Release Zx Pandy Released


D

Dave18

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Mar 16, 2003
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I've ported across my old Spectrum emulator that I first wrote for the GP32. It's available on Pandora File Archive here

It uses Notaz's SDL for full screen and hardware scaling (thanks for the advice on using the fb for vsync) and will try to change the LCD refresh rate to 50hz (but changes it back to 60hz on exit).

First attempt at creating a PND file, seems okay except I can't get it to appear under Emulators in the menu despite setting <Category Name="Emulators"> (it will probably pop up under Other).

Any bugs let me know.
 
I've not looked at FUSE but it is probably more accurate than mine. I wrote mine from scratch with an ASM core as a challenge to see how low a clockspeed it could run on a GP32, I got it to 80Mhz for 48K games and 120Mhz for 128K games. It saved quite a bit on batteries!

It was also designed with playability in mind and lets you map buttons to spectrum keys, which was more important when there was no physical keyboard.

Tbh I just wanted to test building and packaging something for the Pandora and this seemed like a good way to start. I actually did the full port including editing and building it entirely on the Pandora itself.
 
Dave18 said:
I've not looked at FUSE but it is probably more accurate than mine. I wrote mine from scratch with an ASM core as a challenge to see how low a clockspeed it could run on a GP32, I got it to 80Mhz for 48K games and 120Mhz for 128K games. It saved quite a bit on batteries!
Click to expand...

! wow ! :blink:
That is 7 different kinds of awesome :)

I'm going to check this out. Fuse is the kitchen sink of spectrum emus, but yours sounds leaner and more focused on gaming.
-(e)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Dave18 said:
and lets you map buttons to spectrum keys, which was more important when there was no physical keyboard.
Click to expand...
Ooh, now THAT's handy. I've had troubles with some games in FUSE (such as Worse Things Happen At Sea), and this sounds like just the ticket. :D

Tbh I just wanted to test building and packaging something for the Pandora and this seemed like a good way to start. I actually did the full port including editing and building it entirely on the Pandora itself.
Click to expand...
That is cool.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi,

Some comments:

  1. Can't seem to scroll through the 128K selection (tape loader, 128 BASIC etc.) with the DPAD or anything for that matter, how does this work?
  2. Movement in the START menu is really fast i.e. its hard to move up / down and accurately hit an option, same for changing options (e.g. model)
  3. Initial folder in browse is not accessible, but reset to root does seem to work
  4. Save state seems to save to last selected dir, perhaps a "savestates" or similar under the appdata/zx_pandy dir would be better?
  5. Can't seem to load .tzx files (or probably I am just being stoopid)

Thanks
-(e)
 
Dave18 said:
I've ported across my old Spectrum emulator that I first wrote for the GP32. It's available on Pandora File Archive here

It uses Notaz's SDL for full screen and hardware scaling (thanks for the advice on using the fb for vsync) and will try to change the LCD refresh rate to 50hz (but changes it back to 60hz on exit).

First attempt at creating a PND file, seems okay except I can't get it to appear under Emulators in the menu despite setting <Category Name="Emulators"> (it will probably pop up under Other).

Any bugs let me know.
Click to expand...

It was one of the first things I tried on my new Pandora. It runs just fine except when you try to exit the application. For some reason a layer containing the graphics from this great spectrum emulator remains on the screen. You can actually see the Pandora loading in the apps from the MMenu and you can start other apps but the screen layer of the emulator stays on top.

Excellent emulator - it was a treat looking at some of my old speccy favorites on the bright Pandora screen. Like this machine was made for the Spectrum emulator!

Kudos!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've updated the file at openhandhelds to V2.0.

There are a few bug fixes included but the main change is that I've moved to a file database system instead of the normal file selector (see the readme).

The idea is that each game has a unique id that can be used to show screenshots, apply pokes (using .pok files), save hi-scores, save configs and manage save states. The advantage is that it doesn't matter whether the game was loaded from a sna, z80 or tap file as all of the above functionality works on the game id rather than the filename.

I personally think it's a better approach however there are a couple of cons:
1) The database has to be built up, the one currently included in the pnd contains quite a few games but if anyone wants one added just send me a copy of the file and I'll add it. An updated database file can just be dropped into appdata/zx_pandy to replace the once in the pnd.
2) Reading directories take longer, not too long a the moment but as the database builds I'll have to keep an eye on it and look at faster ways of indexing.

If people think this new direction is a bad idea let me know, and I'll see about including an option to select which fileloader to use (although the old one will not include functionality such as hi-score saving and loading of .pok files).

Oh, I don't think it says in the readme but you can save thumbnails (used by the file selector) and full size screenshots by holding down LS and pressing A or Y (can't remember which does which though). If you save a thumbnail it will save in appdata/zx_pandy/scr and take precedent over the one contained in the pnd.

Next job, implement TZX loading!

Enjoy
 
Version 3.2 is now on Openhandhelds (version 3.0 and 3.1 were internal versions never uploaded). Main change is added support for TZX files, tried it out on quite a few tape images and they all seem to load, let me know of any that fail. There is no instant load for TZX but if you turn off speed throttling it will obviously load faster (~ 4 x at 600 Mhz).

Also, a few other bug fixes and I don't know any any games that don't work anymore, again if you find one let me know.

Enjoy
 
Hi..

On the new kernel ( need to try the old ) but sometimes the savestate button doesn`t work.. I mean, pressing it does nothing..
on Roller Coaster I can use savestate, but on Matchpoint I can`t.

Both games seem to work when I press load state ( although that craps out because no save was done ) ..

any ideaS?

other than that, I`ve moved from FUSE to this :)
 
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