Gp2xmess 0.11 Released

[TelcoLou]

What a mess! Hope you can work it out ... thanks for all your work

 

[DaveC]

Well it seems my little goal of not modifying core xmess code was somewhat of a waste.

xmess is dead, replaced by sdlmess. I'm currently moving to that to see just how much it supposedly improves performance compared to xmess. The "gloves are off" too as far as changing core code for optimization. If I can do it I will from now on.

The update to sdlmess will fix some of the reported issues w/ a2 emulation (bugs, programs not running etc) and hopefully others.

~telengard

Honestly I wouldn't put too much work into O2 emulation. Just use this:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...&hl=odyssey

I didn't delete the config file for Coleco, probably the reason. It would still be nice to have an OR type thing, use a button for player 1 start (that is more convienient than fiddling with the KB) OR using the KB for the times when player 1 start is not enough, like games that use the keypad for game functions.

There is an Intellivision emu out too. it is very buggy but runs full speed w/sound on the few games that work. I wonder how good the MESS one is?

 

[TelcoLou]

I had to delete the coleco.cfg file to get the virtual keyboard to work. It rocks, thanks again

 

[telengard]

I had to delete the coleco.cfg file to get the virtual keyboard to work. It rocks, thanks again

No problem, next release I'll be sure that both work at tha same time, both the joystick button for '1' and the virtual keyboard '1'.

The port to SDLMess is progressing well. Maybe another day or two (hopefully, it's a lot of fiddly work).

~telengard

 

[TelcoLou]

Coooool!!!!!

 

[DaveC]

I had to delete the coleco.cfg file to get the virtual keyboard to work. It rocks, thanks again

No problem, next release I'll be sure that both work at tha same time, both the joystick button for '1' and the virtual keyboard '1'.

The port to SDLMess is progressing well. Maybe another day or two (hopefully, it's a lot of fiddly work).

~telengard

Cool that could be nice. It will be interesting to see the speed differences. Hopefully it will be faster.

No rush though, don't burn out

 

[telengard]

I had to delete the coleco.cfg file to get the virtual keyboard to work. It rocks, thanks again

No problem, next release I'll be sure that both work at tha same time, both the joystick button for '1' and the virtual keyboard '1'.

The port to SDLMess is progressing well. Maybe another day or two (hopefully, it's a lot of fiddly work).

~telengard

Cool that could be nice. It will be interesting to see the speed differences. Hopefully it will be faster.

No rush though, don't burn out

Well I finally got it to at least get me to a point where I got the screen up (for coleco vision) and I could use the joystick. Man alive, the performance is awful. I'm gonna spend a little more time trying to play with the SDL options but if this is how bad it is I will just bring gp2xmess up to the last xmess release and continue with that.

Hehe, I won't burn out, promise.

EDIT: Seems that SDLMess is multithreaded, that could be the issue since I'm only using one processor. I wonder if there's a way to leverage that other proc... off to investigate. Seems on the gp2x only one thread is used, so it's not that.

~telengard

 

[DaveC]

EDIT: Seems that SDLMess is multithreaded, that could be the issue since I'm only using one processor. I wonder if there's a way to leverage that other proc... off to investigate. Seems on the gp2x only one thread is used, so it's not that.

~telengard

Multiple threads needed to emulate a ColecoVision? My watch could emulate a ColecoVision Sounds like SDLMESS is some poorly written spaghetti code, it's name is fitting, it is in that case a MESS.

It seems like most desktop emus are terribly inefficient. That is why Gp2X MAME is based on an older version. Maybe that would work for MESS too? Just base it off of a version that ran on old weaker PCs, then strip out all of the unneeded fluff, add some Gp2X specific stuff and that may run better.

 

[telengard]

EDIT: Seems that SDLMess is multithreaded, that could be the issue since I'm only using one processor. I wonder if there's a way to leverage that other proc... off to investigate. Seems on the gp2x only one thread is used, so it's not that.

~telengard

Multiple threads needed to emulate a ColecoVision? My watch could emulate a ColecoVision Sounds like SDLMESS is some poorly written spaghetti code, it's name is fitting, it is in that case a MESS.

It seems like most desktop emus are terribly inefficient. That is why Gp2X MAME is based on an older version. Maybe that would work for MESS too? Just base it off of a version that ran on old weaker PCs, then strip out all of the unneeded fluff, add some Gp2X specific stuff and that may run better.

Hehe yeah, desktop emulators are pretty inefficient for the most part. That's the problem when developers are given too many resources. In the days of these emulators devs had what 8k/16?

I think MAME in general now has threading built in which isn't enabled with one proc but the locking is still there which slows things down (didn't help in my case, I stubbed out the locking). I just finished moving to the last version of xmess (.106) and will optimize that and merge bug fixes for system emulation only from future mess versions.

I'll also look to see if mess was around during the time of that golden MAME release. Was it .036 or something? I remember a huge speed loss way back then. If it weren't for the game updates I'd still have that in my MAME cabinet.

In the mame/mess team's defense, they are going for the best possible emulation and totally do not care about performance. As computers get faster it will only get better for them. One thing that really surprised me about the new mess was it seemed to ask if keys were hit rather than the other way around, i.e. putting pressed keys/joy buttons etc in a queue etc. Weird, and might have been the reason for the sluggishness. This might be for more accurate emulation, who knows.

This is after only poking at the code for 2 or so days so I may have missed something.

~telengard

 

[DaveC]

In this thread there is some links to source code for Atari-7800 emus.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...p;hl=atari+7800

Maybe one these could be ported? I know that it is only a single system but maybe that would produce better results? I know it is nice to get multiple systems at once in something like MESS but if they are too slow to be playable there is not much point in my opinion. Maybe the single system emu is the way to go on slower hardware like the GP2X? I mean if you port the same systems but from different sources and they run full speed with sound you end up with a better result.