Release BeebEm alpha, Acorn BBC Micro emulator


a couple updates:

- fixed the appdata problem, it now works right with FAT SD cards

- I got rid of the directory "gp2x" in the appdata, it moves files from that directory to the main appdata if needed
 
ok, but why not use the default save dir?  ( appdata/beebem/saves or whatever it is )
 
What I mean it... it doesn`t save the dir. 

I`ve been saving my saves in my beeb game dir...

I suppose I could move em... just wanted them all in one please really :)
 
hey stainy... thanks for the reminder.  I should give BeebEm some love, she is my flagship product :p

In the next update I'll try to include at least these features:

- remembers your save folder

- hides the "mysterious black shadow" mouse pointer

and maybe:

- better graphics so doesn't miss any horizontal "scan lines" (we're still using vertical res of 240 like gp2x, so by default it misses 16 lines, it's noticable in thrust for example with the default settings)

I'm a bit forgetful and lazy, so I am making TODO lists for myself, in 1st post of each project thread, and also a merged one for all projects, in my profile.
 
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Good stuff. Save folder would be good, also the lines thing will be good also. It is noticeable in certain games.


Also if you have time, have a look at the loading thing. Remember i sent you a save state just before loading levels from disk :)


Sent from my A500 using the cli.
 
This would be cool.  I have seveal games I play on BeebEm.

Judge DREDD is the one who first turned me on to BeebEm....I'd had no idea it was out there, but I had played Acorn games way back in the day.

I'm particularly enjoying playing Impossible Mission again.
 
Hi, sorry to be so late to this thread but I have just started introducing my kids to BBC Basic and so I would really like to get BeebEm working on my Pandora.

I downloaded this version, which I guess is still the newest; http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=beebem-15428&p=1

When I ran it back in 2013 I just saw disc I/O from the flashing light but nothing ever actually appeared on the screen. I just downloaded it again to see if anything had changed recently and it's still having the same problem; nothing visible launches but I do see a little disk I/O for about a second after launching the pnd from the XFCE menu.

Something weird is that when I look at the properties of beebem.pnd in Thunar I see that it has a "kind" set to "plain text document" although all the other pnds are "executable". When I do an "ls -l" in the console I see that it is "rwxrwxrwx" though so I don't understand why Tunar would think it was a text document. I have a couple of other pnds like this though and they seem to execute fine so I guess this is okay. I did a "file" on the pnd and it recognises that it's a squashfs.

The pnd seems to create the appdata/beebem-15428 directory with the config and saves directories, so it is doing something when I launch it.

Am I missing something obvious?

I think I am using SuperZaxxon R1 if that helps.

Please please please if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

I have BeebEm working fine on my PC but I would really like to get it working on my Pandora also.

Thanks!
 
SuperZaxxon R1 is ancient for one, there has been a ton of fixes and improvements over the years, perhaps a reflash is needed.

But there may be some information in the output log on the pnd run... After trying to launch the PND, check for a log file in the /tmp/ directory. There should be a .out file with the beebem name in it. It may have some clue to what is going on.
 
I`ve used Beebem alot.. I got a version that Ptitseb worked on for me a while back... not sure if that one is on the repo.
I can help..like Trashy said... you really need to upgrade first!
 
BeebEm worked for me when I've used it. Make sure you've installed the BIOS files - including the BASIC ROM.

FWIW, if all you want is BBC BASIC, you could use ArcEM as the Archimedes shipped with BBC BASIC 5. Or even run modern RISC OS natively on the Pandora, but I've not tried either of those approaches yet, so can't report how easy they are. On a real RISC OS machine, after booting to the desktop, hit F12 and type 'BASIC' to get into BASIC 5.
 
Does it let you map controls? That's the main thing I found missing in the existing version (many BBC Micro games use symbol keys for gaming - it's usually either ZX;. or AZ,, based on the layout on this keyboard), and on the Pandora many of those are behind function key mappings, so not really usable in game.

Some sort of virtual keyboard would also be useful probably, as I remember having to hunt for specific keys on the current version.

But, since ED ported Chuckie Egg natively to the Pandora, I have less need of BeebEm these days ;)
 
Well, here is the last version I packaged (almost a year ago!). I may push it to the repo later.

As a reminder (and if I haven't forgotten everything about this one), F11 get you the menu (to quit or load a disk), and F12 the virtual keyboard.
 

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Very nice, the virtual keyboard and keyboard remapping works well, thanks! A big improvement there.

A few oddities:
- The Caps lock etc. lights are drawn over the Shift/Z/X keys. They should be a dozen pixels or so lower.
- The shoulder buttons don't work as shift/ctrl. But the BBC only had one Ctrl so perhaps that's more authentic.
- In the virtual keyboard, pressing ctrl selects the key, and presses it with ctrl. Pressing shift does not, and you have to shift+enter it to make it happen. Perhaps this is because ctrl on the Pandora is the select key, I'm not sure.

And a bug:
- You've left personal paths in the default configuration, so none of the file launchers work on my system, erroring instead that the path doesn't exist. I should try to edit the configuration file, but I've not got round to it yet.
 
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