Gba Emulator That You Can Adjust The Screen Size


notaz said:
Done at last:
http://repo.openpandora.org/includes/download.php?app=package.gpsp.notaz

I've done a fair bit of tuning so it runs nicely on pandora, and am quite happy with it. It was supposed to be a weekend project but ended up as hack-every-night-for-almost-a-week project, ohwell I must be getting old and inefficient.

I've uploaded the source as a git repo:
http://notaz.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gpsp.git;a=summary

Are you supporting this from an emulation-accuracy POV, or just getting it out there? Either way, it's a lovely emulator and many thanks.

If on the off-chance you get a moment to look, please consider having a quick trawl through "Ms PacMan - Maze Madness" - it locks the emulator up at the initial splashscreen ("Licensed by Nintendo") to the effect that pressing Y no longer works... well, it does but you have to wait for 30 secs+ for it to respond and bring up the emulator menu. This is a known issue for GPSP and has been the same ever since the original GP2X version :(

My favourite GBA game, too :(

D.
 
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Thanks notaz,

Love the 3x Display scaling with the Screen filtering turned off. Very nice.
 
notaz said:
I've done a fair bit of tuning so it runs nicely on pandora, and am quite happy with it. It was supposed to be a weekend project but ended up as hack-every-night-for-almost-a-week project, ohwell I must be getting old and inefficient.

I browsed the git for the summary of changes, but im curious (since i attempted to port this) what was needed to get it to just run?
 
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Great, finaly a clean 3x scaling, thanks. :)
It even looks good with the filter on, much better than before without filter. Emulator runs fast, I guess we don't even need frameskip enabled, maybe I will try some underclocking later and see how low I can go .
GPSP still has some small graphic bugs in some games (missing effects like highlighting Items in Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance ) but overall it works great. ^^ It always seems so easy, when notaz made it.
 
Pickle said:
I browsed the git for the summary of changes, but im curious (since i attempted to port this) what was needed to get it to just run?
Basically reading back buffer size from SDL_AudioSpec was enough to get the games running on top of Wiz codebase. Perhaps if you disable Wiz backend to get SDL video (what I assume everyone did) you get some other problems, but I did't want to go that way.
 
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Dunny said:
Are you supporting this from an emulation-accuracy POV, or just getting it out there?
I thought about debugging some game issues but later decided not to.

gpSP is probably the most ripped off emu out there. If you see a Chinese PMP supporting GBA games, > 90% chance it runs hacked version of gpSP with all author info stripped. There are also projects like NDS-GBA, released by people claiming they did everything themselves, but over time users notice the emu suffers from exactly the same issues as gpSP, and the emu "author" is incapable of fixing anything. So these bugs are like a fingerprint of gpSP, they can do plastic surgery to it's face, but you'll still recognize it after hanging around with it for a bit.

That said, if anyone knows a worthy port with some real fixes or Exophase decides to get some changes back from commercial phone ports that he authorized, I'll be happy to merge them in.
 
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Heh, good to know the emulator's flaws are like my signature.

I know how to fix the Minish Cap bug, at least in theory (I fixed it at some point but it must have regressed). It has to do with reads to BIOS and/or open bus regions not returning the correct garbage. It's not exactly trivial though, unless I look at it and it becomes immediately clear what was wrong with my implementation. If I do see yongzh again I can ask if he fixed this.

On the other hand I don't know anything about Ms Pacman, this is the first time I've heard of this bug. Dunny, maybe if you bothered me when you immediately noticed it I might have tried fixing it in the GP2X version but you instead spent your time arguing with me about how the emulator was too slow to be useful ;p
 
Exophase said:
On the other hand I don't know anything about Ms Pacman, this is the first time I've heard of this bug. Dunny, maybe if you bothered me when you immediately noticed it I might have tried fixing it in the GP2X version but you instead spent your time arguing with me about how the emulator was too slow to be useful ;p

I certainly did mention the problem with Ms PacMan Maze Madness back when it was emulated on the GP2X - unfortunately the forum search won't go back past September 2010 :(

And yes, it was way too slow - many of the games I wanted to play would not, even with my '2X overclocked to 290MHz... Though I don't recall having a go at you - it was ZodTTD's port that I was testing. I donated a sum of money in order to get my hands on a new "faster" build only to find that it... wasn't, and Zod had basically taken my money and ran, with promised updates and speed increases never appearing.

You have my apologies, none the less. BTW - the game used to get as far as the elephant image on the '2X - on the Panda, it doesn't get that far before locking up.

D.
 
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Another great emulator on the Pandora. It looks so nice having the 3x zoom and it runs silky smooth. Thanks!

Out of curiosity I tried to reproduce the Minish Cap bug in the final dungeon and sure enough it froze in the same spot. No real suprise there, but what was suprising is instead of crashing back to the desktop it locked up the device requiring a reset.

Correction:
I tested it again while logged in via ssh. In fact gpsp was still running but was just unresponsive to any key/button presses and could be killed from the shell.
 
Wow, impressive! Many thanks to Notaz & Exophase!

Long live to :pandora2ut4:
 
Hi notaz, many thanks for this!!
I dont suppose there could be an update for gpFCE-GP2X i.e. native pandora build with 7z support and more scalers kinda like this gpSP release??

you would be my hero!
 
milkshake said:
Hi notaz, many thanks for this!!
I dont suppose there could be an update for gpFCE-GP2X i.e. native pandora build with 7z support and more scalers kinda like this gpSP release??

you would be my hero!

Total change of subject, but all GPFCE for Pandora really needs is working Vsync and some scaling options. The rest is already done. I know nothing about coding, but I assume that's a relatively simple job that most guys could pick up.
 
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Thanks for the good work Notaz and Exophase.

I found a couple of games that used to work but don't now, Space invaders does weird graphical glitches then hangs on the title screen and IridionII crashes emu to MM (this worked before on Wiz but was real slow). Just info in case you were squashing bugs.

Great work though, it runs great on the Pandora.
 
Has anyone played Summon Night swordcraft story 2 on the pandora? On my caanoo there's serious slowdown and I was wondering if this was for the armm version of gpsp in general or just the caanoo version. It plays fine on gpsp for the psp.
 
A bug; occasionally, Shining Soul II doesn't save properly. When it fails, it brings up the GBA boot screen. Then the save file you were using disappears! Being an RPG, this is disastrous; thankfully, this can be averted if you save-state before you actually save. Then you must restart the emulator to save properly.
 
Blue Protoman said:
A bug; occasionally, Shining Soul II doesn't save properly. When it fails, it brings up the GBA boot screen. Then the save file you were using disappears! Being an RPG, this is disastrous; thankfully, this can be averted if you save-state before you actually save. Then you must restart the emulator to save properly.

I have also noticed in Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshis Island, the GBA boot screen will come up on occasion when moving between areas. I haven't found any reliable way to reproduce this however.
 
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