F-19 Stealth Fighter (Amiga) quietly deploying to WinUAE

3 days ago6 min read

This is a guide to running the Amiga version of the MicroProse 1990 classic sim, F-19 Stealth Fighter under WinUAE emulation.

This guide assumes a working emulated Amiga, with a hard disk based Workbench as created in the earlier article, Amiga emulation with WinUAE.

Why play the Amiga version?

There are a number of issues with the PC version of F-19 Stealth Fighter comprising of:

A certain degree of speed sensitivity. Running the game at too high a speed under emulation can result in weapon misses, such as the normally reliable AMRAAM or Sidewinder missing enemy aircraft. This requires some careful tweaking of DOSBox cycles.
Buggy weapon delivery. Certain weapons have a history of being very buggy, with a valid lock and proper delivery, LGB's should almost always hit, sadly this is not the case with the PC version. This results in a tendency to stick with the same reliable weapons continuously, in preference to better suited weapons, e.g. Mavericks rather than LGB's or Harpoon's.
The VGA version of the game sticks to a rather EGA inspired colour palette.

F-19 arming page — All of these weapons are usable in this version.

The Amiga version doesn't suffer from either of these issues, has fairly fluid gameplay when emulating a cycle exact A1200 and a more VGA like colour palette. There's also:

Nostalgia, nothing like revisiting a classic sim.
Unfinished business. If you've always wanted to complete a 99 mission career but never managed to, now is the ideal opportunity!

Version

This guide assumes a copy of F-19 Stealth Fighter pre-patched for hard disk use with WHDLoad. Converting a disk/disk image copy of F-19 with the relevant WHDLoad support files into a patched 'hard disk supported' version is beyond the scope of this guide.

The recommended version of the WHDLoad patch files is v3.1. The prepatched WHDLoad distribution is normally packaged as an LHA (LH Archive) file. The workbench installation created earlier, supports LHA files.

The original game was distributed on 2 x (UK release) or 3 x (US release) 880 KB 3.5" Amiga floppy disks. Various copies may be encountered utilising the TOSEC naming convention.

WinUAE setup

The following is a list of differences from the Workbench configuration in the Amiga emulation with WinUAE article. It is recommended to load the Workbench configuration file and save it as a separate configuration file specifically for F-19. Make sure to load this new configuration file before continuing and give it a suitable description.

CPU and FPU

The 'CPU Emulation Speed' section should be set to 'Approximate A500/A1200 or cycle exact'.
In the 'Cycle-exact CPU Emulation Speed' section, the 'CPU Frequency' should be set to '4x (A1200)'. You may wish to set this to A500 speeds if you think it's too fast.

Chipset

In the 'Chipset' section make sure 'Cycle-exact (Full)' and 'Cycle-exact (DMA/Memory access)' are both checked.

Display

As F-19 Stealth Fighter was developed by MicroProse, a US game developer, it was developed for both PAL and NTSC based Amigas. In the 'Settings' section the 'Refresh' drop down menu should be set to 'PAL' or 'NTSC' depending on the version you have.

Sound

I've encountered sound crackle in F-19 and other games and I believe these settings reduce/eliminate it. However you should feel free to experiment with sound drivers if you continue to experience crackle.

The top drop down menu was set to 'DSOUND: Primary Sound Driver'.
In the 'Settings' section, 'Frequency' was set to '44100' and 'Audio filter' was set to 'Always on (A1200)'.
In the 'Drivers' section, only 'DirectSound' was checked.

Filter

The filter settings selected should be compatible with the refresh setting selected on the 'Display' page. As I'm using an NTSC version of F-19, NTSC was selected. The filter settings should be compatible with emulating an NTSC display.

For a discussion of filters and slider settings, John Novak's article, Achieving period-correct graphics in personal computer emulators — Part 1: The Amiga should be consulted.

The 4.0x NTSC filter was chosen, 'D3D: CRT-A2080-NTSC-4.0x'. Depending on your display or personal preference, you may wish to choose a smaller 3.0x or 3.5x multiplier.
The 'Horiz. size' slider was set to '2000' and the 'Vert. size' slider was set to '2800' as required by the NTSC 4.0x filter.

For a PAL based F-19 version the setting would be:

Filter: 'D3D: CRT-A2080-PAL-4.0x' or the 3.0 or 3.5x filters.
'Horiz. size' slider: '2000' for the 4.0x filter.
'Vert. size' slider: '2000' for the 4.0x filter.

Finishing up

Don't forget to save your new F-19 WinUAE configuration with these revised settings.

Installing

Firstly you should create a new folder (or drawer in Amiga terms) on the System disk to store any games, if it doesn't already exist. The next steps are:

Open WinUAE or the configuration utility (if WinUAE is started) and go to the 'CD & Hard drives' page.
Click on the 'Add Directory or Archive...' button.
Add the archive file as shown in the screenshot. The 'Device name' will be DHx where x is the next device no. (so DH2 in this case). Make sure the 'Read/write' and 'Bootable' options are unchecked. The 'Select Archive or Plain File' button is used to select the F-19 archive file.
Once selected, start the emulated machine, or if it is already started use 'Reset' to reset the machine.
The archive should appear on the Workbench desktop as a new disk. Open it and copy the F-19 Stealth Fighter folder/drawer into the Games folder/drawer.

That's it the game is now installed! You don't need to save this configuration, once the folder is copied onto the Amiga hard disk.

HOTAS setup

This next section is more advice than hard facts as I believe the exact settings you'll need will depend on your particular HOTAS setup. This will describe how I set up my Warthog HOTAS and things to consider when setting up your own.

F-19 was written for analogue and digital joysticks. The analogue joystick setting was used within WinUAE and selected from game startup menu.

WinUAE also has native controller support, with the HOTAS devices seen by Windows also being available to WinUAE. However using the native controller in WinUAE had a 'sluggish' response. If I used the TARGET profiling software to create a virtual controller, it had a far more sensitive response.

This suggests the virtual controller uses a larger scale across axes than the default one provided by Windows. For this reason I opted to use a virtual controller.

HOTAS axes

The HOTAS axes were set as follows:

Physical axis	Windows axis
Joystick x-axis	DX_X_AXIS
Joystick y-axis	DX_Y_AXIS

The throttle and rudder pedals were added to the TARGET profile but all of their axes were disabled.

Throttle

Throttle buttons were mapped to the throttle up/down keys within F-19.

Rudder pedals

The rudder pedals aren't used in F-19, but were added to the profile to ensure they would be disabled.

WinUAE configuration

On the 'Game ports' page the Joystick should be set in Port 2 as your virtual controller. The type should be set as 'Analog joystick'.

Manual configuration

Not all configurable options are available from the config utility. The configuration file (.uae) can be edited from a text editor. The following settings:

input.joystick_deadzone=33
input.analog_joystick_multiplier=18

Were changed to:

input.joystick_deadzone=0
input.analog_joystick_multiplier=20

Custom configurations

An alternative is to create a custom configuration. This allows you to map multiple physical axes and buttons from native controllers to virtual Amiga joysticks in ports 1 and 2.

The Game port section should be left unchanged and a new custom configuration created on the 'Input' page.

Running

To run the game, open the System disk and your games folder/drawer. Within the games folder/drawer there should be an F19StealthFighter folder/drawer. Within this folder there will be a game icon which looks like the title screen (this is a facility provided by NewIcons).

Simply double click to start the WHDLoad config for the game. A WHDLoad dialog box should appear and the game will start shortly.

Career progress will be recorded in the F19_Roster save file within the F19StealthFighter folder/drawer.

Documents

It's recommended to try and obtain the following documents:

Amiga manual for a complete list of instructions for all aspects of the sim, including keyboard commands.

Or:

Amiga key reference, for a list of keyboard commands
DOS manual for a complete list of instructions for all aspects of the sim except keyboard commands.

You should also be able to find digital versions of the ONC Maps that were distributed with the retail game.

Good Hunting!