Patreon anniversary news + End-of-support reminder

One year ago, I started my Patreon page after 2 years of contributing to the MiSTer ecosystem. I wasn't sure where this was going to go, but 12 months and 15 posts later, here we are, still on it.

I'm happy to say that this experience has been very positive for me, and I think it has also been even more favorable for the tools I create and maintain. Just to throw some numbers, with all options on, Update All is now 4x faster than it was in the past despite installing much more content today, jumping from an average first run of 60 minutes to just 15 minutes. And this is just one of the "verticals" I've worked on for the various tools I maintain.

Thanks to your colossal support, I could commit more time to MiSTer to make all of this possible, and I could see that the work I'm doing it's really being valued by the community, which is always important to double down on that commitment.

For 2023 I hope to continue this path with your help. There are still many things to improve in MiSTer UX, and I still think that working on user experience will have a very positive impact on the preservation of classic systems in FPGAs. I think so because better UX brings (and retains) more users, and some new users could be or become FPGA developers. Therefore keeping the platform "healthy" and easy to use is vital and needs much more attention for the foreseeable future.

Ok, that was a lengthy introduction. Let's start with the topics I have for today.

Old Updater End-of-support is almost here.

As I announced almost a year ago here, the old Updater will no longer be supported by Update All after the 31st of December 2022. This deadline is pretty close -time flies- but it's not affecting the vast majority of users.

Users that already use Update All 2.0 or the official MiSTer Downloader in any form will have to do nothing because you are already up-to-date and are not affected. You can skip the next paragraph because it's not relevant to you. And if you installed MiSTer in 2022 in any way, you are in this group too. In these new installations, the MiSTer Downloader can also be called "update.sh", so I hope this doesn't confuse you.

For the rest of the users -hopefully, a pretty small group- the recommendations are the following:

- If you are still regularly using Update All 1.4 with the old Updater selected, you'll have to upgrade to 2.0 before the 31st or reinstall the script in 2023. More info about the upgrade process is in this post.

- If you haven't run any updater on your MiSTer since before September 2021, I recommend you reinstall your SD card with mr-fusion. Don't forget to back up your savegames and games first!

Update All 1.4 "Updater PC" will stop working too.

The Updater PC for Update All has been a way to install MiSTer content on an SD card without using MiSTer, which is especially useful when you don't have an internet connection on your device.

This method will also stop working after the 31st of December. The alternative is to use the new PC Launcher for the MiSTer Downloader. With the correct downloader.ini configuration (you can generate it by running the Update All Settings Screen just once on MiSTer), you'll download the same content you'd be downloading in your MiSTer. And yes, this is also way faster than the old Updater PC. It's even much faster than using git, or downloading the zipped repositories directly from GitHub.

More Update All Color Themes for Patrons

The Patrons menu now offers 3 additional color themes:

                                                             Japan

                                                                   Aquamarine

                                                                  Clean Wall

These color themes are exclusive content only accessible to patrons. If you are a patron already, you'll need the Patreon key to access this menu. Please take a look at this post to learn how to install it.

I still plan to add more color themes in the future. Please share some ideas in the comments if you'd like to see some specific color combinations.

New Downloader short-run optimization

In November, I implemented a new HTTP Client for the MiSTer Downloader that requires fewer attempts to establish server connections. Thanks to this, short runs should execute a bit faster than before. This is noticeable when there are no new updates to fetch, and therefore the whole run takes less than 20 seconds.

Kudos to Tonurics, who, after knowing that I was working on this optimization, tried to help by sharing some code that was an excellent source of inspiration.

MGL integration in the official MiSTer Distribution

As I shared on my Twitter account, I integrated into the official distribution the new launchers that Roberto Garcia-Lago created for a few cores. These are: Atari 2600,  Game Boy Color, Mega Duck, WonderSwan Color, and GameGear (SG-1000 was not added in the end).

These launchers are MGL files. They are like links to existing cores with a twist. Because additionally, they tell MiSTer to use a different folder & configuration file specific to that launcher.

They are helpful because some cores implement more than one system, and sharing the same configuration is not always ideal. Example: Master System core also implements Game Gear. Thanks to this, now you'll have your games/GameGear folder and config when you run the GameGear launcher.

If you don't like them, you can filter them out using the "!mgl" term in a Download filter.

Added Y/C Builds to the Unofficial Cores menu.

Developer MikeS11 published a Downloader DB containing forks for the most relevant console, computer, and arcade cores. They support S-Video and Composite video outputs once you have the correct cable. This is an excellent addition to display the content with the same signals we used to have in the 80s and 90s, and this is especially good news if your CRT doesn't support RGB input. Please take a look at this page for more info.

You can go ahead and enable it already through the Settings Screen of Update All, if you like.

Maintenance of the official MiSTer Distribution to support the new Wiki

The new official MiSTer wiki is now in this URL: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki 

Currently, it's looking the same as the old one, but I'm working together with Sorgelig on some changes that will affect the way the cores are represented in the Wiki itself. And along the way, I hope to improve the filtering feature for its Downloader DB by adding more core-specific metadata. This is my current area of work as of today.

Closing 2022

And that's almost all. As usual, I also had to do some other maintenance work during these weeks that I'm omitting here. Bug fixing, adding bioses, and a few other minor changes here and there.

Feel free to follow me on GitHub to see all the details of my developments, as I always work on the open. And on Twitter to get more day-to-day news.

To finish, I have to thank you again for your fantastic support during 2022. Whether you are one of the 286 patrons (what a nice number, btw), or you are just trying to support me in other ways, I genuinely appreciate it.

Have a lovely holiday, and see you soon.