Gp2xmess Pre-alpha Release 0.4

[telengard]

Hi everyone,

I finally have something worth putting out for folks to fiddle with. I had hoped to have something done earlier in the week but it turns out the first system I wanted to tackle needs an initial cart to even start-up which meant I had to write a file chooser.

Here's a few pics:

I've put a page up as suggested by vic20-ian although it's not pretty. It'd be cool to have a logo and splash screen for the emulator but I have no artistic ability. Any takers? You'll get a big thanks in the THANKS file.

The file chooser code is also pretty modular so other's can use it if they'd like. It's not 100% finished nor pretty but it does work. Unfortunately scrolling doesn't work due to what seems to be an SDL timer limitation on the gp2x. I need to find a different way to do it. The font handling code doesn't depend on SDL_ttf and I got the code from it from a nice guy name Ray Kelm.

I spent a while on a README which has some useful info and I'd appreciate feedback on that. It describes basic usage, etc. I do not provide any BIOS or roms so you'll have to hunt those down.

The only driver this release tackles is the Atari 7800. Some games run at what seems to be full speed w/ slightly laggy sound. I have not done *any* optimizing yet. The binary size is also quite large at the moment. That will change too. Everything is statically linked in also, so you can just drop it on your SD and run it.

Unpack the zip file and place your a7800.zip BIOS rom in the bios dir and run a7800.gpe. Select a cart (usually *.a78) and you are good to go. Everything that I could think of that does/doesn't work etc are in the README and TODO files.

I also have the source up there but only the new files. I will generate a patchset tomorrow and put that up there. The xmess src is 19M and I can't host it. Speaking of which, how do I get releases placed up on gp32x.de? I don't have a lot of space (10M) so keeping releases there will be difficult going forward.

Enjoy and please let me know how you like it/feedback etc!

Get it here...
http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/gp2x.html

phew,
~telengard

 

[DaveC]

Cool I will have to try this. Now to look for 7800.

How many of those systems do you think will eventually be possible with this? (Vectrex would be cool to get working) Obviously some like PC and especially Amiga won't work very well because of hardware limitations. Genesis would be redundant since we have it full speed with DRMD. Will you pare out the unuseable stuff to decrease the file size and increase speed?

Thanks for the good work, It will be cool to have this working.

 

[stonerdrifter]

I want to try the logo/splash. Could you tell me whay you want on it?

 

[Belgarath]

It's great to see this, but the few games I've played so far seem far too slow to be enjoyable. I even tried lowering the samplefreq and putting a frameskip of 2 in and it didn't appear to have any effect on the speed.

It's still great for a first release and I wish you luck with it!

 

[Eolair]

Great start! I'm looking forward to playing Colecovision games

 

[Eolair]

how do I get releases placed up on gp32x.de?

Go here http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,5,0,0,1
Create an account and then you can upload your own releases to the archive

 

[telengard]

I want to try the logo/splash. Could you tell me whay you want on it?

​

Hmm, that's a good question. Something retro or 8 bit looking I guess.

~telengard

 

[telengard]

Cool I will have to try this. Now to look for 7800.

How many of those systems do you think will eventually be possible with this? (Vectrex would be cool to get working) Obviously some like PC and especially Amiga won't work very well because of hardware limitations. Genesis would be redundant since we have it full speed with DRMD. Will you pare out the unuseable stuff to decrease the file size and increase speed?

That's exactly what I plan on doing. Altough I don't think removing the drivers though won't decrease speed, just file size, memory footprint, etc. It may though. I think not compiling in drivers that are just not going to work, or aren't worth using due to speed/limitations, or already have emulators present is a good idea.

Thanks for the good work, It will be cool to have this working.

​

edit: quoting and pre-coffee grammar fixed

thanks for the comments!
~telengard

 

[telengard]

It's great to see this, but the few games I've played so far seem far too slow to be enjoyable. I even tried lowering the samplefreq and putting a frameskip of 2 in and it didn't appear to have any effect on the speed.

It's still great for a first release and I wish you luck with it!

​

Yep, it's not full speed yet, and I'm not sure what the bottleneck is. I played with all the same settings you did and more and it didn't have much of an effect on performance. I plan on runnong gprof on it this weekend.

Some games are playable though. I was playing One On One last night and it's not too bad. The pre-game music is laggy, but the game seems to play fine.

This is however, based on a 34 year olds' perception. I don't have the real thing to compare against although I will try and do comparison benchmarks on my Linux box.

How did you find the file sel dialog?

thanks for the wish of good luck!
~telengard

 

[telengard]

Great start! I'm looking forward to playing Colecovision games

​

I could work on that one next if you'd like. Or maybe I should take a poll??
Atari 2600/5200/800/ST seem to have other emulators in the work so I was going to skip trying 2600/5200/800. I won't even attempt the ST since I've seen how the Amiga emulation works on my desktop (100% CPU usage).

~telengard

 

[remowilliams]

I could work on that one next if you'd like. Or maybe I should take a poll??

​

I think there's only one right choice here - TI99-4/A


:lol: Keep up the good work!

 

[Belgarath]

It's great to see this, but the few games I've played so far seem far too slow to be enjoyable. I even tried lowering the samplefreq and putting a frameskip of 2 in and it didn't appear to have any effect on the speed.

It's still great for a first release and I wish you luck with it!

​

Yep, it's not full speed yet, and I'm not sure what the bottleneck is. I played with all the same settings you did and more and it didn't have much of an effect on performance. I plan on runnong gprof on it this weekend.

Some games are playable though. I was playing One On One last night and it's not too bad. The pre-game music is laggy, but the game seems to play fine.

This is however, based on a 34 year olds' perception. I don't have the real thing to compare against although I will try and do comparison benchmarks on my Linux box.

How did you find the file sel dialog?

thanks for the wish of good luck!
~telengard

​

The only problem I had with the file selector is whatever method it uses to list the file order, looked as if it was going off date rather than name.

 

[telengard]

It's great to see this, but the few games I've played so far seem far too slow to be enjoyable. I even tried lowering the samplefreq and putting a frameskip of 2 in and it didn't appear to have any effect on the speed.

It's still great for a first release and I wish you luck with it!

​

Yep, it's not full speed yet, and I'm not sure what the bottleneck is. I played with all the same settings you did and more and it didn't have much of an effect on performance. I plan on runnong gprof on it this weekend.

Some games are playable though. I was playing One On One last night and it's not too bad. The pre-game music is laggy, but the game seems to play fine.

This is however, based on a 34 year olds' perception. I don't have the real thing to compare against although I will try and do comparison benchmarks on my Linux box.

How did you find the file sel dialog?

thanks for the wish of good luck!
~telengard

​

The only problem I had with the file selector is whatever method it uses to list the file order, looked as if it was going off date rather than name.

​

Ok, I'll add that to the TODO list, that will be easy to do. The lack of showing the current directory annoys me so I'm going to add that also.

thanks!
~telengard

 

[Eolair]

I could work on that one next if you'd like.  Or maybe I should take a poll??

​

I think there's only one right choice here - TI99-4/A


:lol: Keep up the good work!

​

No, Colecovision for the win!

I'm really looking forward to this

Edit: on second thought, Vectrex would be pretty cool too! I think MESS even supports overlays

 

[luteijn]

I'd like to see the 99/4a too... anyway, work on colecovision would maybe also help the 99/4a (same graphics processor)

 

[DaveC]

Vectrex all of the way. We never had a good one of those on the GP32. Coleco would be great but I think Rlyeh will end up doing one as his GP32 coleco emu is like perfect.

 

[Eolair]

Vectrex all of the way. We never had a good one of those on the GP32. Coleco would be great but I think Rlyeh will end up doing one as his GP32 coleco emu is like perfect.

​

He'll probably save it for fday and who knows when that'll happen