Jaguar Emulator?

[Orion4874]

Is it possible to port the GP2X Jaguar emulator to the Wiz? I'm not sure how far the emulator went but the article I read was from 07, and that it was still in progress.
Sorry if this was already covered, I didn't see anything previously posted about this.

 

[DaveC]

As far as I remenber it wasn't a true jaguar emulator as in it didn't emulate the whole Jag hardware. It just emulated enough hardware to play Tempest 2K without sound.

But there hasn't been any updates on it after that older release.

 

[kolibri]

Ow... I would have prefered a 3DO emulator, there are much more games on it. Is it easier to emulate ?

In fact, even if it's easier I dont think it could be ported on the wiz, so...

 

[Rivroner]

FreeDo original author was working ages ago on a 3D0 emulator for the GP2X.

Some coders of this forums do not believe in him, they were right

Maybe now?

 

[kev256]

Would a 3D0 be that much harder than a playstation?

 

[Exophase]

Would a 3D0 be that much harder than a playstation?

Starting from nothing, with the same level of documentaiton for both, no. But that's not the situation.

 

[devour]

3do and Jaguar would be amazing, that would make my wiz complete! (well, ya know, that and 32-x and Saturn...)

 

[DaveC]

3do and Jaguar would be amazing, that would make my wiz complete! (well, ya know, that and 32-x and Saturn...)

It would be amazing all right. It would be amazing because the Wiz doesn't have the power to run those you mentioned at anything near playable speed.

 

[Audi]

we shall call this man "dreamer"..

 

[Exophase]

3do and Jaguar would be amazing, that would make my wiz complete! (well, ya know, that and 32-x and Saturn...)

It would be amazing all right. It would be amazing because the Wiz doesn't have the power to run those you mentioned at anything near playable speed.

3DO emulation could possibly take less, maybe substantially, than GBA emulation if a really optimized emulator were done. Too bad almost no one really knows how to write a 3DO emulator - the end-developer user manuals have been leaked but you need to at least know how the interfaces between the games and the OS work, at a more low level than just knowing what their names are. If someone has the full SDK then things could probably be determined.

 

[Orion4874]

As a few of you may know, I started work on a GP2X port of the T2K Jaguar emulator quite some time ago.

In the last week or so I've managed to scrape some time together to do some more to it, and now it runs well enough that I feel the time's right to release a work in progress demo version.

There's still no sound, and there are a few bugs that need ironing out. The GP2X version is based on an early copy of the emulator code that is only complete enough to run Tempest 2000 and the VLM (CD BIOS). I'm planning to upgrade the GP2X version to the latest codebase which successfully runs more ROMs, though.

Many thanks to Dio for writing the original PC version, and Fdave and Notaz for Cyclone 68000!


This is the original article about the Jag emulator from DCEMU. Firefox was the developer working on it. Anyone know if he was actually able to update it?

 

[Dunny]

This is the original article about the Jag emulator from DCEMU. Firefox was the developer working on it. Anyone know if he was actually able to update it?

From other forums I read, it would appear that Firefox has bought himself a lovely little dingoo, and is busy developing for that.

D.

 

[iprice]

Firefox is indeed developing for the Dingoo - he's working on a Zarch/Virus remake/update, which could be interesting.

 

[Firefox]

Hello! ^_^

I don't have a Wiz yet, I afraid. I may get one at some point, but it probably won't be this year now.

iprice is correct - I have been developing a Zarch/Zeewolf-like game engine for handhelds. It's optimised for 32-bit integer-only RISC processors, and needs the bare minimum of platform support (basically just a framebuffer, stereo sound channels, and some buttons to read). The Dingoo (native firmware) is the first target, but it's designed to be very easy to port to other platforms. Most of the development takes place in an SDL-based framework under Linux, with occasional testing on the Dingoo.

The engine has some rough edges, but is mostly done. Last time I worked on it (several weekends ago) I got a lot of the spatial sound machinery in, though objects just make really irritating tones rather than proper sound effects so far.

The game was originally going to be helicopter-based, somewhere between Zeewolf and Cyclone... But as I've been working on the engine, I've come to realise that a Zarch-like game would be much quicker to develop, so that's what I'm aiming for first. It won't be exactly like Zarch (levels will have larger landscapes that don't wrap around, for a start), but it will probably be a race against time to kill <baddies> whilst avoiding crashing / getting shot.

My handheld ports of Dio's T2K Jaguar emulator aren't dead, but I have much less free time these days so they've been put on the back burner.

 

[DaveC]

Hello! ^_^

I don't have a Wiz yet, I afraid. I may get one at some point, but it probably won't be this year now.
The engine has some rough edges, but is mostly done. Last time I worked on it (several weekends ago) I got a lot of the spatial sound machinery in, though objects just make really irritating tones rather than proper sound effects so far.

The game was originally going to be helicopter-based, somewhere between Zeewolf and Cyclone... But as I've been working on the engine, I've come to realise that a Zarch-like game would be much quicker to develop, so that's what I'm aiming for first. It won't be exactly like Zarch (levels will have larger landscapes that don't wrap around, for a start), but it will probably be a race against time to kill <baddies> whilst avoiding crashing / getting shot.

My handheld ports of Dio's T2K Jaguar emulator aren't dead, but I have much less free time these days so they've been put on the back burner.

That looks like it could be cool. I don't have a dingoo but if it gets ported to Wiz someday I would be interested in trying it.

Would you ever consider a Wiz port of the T2K emu when you started back on it? I think it is possible to port without having actual hardware right? With the extra speed of the Wiz it should run better than it did on the GP2X. To be honest games like T2K are just perfect for the OLED screen that the Wiz has. Pure blacks (no LCD backlight light leak haze) no ghosting, and saturated colors of OLEDs make current Tempest games in MAME look fantastic on the Wiz.

 

[Firefox]

Would you ever consider a Wiz port of the T2K emu when you started back on it? I think it is possible to port without having actual hardware right? With the extra speed of the Wiz it should run better than it did on the GP2X. To be honest games like T2K are just perfect for the OLED screen that the Wiz has. Pure blacks (no LCD backlight light leak haze) no ghosting, and saturated colors of OLEDs make current Tempest games in MAME look fantastic on the Wiz.

It should be pretty straightforward to port the GP2X version to the Wiz - but not without the real hardware. The GP2X port relies on accessing the hardware directly to get a lot of its speed. I'd need a real Wiz in order to experiment and find how close to Wiz's hardware I can get the T2K code. The Wiz's 16-bit SDRAM is a caution, seeing as there's one 16-bit processor, two 32-bit processors, plus some complicated 64-bit graphics cores to emulate (that's lots of data to move around). But on the other hand the Wiz has one fast(er) ARM core instead of two slow cores, so that'll save a lot of overhead synchronising the two halves of the emulator code.

I've often thought that Tempest 2000 would be a good fit for an OLED display too - the black backgrounds contrasting with Gourad shaded polys and colourful vectors should look awesome!

Ah, I'll probably get one in the new year, just to see what the display can do.

 

[iprice]

I'd more than happily test T2K on Wiz, FireFox.

 

[DaveC]

I've often thought that Tempest 2000 would be a good fit for an OLED display too - the black backgrounds contrasting with Gourad shaded polys and colourful vectors should look awesome!

Ah, I'll probably get one in the new year, just to see what the display can do.

Well yes i am sure it will look awesome. I know the regular Tempest in MAME looks great on the display. Basically that is the reason I got the Wiz was that classic games look especially great on the OLED, it is the closest thing to the look of an old RGB arcade monitor that you will get on a handheld.

 

[Firefox]

I'd more than happily test T2K on Wiz, FireFox.

You know... your avatar looks strangely familar.

 

[DaveC]

It should be pretty straightforward to port the GP2X version to the Wiz - but not without the real hardware. The GP2X port relies on accessing the hardware directly to get a lot of its speed. I'd need a real Wiz in order to experiment and find how close to Wiz's hardware I can get the T2K code. The Wiz's 16-bit SDRAM is a caution, seeing as there's one 16-bit processor, two 32-bit processors, plus some complicated 64-bit graphics cores to emulate (that's lots of data to move around). But on the other hand the Wiz has one fast(er) ARM core instead of two slow cores, so that'll save a lot of overhead synchronising the two halves of the emulator code.

I've often thought that Tempest 2000 would be a good fit for an OLED display too - the black backgrounds contrasting with Gourad shaded polys and colourful vectors should look awesome!

Ah, I'll probably get one in the new year, just to see what the display can do.

Does T2K use all of those Jag cores that you mention?

Do you think the Wiz's 3D GPU could be used for something like handling the vectors or doing some of the polygon fills? If that was possible maybe some speed could be gained.