right from the menu on the Settings Screen, or every time that Update All runs. With that, a user could just run Update All once a week to get everything updated and safe on both his FPGA devices. Everything except the cores in the Pocket, since the Pocket's USB interface is quite slow for performing heavy updates on it.
Why this support is arriving now and not before? You may wonder. The answer is simple: I finally got my first Pocket a month ago. Right after sharing the picture of my new red jewel on Twitter, Jotego suggested this line of development to me. He clearly knows best how the FPGA gaming user base looks, so I listened to him :). Wizzo, who also got one of the Pockets of this batch, started to explore these ideas with me. Soon after, he first published the Pocket Backup utility as a standalone script, which was very well received by the community. That was all the confirmation we needed to start more extensive development in this direction.
New Databases
It seems that each 'rey' gifted us one new downloader database:
- Uberyoji MiSTer Boot ROMs Database: Uberyoji created a bunch of fun boot ROMs for all the popular consoles. The latest one he made was for the PSX, and it seems that Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn will follow next. Check them out; they are really a work of art. You may activate it in the new Extra Content menu. Here is more info about the project.
- RGarciaLago Wallpaper Collection: Robby is maintaining this wallpaper database. He isn't creating any of the wallpapers himself, but he is curating this collection for our enjoyment. You may activate it in the new Extra Content menu as well. Here is the repository.
- RetroSpy DB: zoggins is maintaining this handy tool to display controller input displays on videos or streaming platforms. Thanks to this DB, this utility is now better integrated with MiSTer. You'll find this option on the Tools & Scripts menu. Here is the GitHub organization. Kudos to 40wattrange for pulling the strings on this!
Other changes
As usual, with each release, there is a long list of improvements, fixes, and other minor changes corresponding to mundane maintenance tasks. I won't go through all of them, but I will highlight some of the most important:
- The Arcade ROMs DB and BIOS DB are no longer maintained by me. As you already know, I was looking to delegate these to someone else, and the user BigDendy wrote me volunteering for it. Hopefully, he'll do a great job maintaining them, as they are pretty important for the community. I will remove them from my username soon, so Update All already changes the db_url's to the new locations. In case you manually manage your downloader.ini without using Update All, don't forget to perform these changes soon.
- The Coin-Op Collection database is now migrated to a different db_url since they now operate under this GitHub Organization: https://github.com/Coin-OpCollection/. atrac17 expanded the team to deliver more cores to us, so they also decided to reflect these changes in a new organization. Again, in case you manually manage your downloader.ini without using Update All, you already know what to do.
To know about further changes, please check the CHANGELOG here.
And that's it for now. I hope you all had a great Christmas, and I wish you an awesome 2024. See you soon in the next post.