Criticalbeeb 0.1.0 Released

[AdamC]

Is anyone getting "File not found" on some games? I can't seem to get it to run Chuckie Egg :/

Wonder why it says that for some and not others?

Probably missing the !BOOT file on your disk.

 

[critical]

FRAK!

Cybertron, yes!

Going to have to take a proper look at the key mapping files,

For Frak!, you probably want to copy the default.kbd as frak.kbd and just change the following line:

X=n

to:

X=COLON

That will then allow you to use the X button to do jumping. It's difficult/impossible to play otherwise

Argh, that bloody tune.

A mapping for Cybertron Mission would look like:

LEFT=COMMA
RIGHT=PERIOD
UP=a
DOWN=z
A=SPACE
B=m
X=n
Y=RETURN
SELECT=ESCAPE

However, due to the problem that someone mentioned earlier (diagonals don't work at present), you won't have much fun playing it. I'll take a look at fixing that now.

 

[Parkydr]

Excellent emulator - I can finally play Imogen on my GP2X

 

[critical]

Excellent emulator - I can finally play Imogen on my GP2X

Glad you like it. BTW, if I never said it before, thanks very much for your silent GP2X startup wav. It saved me having to make one myself... the silly noise thing was not one of the new firmware 2.0 features I appreciated.

 

[Parkydr]

Glad you like it. BTW, if I never said it before, thanks very much for your silent GP2X startup wav. It saved me having to make one myself... the silly noise thing was not one of the new firmware 2.0 features I appreciated.

Glad it was useful - when I made it, everyone seemed so excited about making new startup sounds I thought no-one would bother with it. Over 400 people have proved me wrong.

 

[taras]

Excellent news, last time I used a BBC was to play Through The Dragon's Eye when I was 6 or 7. Might give it a spin

 

[WhizzBang]

I have got it to load Chuckie Egg and have chosen the Chuckie Egg mapping but none of the buttons seem to do anything. The mapings say Start is mapped to 'S' but I still can't get a game started.

 

[critical]

Just updated release to version 0.2.0. Diagonals are now supported, a couple more keymaps are provided, and the menu's a bit more usable.

I have got it to load Chuckie Egg and have chosen the Chuckie Egg mapping but none of the buttons seem to do anything. The mapings say Start is mapped to 'S' but I still can't get a game started.

To get Chuckie Egg working, wait for the game to go to the menu, then press the A button. This will take you to the Chuckie Egg control configuration. You can then just set it up properly. I couldn't remember what the default up and down keys were, otherwise I'd have provided them in the key mapping file.

 

[krosfyah]

I don't know if this is relevant but I noticed the keyboard mapping files were not using Unix line endings. I changed them just incase and finally got Chuckie Egg working.

 

[vaman]

Just updated release to version 0.2.0. Diagonals are now supported, a couple more keymaps are provided, and the menu's a bit more usable.

I have got it to load Chuckie Egg and have chosen the Chuckie Egg mapping but none of the buttons seem to do anything. The mapings say Start is mapped to 'S' but I still can't get a game started.

To get Chuckie Egg working, wait for the game to go to the menu, then press the A button. This will take you to the Chuckie Egg control configuration. You can then just set it up properly. I couldn't remember what the default up and down keys were, otherwise I'd have provided them in the key mapping file.

I have been unable to get much working with the Beeb-Em2x, has it been tried with Citadel. I'll check it tonight I hope. But it would be good to know it can run, never did complete it when it first came out.
Keep up the good work Critical.
Many thanks.
vaman

 

[rooster]

has it been tried with Citadel. I'll check it tonight I hope. But it would be good to know it can run, never did complete it when it first came out.

I just tried it with Citadel and it works a treat. I OCed it 270mhz. I see it automatically OCs to 250 in the source there critical

as soon as critical gets the save states going I'm gonna be trying to complete it, it was a massive game and one of my favourites on the BBC.

 

[critical]

I just tried it with Citadel and it works a treat. I OCed it 270mhz. I see it automatically OCs to 250 in the source there critical

as soon as critical gets the save states going I'm gonna be trying to complete it, it was a massive game and one of my favourites on the BBC.

Indeed. As I mentioned before, it was done for my own entertainment primarily, so I wanted it to work at a reasonable speed right away. I can work on the rendering slowness and remove the need for overclocking, I'm sure. I've got save states working on my GP2X at the moment - hopefully I'll do a release this afternoon / evening.

I'm really pleased I bought a mains power adaptor recently... I was finding having to either charge batteries or keep switching on/off to do development was the main block to my working on stuff for the GP2X so much. My other handheld development toy hasn't been switched on for a couple of weeks now

 

[critical]

as soon as critical gets the save states going I'm gonna be trying to complete it, it was a massive game and one of my favourites on the BBC.

Please try out version 0.3.0 now (see edited first post)

 

[rooster]

superb. just got v0.3.0 - gonna have a good play with it this morning.

thanks for making saves 'per game' btw, i was really hoping you'd do that rather than 1 save for the whole emu good job.

Critical, i was thinking... if your emu is based on the Dave Eggleston's v0.0.11 SDL port, which as he says on his site is based on the latest BeebEm v0.34 then this is a VERY compatible emu right away. Not surprisingly everything I've tried on CriticalBeeb runs fine so far.

I wanna try the infamous games that do ugly interrupt trickery like Revs and Firetrack now. I have faith!
Gentlemen, to the testing labs!

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Would it be possible to link the keyboard config files to the disc image names? Ie, look for the same name, but with the .kbd extension?

 

[critical]

Would it be possible to link the keyboard config files to the disc image names? Ie, look for the same name, but with the .kbd extension?

It would be possible, but I thought it'd be less hassle as it currently is.

Things will probably change to the scheme you suggest (which is used by pspbeeb, etc.) when the virtual keyboard and on-device keymap editing are in place - it's more sensible then.

Until then, the keyboard config files may now be linked to the disc images by using the new "Save settings for game" menu item. When you've made the association using that, whenever you load a disc which has a linked keymap, it'll select it.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Great - that probably works even better actually - means you can use the same keyboard file for many games.

What do you think the prospects are for improving speed and sound?

 

[critical]

Great - that probably works even better actually - means you can use the same keyboard file for many games.

What do you think the prospects are for improving speed and sound?

I'm working on the CPU and rendering code at the moment. I've had some encouraging results from changing the rendering / scaling and removing some inefficiency from the 6502 core. Ideally it would be great to integrate the 6502 asm core from ljp or somewhere else, but that won't happen overnight, if at all. I'm concerned about the impact it might have on compatibility too.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Sounds promising - it would be awesome to get this running full speed with sound!

Can the shoulder buttons be mapped in the keyboard files? Also, can the GP2X buttons be mapped to multiple BBC keys?

...and lastly, what key is the equivalent of the BBC ']' (closing square bracket) key? I tried RIGHTBRACKET but it didn't seem to work (in Labyrinthe)...

 

[critical]

Sounds promising - it would be awesome to get this running full speed with sound!

Can the shoulder buttons be mapped in the keyboard files? Also, can the GP2X buttons be mapped to multiple BBC keys?

The shoulder buttons can't be mapped in keyboard files. I didn't implement that, because I needed a trigger to open the virtual keyboard. I guess I could just use the R trigger for that, and let people map the L trigger. Alternatively, I could use the SELECT button to bring up the virtual keyboard, and allow mapping of both triggers. That might be a bit tidier.

...and lastly, what key is the equivalent of the BBC ']' (closing square bracket) key? I tried RIGHTBRACKET but it didn't seem to work (in Labyrinthe)...

That's not currently mapped, but I think I know how it should be done. That'll be available in the next release (along with performance enhancements).

Cheers for the feedback.