Caanoo / WIZ 100% Serious Things The Wiz Could Run

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

Ok, so basically there's been tons of "I can has N64? I can has playstation? I can has nintendo DS?" when it comes to the wiz, and it just seems kind of foolish. So this is a list of things I would see as being both useful AND possible on the wiz:

Emulators:
GB/GBC - It's pretty much a given. GB/GBC emulation runs on almost anything. I'm pretty sure the DOS version of N$GBA ran playably on a 386, so the wiz should be able to handle it easily, especially considering all the GBA games that run at 300Mhz on the wiz.

Wonderswan - The wonderswan is sort of in between the GBC and the GBA in terms of power, graphics, and portability. It doesn't seem like it would be impossible to emulate on the WIZ, and it would be pretty interesting to see a wonderswan emulator on the wiz.

NES - Yes, I know, it exists, but I'm talking optimizations and stretching to fullscreen. That's probably nto that hard to modify the current NES emulator to do.

Applications:

The wiz has a touchscreen, a really nice 320x240 display that's clear as day, and decently loud speakers. Here are some applications that could possibly be written for the wiz that I think would be decently useful to the average person:

PDA Environment:
An application designed with using the WIZ as a PDA in mind, this would have the following functions, and could run them side-by-side, simultaneously:

Alarm Clock - The wiz features a countdown timer, but it's pretty lame, doesn't let you set any options or change the alarm sound, and it's in general just really lame. A decent alarm clock function would be ideal, allowing you to play an MP3 from the SD slot or NAND at alarm time, and maybe including a snooze function as well. This could also sync up with the

Calendar - The wiz's calendar just plain sucks. You can't do anything with it, you can't set dates, you can't mark days, you can't do anything aside from look at it, which isn't very helpful. A calendar in this sense should be able to connect up with the alarm clock function and deliver reminders of important dates, etc.

Keyboard - An on-screen keyboard to type in dates in the calendar, type in the reminder for your alarms, or type into a text file/notepad would be great for the wiz, where the keyboard could take up much of the screen, and you could type to one line at the very top of the screen.

Address Book - Phone numbers, screen names, addresses, names, etc. All on your wiz

Music Player - Now, this isn't entirely necessary for an environment like this, but being able to select and play an MP3 with a small interface while typing, or waiting for your alarm would be ideal, and being able to listen to music until your alarm time would be awesome (Say you're jogging, and select a time you would like to stop, you listen to music and your alarm goes off, telling you your workout is over.) This could also make sense, at it could be the back-end for the sound engine of the Alarm feature. These things combined together would make the Wiz a VERY useful device.
________________________

Yeah, so those are some things that I think would be useful on the wiz. Here are some things that will probably never be useful on the wiz:

N64
dreamcast
psx
psp
ds
saturn
sega 32x
xbox
ps2
ps3
xbox 360
N-Gage
Atari jaguar
3DO
complex arcade machines (cruisin USA? House of the dead? No. Not on my wiz. >:0)


Anything else that's fairly foolish to think the wiz can emulate?
Also, how realistic does the PDA Environment sound? It could be made to autoboot from an SD card as well.

 

[SML]

Also likely doable: Neo Geo AES and MVS (the later games not covered by Mame4All), Neo Geo Pocket Color. Sega 32X.

And since this is my first post: many, many thanks to the coders for the work already done. You guys are rock stars.

 

[darkriku]

i disagree with the psx i think its possible sega 32x also and maybe 3do if we ever got a open source

 

[jacksterson]

i disagree with the psx i think its possible sega 32x also and maybe 3do if we ever got a open source

T_T Don't say the psx isn't going to happen, its the main reason I bought the wiz T_T

 

[Dunny]

i disagree with the psx i think its possible sega 32x also and maybe 3do if we ever got a open source

T_T Don't say the psx isn't going to happen, its the main reason I bought the wiz T_T

Of course it will happen. Just not all games will be fast enough to be playable, and you'll likely have to go into extreme overclocking in order to get the rest to run at a playable speed.

If you're prepared to be a bit selective on which games you'll play, then psx should be do-able.

Also bear in mind the rather stunning results that ZodTTD got with the '2x psx emulator after a few months of optimisations - the Wiz is theoretically better than the '2x, if not in practice currently. Exophase/ZodTTD got GBA running amazingly well on the '2x - again, if you're prepared to just not play a few games and are prepared to overclock your unit to 280mhz.

The same applies to the Wiz.

D.

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

i disagree with the psx i think its possible sega 32x also and maybe 3do if we ever got a open source

T_T Don't say the psx isn't going to happen, its the main reason I bought the wiz T_T

Of course it will happen. Just not all games will be fast enough to be playable, and you'll likely have to go into extreme overclocking in order to get the rest to run at a playable speed.

If you're prepared to be a bit selective on which games you'll play, then psx should be do-able.

Also bear in mind the rather stunning results that ZodTTD got with the '2x psx emulator after a few months of optimisations - the Wiz is theoretically better than the '2x, if not in practice currently. Exophase/ZodTTD got GBA running amazingly well on the '2x - again, if you're prepared to just not play a few games and are prepared to overclock your unit to 280mhz.

The same applies to the Wiz.

D.

I don't ever think PSX will run at decent, playable speeds for most games. MAYBE some RPGS, but beyond that I doubt it. Even overclocking to 800 Mhz probably won't give you DECENT playable speeds. That's why I left it off of the list, as the rest of this list is very much doable, most without much optimizing at all.

 

[SML]

Why do you feel 32x isn't doable?

 

[mindlord]

The 32x is a beastly mess on top of the Genesis/MegaDrive core. Anytime you add processors the difficulty in emulating a system increases exponentially, because you're dividing your 1 ARM CPU against more than one CPU, GPU, Sound Chip, etc already needed to fully emulate the Genesis/Megadrive. The 32x adds two CPU cores, and an extra sound chip. It's quite a load for any processor to manage.

It took quite a while after full speed Genesis emulation appeared for 32x emulation to debut on the PC, mainly for the reason state above. It's because of Sega's demented use of multi-processor architectures that the Saturn is such a monster to emulate as well.

I'm not saying that 32x emulation is impossible, and in fact I'm quite sure that it will appear sometime in the future. However, it's not as easy as you might think.

 

[SML]

Ah, thanks for the info.

I could take or leave 32x, anyway. I'm not treating this as a request thread.

Maybe Virtual Boy, though rboy is pretty slow on the 2x.

 

[Ghanji]

The PSX emu is the only chance to get Civilization II working on the wiz.
It was quite playable on the gp2x. B)

 

[chickendung]

I think 32x could be doable as well. Useful, however, it may not be. There weren't many great games for it...

I thought that GPSP could play Gameboy Mono and Color games as well, but I guess TehSkeen is misinformed.

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

I think 32x could be doable as well. Useful, however, it may not be. There weren't many great games for it...

I thought that GPSP could play Gameboy Mono and Color games as well, but I guess TehSkeen is misinformed.

PSX - There have been numerous threads about it, the reason I listed it as being unrealistic or unuseful is that even if it gets faster, it will most likely never be full speed.

32x - The 32x is sort of a crazy mix of hardware, and just like most desperate sega consoles, it was developed by piling everything they had together to create some sort of frankenstein addon for the Genesis. It was fairly powerful, and I don't think it would be that great on the GP2XW. Playable? Maybe. Great? Not really.

GB/GBC - Pickle is working on a port of lemonboy, I think, so that should take care of GB, and GPSP only emulates the GBA, and doesn't support GB/GBC games (afaik)

3DO - The 3DO was decently advanced for it's time, and ran games like gex and need for speed. While not on par with the playstation graphically, it was (probably) more complicated. And I'm not too sure that many people would really WANT to play 3DO. =P

 

[DurTahar]

Yes, but just because the 3DO was capable of very powerful things doesn't mean that necessarily NONE of them would run. After all, the PSX emulator is already capable of running Monster Rancher Battle Card just because it's a game that's far from using the PSX's full potential. There are plenty of 3DO games (I would even say the majority) that are more around the Sega CD's capabilities, which runs great on the Wiz. For the handful of people who expressed interest in a 3DO emulator in the topic where (supposedly) the source was being released, I didn't see anyone asking for any graphically intensive games that aren't any more demanding than many Sega CD games I've already played, much less PSX. The examples you gave are a lot less reasonable than the games that people were expecting from a potential 3DO emulator.

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

the source was being released, I didn't see anyone asking for any graphically intensive games that aren't any more demanding than many Sega CD games I've already played, much less PSX. The examples you gave are a lot less reasonable than the games that people were expecting from a potential 3DO emulator.

I'm just pointing out things that would be easily done, and separating them from the things that would be rather difficult to do. That's all. =P Not saying it's impossible.

 

[DurTahar]

Well considering you worded it like this

QUOTE
Here are some things that will probably never be useful on the wiz


I had no reason to believe you meant it like you are saying you did now.

 

[jacksterson]

Well considering you worded it like this

QUOTE
Here are some things that will probably never be useful on the wiz

I had no reason to believe you meant it like you are saying you did now.


What are the possibilities of playing old PC games like dating sims, THE Sims, and space quest games?

 

[Andrewr05]

The PSX doesn't even have full compatibility on todays new extremely powerful personal computers, don't expect a 300MHZ handheld to run it smoothly.

What are the possibilities of playing old PC games like dating sims, THE Sims, and space quest games?
Anything is theoretically possible, you just need to find someone who has the code for the game and the ambition to port it over.

If they are Win95 (Some 98 era) games and they ran under DOS (or if they are plain DOS and can't be run under Windows anyway) then it is quite a bit more likely that if you were to get a hold of the game that it may work out of the box with DOSBox...
(If you even manage to get that working)

 

[SML]

All six (there were only six, right?) of the Space Quest games run under Dosbox on a pc. Whether or not you can get them to run on dosbox for the wiz is another story.

 

[darkriku]

The PSX doesn't even have full compatibility on todays new extremely powerful personal computers, don't expect a 300MHZ handheld to run it smoothly.


Umm i built my pc two years ago and pc's have gotten alot better i can run ANY psx game thrown at it full speed

 

[DurTahar]

There are a handful of games that don't work, that's what he means by full compatibility. To be fair though, this isn't going to affect the majority of people. The only game I came across that wouldn't work on any PSX emulator I tried was Little Princess, but then I discovered the swap disc trick and just played it on my actual PSX. Other than that, every game I emulated worked just fine, and almost every game will even run flawlessly on my Macbook, where emulators are still quite a bit behind.

To be honest I'd consider it near impossible to make an absolutely perfect emulator for anything just because of the amount of testing it would require. I would consider PC PSX emulators to be very very close.