Release ColEm v2.9 released

[EvilDragon]

There seemed to be little love for really classic retro systems on the Pandora, so I decided to try to improve some ports we have.

First let's start with a new version of ColEm, a Colecovision emulator.

 

I've updated it to the latest version (v2.9), added Picklelauncher for easier ROM browsing and optimized the controls for the Pandora.

It also now runs fullscreen (the old version started in windowed mode).

It runs .COL, .ROM, zipped and gzipped.

Most important Controls:

* START: Ingame menu (save state, load state, etc.)

* A-Button: Left Fire button, X-Button: Right Fire button

* Y-Button: Fast forward (useful for the first Colecovision screen )

* q and w: * and #

* ESC: Quit and return to ROM Selector

You need to put the Colecovision ROM (named coleco.rom) into the appdata-directory (colem).

Download it from the Repo: ColEm v2.9

 

[budweiser]

Awesome Thank  You

 

[spn-x]

I just tried it. It works perfect Thanks ED

 

[levi]

Thanks for the port.


Unfortuantely I'm having a little trouble getting the BIOS to work. I've put it in place as 'coleco.rom' and the launcher doesn't complain now, but the pndrun.out contains ' OPENING COLECO.ROM...NOT FOUND'. So I renamed 'coleco.rom' as 'COLECO.ROM' and now the launcher complains.


Perhaps my bios is duff and the error message is misleading. I'll try to see if I've got another version hanging about.


Edit: Yes, another bios works. Seems that if you get that message, that's probably the problem.


Edit2: Donkey Kong works, Venture works (although the red player dot is a little hard to see on my screen), Zaxxon works, and Montezuma's Revenge works (though who thought the noises it makes were a good idea is beyond me).

 

[Jumpman]

Works great ED, thanks for the update. Colecovision was my first gaming love, and it never gets old. Looking forward to more old school emu updates, as this was a great start.

Chris

 

[levi]

I've been playing a fair bit of Venture on this recently. It's a great little game that is completely new to me, and while it's a little hard to see your red dot in the 'outside' screen, it's relatively easy to follow it once you know how it moves. Zaxxon as well is probably one of the best official 8-bit ports, and up there with all the unofficial ports on other systems too.

 

[EvilDragon]

You should also try Venture on the original Arcade

 

[levi]

Will do! I only discovered what arcade Zaxxon looked like after playing it here and being reminded of it.


Meant to ask, when I look at a video of Donkey Kong Coleco on youtube the flickering of sprites on the same line as your player doesn't look too bad, while on the Pandora it can be a little hard to see the barrels rolling towards you. Is that an artefact of the compression youtube does to videos perhaps, or perhaps different emulators trigger a vsync call at different timings?

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Looks like I'm the only one having problem with this emulator.  Couldn't launch a game.  The emu keeps on going back to pickle lancher eventhough I have the coleco.rom in the colem appdata diretory.

Here's the pnd_out:

Spoiler

=======================================================================================
PND             : /media/ROOT/pandora/menu/colem.pnd
PND_FSTYPE      : Squashfs
APPDATADIR      : /media/ROOT/pandora/appdata/colem
APPDD_FSTYPE    : ext3
PND_CPUSPEED    : <unset>
EXENAME         : ./run.sh
ARGUMENTS       : <unset>
=======================================================================================
[ START ]--- Mount the PND ----------
Mounting : mount -t squashfs -o ro "/dev/loop0" "/mnt/utmp/colem"
Mounting the Union FS : mount -t aufs -o exec,dirs="/media/ROOT/pandora/appdata/colem=rw+nolwh":"/mnt/pnd/colem=rr" none "/mnt/utmp/colem"
[sUCCESS]--- Mount the PND ----------
[ START ]--- Starting the application ( ./run.sh  ) ----------
Allocating 256kB for CPU address space...OK
Creating VDP...OK
Loading ROMs:
  Opening COLECO.ROM...NOT FOUND
Allocating 256kB for CPU address space...OK
Creating VDP...OK
Loading ROMs:
  Opening COLECO.ROM...NOT FOUND
Allocating 256kB for CPU address space...OK
Creating VDP...OK
Loading ROMs:
  Opening COLECO.ROM...NOT FOUND
Allocating 256kB for CPU address space...OK
Creating VDP...OK
Loading ROMs:
  Opening COLECO.ROM...NOT FOUND
Starting PickleLauncher Version v0.21.
Running from '/mnt/utmp/colem/' as 'picklelauncher'
Loading config.
Loading ziplist.
Initializing SDL.
SDL initialized.
Loading profile.
Closing TTF fonts.
Quitting TTF.
Quitting SDL.
Quitting PickleLauncher Version v0.21.
[sUCCESS]--- Starting the application ( ./run.sh  ) ----------
[ START ]--- Restoring the frame buffer status ----------
[sUCCESS]--- Restoring the frame buffer status ----------
[ START ]--- uMount the PND ----------
[ START ]--- Waiting the Union to be available ----------
[sUCCESS]--- Waiting the Union to be available ----------
auplinklink.c:223: AUFS_CTL_PLINK_MAINT: Inappropriate ioctl for device
rmdir: failed to remove `/mnt/utmp/colem': Device or resource busy
[ START ]--- Waiting the PND mount dir to be free ----------
[sUCCESS]--- Waiting the PND mount dir to be free ----------
cleanup done
[sUCCESS]--- uMount the PND ----------
=======================================================================================
Return code is : 1

 

[TrashyMG]

look at Levi's post.. you need to change the filename of the ROM to all uppercase letters.

 

[Jumpman]

Meant to ask, when I look at a video of Donkey Kong Coleco on youtube the flickering of sprites on the same line as your player doesn't look too bad, while on the Pandora it can be a little hard to see the barrels rolling towards you. Is that an artefact of the compression youtube does to videos perhaps, or perhaps different emulators trigger a vsync call at different timings?

Go in to the Colem settings menu and select "Show All Sprites", and that should fix the issue.

Chris

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

look at Levi's post.. you need to change the filename of the ROM to all uppercase letters.

Not working.

 

[TrashyMG]

perhaps steal the ROM from a better source?   Maybe you need to re-dump the BIOS ROM from your legitimately purchased Colecovision.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I do own a colecvision.  I redumped many times.  I quit

 

[mcobit]

You did rename the filename AND extension uppercase?

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

You did rename the filename AND extension uppercase?

Yes I did try both lowercase and uppercase.  Here's the strange part.  If I rename the bios all uppercase like COLECO.ROM, the emu complains that there is no bios and it needs a bios named coleco.rom.  So I rename COLECO.ROM to coleco.rom and the emu gets to the picklelauncer, but can't run any game and will keep falling back to the picklelauncher doesn't matter what game I pick.  I then use the same bios and use both uppercase and lowercase version of it (i.e., COLECO.ROM and coleco.rom), the emu works and now I am able to play all my games.  Why is that?  Is it that on starting the emu, it looks for lowercase bios, and when playing games, it looks for uppercase bios of the same bios?

So my bios is fine all along.  Just have to make two copies of it and name one coleco.rom and another COLECO.ROM  ------> Weird but works

 

[levi]

Hah, weird. I thought I had fixed mine by putting a valid one in lower case, but I've ended up with the first one I tried in upper case and the second one in lower case, and diffing them shows they are in fact identical. So yes, it appears you need two copies of the BIOS.


I've just tried emptying the lower-case version of my BIOS, and it seems the emulator still launches games fine. So it seems that the launcher is checking for the lower case file, while it should be checking for it in upper case - straightforward bug I think.

 

[EvilDragon]

Ahh, okay. I only tested it with a FAT32 card, so case is irrelevant. I'll change it that it works with both cases.


I'll also enable 'Show all sprites' as default.

 

[levi]

Well, it should check for upper case only, as on ext that's what the emulator wants.


And indeed, enabling show all sprites was all I needed to be able to see the barrels clearly in Donkey Kong, thanks!

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

My cards are ext4 formated.