Gameboy Advance


Big_bazza99

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OK - I know that Visual Boy Advance has been ported to the GP2X but is anyone working on improving or recompiling it so that it runs at full speed on 2X?
 
Visual Boy Advance will never run full speed on the 2X, so forget about it.

There are ways of full speed GBA emulation however, but porting an existing emu isn't one of them.
 
OK - I know that Visual Boy Advance has been ported to the GP2X but is anyone working on improving or recompiling it so that it runs at full speed on 2X?

The way that it is written means it will never be anything playable. You have an ARM running "c" code that emulates an ARM. Kind of dumb. It would be like a GBA running "c" code that emulates a GBA even though it could run full speed natively.
 
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OK - I know that Visual Boy Advance has been ported to the GP2X but is anyone working on improving or recompiling it so that it runs at full speed on 2X?

The way that it is written means it will never be anything playable. You have an ARM running "c" code that emulates an ARM. Kind of dumb. It would be like a GBA running "c" code that emulates a GBA even though it could run full speed natively.

I hope that efficient GBA emulator will not show too soon...

Reason is very simple - Nintendo still is selling GBA derivates in a market so would go very anal about it. At worst could seek damages directly from GPH. This is something to be avoided especially knowing that for GPH it would be probably to costly to defend itself from ones like Nintendo.

For me the GBA isn't a big deal anyway.
 
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OK - I know that Visual Boy Advance has been ported to the GP2X but is anyone working on improving or recompiling it so that it runs at full speed on 2X?

The way that it is written means it will never be anything playable. You have an ARM running "c" code that emulates an ARM. Kind of dumb. It would be like a GBA running "c" code that emulates a GBA even though it could run full speed natively.

I hope that efficient GBA emulator will not show too soon...

Reason is very simple - Nintendo still is selling GBA derivates in a market so would go very anal about it. At worst could seek damages directly from GPH. This is something to be avoided especially knowing that for GPH it would be probably to costly to defend itself from ones like Nintendo.

For me the GBA isn't a big deal anyway.


How could Nintendo do anything? Do they go after PC manufacturers because PCs run perfect GBA emulators? I think not.
 
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porting the gp32 gba emulator that simulates the arm7 architecture of the gba is impossible?

If you mean GPAdvance, then it would be difficult because of Linux, but not impossible.

However, I've yet to see GPAdvance actually run any commercial games, so is there any point in porting it? It wasn't short of memory, so a 2x version would most likely see no improvement.
 
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DaveC - Nintendo may not be ethically or legally 'right' to sue someone about emus, but _they have done it_ ;) I know when I get C&D letters from companies, I bend over and squeel and run. (True story; I shoudl scan the letters in.)

Nintendo also has of late been patenting emulation approach methods; they're not first to do emulation, but the rest of us didn't patent these ideas either.. so N can actually legally go after GBA emu authors, and supporters thereof..

jeff
 
However, I've yet to see GPAdvance actually run any commercial games, so is there any point in porting it? It wasn't short of memory, so a 2x version would most likely see no improvement.

Do you mean running them at a decent speed? Because it did run certain commercial games, as fast as Ridge Racer on gp2psx, for example. I remember playing a... International Karate or something. It also played a YuGiOh game (can't give the exact rom name, but it was bigger than 4 MegaBytes) and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but I haven't seen these two by myself.

And I completely forgot about Linux... sounds like it's an obstacle when virtualizing?
 
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What about porting over Boycott Advance / SDL ? This is an SDL based gameboy advanced emulator. I know the GBA has a more advance architecture than nes or snes or genesis but what is the difference in porting wise? Why would it be emulating twice over like some of you are referring to? It almost sounds like there aren't very many devs who are interested in the GBA's games or architecture to give it a try as well. I'm not very good at it but I might try porting /compling this one to see if the speed increases over the Visual Boy Advance port. Who else is interested in giving this a try or helping me with this?
 
How could Nintendo do anything? Do they go after PC manufacturers because PCs run perfect GBA emulators? I think not.

Well... PC manufacturers and there is only one firm (and not exactly rich) what is standing behind the gp2x.

Nintendo knows very well that they could have chance only againsts minor players. Few minor PC's firms less that's not big deal for a whole PC industry. However there is only company involved in the gp2x and this is the difference.

It doesn't matter if claims would be bogus. As long one firm has more money then it can drain another to bankruptcy. The best example of such case is the Creative vs Aureal lawsuit. The latter even won but it didn't matter at all.
 
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What about porting over Boycott Advance / SDL ? This is an SDL based gameboy advanced emulator. I know the GBA has a more advance architecture than nes or snes or genesis but what is the difference in porting wise? Why would it be emulating twice over like some of you are referring to? It almost sounds like there aren't very many devs who are interested in the GBA's games or architecture to give it a try as well. I'm not very good at it but I might try porting /compling this one to see if the speed increases over the Visual Boy Advance port. Who else is interested in giving this a try or helping me with this?
I'll describe how I understand it (I'm not a developer). It's not emulating twice over, but rather emulating once unecessarily. You see, the GP2X has an ARM processor, the same as the GBA, which is potentially capable of running GBA code. This would cut out the need for traditional emulation, which would be too slow to run on the GP2X. This is why it should be fast enough, but Boycott Advance probably wouldn't.

Feel free to try though.
 
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The results would be pretty much the same we got with Visual Boy Advance. It uses the same technique, it loads the GBA rom and translates the instructions into "GP2X instructions". The only way to get fullspeed emulation in gp2x is, as has been said, through virtualization. This tries to run GBA code directly in the GP2X (which works, because they use a processor of the same family), but "adapting" those things that the GP2X and the GBA don't have in common. This has to be written from scratch, which is the other side of the story.

Edit: you were faster LHC ;)
 
I realize now that Boycott Advance seems to be closed source anyways. Also, how hard would it be to emulate a system lke GBA from scratch. Is there enough info on the net to pull together the neccasary resources to use the GP2X to emulate it? Where would one start?
 
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