Vectrex emulator new release..

[RobertG]

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/punkoff/robert/VecxGP2.fxe

Stick your roms in gp://gpmm/vectrex/ you now get a nice menu where you can select from your roms, and the built in game Minestorm.

I've changed a few things around in the CPU core but it probably wont be any faster yet. This is probably the last release until my GP32 arrives, as it's hard to determine whether things are running better or not in Geepee32. Might write a raycasting engine or something..

The usual condition applies, i.e "I don't even have a GP32 so I don't know if it works!"

 

[RobertG]

Any early birds may find that the menu selects the wrong game if you go past the first page of roms.. (if you select rom2 from page 2,3,4,5,etc it will load rom2 from page 1. If that makes sense If you get this problem please redownload the file, as it's fixed now.

Thanks

 

[jjthe2]

Very cool. Tried Star Trek, Ripoff, and Spinball. They all worked fine, still around 70% speed. Thank you very much.

 

[Flack]

Hey Robert, just got a chance to check it out.

Emulator loads okay. Menu system is really fast. Seems like the Vectrex screen sticks for ... 30 seconds maybe? Then game screen comes up, takes another 10-15 seconds to launch game.

Mine game: Perfect
Animaction: Crashed
Armor Attack: Perfect
Bezerk: Crashed
Blitz: Perfect, didn't understand how to play though.
Polar Rescue: Showed ship launching, then crashed.
Rip Off: Perfect.

Of course by perfect I mean game played fine, at approx 75% speed.

Good work so far! I'll bet you get the kinks ironed out when your gp32 arrives!

 

[Betty 2001]

I'm not familiar with vetrex but would love to try the Emu out.

Are there any websites out there that would explain Vetrex details, Game details etc.

Cheers.

 

[sixxie]

I've changed a few things around in the CPU core but it probably wont be any faster yet.

I wrote my own 6809 core for GPRoar - it's ok, and certainly runs my emu full speed, but I haven't resorted to ARM assembly or anything like that (and there are definitely bugs). Fancy comparing notes? Mine's GPLed, and available here (currently quite closely tied to the emu, but that's not too hard to fix):

http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/m6809.c

 

[RobertG]

Hi Sixxie,

To be honest I'm very new to the 6809, infact porting Vecx to the GP32 was my first contact with it

So until I'm more familiar with the processor I'm really just improving the current implementation, rather than changing it, to get a speed increase.

Once I've read up on it, and brushed up on my assembly a bit I'll probably have a go at writing it in ARM. If that works out and HLEing the display system works then this thing is going to fly! "hopefully"

----

I've only really put a few hours into this so far, i'm sure that most people wouldn't even release it in the state it's in (first version didn't even have controls!), but I hope that people are getting some enjoyment out of using it. This port only exists because I was waiting for someone else to do it before buying a GP32..

Instead of waiting around or posting "give me a vectrex emulator!!", I decided to have a go at doing it myself.. and it's going alright. Ermm.. let that be a lesson to you all.. My C sucks.. totally.. Until last week I'd not gone near a compiler in years, and I sucked back then too. Everyone, just have a go. Read a few tutorials, read the GP32 documentation, ask for help when you get stuck. If you don't want to do an emulator, try a simple game. Imagine how many cool emulators and games there'd be on the GP32 if (nearly) *everyone* was having a go

 

[giffel]

Try putting all the vector calculation in fixed point math (no doubles etc). its increasing the speed of emulation considerably.

 

[RobertG]

Try putting all the vector calculation in fixed point math (no doubles etc). its increasing the speed of emulation considerably.

Blimey! You're not wrong there!

 

[Arutha]

I appreciate your encouragement (even though it was directed globally and not at me...) I'm a VB (that's Visual Basic) programmer, very experienced in my own way, but with NO knowledge of C, C++ or assembly. I've spent the last week reading up on C, getting a grasp of it... so far so good and in a week or two I hope to start working on projects that are fun as well as learning items. Do you (or anyone else) have any suggestions for places to read that deal with programming games and/or emulators? While I have extensive experience working with databases, thanks to VB's handling of pretty much everything graphical I have zippo knowledge when it comes to things along that line. Thanks for the help!

 

[RobertG]

Arutha,

I'm a webdeveloper by trade, javascript/asp all that sort of rubbish

I recommend trying to program a chip 8 emulator. BRIX is a very easy game to get running.

It's not very exciting stuff but it's a good start, and the chip8 is very simple. I got an emulator running in about an hour from scratch in Javascript! Dead easy.

Have a look at http://members.aol.com/autismuk/chip8/chip8def.htm


Have a go using Visual Basic, which you're comfortable with, and if you find it "fun" go ahead and make "Chip8GP" or whatever

 

[Arutha]

Thanks for the link, it looks like the perfect item to start with. I'm going to wait a bit and do it in a different language than VB - technically its possible in VB, but VB code can't be ported to anything other than windows, and also it abstracts memory and graphics... makes general programming easier, but cuts out a lot of the power unless you use some workarounds. Hopefully in a couple of weeks to a month there will be something running from me, even though it'll be basic.

Thanks again!

 

[RobertG]

I said to do it in VB first because of the abstraction.. You would be able to concentrate on learning how to program an emulator without worrying about memory allocation and all that rubbish

Anyways, I look forward to seeing whatever you come up with