Pandora Pandora Emulator Frontend

[dflemstr]

Latest version of .... PEF <_<

Precautions:

1. Executable is compiled for linux i386
2. You need the EFL installed before you can hope to run it.
3. Lot of things are still....rough.

What I hope to achieve from releasing it.

1. Prove that it is indeed coming along.
2. Give everyone an idea of performance on various platforms.
3. Maybe even get it compiled on or for a beagle board for testing on actual hardware.

Pipe Dreams.

1. In data-->emu_config-->[emulator] you will find a game.list file. This file has every game I have for that system and its corresponding md5sum. I need someone to verify as many of the md5sums as they can to make sure it will work on the Pandora as planned.

2. The same game.list file from above is semi-colon delimited and will be where game information is retrieved. The fields are laid out like this:

md5sum: Titleublisher;year;emulator;developer;system;genre;flyer;

If anyone would like to tackle a certain emulator/game list. Feel free. Just don't add or delete fields. Make your intentions known so that no one else attempts the same list.

Thanks.

Dude, you realize that all of your roms are in that tgz too, right? You risk being banned for uploading roms on this board.

 

[Aimless_E]

[quote name='Aimless_E' post='734951' date='Jun 15 2009, 10:41
Dude, you realize that all of your roms are in that tgz too, right? You risk being banned for uploading roms on this board.

Dude, they're symbolic links to files that don't exist in the archive. They were left to show how the rom manager works. But you're right I should have removed them in case people mistake them for actual roms. I'll re-upload shortly.

Oh and thanks, for the quick reply.

 

[dflemstr]

[quote name='Aimless_E' post='734951' date='Jun 15 2009, 10:41
Dude, you realize that all of your roms are in that tgz too, right? You risk being banned for uploading roms on this board.

Dude, they're symbolic links to files that don't exist in the archive. They were left to show how the rom manager works. But you're right I should have removed them in case people mistake them for actual roms. I'll re-upload shortly.

Oh and thanks, for the quick reply.

Heh, it's very strange that 1. tar recognizes the files as actual files and 2. apparently creates empty dummy files for all of them (Actual files filled with \0's of the right sizes; yes I don't have a clue either about how that happened)
So it might still be a good idea to remove them.

Anyways, now I just have to get access to a 32-bit PC and try out the application (because I don't want to svn co the whole EFL) brb

 

[Aimless_E]

[quote name='Aimless_E' post='734951' date='Jun 15 2009, 10:41
Dude, you realize that all of your roms are in that tgz too, right? You risk being banned for uploading roms on this board.

Dude, they're symbolic links to files that don't exist in the archive. They were left to show how the rom manager works. But you're right I should have removed them in case people mistake them for actual roms. I'll re-upload shortly.

Oh and thanks, for the quick reply.

Heh, it's very strange that 1. tar recognizes the files as actual files and 2. apparently creates empty dummy files for all of them (Actual files filled with \0's of the right sizes; yes I don't have a clue either about how that happened"]
So it might still be a good idea to remove them.

Anyways, now I just have to get access to a 32-bit PC and try out the application brb[/quote]Agreed, I would have thought they would have remained links....

Uploaded a "fake rom" free archive to Google code. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Aimless_E]

A few more things.

1. Emulator configs are found in data-->emu_config-->[emulator]-->config
2. To setup new emulators you need only three things. Directory,Directory/config,and Directory/game.list.
3. The mklist.tcl file is just a quick script to setup game.list. The MAME folder has a much more complicated version, because of the game data that MAME stores within its program by default.

Flyers. Don't currently display. Disabled code till I can find a more efficient way to display them.

 

[Aimless_E]

Well 4 of you have downloaded it. Any reports?

 

[dflemstr]

Well, since your program uses libraries that I've been unable to get hold of, I've not been able to test it. I think that the same is true for many others.

 

[Aimless_E]

Yeah but you could still help with the file stuff.

I'll see about creating a libs folder and a script to run the app on any Linux machine. Of course the source is available so if you need to compile it for 64bit systems that would be fine to. In the meantime everyone should be able to install the libraries here .

Let me know what happens.

Thanks.

 

[dflemstr]

In the meantime everyone should be able to install the libraries here .

Thank you, exactly what I was looking for
Of course I was trying to compile the app all along, I never run 32-bit binaries on my system if I can avoid it (and I didn't want to cross-compile the EFL either)
We'll see if I can test this thing out now.

 

[Aimless_E]

In the meantime everyone should be able to install the libraries here .

Thank you, exactly what I was looking for
Of course I was trying to compile the app all along, I never run 32-bit binaries on my system if I can avoid it (and I didn't want to cross-compile the EFL either"]
We'll see if I can test this thing out now.[/quote]I prefer to run everything 64bit as well. But I have a lot of newbish friends that have a hard time grasping the difference so for their sake I keep to 32bit on my development machines.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[Aimless_E]

I was able to execute and use my program on a Pentium 2 466mhz with 256 megs of ram. However because my development environment has over 3 gigs of ram I haven't been keeping an eye on the memory usage. I will be uploading a less memory hungry version in the next couple of days. I will also be changing the file formats a little to make them more compatible with current spreadsheet software.

Or if you think it would work better I could write a quick apt in tcl/tk to facilitate this need.

Thanks,

 

[Aimless_E]

Project isn't dead and I am steadily fixing and tweaking.

I've gotten the memory issue fixed but with the database full I still am using around 100megs of ram. This isn't great but at least it fits well within the Pandora ram amount.

I have created a launcher for the games that will be used when executing the .desktop files that can be generated under favorites. Due to current state of the main program I will use the launcher to kill and then restart PEF to free up as much ram as possible.

Themeing documentation is coming along but due to some outdated tutorials on www.enlightenment.org I am having trouble recreating the current theme in a more modular fashion.

More soon.

 

[Tiptup300]

Project isn't dead and I am steadily fixing and tweaking.

I've gotten the memory issue fixed but with the database full I still am using around 100megs of ram. This isn't great but at least it fits well within the Pandora ram amount.

I have created a launcher for the games that will be used when executing the .desktop files that can be generated under favorites. Due to current state of the main program I will use the launcher to kill and then restart PEF to free up as much ram as possible.

Themeing documentation is coming along but due to some outdated tutorials on www.enlightenment.org I am having trouble recreating the current theme in a more modular fashion.

More soon.

100megs!?

 

[Aimless_E]

Project isn't dead and I am steadily fixing and tweaking.

I've gotten the memory issue fixed but with the database full I still am using around 100megs of ram. This isn't great but at least it fits well within the Pandora ram amount.

I have created a launcher for the games that will be used when executing the .desktop files that can be generated under favorites. Due to current state of the main program I will use the launcher to kill and then restart PEF to free up as much ram as possible.

Themeing documentation is coming along but due to some outdated tutorials on www.enlightenment.org I am having trouble recreating the current theme in a more modular fashion.

More soon.

100megs!?

Yeah I know.

That is with the database 100% full and I cache all the data title:filename:emulator:genre:year:md5sum for ~9999 files. If you only have 20 files memory usage is much lower. Im sure I can reduce the overall ram usage if I cache only some of the data, but right now (even on an old 466mhz PII) I have near instant search and sort routines. I would hate to lose that for a few megs of ram when I can just kill the program an restart it when needed.

But I'm far from finished. The EFL has a library that might make the configuration and database distribution much easier and it claims to have lightning fast random data access abilities (to replace my search and sort code). Unfortunately I haven't been able to implement this yet.

But we're down to 2 months ;-) before we get our hands on the actual hardware. And depending on how long it takes 2 months to past will depend on how complete PEF is. I plan to have every feature available at the word go except for p2p config sharing and possibly theme support. Optimizations will come hard and heavy after I can actually see it work on the Pandora.

 

[Vorporeal]

What strategy (in 200 words or less) are you using for accessing the data? Hash table? Heap? Something more complicated? Something completely different?

 

[Tiptup300]

Wouldn't using SQL make everything a lot easier?

 

[bzar]

Wouldn't using SQL make everything a lot easier?

Yeah... something like sqlite could really be worth looking at.

 

[Aimless_E]

"True" SQL no, sqllite isn't "truly" sql (in the since that there is no server to do the data acquisition) but I have considered using it.

@Vorporeal: Strategy? we don't need no stinking strategy. actually the closest definition would be heap.

Okay, nevermind the 100meg thing. I didn't apparently finish the 6th grade and don't know how to figure percentages :{ . PEF uses more like 68megs with the database at maximum. I removed all but 128 megs of ram out of the PII machine I keep referencing and it only reports 52% of the ram is used for PEF.

And.. I.. just realized what I'm doing wrong in my sort code. Stay tuned.

Oh and regardless to how much I end up optimizing I seen no reason why I shouldn't kill and restart PEF between games. Even if it doesn't free much ram, it will still free up one or two cpu cycles while the game is running.

I'll add it to the options list in the config file.

 

[Tiptup300]

"True" SQL no, sqllite isn't "truly" sql (in the since that there is no server to do the data acquisition) but I have considered using it.

@Vorporeal: Strategy? we don't need no stinking strategy. actually the closest definition would be heap.

Okay, nevermind the 100meg thing. I didn't apparently finish the 6th grade and don't know how to figure percentages :{ . PEF uses more like 68megs with the database at maximum. I removed all but 128 megs of ram out of the PII machine I keep referencing and it only reports 52% of the ram is used for PEF.

And.. I.. just realized what I'm doing wrong in my sort code. Stay tuned.

Oh and regardless to how much I end up optimizing I seen no reason why I shouldn't kill and restart PEF between games. Even if it doesn't free much ram, it will still free up one or two cpu cycles while the game is running.

I'll add it to the options list in the config file.

I just meant any sql, preferably sqllite. It seems like you're just reinventing the wheel.

 

[Aimless_E]

"True" SQL no, sqllite isn't "truly" sql (in the since that there is no server to do the data acquisition) but I have considered using it.

@Vorporeal: Strategy? we don't need no stinking strategy. actually the closest definition would be heap.

Okay, nevermind the 100meg thing. I didn't apparently finish the 6th grade and don't know how to figure percentages :{ . PEF uses more like 68megs with the database at maximum. I removed all but 128 megs of ram out of the PII machine I keep referencing and it only reports 52% of the ram is used for PEF.

And.. I.. just realized what I'm doing wrong in my sort code. Stay tuned.

Oh and regardless to how much I end up optimizing I seen no reason why I shouldn't kill and restart PEF between games. Even if it doesn't free much ram, it will still free up one or two cpu cycles while the game is running.

I'll add it to the options list in the config file.

I just meant any sql, preferably sqllite. It seems like you're just reinventing the wheel.

Not completely. But the problem seems to be WHEN I pull the data not how. I have some ideas and an entire weekend to work on it.