Gp2x And The Future Of The Console

[morcar]

Just thought i`d ask what you thought about the future of the console as i should be getting mine with in the next few days.

What apps, games and emu`s do you think will come this year or maybe improvments in teh area`s i just mentioned ?

Have to say i was a little dissapointed about the snes emu on the gp2x as i thought it would have done full speed by now. Even the Dreamcast version is better from what i have seen, but maybe that`s me being picky and wanted it 100% full speed.

anyhow let me know cuz i`m really interested.

 

[critical]

Wait until you get your GP2X, try it, then see if you think it's good enough. If not, sell it. You obviously thought it would be alright enough to buy one in the first place. You'll probably be flamed for coming across as an ingrate, given that most of the software is written for free in people's spare time, and you therefore don't have any right to expect anything from them. I do hope so, but lack the motivation to do it properly myself.

 

[ruckage]

It's not possible to say what will be released this year, just about all of the GP2x software is made by hobbyists and as such it all depends on what we feel like doing and whether we have spare time to do it. Remember apart from the odd donation the devs only reward for their efforts is the appreciation of the end user (or in some cases lack of). I do believe this will be a good year for software though - the ammount of homebrew games especially seems to be increasing in both quantity and quality. Also keep an eye on the GBAX 2007 compo as thats sure to have some great entries.

 

[morcar]

well as everythings open source i wouldn`t mind learning and making the odd game as i aint dont it since the days of the speccy and if i can i will donate where the software shows promise.

I think i`ll like it though just wanted to know other peoples views

 

[yodaofborg]

Well, I've never been disapointed with my GP2X, infact, its exceeded my expectations - just after I got mine, zotd released beta of he PSX emu, and while I was not very impressed, it was surely something that I never thought I would see a GP2X do! And now he made it faster, OK, so its never going to be full speed, but wow, if the GP2X can do some of that stuff emulated... Well I am sure you see my point.

As for the homebrew/port scene, well some devs give us way too many releases round here, sometimes its like xmas is coming every day, waiting for an update, or a new app, sometimes theres so much to do you just cant do it all in one set of batteries

 

[morcar]

Well, I've never been disapointed with my GP2X, infact, its exceeded my expectations - just after I got mine, zotd released beta of he PSX emu, and while I was not very impressed, it was surely something that I never thought I would see a GP2X do! And now he made it faster, OK, so its never going to be full speed, but wow, if the GP2X can do some of that stuff emulated... Well I am sure you see my point.

As for the homebrew/port scene, well some devs give us way too many releases round here, sometimes its like xmas is coming every day, waiting for an update, or a new app, sometimes theres so much to do you just cant do it all in one set of batteries

I have to agree i think the ps1 emu is great and is better than the xbox version

 

[Tobriand]

Surprised you're not so keen on the SNES emus... last I tried the DC ones (admittedly almost exactly a year ago) they were an... interesting experience. I mean, certainly playable, but if given the choice between DC and GP2x emus for SNES (again, as of a year ago; maybe there've been some advancements), I think the GP2x would win hands down, assuming you've got a BoB and a couple of controllers lying around.

The only reason the DC ones might seem faster is if you're not overclocking to about 240MHz, although 266MHz is basically full speed. So try that, if you can, and then try running them again. Also, be sure you've got an mmuhack.o file in the same dir as the emu, since it makes one heck of a speed difference...

In terms of advancements? Well, no idea what people'll come up with next, but people to keep an eye on are Squidge (Spot looks very very cool indeed), Exophase (in case GPsp can get any better), ZodTTD (Psx4allGP is starting to look swanky, even if it's a long way to go yet... the man is a coding machine), Skeezix (because battle jewels looks like it could be a lot of fun indeed), Notaz (what can I say? He's a legend. Not sure of current projects, but he fixed the crashing issue in GPsp yesterday, which has to be worth some points), and possibly Akuma if he get's his dev'ing goggles back on. And everyone else who I've forgotten, which is far too many to remember. Basically, see what happens.

What you'll not see is anything newer than the PSX come out, although from what you're saying, I'm guessing you're not after that. Just possible someone might try again with Jaguar, although the guy who was working on that seems to have vanished. And maybe (just maybe) someone'll decide to tackle DosBox properly and do an ASM core for us all for a portable 486 (well... maybe... if we're very very lucky).

 

[gavie]

I have to agree i think the ps1 emu is great and is better than the xbox version

I am not attempting to flame you, I just hope you are being sarcastic, because about 60-70% of all PSX titles do run on the xbox.

But if you are comparing the guts of the GP2X and the XBOX, the GP2X version is probably better indeed (in terms of code skills).

Anyway, ontopic

Just possible someone might try again with Jaguar, although the guy who was working on that seems to have vanished. And maybe (just maybe) someone'll decide to tackle DosBox properly and do an ASM core for us all for a portable 486 (well... maybe... if we're very very lucky).

The jaguar does not even have a very good pc emulator, it seems to be a hard console to emulate (and consider it's a 64-bit console). I wouldn't expect anything from it. The jaguar also has a lack of (good) games, so that's not a nice motivation.

 

[morcar]

I have to agree i think the ps1 emu is great and is better than the xbox version

I am not attempting to flame you, I just hope you are being sarcastic, because about 60-70% of all PSX titles do run on the xbox.

But if you are comparing the guts of the GP2X and the XBOX, the GP2X version is probably better indeed (in terms of code skills).

Anyway, ontopic

Just possible someone might try again with Jaguar, although the guy who was working on that seems to have vanished. And maybe (just maybe) someone'll decide to tackle DosBox properly and do an ASM core for us all for a portable 486 (well... maybe... if we're very very lucky).

The jaguar does not even have a very good pc emulator, it seems to be a hard console to emulate (and consider it's a 64-bit console). I wouldn't expect anything from it. The jaguar also has a lack of (good) games, so that's not a nice motivation.


I always compare the emu`s what ever the system so there`s no digg at anyone really. I didn`t think much of the xbox ps1 emu i thought itwas crap to be honest but it seems that the gp2x is getting there and i`m well pleased about that.

Looking back to my first post i can see why people would flame me but i think i have written it wrong as i wasn`t trying to start any war and i am not trying to belittle anyone who writes for the gp2x infact it`s the opposite. I would like to see a gp2x version of zsnes though as i have always thought it was the best snes emu out there on any system.

 

[gavie]

I always compare the emu`s what ever the system so there`s no digg at anyone really. I didn`t think much of the xbox ps1 emu i thought itwas crap to be honest but it seems that the gp2x is getting there and i`m well pleased about that.

Looking back to my first post i can see why people would flame me but i think i have written it wrong as i wasn`t trying to start any war and i am not trying to belittle anyone who writes for the gp2x infact it`s the opposite. I would like to see a gp2x version of zsnes though as i have always thought it was the best snes emu out there on any system.

Ok, then you're right
I agree there's nothing to flame. I think you won't be dissapointed, and (especially with a little overclocking if possible) squidgesnes and dr.pocketsnes will run very nicely, i believe some people mentioned here the GP2X-snes emulators use some code of snes9x, which is also a very good emulator.

 

[nubie]

I always compare the emu`s what ever the system so there`s no digg at anyone really. I didn`t think much of the xbox ps1 emu i thought itwas crap to be honest but it seems that the gp2x is getting there and i`m well pleased about that.
Basically the Xbox is a 733mhz Celeron (Pentium 3 with less level 2 cache) with 64MB or RAM, and a Geforce 3. These specs should be able to run PSX fine, unfortunatly the Xbox doesn't run Windows so you can't get the best or fastest emulators on it (ePSXe is by far the most compatible and tweakable, and even VGS by connectix is great for actual perfect emulation, meaning no higher res, just PSX as it should be). I think it is just annoying to do Xbox work because it is basically a PC and if we could just get Windows 98 or 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 installed with DirectX everything would work, of course just buy a PC is always something that comes up.

Basically if someone was to port a proper PSX emulator to the Xbox from the PC it would work great, but there is no motivation as it isn't really cool, the Xbox is huge and you can easily make a much smaller and more powerful PC that will run any emulator. Socket 754 Mini-ITX Athlon64 comes to mind, even a GeodeNX (14 watt Athlon Mini-ITX platform) for $150 right now is a better choice http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813153052 These would easily be 1/4 the size of the Xbox and have real Windows XP running on them, or Linux, I have had ePSXe running in Linux.

Not flaming, just trying to explain what is going on.

AFAIK the SNES emulator is doing fine, I played Super Mario World on it, you have to know what settings you are using so you can turn off stuff and then it is fullspeed.

gavie, your sig is funny, but my PSP runs that just fine , I even moved a 120 power stars savegame onto the PSP so I can fly around the castle with the cannon and hat box. The PSP can't go from RED to any other color quickly though, so his hat is always leaving a blurry smear behind it , oh well for $120 what did I think would happen? I really bought it for Streaming VLC video, but I haven't got that to work, yet. I picked up an Airport Extreme for $2 at the second-hand store, so I can have a nice WAP, there is a WinXP utility for it .

 

[darkman]

Just thought i`d ask what you thought about the future of the console as i should be getting mine with in the next few days.

What apps, games and emu`s do you think will come this year or maybe improvments in teh area`s i just mentioned ?

Have to say i was a little dissapointed about the snes emu on the gp2x as i thought it would have done full speed by now. Even the Dreamcast version is better from what i have seen, but maybe that`s me being picky and wanted it 100% full speed.

anyhow let me know cuz i`m really interested.

On my GP2X I have full speed SNES, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx 16, Neo Geo, CPS 2, and Mame. I am over clocking to get the best out of the emus. I also enjoy great homebrew. The future of the console? It is basically in the hands of those who owns one. It being open, gives any owner the freedom to try and make their own games.

What will come out this year? Learn how to program and then make an announcement. You tell us. That is what this system is all about. There are surprises all year round.

 

[evol]

one project to keep your eyes peeled on is open2x, im impatiently waiting for the gp2x to be free of all embedded hacks in the official firmware. To bad that the binary blob seems to f*ck with my sound every time it interfaces with the 940 when i run mplayer. the official firmware is going in all the wrong directions. and i feel that it,s time to switch to something more configurable (i would love to have powersaving,changeable light intensity,maybe sdhc and so on )

 

[Tobriand]

Yes, Open2x looks very very cool indeed . Should be a milestone in the GP2x's life, although more in terms of the homebrew OS having surpassed GPH's one.

Re: Zsnes, the reason no-one ports it is the reason it's so fast. Zsnes is pure x86 assembly, which means that any port would basically have to be a re-write. The current SNES emus, in contrast, use an ARM assembly core written by Yoyofr and the OpenSnes9x team (back in the GP32 days) plus the rest of the code from Snes9x for specific chips. The most recent emus also use the sound code in ASM as done by Notaz (iirc), which basically means there's now very little difference between playing with sound on and playing with it off in speed. But crucially, it's still a snes9x base, and until someone re-write the graphics routines from the ground up (read: hard, painstaking work that may or may not yield a lot of gain), it's not going to approach a pure ASM emu from a different system.

Re: Jaguar - I thought it impossible too, but there was a guy who had a successful port of one of the game-specific emus (can't remember the one) working within a few weeks of the Gp2x release, despite naysayers, including myself, saying it couldn't be done. Dig through the archives for more info, though I don't recall there ever being a release...

 

[Nova]

Why exactly is the Jaguar so hard to emulate? Is It like the Saturn and just so complicated inside?

 

[Tobriand]

Yes. Very very compicated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar. Note the specs.

 

[Nova]

Yes. Very very compicated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar. Note the specs.


Jee-sus! :blink:


And someone managed to get that at a playable speed on the GP2x?!

 

[Jaguarandine]

I always thought Jaguar emulation was insufficient because no one is really working on it at the moment. The main developers I believe are all busy with other stuff. Being open-source doesnt really seem to help this project all that much either.

Also, most new emulators like those for Saturn and DC for example, are targeted at recent mid-level PCs (1.5+ GHz probably). It makes more sense to create the emus for the systems that most people have and easier for the developers.

 

[morcar]

I think the Atari J was just junk to be honest no good games and no one bought it and even though it shows that the gp2x can emu it i`m glad no one is going to bother finishing it.

I`m glad to see the GBA is being updated a lot though and from what i can see it's making good head way.Same for majot emu`s like mame, megadrive, snes and amiga. good job guys and keep up the good work