Beta Handy

[cosam]

I've been tinkering with an experimental menu system and it turns out Handy was a good guinea pig.

http://www.cosam.org/computers/pandora/handy-0.5a.pnd

Very much a beta release, but the following should work:

• Zenity picker has gone, replaced with simple file picker in menu.
• Load new game without exiting emulator.
• Video options available in menu (frameskip, FPS display [not working for full-screen], LCD effect on/off, Filters [forces 2x scaling]).
• Switch sound on/off via menu.
• Controls can be remapped via menu (unfortunately not saved at this time).

Hit select to bring up the menu in-game. Escape (Fn+Q) to exit emulator.

I'll post something in the developer's corner about the menu stuff.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

I'd just like to say thanks now for your work on this - it doesn't look like I'll be able to take advantage for a couple of months still, but "thanks".

 

[Jumpman]

Thank you SteveM.

The new menu is clean and straight forward, very nice.

Chris

 

[SomeGuy99]

Loving the menu, thanks. Zenity can go screw one ;

I notice the filters just make the screen size really small?

 

[DaveC]

I've been tinkering with an experimental menu system and it turns out Handy was a good guinea pig.

http://www.cosam.org/computers/pandora/handy-0.5a.pnd

Very much a beta release, but the following should work:

• Zenity picker has gone, replaced with simple file picker in menu.
• Load new game without exiting emulator.
• Video options available in menu (frameskip, FPS display [not working for full-screen], LCD effect on/off, Filters [forces 2x scaling]).
• Switch sound on/off via menu.
• Controls can be remapped via menu (unfortunately not saved at this time).

Hit select to bring up the menu in-game. Escape (Fn+Q) to exit emulator.

I'll post something in the developer's corner about the menu stuff.

Die, Zenity Die!

That said the new menu is ok, simple and clean, but could be improved:

Common ways on the open device we are used to (gp32, gp2x, Wiz) is: either d-pad left and right, or shoulder buttons to go page by page. Not a big deal here though.

EDIT: Ok you can page by using game buttons. That is ok but maybe other way could be option as we are all used to it. (or maybe a small line of text at bottom can be there as instructions. There is allot of unused space on the screen.

BIG ONE: Needs to have a "save as default directory". If you don't have the ROMs where coder expects it, it is a royal pain to have to navigate to them everytime especially for non-linux users. What is mmbkl01, media, etc. and all of that crap?

Emu itself:

The scale filter options are 2X. That is ok except they should be *4* X for Lynx

It really needs save states. Hopefully that could be in a future release.

Thanks for the continued work on this though. As I have said this may be the only Lynx emu for the system. Hopefully it gets a few more finishing touches.

Great work!

 

[cosam]

Common ways on the open device we are used to (gp32, gp2x, Wiz) is: either d-pad left and right, or shoulder buttons to go page by page. Not a big deal here though.

EDIT: Ok you can page by using game buttons. That is ok but maybe other way could be option as we are all used to it. (or maybe a small line of text at bottom can be there as instructions. There is allot of unused space on the screen.

D-pad left/right is being used to change the options at the moment and X/Y just happens to trigger PgUp and PgDown. Using L/R would be good as it frees up the game buttons for other stuff (e.g. I'd like to have a "back" button but didn't know what to use for it). Thankfully all easy stuff as the calling app sets the controls when it creates the menu.

BIG ONE: Needs to have a "save as default directory". If you don't have the ROMs where coder expects it, it is a royal pain to have to navigate to them everytime especially for non-linux users. What is mmbkl01, media, etc. and all of that crap?

There's no mechanism present to save anything at all yet. When I get around to that (and there's something worth saving) I'll add something to do this. Right now the paths aren't static, so it doesn't make much sense anyway.

The scale filter options are 2X. That is ok except they should be *4* X for Lynx

It really needs save states. Hopefully that could be in a future release.

Yeah, the filters are hard-coded to use 2x for some reason; I've not looked why. Save states is of course possible but will probably require a bit of digging in the code to do properly. It'd also be nice to get OpenGL working as it should help speed up rendering and you get a free vsync option, too.

If anyone gets the urge to look at any of this, the sources are in Subversion here:

http://sources.cosam.org/svn/pandy/

(For the menu stuff you'll need http://sources.cosam.org/svn/goomba/ too.)

 

[socket]

Loving the new version menu! Thanks for continuing to work on this!

 

[DaveC]

Common ways on the open device we are used to (gp32, gp2x, Wiz) is: either d-pad left and right, or shoulder buttons to go page by page. Not a big deal here though.

EDIT: Ok you can page by using game buttons. That is ok but maybe other way could be option as we are all used to it. (or maybe a small line of text at bottom can be there as instructions. There is allot of unused space on the screen.

D-pad left/right is being used to change the options at the moment and X/Y just happens to trigger PgUp and PgDown. Using L/R would be good as it frees up the game buttons for other stuff (e.g. I'd like to have a "back" button but didn't know what to use for it). Thankfully all easy stuff as the calling app sets the controls when it creates the menu.

BIG ONE: Needs to have a "save as default directory". If you don't have the ROMs where coder expects it, it is a royal pain to have to navigate to them everytime especially for non-linux users. What is mmbkl01, media, etc. and all of that crap?

There's no mechanism present to save anything at all yet. When I get around to that (and there's something worth saving) I'll add something to do this. Right now the paths aren't static, so it doesn't make much sense anyway.

The scale filter options are 2X. That is ok except they should be *4* X for Lynx

It really needs save states. Hopefully that could be in a future release.

Yeah, the filters are hard-coded to use 2x for some reason; I've not looked why. Save states is of course possible but will probably require a bit of digging in the code to do properly. It'd also be nice to get OpenGL working as it should help speed up rendering and you get a free vsync option, too.

If anyone gets the urge to look at any of this, the sources are in Subversion here:

http://sources.cosam.org/svn/pandy/

(For the menu stuff you'll need http://sources.cosam.org/svn/goomba/ too.)

For the default save you could just have a button that will save the current path that you are in at the time. If someone pulls out the card and switches the card slot then yes path would no longer be valid. In that case the menu after looking for that saved path then failing would just revert to the default like now. In the majority of cases though it would work as long as the user leaves the card in the same slot. Saved paths working 90% of the time would be better Than never saving which is what it is now and it is a HUGE pain in the ass to have to navigate that long cryptic tree to get to the ROMs every time 90% is always better than 0%.

For the current 2x scale couldn't you just take what ever that is then pixel double that?

 

[SomeGuy99]

Also, saving the last selected rom after you quit a game would be nice.

 

[cosam]

Here's a quick update. The menu controls are a little different (help text at bottom of screen explains them) and the options get saved on exit. It should remember the directory of the last ROM loaded and use this as a starting point for the next session.

http://www.cosam.org/computers/pandora/handy-0.5b.pnd

Known issue #1: sound can't be enabled if it was off at startup.
Known issue #2: if you start up and don't load a game, a null directory is saved for the file picker.

 

[DaveC]

Also, saving the last selected rom after you quit a game would be nice.

Well nice if you don't mind possible corrupt SD card. That also wears out the card. If everything you load writes to the card every time you are going to be replacing it sooner. That could be bad for expensive cards.

While that could be an option I don't think that is a good idea doing that as standard especially if the menu becomes widely used.

 

[cosam]

Also, saving the last selected rom after you quit a game would be nice.

I'm not sure I understand the request. At the moment there is no quitting a game as such, you just load a new one or quit the emulator completely. The path is still in memory when you load a new game and it's saved when you quit the emulator.

Well nice if you don't mind possible corrupt SD card. That also wears out the card. If everything you load writes to the card every time you are going to be replacing it sooner. That could be bad for expensive cards.

While that could be an option I don't think that is a good idea doing that as standard especially if the menu becomes widely used.

Just now it does a single write to SD on exit to save all settings.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Found a bug! If you enable the FPS counter, not only does the game slow down dramatically, but the counter doesn't even show!