(splurge) Porting a Vectrex emulator..

[RobertG]

Decided to have a go at porting an emulator accross to the GP32, I've set myself a deadline to get it running before I receive my FLU from GBAX.

Had a good look at DVE and RAN AWAY CRYING. That's scary stuff.

Luckily I found a really nice, clean, portable Vectrex emulator and now everything is going well. This is my first thing in C for awhile, (Been working in webdev, but have been doing games and emulators in Javascript to stay "sharp" ) so it's a mess but I think it'll be up and running way ahead of schedual


Vectrex at 320*240 looks kinda bad, but still usuable. If only the GP32 had Wonderswan style controls so that you could play it on it's side (tall screen instead of wide screen). At 320*240 alot of space is wasted as the Vectrex has a tall screen.. erm.. like this:-

|---------------|
| ***            |     
| ***            |
| ***            |
|---------------|

That's supposed to be the GP32 screen, the stars are the vectrex display. To maintain the correct "aspect" ratio the Vectrex display has to be squashed down to about half of the GP32 screen. If the GP32 screen was on it's side (rotated 90 degrees) the Vectrex display could pretty much fill the GP32 screen and look TONNES better.. MRRGH!


I'd like to hear peoples thoughts on this. Would it be useful to have a 90 degree rotate option? I'm sure a couple of games would be playable using the Dpad and start (as an action button)..

 

[tapsel]

Well... I'd say why not. There is already a homebrew breakout clone, for which you have
to hold your GP32 this way. I forgot where the download location was.

Holding the GP32 this way is somewhat unergonomic and you will probably get a
tendon sheath inflammation (hope I got the translation right), if you do it for
too long.

But basically it would probably be useful for some games.

 

[Arutha]

I've never played any Vectrex games, so I don't know how well the d-pad w/ only one easy button (start) would work, but if it's not too hard to program, I think it would be great to have as an option!

 

[skeezix]

Vectrex at 320*240 looks kinda bad, but still usuable. If only the GP32 had Wonderswan style controls so that you could play it on it's side (tall screen instead of wide screen). At 320*240 alot of space is wasted as the Vectrex has a tall screen.. erm.. like this:-

Check GT's TailGunner, GPasteroids, and XCade's Rip Off or Star Castle. XCade runs horizontally, but I've been thinking of adding a rotated mode. But you can tell from all of these that vectors look okay on the relatively low res GP32.

You can certainly play rotated; its trivial to render horiz or vertically.. the GP32 keys are pretty good vertically.. you get D-pad and one button, which is probably all you need for vectrex.

Since its vectors, you coudl easily rotate in runtime... push right-shoulder to toggle rotation or the like.. just a different vector generator or a couple different matrices to rotate

Changing the D-pad is easy too.. since your'e reporting the D-pad to the emu core anyway, you can just rotate it by using right instead of down, etc.. easy.

So I'd make it rotated in your case, or make it togglable. Easy

Feel free to ask if you need help..

jeff