Columbo (colecovision Emulator) Release -- 001 Alpha :)


skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
Messages
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Website
www.codejedi.com
Snaff beat the Commies to death so I thought I'd work on the old Coleco since no one else seems to have the love for it ;)

Columbo is a more or less from-scratch emulator, so its got a lot of growing pains to work through.. still, she works pretty well already. Compatibility is not perfect, but its pretty good; audio is recognizable though shoddy (working on that!), but you can already play quite a few games :)

I hope you dig it!

Help me out though... give me lots of suggestions. And if anyone wants to whip up a title screen let me know ;)

Check the README for installation instructions and all that; its not much of a manual for now, but I've been busy so deal with it ;)

Get it on the archive:
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,1485

Or at my site:
http://www.codejedi.com/columbo/binaries/c...x-001-alpha.zip

Please reply with your comments!

jeff
 
Seems like a good start, every game I've thrown at it runs extremely fast. Here's my comments:

1) it is a definitely too fast
2) left/right in menu scrolls the page very slowly, besides, I think the shoulder buttons would be better for page scrolling because of the diagonal issues
3) sound is still so-so ;)
4) I'd love a virtual keyboard instead of shoulderbuttons the way they are...

Thanks for your good work!


skeezix posted on May 5 2006 at 04:05 PM said:
Snaff beat the Commies to death so I thought I'd work on the old Coleco since no one else seems to have the love for it ;)

Columbo is a more or less from-scratch emulator, so its got a lot of growing pains to work through.. still, she works pretty well already. Compatibility is not perfect, but its pretty good; audio is recognizable though shoddy (working on that!), but you can already play quite a few games :)

I hope you dig it!

Help me out though... give me lots of suggestions. And if anyone wants to whip up a title screen let me know ;)

Check the README for installation instructions and all that; its not much of a manual for now, but I've been busy so deal with it ;)

Get it on the archive:
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,1485

Or at my site:
http://www.codejedi.com/columbo/binaries/c...x-001-alpha.zip

Please reply with your comments!

jeff
 
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*g* Glad you tried her out.. don't want things to be just SNES and Genesis around here :) (Thankfully one never has to worry about that here .. people still love the C64, ST and Amiga here, and I bet someone is dieing for an Atari XE emu somewhere :)

Theres lots to be done if folks are interested; zipfile support (though not really needed I expect, unless perhaps to zip the entire collection into one file :p); the speed is still too fast eh? DDiud you have a Coleco or ADAM? I'm not quite sure of the speeds..

Full screen scaling needs doing; fixing up the audio and adding volume and mute control.

A virtual keyboard is the way to go for sure (and driven by SELECT I guess like I do in OutcaST), but I'm rather hoping someone will be so disgusted with the shoulder interface that they'll draw me up a small onscreen keyboard that I can use ;)

(13x13 or 15x15 px keys would be peachy ;)

I always liked the Coleco Donkey Kong....

jefftired
 
I have a fully functional and hooked up Colecovision below my tv ;)
I don't know how to measure it precisely. nut speed is quite definitely higher than the original in all games.

All the things you mentioned would be nice. I have an image somewhere which someone had made for my PalmColem port, if I find it I will send it to you, it might work for your needs...

skeezix posted on May 5 2006 at 07:18 PM said:
*g* Glad you tried her out.. don't want things to be just SNES and Genesis around here :) (Thankfully one never has to worry about that here .. people still love the C64, ST and Amiga here, and I bet someone is dieing for an Atari XE emu somewhere :)

Theres lots to be done if folks are interested; zipfile support (though not really needed I expect, unless perhaps to zip the entire collection into one file :p); the speed is still too fast eh? DDiud you have a Coleco or ADAM? I'm not quite sure of the speeds..

Full screen scaling needs doing; fixing up the audio and adding volume and mute control.

A virtual keyboard is the way to go for sure (and driven by SELECT I guess like I do in OutcaST), but I'm rather hoping someone will be so disgusted with the shoulder interface that they'll draw me up a small onscreen keyboard that I can use ;)

(13x13 or 15x15 px keys would be peachy ;)

I always liked the Coleco Donkey Kong....

jefftired
 
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PalmColem? I also have a Colem port for Palm (called Columbo in fact; I coudlnt' think of a better name for this one, so I called it Columbo/gp2x, despite not being descended from the same thing :p)

jeff
 
It is a port of Marat's Colem I did on my Tungsten some time before the release of Columbo ;) Never really completed it though it was fast and sound was not so bad...

skeezix posted on May 5 2006 at 10:40 PM said:
PalmColem? I also have a Colem port for Palm (called Columbo in fact; I coudlnt' think of a better name for this one, so I called it Columbo/gp2x, despite not being descended from the same thing :p)

jeff
 
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Skeezix, I was bored in photoshop, here's what I came up with, tell me what you think.

Columbo-v1.jpg
 
skeezix posted on May 5 2006 at 02:05 PM said:
Snaff beat the Commies to death so I thought I'd work on the old Coleco since no one else seems to have the love for it ;)

Columbo is a more or less from-scratch emulator, so its got a lot of growing pains to work through.. still, she works pretty well already. Compatibility is not perfect, but its pretty good; audio is recognizable though shoddy (working on that!), but you can already play quite a few games :)

I hope you dig it!

Help me out though... give me lots of suggestions. And if anyone wants to whip up a title screen let me know ;)

Check the README for installation instructions and all that; its not much of a manual for now, but I've been busy so deal with it ;)

Get it on the archive:
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,1485

Or at my site:
http://www.codejedi.com/columbo/binaries/c...x-001-alpha.zip

Please reply with your comments!

jeff

Ever thought of porting Rlyeh's Coleco emu from the GP32? That emu was *perfect* on the Gp32, speed , sound, compatibility, all of it. Maybe he will give you the source if you ask as it seems he is not coding much anymore anyway.

Anyway here is a splash screen I was working on for Rlyeh but he didn't like it, if you wanted I could finish it for your emu. It does need a bit of work but it can be completed if you wanted it.

coleco.png
 
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Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)
 
Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 08:35 AM said:
Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)


hDay?! :blink: um ok, even so I am getting old and don't have 10 years to wait for it. If Skeezix can port it in a few weeks, I will be able to experience perfect portable Coleco emulation before they plant me ;)
 
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good start, skeezix. i like this emu! how long have you been working on this one?

Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 08:35 AM said:
Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)

serious?! didn´t hear something from rlyeh in ages!
 
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B4N5H33 posted on May 6 2006 at 10:33 AM said:
Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 08:35 AM said:
Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)

serious?! didn´t hear something from rlyeh in ages!

Yup, spoke to him yesterday on IRC....

<Squidge> so... what happened to fDay ;)
<rlyeh> evolutioned
<rlyeh> into hday
<rlyeh> :D

There's no time frame though, so don't excited just yet. hDay will appear whenever he's happy, which could be a month, 6 months.. whatever.
 
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hmmm what's hDay??

Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
B4N5H33 posted on May 6 2006 at 10:33 AM said:
Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 08:35 AM said:
Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)

serious?! didn´t hear something from rlyeh in ages!

Yup, spoke to him yesterday on IRC....

<Squidge> so... what happened to fDay ;)
<rlyeh> evolutioned
<rlyeh> into hday
<rlyeh> :D

There's no time frame though, so don't excited just yet. hDay will appear whenever he's happy, which could be a month, 6 months.. whatever.
 
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Not been working on it thaaat long, but over a long period of time as I've been beaten up lately :p The coleco is a pretty simple machine in a lot of ways (but any emulation project is tedious since you have to fiddle a lot :) A lot of components are from prior work though, such as the Z80 core (based on some Neil Bradley work) and such and the menu code is one of the Zot dialogs (same as for outcast)

Needs lots of work but hopefully I can fixerup a bit.. I always liked Coleco DK for some reason :)

DaveC -- sure, fix it up a bit... thats a pretty nice titlescreen (sorry Psymaster!)

But today another look for houses... I so hate shopping for a house :p

jeff

I should note it would take much longer to dev from scratch were it not for some good documentation and sample code in existing emus to look at; this codebase can be compiled with or witrhout various pieces from other emus as well as thats what I've been doing for parallel testing.. so while a given release is all new work, the dev builds for myself have all sortds of crap in them :) So many kudos to Marat for Colem :)
 
Squidge posted on May 6 2006 at 10:35 AM said:
Rlyeh is still coding, but he's working on hDay now :) (fDay was gp32 only, which is now kinda pointless)

I guess this proclamation broke many GP32 owners' hearts...
 
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