Wanting someone to update Beebdroid. Money waiting :)

[Stainy]

Hi all.

While waiting for the Pyra I got myself a GPD XD+ to fill my retro gaming slot. I sold my Pandora last year ( obviously too early )
Beebdroid ( BBC Microcomputer emulator ) on the play store hasn`t been updated since 2015.. I have a version that allows you load your own images.. although sound doesn`t seem to work. I would love a version that allows me to map the physical controls at a per game level.
I have some cash waiting if someone could possibly look at this. I can test and give feedback when needed.

Hoping..
Thanks

 

[Stainy]

No interest? :/

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Perhaps there may be if it wasn't an Android app? A beeb emulator on the Pyra would be awesome though.

 

[levi]

Yes, on the Pandora we had beebem ported by sswam and later picked up by ptitseb. IIRC it's not a straight port as it included a GP2x style keyboard overlay that you could get to pop up for especially hard to press keys, but assuming that source hasn't gone walkabout it should be a straightforward port once SDL and alsa are ready on the pyra.

P.S. Stainy posted in the beebem thread, so he's aware of that.

 

[ptitSeb]

And what about https://github.com/mcfasa09/bbcmicro ?

 

[Stainy]

And what about https://github.com/mcfasa09/bbcmicro ?

Oh.. I didn`t know about this... but the GPDXD+ doesn`t have a physical keyboard... and it states to use Beebdroid if you want a game/other experiance. of which I was looking for someone to look into because of mapping per game controls. I`m up for populating a config file

Also I don`t see a download for that version ptitSeb. Would I have to compile that?

 

[ptitSeb]

Yep, I don't think there is any binary ready to use.
The project is quite old and seems to be eclipse based, and doesn't use Android Studio. No idea how difficult the migration can be (because of the presence of jni, probably not plug'n play).

 

[elvissteinjr]

Eclipse JNI stuff is pretty much not supported anymore I'd say. At least not with recent SDKs/NDKs, which on the other hand you want in order to debug properly on your modern Android device.
Android Studio has full NDK support these days and supports importing Eclipse projects. I wouldn't say it's plug and play, though, especially when third-party libs are involved.
This is my main gripe with Android development. They deprecate stuff way too fast. "Maybe I should update these tools, been a little while" "Oh, something changed for no reason and needs to be adapted.". There are also isn't all that much of troubleshooting resources regarding the NDK on the internet.

 

[ptitSeb]

Yep, agreed. That's probably also the main reason why no-one really stepped up to build beebdroid in the first place.

 

[Stainy]

So.. probably a non-starter then? :/

 

[sleekweasel]

So.. probably a non-starter then? :/

Actually, I've been working on a fork of the Beebdroid code on GitHub over the past few months: sleekweasel/Beebdroid

It now compiles in Android Studio, has position-independent libraries (required since Lollipop or thereabouts), and has (Bluetooth) keyboard support. I've more been working towards using the keyboard for programming with my daughter than playing games, but the games I've tried seem to work.

I also plumbed in the save/restore machine image code, and I'm currently adding the mouse x,y coordinates to the ADVAL 1 and 2 channels.

Sound seems to work: SOUND 1,-15,170,20 went beep at me for a couple of seconds, and Chuckie-Egg does its thing.

I'm using it on an Amazon Fire TV stick, but it run happily on my phone and tablet.

In any case, you should be able to compile it yourself and tweak stuff.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Ooh, sounds promising Would be fantastic if it could/already does support an in-built keyboard (like the KeyOne)

 

[sleekweasel]

It works with my tablet's built-in keyboard, which so far as I know is effectively a standard Android affair - not sneaky Bluetooth.

I could probably upload an APK to GitHub, though it would be an unsigned debug version. I'm trying to make contact with the Little Fluffy Toys guys, in case it's possible to update the one already on Google play.

Ok, added an APK to my GitHub

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Cool! My personal preference would be f-droid, but I'm not sure if that might just make it more complicated to deploy...

FAQ - App Developers | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

How do I get my app included? How do I change the description and add meta information like screenshots? How do I license my app? How are donations hand...

f-droid.org

Don't worry about packaging anything quickly for me though - bit short on spare time to do any testing at the moment.

 

[levi]

The best test for sound I know is probably Planetoids game start sound, which IIRC is two channels which are off each other ever so slightly so they phase each other fantastically.

 

[sleekweasel]

Don't worry about packaging anything quickly for me though - bit short on spare time to do any testing at the moment.

Well there's an APK on GitHub now under releases if you want it. I'm not really looking to become the project's maintainer, I just wanted to get it working for my daughter. I might upload a final signed version to Play and Amazon, in addition to GitHub, but if you wanted to post it from there you'd be welcome.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Thanks again, I may look in to that...

 

[sleekweasel]

The best test for sound I know is probably Planetoids game start sound, which IIRC is two channels which are off each other ever so slightly so they phase each other fantastically.

I just tried that with the APK I posted, and it sounds fine - all interphase.

 

[sleekweasel]

Cool! My personal preference would be f-droid, but I'm not sure if that might just make it more complicated to deploy...

Not harder - it looks like they monitor GitHub projects they're told about - but it seems polite to try to get the original developers' agreement before submitting it there. I know Reuben is active, so I just need to work out how to contact him.

 

[Stainy]

Not harder - it looks like they monitor GitHub projects they're told about - but it seems polite to try to get the original developers' agreement before submitting it there. I know Reuben is active, so I just need to work out how to contact him.

Nice work sleek Don`t know how I missed this. .I have no way of compiling it, is there a binary apk I could try on my GPDXD+ ?

Looking at your git.. I can`t see the .apk :/

EDIT: Found it thank you