Gamboyadvance: Gp2xvba For Gp2x

[murak]

Greate news on the emu, I spy alot of dedicated developers for the GP2X
And I have to agree with nickspoon, Advance Wars was my favourite GBA game (shortly followed by Castlevania Circle of the Moon) and with my GBA looking pretty shabby after the Afterburner modd I am looking forward to play GBA games on the buss again.

Keep up the good work!

 

[icurafu]

Advance Wars. Point proven.

And whoever said about Oracle of Seasons on the GBC emulator, I can't get it to work. Nor can I get Final Fantasy IV or Mario Allstars to work on SNES. Megadrive and Quake work brilliantly though.

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Final Fantasy IV just came out for the GBA. ^___^

 

[nubie]

GBA emulation is mostly concerned with the other hardware, not the ARM CPU

The things that need emulating for a GBA emulator are the SOUND, the GRAPHICS, and the CONTROLS

Full Speed will happen because it is

2 ARM cpus @ 200mhz VS. 1 ARM at 16mhz

they are the same processor, we will be running the code from the GBA directly on the processor.

VBA is not going to do it. A modified GPAdvance is what will achieve the fullspeed

 

[Alex.]

Man, if only the GP2X would get NFS 2+ ported over (as commercial game of course), then I'd buy the GP2X in a second

Btw as a cool 3D car game, did you guys try Stunt Car racer on Frodo?

 

[pip]

I call FS0 full framerate a reality, it will happen.

How do you know it will happen? Are you going to do it yourself? Otherwise, it can happen if someone does it. It could happen on the GP32 as well but no one finished the project so saying that it will happen on the GP2X is taking way too much for granted.

Also keep in mind that while the design and concept of GPAdvance is great, it is not near completion.

 

[DaveC]

GBA emulation is mostly concerned with the other hardware, not the ARM CPU

The things that need emulating for a GBA emulator are the SOUND, the GRAPHICS, and the CONTROLS

Full Speed will happen because it is

2 ARM cpus @ 200mhz VS. 1 ARM at 16mhz

they are the same processor, we will be running the code from the GBA directly on the processor.

VBA is not going to do it.  A modified GPAdvance is what will achieve the fullspeed

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It is not that simple. You have to be able to emulate all of that custom chippery in the GBA that handles GFX sound etc and the ways that they interact with each other. Since both GP2X cores have limitations such as memory access etc it may not be very easy or may not work at all that way. I am not saying it is impossible because I don't know. I am just saying don't think it is a sure thing either.

 

[nubie]

It is not that simple.  You have to be able to emulate all of that custom chippery in there that handles GFX sound etc and the ways that they interact with each other.  Since both cores have limitations such as memory access etc it may not be very easy or may not work at all that way.  I am not saying it is impossible because I don't know.  I am just saying don't think it is a sure thing either.

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I believe I mentioned the "custom chippery" they are covered under the "graphics, sound and controls need emulating" section of my post.

 

[Fez]

ahh man woohoo ive been hanging out for this. I was even going to try port it myself. Hopefully I will be able to give my gameboy to my little sister in the future.

 

[Wolfspirit]

Honestly.. I'm just going to get a DS with a supercard SD since I already own the zodiac. I'm going to wait until the gp2x matures before getting it.. let all the kinks get worked out. I can't wait to get my DS with the supercard SD slot I'll be able to finally complete Golden Sun!

 

[SolidSnake]

LOL, i own a DS and a supercard, and MOST of the games for the DS is a piece of shit ;/. I have a GBA SP too, but the possibility to play everything in a single unit kick asses! I only remember that i have a SP when i need to flash my other cart, since the DS doesnt have the EXT port...

And, btw: where is the atari 2600 emulator?? umm, riveraid ~~

 

[Yamcha79]

I have a problem with this emu. BLACK SCREEN with every game. Why? What game run with this emu for gp2x?

 

[Tobriand]

I believe Squidge mentioned in another thread that it was perfectly possible (under HH), but that you'd near certainly have to have one processor going full whack at 200MHz for the gfx emulation and the other at 16MHz or so for the CPU - and that that it might be tought to synchronize them.

I'm absolutely certain GBA emulation will be released and pretty close on to full speed somewhen (lord knows we have the hardware this time round - we almost did under the GP32, amazingly enough!). What I'm not certain about is how long it'll take; it'll probably need some pretty hefty coding to get the graphics hardware of the GBA emulated in a useable fashion, I imagine - especially if we're aiming to use the 2x's hardware acceleration (which from what I've heard is tbh fairly limited for anything except OSDs and mpeg decoding).

 

[Kmeru]

Let's make a bounty for that emulator too

 

[LHC]

6fps are pretty slow! However with a bit of luck and 280mhz we might be able to see it running in realtime, someday

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I think we might even get by at 100mhz or less!

The GBA only runs on a sub 20mhz ARM processor,

I see what you're thinking, however VBA is nothing to take that easy... You need a decent PC to play it at FS0(CPU 700mhz+). I don't know the details, but the ARM CPU is should not be taken lightly.

perhaps a completely new written for the gp2x might run at 100mhz. But as long as we need at least 200mhz to run NES(4mhz cpu afaik) at FS0, I don't see that happen

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I like how you ignored half of what he said; the bit that argues against your point. I'm not saying it will definitely happen, because I have no idea. But don't ignore what he said.


For the record I'd say that 6fps is actually fairly impressive for a quick direct port, although obviously not playable.

 

[Squidge]

The problem with GBA emulation is getting it to run slowly enough h34r:

 

[God Ginrai]

That's if you make use of the ARM architecture, right?

 

[Willei]

Here are some specs of the GBA taken from here. I can't see anything incredibly compicated about the processor (an ARM7) or the memory structure. The only relative unknown there is the sound.

Important GBA hardware features include:

* 32-bit 16.78 MHz ARM (RISC) processor
* 8-bit Z80 (CISC) processor that runs at 4.2 MHz or 8.4 MHz (this provides compatibility with older Game Boys: the Game Boy Color, or CGB, and the monochrome Game Boy, or DMG)
* Four 16-bit timers
* Four DMA channels
* 240x160 TFT color LCD
* Stereo sound (through stereo headphones)
* Ten keypad inputs
* Serial port
* Game cartridge (GamePak) interface

The GBA includes several memories for different purposes:

* 16 KB BIOS ROM
* 256 KB external (to the ARM processor) work RAM (EWRAM)
* 32 KB internal (to the ARM processor, that is, on the same chip as the ARM core) work RAM (IWRAM)
* 1 KB Background and Sprite Palette RAM
* 96 KB Video RAM
* 1 KB Object Attribute RAM
* Up to 32 MB of GamePak ROM
* Up to 64 KB of GamePak SRAM (optional)

If someone is willing to put the masses and masses of time required to make an emulator more or less from scratch, I doubt they'd have any problems with the GP2X hardware.

But personally, I'd never make one myself (regardless of my lack of free time or coding skills ). The system can still be baught in the shops, developers are still working hard to make a living by selling games for the system. I'm all for emulation as a means of preserving what would otherwise be long forgotten games (although I still own several arcade boards and old game systems), but I wouldn't want to play a part in making piracy any more rife (no matter how slight). I wonder how many homebrew devs would share this view...

MOST of the games for the DS is a piece of shit ;/.

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You're a lunatic. No system before has had the amount of excellent games a single year from launch that the DS has. If you consider most games on the DS to be shit, there isn't a system on the planet that you couldn't raise the same issue with.

 

[nubie]

I like how you ignored half of what he said; the bit that argues against your point. I'm not saying it will definitely happen, because I have no idea. But don't ignore what he said.


For the record I'd say that 6fps is actually fairly impressive for a quick direct port, although obviously not playable.

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It's OK.

I PM'd him and pointed that out, he said he missed it because he was extremely tired.

So anyone who wants to can have a crack at GPAdvance. GP2AdvanceX anyone?

 

[God Ginrai]

So anyone who wants to can have a crack at GPAdvance. GP2AdvanceX anyone?

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Domm, the guy who ported the current GBA emu that this topic is about has posted in another topic that he would try to port it.

Ah, didn't know that existed. I'll take a look at it. It looks like it might be alot easier to get that optimized than VisualBoyAdvance. I don't thik I really want to try to optimize VisualBoyAdvance anyway, I just wanted to see if I could port it.

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[nubie]

So anyone who wants to can have a crack at GPAdvance.  GP2AdvanceX anyone?

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Domm, the guy who ported the current GBA emu that this topic is about has posted in another topic that he would try to port it.

Ah, didn't know that existed. I'll take a look at it. It looks like it might be alot easier to get that optimized than VisualBoyAdvance. I don't thik I really want to try to optimize VisualBoyAdvance anyway, I just wanted to see if I could port it.

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I thought that was this thread, oops.
I mentioned earlier that he was planning on it.
So, all cleared up on the VisualBoyAdvance is dead?
Long live GPAdvance!

Edit: In fact, look on the first page of this topic, I believe I quoted that very post :blink: