Release Hugo-Pandora V1.1.0

[zx-81]

Hi All,

For those who haven't seen previous release, Hu-Go is a famous emulator of NEC PC Engine console,
running on many system such as Linux and Windows. (see http://www.zeograd.com/ for details)

Pandora-Hugo is a port on Pandora of my latest Dingux version of Hu-Go.
It's almost fullspeed without any overclocking.

What's new then in this version compared to original one ?
- Cheat support !
- Memory monitoring engine to find your own cheat code !
- Text editor to modify the global cheat.txt file
- Text editor to write your own comments on games
- Display first comment line while browsing game files
- Screen size / Fit mode optimized for Pandora
- Pandora Keyboard support
- Save directories for rom images on exit
- etc, etc ...

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public licence v2,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

Work still remain to support cd.

http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/


http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,117


Enjoy,

Zx.

 

[jaycee900]

Thanks alot! just tried a few games out, for starters it loads a hell of lot quicker than the other port of hugo, its faster, decent sound and at least an option for a stretched image.
Games wise, plays very well, as you say near full speed with sound without overclocking, though a few games have graphical issues and sf2 still doesnt load.
I couldnt get cd games working either, are they support in this version, mine are in iso format is this correct? I go the cd game folder and its just not seeing any file (it's unzipped iso and mp3 files)

Thanks again for this release, hope you can add other features and more compatibility at a later stage.

 

[zx-81]

Thanks alot! just tried a few games out, for starters it loads a hell of lot quicker than the other port of hugo, its faster, decent sound and at least an option for a stretched image.
Games wise, plays very well, as you say near full speed with sound without overclocking, though a few games have graphical issues and sf2 still doesnt load.

Yes, game compatibility is not that good ...

I couldnt get cd games working either, are they support in this version, mine are in iso format is this correct? I go the cd game folder and its just not seeing any file (it's unzipped iso and mp3 files)

cd-roms are not supported in this version. I've to work on it a little bit. (i should have mentioned it in the release).

 

[DaveC]

Yes, game compatibility is not that good ...

cd-roms are not supported in this version. I've to work on it a little bit. (i should have mentioned it in the release).

In all honestly you may just want to wait until/if Exophase decides to release Temper. It runs truly fullspeed at around 300 MHz, has superior compatibility, and has CD support. It is a much nicer more optimised emu as it was written from scratch for ARM rather than a port from a PC codebase.

I would ask Exophase what his plans were and if he is going to release Temper any time soon. If he doesn't want to release it maybe you could ask him if you could get the source and port it. If that fails or if he doesn't plan to release it for a long time then I could see spending more time on HuGO.

 

[zx-81]

In all honestly you may just want to wait until/if Exophase decides to release Temper. It runs truly fullspeed at around 300 MHz, has superior compatibility, and has CD support. It is a much nicer more optimised emu as it was written from scratch for ARM rather than a port from a PC codebase.

I would ask Exophase what his plans were and if he is going to release Temper any time soon. If he doesn't want to release it maybe you could ask him if you could get the source and port it. If that fails or if he doesn't plan to release it for a long time then I could see spending more time on HuGO.

I've ported Hu-Go only because i like PC-engine, and it took me only few hours to port my dingoo version to pandora (since most of the work has been already done for msx port).

Temper is much better from compatibility and performance point of view. I'm waitting for exophase version .
Anyway even if two emus are better than one, as you suggested i won't spend time for cd support since the code in Hu-go is not really good on this point, and we can enjoy it using temper.

 

[jaycee900]

Still a big thanks for porting it, the first Hugo port was awful , at least I can play most pce games while we wait for another port to arrive, it could be a while yet, and as u say the more emus the merrier!

 

[Exophase]

I am working on Temper, right now it looks like most games run using 20-30% CPU utilization at 500MHz, so if everything scales nicely you should be able to usually run it at < 150MHz.

Most of the basic port stuff is done and works fine for a first release, it's just being held back because I'm working on netplay, and Pandora's wifi is pretty flaky and giving me headaches.

 

[puppydee]

I am working on Temper, right now it looks like most games run using 20-30% CPU utilization at 500MHz, so if everything scales nicely you should be able to usually run it at < 150MHz.

Most of the basic port stuff is done and works fine for a first release, it's just being held back because I'm working on netplay, and Pandora's wifi is pretty flaky and giving me headaches.

Thanks for hugo zx-81 and I'll look forward to Temper Exophase, you guys rock for sure

 

[Prometheus]

Thanks zx-81 - I just tried out ShockMan with it. Works at full-speed with a bit of an overclock.

@Exophase - I shall look forward to that. When I can play Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 3 - Ikai no Princess with its music (it's a CD-ROM2 title that has consistently been a nightmare with Hu-Go), that will be a fun day. :lol:

 

[zx-81]

I am working on Temper, right now it looks like most games run using 20-30% CPU utilization at 500MHz, so if everything scales nicely you should be able to usually run it at < 150MHz.

very good news , i just can't wait to give it try !

Most of the basic port stuff is done and works fine for a first release, it's just being held back because I'm working on netplay, and Pandora's wifi is pretty flaky and giving me headaches.

Wifi is really unstable on mine (even if with max power settings), so i'm using usb ether instead ...

 

[cosam]

Nice work - looks like I can finally put my "awful" port to rest! Unless anyone's particularly attached to it, I'd suggest this version replace the existing one on the archive and app store.

I'm curious to know how you fixed the grumbling sound (assuming you even had that problem in the first place).

 

[Wolfsclaw]

Most of the basic port stuff is done and works fine for a first release, it's just being held back because I'm working on netplay, and Pandora's wifi is pretty flaky and giving me headaches.

did you try usb ethernet or a usb wifi dongle? I mean, if it's not temper's problem but one of the pandys wi-fi there wouldn't really be a reason to hold this back since theres nothing you can do about it (except waiting for an eventual hotfix for this)!?

 

[jaycee900]

Nice work - looks like I can finally put my "awful" port to rest!

lol sorry no offense mean't by that, the 'awful' part was more to do with the fact it took over 30 secs just to get to the menu! Well plus it was pretty slow and crap sound lol but thanks for it anyway, it was still appericated at the time, any emulators for any system are better than none at the time and will be improved as time goes on naturally

 

[Exophase]

did you try usb ethernet or a usb wifi dongle? I mean, if it's not temper's problem but one of the pandys wi-fi there wouldn't really be a reason to hold this back since theres nothing you can do about it (except waiting for an eventual hotfix for this)!?

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I need to better handle the bad wifi.

Can someone send me a PM explaining how to setup USB ethernet in Linux (Ubuntu)?

 

[zx-81]

did you try usb ethernet or a usb wifi dongle? I mean, if it's not temper's problem but one of the pandys wi-fi there wouldn't really be a reason to hold this back since theres nothing you can do about it (except waiting for an eventual hotfix for this)!?

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I need to better handle the bad wifi.

Can someone send me a PM explaining how to setup USB ethernet in Linux (Ubuntu)?

I'm using this on my Fedora core (should not be too different for ubuntu) :

On the pandora side :
sudo ifconfig usb0 192.168.2.1 up
^^^^^^^^^^^^ use here a network address that doesn't conflict with existing one

On the PC linux side (Fedora core) add the file :
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-usb0
DEVICE=usb0
BOOTPROTO=none
BROADCAST=192.168.2.255
IPADDR=192.168.2.2
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.2.0
TYPE=Ethernet

Then in a root shell on my pc :
ifconfig usb0 up

then the ip@ for the pandora is 192.168.2.1 and the ip of my PC from the pandora is 192.168.2.2

 

[DaveC]

Most of the basic port stuff is done and works fine for a first release, it's just being held back because I'm working on netplay, and Pandora's wifi is pretty flaky and giving me headaches.

That sounds good. Only 150 MHz and running fullspeed, wow.

Holding it up for netplay? Is that something anyone will really use? Pandoras are rare and I would think it even rarer to get two in the same room that want to play 2-player PC-engine games. Could there maybe be a release sooner, then one with better netplay later? That way 99.9% of users could enjoy it sooner. Network managers in the background just cause annoying pauses and stutters and many are disabling that to avoid this now anyway. Just a thought.

Looking forward to it.

 

[torpor]

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I need to better handle the bad wifi.

I'm working on multiplayer code/framework for my Pandora apps and during onboard testing I have found better wifi uptime if I carefully select channels first and somehow prevent the driver from going to sleep (i.e. ping -c somehost in the background) .. NetManager blows at quite a few things, in the meantime to patch things up you have to sort of keep the driver exercised, lest it blow down.

 

[almatuk]

Thanks for a great job. Plays parasol stars a treat which caused the other Hugo random control problems.

 

[Exophase]

Thanks zx-81, I will try this later today.

That sounds good. Only 150 MHz and running fullspeed, wow.

Shouldn't surprise you very much, GP2X could often do that too. This is, afterall, not a Wiz.

Holding it up for netplay? Is that something anyone will really use? Pandoras are rare and I would think it even rarer to get two in the same room that want to play 2-player PC-engine games. Could there maybe be a release sooner, then one with better netplay later? That way 99.9% of users could enjoy it sooner. Network managers in the background just cause annoying pauses and stutters and many are disabling that to avoid this now anyway. Just a thought.

I'm not noticing any pauses or stutters when playing normally.. maybe your experiences will be different from mine, and I'm sure you'll tell me if that's the case.

I actually think netplay will be more popular than you do. Understand, it's not meant for two people to play in the same room, it's meant for people to play over the internet. PC-Engine actually has a large library of good multiplayer games (although my netplay will only support 2 player, at least for the time being). I also intend for people to eventually be able to play against not just other Pandora users, but users of iPhone, Android phones, Wiz if the support is ever there..

I'll release it w/o the netplay if I end up not getting it in a state I'm happy with. But for right now I'm trying my best to improve it. I like my releases to be substantial and not half done; with the Hu-Go ports out I think everyone can bear to wait a little longer.

I'm working on multiplayer code/framework for my Pandora apps and during onboard testing I have found better wifi uptime if I carefully select channels first and somehow prevent the driver from going to sleep (i.e. ping -c somehost in the background) .. NetManager blows at quite a few things, in the meantime to patch things up you have to sort of keep the driver exercised, lest it blow down.

Interesting advice. Has Pandora maybe found a new wifi driver developer? ;D I'm sending out packet data every frame, so I expect that should be keeping it active.. but I'm getting locked up sometimes for a really long time. I think the packets might be getting lost altogether, and from what I'm aware the TCP RTO is reeeaally looong on Linux (by default). Is it maybe possible to change this on a per-application basis?

Anyway I'll stop polluting zx-81's release thread ^^ By all means PM me if you want to talk about interesting things, heh.

 

[zx-81]

Thanks zx-81, I will try this later today.

Unfortunatelly it works fine on my Linux FC, but it doesn't work on my ubuntu 9.10 netbook (device name 'usb0' doesn't exist, and the pandora is not recognized ...). So i just can't help you more.