Temper For The Gp32?

[christo930]

I've been playing with temper a lot and it is faster and has better sound than Gpengine even at low clock speeds and is more compatible and supports saving. It works with the games I've tried at full spped down in the 150s-160s which most gp32's can hit. I do like to use my gp32 when possible because of the better stick and battery life. Any chance of a port? It would be really, really nice to have such a good emulator for tg16 for the gp32.

Chris

 

[Exophase]

I've been playing with temper a lot and it is faster and has better sound than Gpengine even at low clock speeds and is more compatible and supports saving. It works with the games I've tried at full spped down in the 150s-160s which most gp32's can hit. I do like to use my gp32 when possible because of the better stick and battery life. Any chance of a port? It would be really, really nice to have such a good emulator for tg16 for the gp32.

Chris

I've generally had that GPEngine is very good so I'm a little surprised anyone would want this, but...

slaanesh offered a while ago but he's really busy now. I personally don't have a GP32, maybe if someone wants to donate one to me I can see what I can do. CD-ROM games, however, would probably pose something of a problem. Unless you can overclock to 166MHz then there isn't much chance of getting it fullspeed with OGG playback, and the SMC cards are by and large too small to hold even one complete raw BIN/CUE game. The only really feasible alternative is low quality WAVs (mono, 8bit, 11 or 22KHz), which is obviously inferior, but would probably still be worth it to people.

It'd probably need auto frameskip too, especially for the people stuck at 133MHz or less.

I'd be a little concerned about getting it to fit into 8MB of RAM. That could take some reworking.

 

[christo930]

I've been playing with temper a lot and it is faster and has better sound than Gpengine even at low clock speeds and is more compatible and supports saving. It works with the games I've tried at full spped down in the 150s-160s which most gp32's can hit. I do like to use my gp32 when possible because of the better stick and battery life. Any chance of a port? It would be really, really nice to have such a good emulator for tg16 for the gp32.

Chris

I've generally had that GPEngine is very good so I'm a little surprised anyone would want this, but...

slaanesh offered a while ago but he's really busy now. I personally don't have a GP32, maybe if someone wants to donate one to me I can see what I can do. CD-ROM games, however, would probably pose something of a problem. Unless you can overclock to 166MHz then there isn't much chance of getting it fullspeed with OGG playback, and the SMC cards are by and large too small to hold even one complete raw BIN/CUE game. The only really feasible alternative is low quality WAVs (mono, 8bit, 11 or 22KHz), which is obviously inferior, but would probably still be worth it to people.

It'd probably need auto frameskip too, especially for the people stuck at 133MHz or less.

I'd be a little concerned about getting it to fit into 8MB of RAM. That could take some reworking.


GPengine is good, but none of the Bonk games work and you need a frameskip of one even at 166 and the sound isn't as good as temper ether. I can't speak for others, but I personally don't care about a lack of cd support as I've never played any of the cd games anyway. I think you can save, but the system for doing so isn't very intuitive. I guess temper just spoiled me, cause I use to think it was just fine There is an emulator to make up for lack of hardware. geepee32

Chris

 

[trooper]

GPEngine does not support saving or loading, As far as i can remember, Some of the code is there for saving, As there is an option to save a game, But as everyone who may have tried GPEngine, The option to load a game save is sadly missing.

But it does play a mean game of parasol stars and puzznic.

Though i would greatly appreciate a port of Temper for the GP32 without hesitation, If there was ever going to be a possibility of one Exophase.

Trooper

 

[slaanesh]

I'd still be willing to port it.

 

[Exophase]

I'd still be willing to port it.

Okay, after the next GP2X version is out I'll send you the source and we'll see what can be done (if you can contact me on AIM or IRC or something that'd be easiest)

 

[christo930]

GPEngine does not support saving or loading, As far as i can remember, Some of the code is there for saving, As there is an option to save a game, But as everyone who may have tried GPEngine, The option to load a game save is sadly missing.

But it does play a mean game of parasol stars and puzznic.

Though i would greatly appreciate a port of Temper for the GP32 without hesitation, If there was ever going to be a possibility of one Exophase.

Trooper

That is all I use pcengine for is parasol stars. It's probably the best game in the series (and with competition like bubble bobble, that's saying a lot) and one of the best arcade type games I've ever played.

Chris

 

[trooper]

That is all I use pcengine for is parasol stars. It's probably the best game in the series (and with competition like bubble bobble, that's saying a lot) and one of the best arcade type games I've ever played.

Chris

I actually loved the Amiga version of parasol stars, Prettier than the PCEngine version (was one of my first Amiga games, Brought with the system) and got used to the Amiga controls for the game (ie. Up for jump and up + fire to open parasol). Though i now prefer the PCEngine version as i`ve played it sooo much, That i`ve got used to the slight graphical differences.

gp32_console :wub: , Silly me. :rolleyes:

Trooper

 

[slaanesh]

I'd still be willing to port it.

Okay, after the next GP2X version is out I'll send you the source and we'll see what can be done (if you can contact me on AIM or IRC or something that'd be easiest)


Great. Looking forward to the next release then.

 

[ralp99]

you know, back in the day i picked up a GP32 for the reason that GPEngine had just come out, and I was flabbergasted! Even thru till now it's performance still satisfies me, and I never was really that disappointed about the lack of load/save... or by the lack of CDrom support (yeah, all those things are nice, though!) ALways sucked that Blazing Lazers ddn't work, if there was one thing I could piss n moan about.

I recently decided to take the plunge and bought a Turbografx, CD system, and the system card (yeah, after all these years!) Nothing beats it on the TV, still..

 

[slaanesh]

I have a real PC Engine too. It's my favorite retro console. I'd love to get the RGB mod done on it so I can plug it into my SCART capable monitor for an ultra crystal clear picture.

 

[Exophase]

I took a look at the memory usage for the GP2X version:

CODE
Sections:
Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn
0 .note.ABI-tag 00000020 00008094 00008094 00000094 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA, LINK_ONCE_DISCARD
1 .init 00000014 000080b4 000080b4 000000b4 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
2 .text 00106afc 000080d0 000080d0 000000d0 2**4
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
3 __libc_freeres_fn 00000724 0010ebcc 0010ebcc 00106bcc 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
4 __libc_thread_freeres_fn 00000088 0010f2f0 0010f2f0 001072f0 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
5 .fini 0000000c 0010f378 0010f378 00107378 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
6 .rodata 0003667a 0010f384 0010f384 00107384 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
7 __libc_subfreeres 00000028 00145a00 00145a00 0013da00 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
8 __libc_atexit 00000004 00145a28 00145a28 0013da28 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
9 __libc_thread_subfreeres 00000004 00145a2c 00145a2c 0013da2c 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
10 .eh_frame 00000004 00145a30 00145a30 0013da30 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
11 .ctors 0000000c 0014e000 0014e000 0013e000 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
12 .dtors 0000000c 0014e00c 0014e00c 0013e00c 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
13 .jcr 00000004 0014e018 0014e018 0013e018 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
14 .data.rel.ro 00000318 0014e01c 0014e01c 0013e01c 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
15 .got 000000d0 0014e334 0014e334 0013e334 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
16 .data 0000808c 0014e420 0014e420 0013e420 2**5
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
17 .bss 0040a794 00158000 00158000 001464ac 2**13
ALLOC
18 __libc_freeres_ptrs 0000001c 00562794 00562794 001464ac 2**2
ALLOC
19 .comment 00001f4a 00000000 00000000 001464ac 2**0
CONTENTS, READONLY



Most of these don't really matter, but the .text and the .bss are quite significant, at over 1MB and 4MB each respectively (the BSS is a few hundred KB larger than on the PC, probably because of the 8KB alignment I recently slapped on a few structures). The amount of stack and heap needed is fairly small (should be in realm of a few KB), although heap could go up a lot if huge directories are entered. Should this work out OK? Oh, and if OGG support is disabled then it may go down a little, although probably not more than a few dozen KB at the most.

 

[slaanesh]

The GP32 has about 7.5MB of useable RAM. 0.5MB for x 8-bit VRAM buffers (or 2x 16-bit buffers), audio buffers, memory mapped area for controlling hardware, stack, etc.

The .BSS section has some or all 8KB alignment? Is this for cache purposes? Or is this storage for PC Engine RAM/ROM? I think the PC Engine had 256x 8KB paged chunks (or something like that). The first 8 were RAM and the rest was ROM. I can't exactly remember.

Due to the lack of space of SMCs, it looks like almost all CD games aren't going to be an option for .bin/.cue and most likely won't even be an option for converted oggs.

My only other concern is the 44100hz sound playback. I think I'd be looking at cutting this down to either 16.5khz or 22khz max.

 

[Exophase]

The GP32 has about 7.5MB of useable RAM. 0.5MB for x 8-bit VRAM buffers (or 2x 16-bit buffers), audio buffers, memory mapped area for controlling hardware, stack, etc.

Okay, we need 16bit output. Two buffers may or may not be enough.

The .BSS section has some or all 8KB alignment? Is this for cache purposes? Or is this storage for PC Engine RAM/ROM? I think the PC Engine had 256x 8KB paged chunks (or something like that). The first 8 were RAM and the rest was ROM. I can't exactly remember.

I only aligned a few structures but it looks like it aligned everything in BSS. Ths might be the only way that it can manage the alignment. The reason why I did the alignment is to make the "compatibility mode" for the next version as fast as possible; having all of the code pages be 8KB aligned makes it faster to detect if the PC exits the current code page that it's in.

7.5MB should be enough though.

Due to the lack of space of SMCs, it looks like almost all CD games aren't going to be an option for .bin/.cue and most likely won't even be an option for converted oggs.

I doubt there will be enough speed available for OGG decoding, but low quality WAVs don't have to take up too much space. Naturally they won't sound that great, but it's much better than not being able to play the games at all. At 11025Hz 8bit mono audio tracks take up 1/16th of the space they normally would, so Dracula X for instance would take up about 68MB. Other games with smaller data tracks would take up less.

My only other concern is the 44100hz sound playback. I think I'd be looking at cutting this down to either 16.5khz or 22khz max.

I doubt that would make a whole lot of difference. Right now there's no support for anything other than 44100Hz for CD and ADPCM playback anyway (so that it doesn't have to resample CD and doesn't have to ever downsample ADPCM). I'd prefer not to have to do anything differently for it, although if it's 22050Hz it probably wouldn't be that hard to hack in.

 

[grahf]

I don't have a gp32, but im glad you guys are making this happen.

 

[slaanesh]

I'm curious to see how CD audio will go. Streaming off the SMC - how fast is this going to be? :-/

I think it will be a very interesting porting project.

 

[grahf]

I remember reading about SMC to MicroSD adapters. While still limited to 128mb, if I remember correctly people said they worked ok. In which case, wouldn't those offer higher transfer speeds for audio?

 

[Exophase]

I'm curious to see how CD audio will go. Streaming off the SMC - how fast is this going to be? :-/

I think it will be a very interesting porting project.

Temper can do 2352 bytes per sector, or about 172KB/sec for full quality audio, which when you think about it isn't really a lot to ask for at all. For the 1/16th quality version the demand would of course be 1/16th that, or under 11KB/sec per second. If GP32 can't handle that very quickly, especially while not feeling the overhead of an OS facilitating it, then I think that's pretty sad. SMC is quoted as being able to handle 2MB/sec.

I think MicroSD provides much worse transfer rate than SD, by the way.

 

[christo930]

That is all I use pcengine for is parasol stars. It's probably the best game in the series (and with competition like bubble bobble, that's saying a lot) and one of the best arcade type games I've ever played.

Chris

I actually loved the Amiga version of parasol stars, Prettier than the PCEngine version (was one of my first Amiga games, Brought with the system) and got used to the Amiga controls for the game (ie. Up for jump and up + fire to open parasol). Though i now prefer the PCEngine version as i`ve played it sooo much, That i`ve got used to the slight graphical differences.

gp32_console :wub: , Silly me. :rolleyes:

Trooper


I never noticed that (that you could hold down the button and push up to point the parasol up), maybe I can now enjoy it more. I never really noticed a difference in graphics, but I haven't played the amiga version much since using the gp32 and now gp2x. I have a 1200 with parasol stars installed on the hard disk, I'll have to check it out again. Having that hard disk is great. I can use IPF files to do a hard disk install on winuae and then backup the directory and put it on a CF card and then transfer it to the Amiga. That's how I got all my games on the Amiga.

I'm THRILLED that this seems to be going through (Temper on gp32). The controller is so much better and now I can play the Bonk! series on the gp32. I have some sort of problem with my left thumb and it gets really painfull ater a relatively short time on just about every controller, but not as bad on the gp32. The worst is the atari 2600 joystick. I have an original release joystick that I use to play Atari. The original joystick that shipped with the first heavy 6ers, actually are completely spring laoded and the fire button has more play and requires less pressure to push which takes the pressure of my thumb.

Chris

 

[christo930]

That is all I use pcengine for is parasol stars. It's probably the best game in the series (and with competition like bubble bobble, that's saying a lot) and one of the best arcade type games I've ever played.

Chris

I actually loved the Amiga version of parasol stars, Prettier than the PCEngine version (was one of my first Amiga games, Brought with the system) and got used to the Amiga controls for the game (ie. Up for jump and up + fire to open parasol). Though i now prefer the PCEngine version as i`ve played it sooo much, That i`ve got used to the slight graphical differences.

gp32_console :wub: , Silly me. :rolleyes:

Trooper


I never noticed that (that you could hold down the button and push up to point the parasol up), maybe I can now enjoy it more. I never really noticed a difference in graphics, but I haven't played the amiga version much since using the gp32 and now gp2x. I have a 1200 with parasol stars installed on the hard disk, I'll have to check it out again. Having that hard disk is great. I can use IPF files to do a hard disk install on winuae and then backup the directory and put it on a CF card and then transfer it to the Amiga. That's how I got all my games on the Amiga.

I'm THRILLED that this seems to be going through (Temper on gp32). The controller is so much better and now I can play the Bonk! series on the gp32. I have some sort of problem with my left thumb and it gets really painfull ater a relatively short time on just about every controller, but not as bad on the gp32. The worst is the atari 2600 joystick. I have an original release joystick that I use to play Atari. The original joystick that shipped with the first heavy 6ers, actually are completely spring laoded and the fire button has more play and requires less pressure to push which takes the pressure of my thumb.

Chris


Is there any progress going on or being made with this project? I'd love to hear about it.

Chris