Gp2xmess 0.12 Released (speed Ups And New System Emerson Arcadia 2001)

[telengard]

Hi everyone,

Happy April Fool's Day!

To celebrate I'm releasing gp2xmess 0.12. There were a bunch of changes, most to speed up the enabled drivers. I also added support for the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (someone requested it a while back). No idea how to use it but it does seem to work well. I'd appreciate some feedback on how to play the games I have (alien invaders, baseball, etc). From what I can tell, no BIOS is needed for this system.

I ported the latest SDLMess to the gp2x but it just proved to be way too slow. I had also moved to xmess .106 but that also seems to have slowed down somewhat compared to .102 so I'm sticking with .102 and merging bug fixes to emulated systems. If it ain't broke..... lots of wasted time doing that but oh well, gotta try it to find out.[cut]

The README has updated info and the CHANGELOG has the details. Here's some benchmarks on the speedups, not mindblowing, but some decent increases. It's a lot more work doing this than porting or fixing bugs, esp since gprof doesn't work as well as it does on my x86 box and mess is built to be generic so it does some very suboptimal things at it's core that would be very hard to change.

Colecovision Burgertime (gameplay)

ver 0.11 FS 6 100% 19fps
ver 0.12 FS 2 100% 41fps

ver 0.11 FS 0 47% 28fps
ver 0.12 FS 0 84% 50fps

TI99/4A (boot screen)

ver 0.11 FS 8 93% 19fps
ver 0.12 FS 5 100% 32fps

ver 0.11 FS 0 47% 28fps
ver 0.12 FS 0 76% 46fps

Atari 7800 Asteroids (gameplay)

ver 0.11 FS 8 70% 14fps
ver 0.12 FS 8 79% 16fps

ver 0.11 FS 0 47% 28fps
ver 0.12 FS 0 51% 31fps

Apple ][ (boot screen)

ver 0.11 53% 11fps
ver 0.12 55% 11fps

Coco (boot screen)

ver 0.11 47% 9fps
ver 0.12 54% 11fps

You can download the updates at the usual place. Please let me know how it works for you etc. I will continue improving performance!

http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/gp2x.html

~telengard[/cut]

 

[TelcoLou]

FOr real? Thanks so much!

(can't wait to run my TI programs on the emu ... hee hee)

 

[telengard]

FOr real? Thanks so much!

(can't wait to run my TI programs on the emu ... hee hee)

Heh, yep no april fools joke here. It's real.

TI got a nice little speed boost.

~telengard

 

[bagmouse7]

I love this eumulator, it is awesome!
Thanks.

 

[DaveC]

Thanks for this release.

One thing could you add something like pressing left and right on the pad to scroll page by page (like pocketSNES or Picodrive) as it is now if you want to get to a ROM down on the list it is slow going one-by -one.

 

[telengard]

Thanks for this release.

One thing could you add something like pressing left and right on the pad to scroll page by page (like pocketSNES or Picodrive) as it is now if you want to get to a ROM down on the list it is slow going one-by -one.

Ok, I will add that to the TODO list. Just how many games do you have to scroll through??
The left shoulder currently toggles the menu so I'm inclined to have joy left/right cycle up and down a page. My front end in my living room does that and it works quite well.

I'm finding that the emulator crashes when playing Oregon Trail as someone else has mentioned. I think it may have something to do with the virtual keyboard. I can't reproduce it of course on my development machine.

EDIT: Shouldn't respond to posts @2am. I see that is what DaveC suggested using left right on the pad. Duh.

~telengard

 

[DaveC]

Thanks for this release.

One thing could you add something like pressing left and right on the pad to scroll page by page (like pocketSNES or Picodrive) as it is now if you want to get to a ROM down on the list it is slow going one-by -one.

Ok, I will add that to the TODO list. Just how many games do you have to scroll through??
The left shoulder currently toggles the menu so I'm inclined to have joy left/right cycle up and down a page. My front end in my living room does that and it works quite well.

~telengard


The complete Coleco ROMset is what I have there.

You could also add scroll wrap. For example if you are at the top of the list and want to get to something at the end you just press "up" and it will go to the last entry and continue up from there (same when at the last entry if you press down).

Also it would be nice if it supported either-or for player 1 start, button or virtual keyboard in Colecovision.

 

[telengard]

Thanks for this release.

One thing could you add something like pressing left and right on the pad to scroll page by page (like pocketSNES or Picodrive) as it is now if you want to get to a ROM down on the list it is slow going one-by -one.

Ok, I will add that to the TODO list. Just how many games do you have to scroll through??
The left shoulder currently toggles the menu so I'm inclined to have joy left/right cycle up and down a page. My front end in my living room does that and it works quite well.

~telengard


The complete Coleco ROMset is what I have there.

You could also add scroll wrap. For example if you are at the top of the list and want to get to something at the end you just press "up" and it will go to the last entry and continue up from there (same when at the last entry if you press down).

Also it would be nice if it supported either-or for player 1 start, button or virtual keyboard in Colecovision.


That a lot of games!

These are good ideas and I will do them hopefully for the next release. I'm focusing on apple2 performance at the moment since that and the coco are the 2 worst performing drivers.

~telengard

 

[TelcoLou]

Using the virtual keyboard in the TI994A causes MESS to crash

 

[telengard]

Using the virtual keyboard in the TI994A causes MESS to crash

Yep I've noticed the same thing. Seems to happen when it is up for a little while. I'm looking into it.

~telengard

 

[telengard]

Using the virtual keyboard in the TI994A causes MESS to crash

Hi TelcoLou,

I believe I have fixed the crash. I'll be doing a release soon.

~telengard

 

[TelcoLou]

Using the virtual keyboard in the TI994A causes MESS to crash

Hi TelcoLou,

I believe I have fixed the crash. I'll be doing a release soon.

~telengard


Sweeeeeet!!! Many, MANY³ thanks again, you're sending my nostalgia cells into over-drive