Sega GG + Nintendo GameBoy emulator for SP beta test

[Guest rushmore]

Hey bitbank,

Glad to know your emulator is out there. Honestly, I thought that by upgrading to the HTC diamond would make games a lot faster, but that wasn't the case. On my previous HTC Tytn (and even the HTC Wizard) game gear and NES games would play at full speed on MorphGear with no frameskip, so I'll be honest, I didn't have much interest in Smartgear. :D

But now that I have the diamond...the 640x480 resolution screen is beautiful and may have four times the pixels, but it also makes MorphGear four times slower. PicoDrive and PocketSNES also run significantly slower...I was about to give up hope of emulation on the Diamond when I remembered SmartGear.

Your emulator is by FAR the fastest on VGA screens. For example, with throttling turned off, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons runs at an average of 75fps on scaled fullscreen (that's taking up about 70% of the screen in portait mode), but in MorphGear, only taking up 50% of the screen the game only runs at 28FPS. MorphGear is damn slow.

Keep up the great work and I hope to see an SNES emulator soon!

Smartgear does rock. Rock EVEN better if he would port a verison that works on Nokia devices. The N95 calls me closer....

[Guest rushmore]

Hey bitbank,

Glad to know your emulator is out there. Honestly, I thought that by upgrading to the HTC diamond would make games a lot faster, but that wasn't the case. On my previous HTC Tytn (and even the HTC Wizard) game gear and NES games would play at full speed on MorphGear with no frameskip, so I'll be honest, I didn't have much interest in Smartgear. :D

But now that I have the diamond...the 640x480 resolution screen is beautiful and may have four times the pixels, but it also makes MorphGear four times slower. PicoDrive and PocketSNES also run significantly slower...I was about to give up hope of emulation on the Diamond when I remembered SmartGear.

Your emulator is by FAR the fastest on VGA screens. For example, with throttling turned off, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons runs at an average of 75fps on scaled fullscreen (that's taking up about 70% of the screen in portait mode), but in MorphGear, only taking up 50% of the screen the game only runs at 28FPS. MorphGear is damn slow.

Keep up the great work and I hope to see an SNES emulator soon!

Had HTC added an external microsd, I would have got a Diamond too. Four GB is too small for me with music, movies, South Park and video games on it. I have an 8gb on my Dash and it is too small. Need the expansion option.

Edited July 30, 2008 by rushmore

[Guest Seberus]

I was stil hopening for Touchscreen Buttons with a 2x3 Grid for which every Button is able to be defined for another missing Hardkey.

[Guest Menneisyys]

Smartgear does rock. Rock EVEN better if he would port a verison that works on Nokia devices. The N95 calls me closer....

Yup, iPhone / S60 / BlackBerry / Android ports, please :D

[Guest Menneisyys]

ever wondered 2 player games over bluetooth :D ???

that would be a dream... or reality ?

btw, the new, 3.0 version of Pocket C64 supports this - see my review

[Guest Menneisyys]

Hey bitbank,

Glad to know your emulator is out there. Honestly, I thought that by upgrading to the HTC diamond would make games a lot faster, but that wasn't the case. On my previous HTC Tytn (and even the HTC Wizard) game gear and NES games would play at full speed on MorphGear with no frameskip, so I'll be honest, I didn't have much interest in Smartgear. :D

But now that I have the diamond...the 640x480 resolution screen is beautiful and may have four times the pixels, but it also makes MorphGear four times slower. PicoDrive and PocketSNES also run significantly slower...I was about to give up hope of emulation on the Diamond when I remembered SmartGear.

Your emulator is by FAR the fastest on VGA screens. For example, with throttling turned off, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons runs at an average of 75fps on scaled fullscreen (that's taking up about 70% of the screen in portait mode), but in MorphGear, only taking up 50% of the screen the game only runs at 28FPS. MorphGear is damn slow.

Keep up the great work and I hope to see an SNES emulator soon!

yup, the same experience here - see my related bibles.

[Guest Eliminator]

Hello! I found a bug in a Smartgear 1.04- the left and right headphones (and stereodyn.) are switched. Game - Pokemon Crystal. Device - HP iPAQ rw6815.

And I have a question - will be GBA emulation in future?

Edited August 26, 2008 by Eliminator

[Guest trew01]

Hello love your emulator but I am still waiting for a registration code please help! my email is [email protected]

Hope to get a reply soon I am also going to mention this sweet emulator to loads of friends! nicely done again been looking for an all in one emulator.

P.S. I know its probably been asked but whats next in terms of updates? maybe more emulator support or fixes? will you keep updating it? or is it done? thanks again for the help ;)

[Guest bitbank]

Hi Everyone,

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I last checked in. I'm extremely busy with other projects, but I can't pull myself away from working on SmartGear. I'm working on performance (of course) and have found a few more tricks which have sped things up significantly on different devices. Unfortunately, all ARM CPUs are not created equal. Something which helps on the XScale has no effect on the OMAP and vice-versa.

Here is the short list of goals for the new version:

1) Fix as many documented bugs as possible

2) Improve performance on all emulators

3) Reset the security model to cut down on piracy.

Item number 3 has been bugging me for quite a while. The "Handango" dynamic registration key system which I use is only there to allow me to sell my product through various resellers (which unfortunately adopted the same flawed model). The 2 biggest problems with it are that it uses the owner name and is case sensitive and spaces also affect the code. The other problem is that it's easily cracked. SmartGear has been a "warez" hit for quite a while. I'm going to toss the whole thing and only sell it with PayPal. I'm currently not making much money anyway (enough for a few beers and pretzels), but hopefully by revamping the security I'll be able to at least delay the rampant piracy of my products. The new security model will be similar (it will use the owner name), but will not care about case or spaces and be totally unrelated to the way Handango does it. The downside to this is that existing customers will need to re-register. I keep records of all sales, so all existing customers will get a free upgrade.

As soon as I have something impressive to show, I'll post a beta of it here.

L.B.

[Guest bitbank]

the game Gradius 2 (NES) has some missing graphics at the bottom.

It should look like this:

but instead, it looks like this:

also, it seems there still is the clicking/popping soudn in all games, but it's quiet, not as noticable as before the 16-bit fix was added.

Hi Mikeey,

I finally got Gradius 2 looking correct (during gameplay). The opening graphics don't look 100% correct, but at least the status bar is displayed properly while playing. This will be out in my next release.

L.B.

[Guest CharlyV]

Nice to see you back, Larry. B)

[Guest PolloLoco]

Hi Everyone,

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I last checked in. I'm extremely busy with other projects, but I can't pull myself away from working on SmartGear. I'm working on performance (of course) and have found a few more tricks which have sped things up significantly on different devices. Unfortunately, all ARM CPUs are not created equal. Something which helps on the XScale has no effect on the OMAP and vice-versa.

Here is the short list of goals for the new version:

1) Fix as many documented bugs as possible

2) Improve performance on all emulators

3) Reset the security model to cut down on piracy.

Item number 3 has been bugging me for quite a while. The "Handango" dynamic registration key system which I use is only there to allow me to sell my product through various resellers (which unfortunately adopted the same flawed model). The 2 biggest problems with it are that it uses the owner name and is case sensitive and spaces also affect the code. The other problem is that it's easily cracked. SmartGear has been a "warez" hit for quite a while. I'm going to toss the whole thing and only sell it with PayPal. I'm currently not making much money anyway (enough for a few beers and pretzels), but hopefully by revamping the security I'll be able to at least delay the rampant piracy of my products. The new security model will be similar (it will use the owner name), but will not care about case or spaces and be totally unrelated to the way Handango does it. The downside to this is that existing customers will need to re-register. I keep records of all sales, so all existing customers will get a free upgrade.

As soon as I have something impressive to show, I'll post a beta of it here.

L.B.

Great to hear you're still working on this emulator - it's always been one of my faves. Especially since I got an HTC Touch Pro - and it's one of the few programs that runs fast on it. I'll probably test it myself before I get an answer - but does the latest version of Genesis games feature all of the sound emulation? Or is it still limited?

[Guest mikeeey]

hey bitbank! nice to see you again. I hate to ask already but how's the SNES doing? haha.

I look forward to your next release, and I hope to get a TouchPro some time in the future, I'll finally get to see your emulator in VGA.

[Guest kburkhart84]

I wouldn't know how to reproduce this error as it is kind of random. In Zelda: Oracle of Ages, the program randomly exits. Sometimes, it goes for a long time, other times it goes a couple minutes many times. Other games don't do this though, at least that I have tested. It also seems sensitive to saving because there is a tendency for the game to close right after unpausing the emulation right after a save(I mean smartgear save, not ROM save).

Also, for any games(emulator issue perhaps), when the program is started, start and select don't work, though the keyboard config still has them as they were set last. If I "set" start to whatever, then suddenly both start and select work for whatever game I'm playing, even if it is the same button it shows isalready the set button for "start". This happens with any game. Also, resetting any game or loading other games has no effect, as long as smartgear itself isn't closed. As in, once I "fix" it, I can play as long as I want(with the exception of the bug from the zelda game mentioned above) without having to "fix" the buttons again.

I posted this on page 46 of this topic. I know most people, including topic starters don't go back to previous pages, especially considering my post is several months old.

@bitbank, I'm still having the problem I stated above. I am a registered user, and am using version 1.04, which is the newest as far as I know. All of the above still applies, except that I have discovered the freeze and exit to occur in about any game. The keyboard problem is still around as well. I don't have any other device to test this with, but I think I'm going to try a new ROM for my tilt, if nothing else but to test and see if I still get this problem.

[Guest bitbank]

I posted this on page 46 of this topic. I know most people, including topic starters don't go back to previous pages, especially considering my post is several months old.

@bitbank, I'm still having the problem I stated above. I am a registered user, and am using version 1.04, which is the newest as far as I know. All of the above still applies, except that I have discovered the freeze and exit to occur in about any game. The keyboard problem is still around as well. I don't have any other device to test this with, but I think I'm going to try a new ROM for my tilt, if nothing else but to test and see if I still get this problem.

I haven't seen the freeze problem, but the key definition problem I definitely have seen and will fix.

I'm also going into uncharted territory by adding optimizations specific to each CPU architecture. The XScale can do things that the others can't. A simple summary of the issue:

XScale - supports ARMv5 instructions properly and benefits greatly from use of them

OMAP - supports most of ARMv5 instructions and benefits a little from use of them

Samsung - does not support ARMv5 instructions (this is the pain the rear causing me to write 2 versions of most functions)

L.B.

[Guest kburkhart84]

I haven't seen the freeze problem, but the key definition problem I definitely have seen and will fix.

I'm also going into uncharted territory by adding optimizations specific to each CPU architecture. The XScale can do things that the others can't. A simple summary of the issue:

XScale - supports ARMv5 instructions properly and benefits greatly from use of them

OMAP - supports most of ARMv5 instructions and benefits a little from use of them

Samsung - does not support ARMv5 instructions (this is the pain the rear causing me to write 2 versions of most functions)

L.B.

Well. I tried a different newer rom on my Kaiser and it still exits sometimes. Let me explain in more detail. Smartgear exits. If you have error reporting on, it will try to report it to microsoft, asking you if you want it to. It also leaves a bar at the top of the screen with the last rendered image from the game. If you do anything on the today screen, it still works, but the top status bar is replaced with what smartgear left there. The only way to fix it is to start smartgear again and play a game. If you exit yourself from smartgear, there is no problem with bars or anything.

I'm glad you are going to fix the keyboard issue. I still think my freezing and the keyboard thing may have some kind of connection because often, when the freeze happens, it is right after I redo the input config to get the buttons to work, as soon as I restart emulation. It doesn't always do it right then, rather sometimes it waits until I try to hit start. Other times it does it regardless. I don't remember this ever happening on my dash, so it may be a Kaiser only issue. I know the processor in my Kaiser is a 400mhz qualcomm processor. Maybe in your code, you have some kind of optimization that causes problems on the qualcomm processors. If that is the case, I don't know how you could optimize for them, but I don't think you really need any more optimization considering that the qualcomm processors are pretty fast as compared to the OMAP and some of the XScale and samsungs as well. I'm willing to help you test if you need it.

I understand about the processor issues. When given a choice, most people I know have recommended the XScale processors for the very reasons you mention.

[Guest mikeeey]

I haven't seen the freeze problem, but the key definition problem I definitely have seen and will fix.

I'm also going into uncharted territory by adding optimizations specific to each CPU architecture. The XScale can do things that the others can't. A simple summary of the issue:

XScale - supports ARMv5 instructions properly and benefits greatly from use of them

OMAP - supports most of ARMv5 instructions and benefits a little from use of them

Samsung - does not support ARMv5 instructions (this is the pain the rear causing me to write 2 versions of most functions)

L.B.

Qualcomm - supports nothing.

no really, how does qualcomm compare to the rest?

[Guest bitbank]

Qualcomm - supports nothing.

no really, how does qualcomm compare to the rest?

I just ordered a HTC Touch Dual from ebay to find out. It has a 400Mhz Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset. Supposedly it is based on the ARM1136EJ-S core which supports ARMv5 and ARMv6 instructions, but I won't know until I get it and do some testing. I'll post my results here as soon as I get it.

So far, I've done a little XScale specific optimization to the "150% smooth scaling routine" (used by GG+GBC emulators) and got a 10-15% overall improvement. Considering that drawing to the display is just a fraction of what's happening during gameplay, I should be able to get some significant performance improvements by going through all of the code and taking advantage of the new optimization. The specific feature that I'm using on the XScale which doesn't seem to work on other ARM CPUs is the ability to pre-fill the cache in anticipation of a future read. This helps a lot since memory is the bottleneck of most performance issues.

L.B.

[Guest mikeeey]

ah you should have got the diamond or the Touch Pro (raphael) if you were getting a Qualcomm device. They atleast use the 7200a, with a 528MHz processor. Huge leap from the 400MHz version.

[Guest kburkhart84]

I just ordered a HTC Touch Dual from ebay to find out. It has a 400Mhz Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset. Supposedly it is based on the ARM1136EJ-S core which supports ARMv5 and ARMv6 instructions, but I won't know until I get it and do some testing. I'll post my results here as soon as I get it.

So far, I've done a little XScale specific optimization to the "150% smooth scaling routine" (used by GG+GBC emulators) and got a 10-15% overall improvement. Considering that drawing to the display is just a fraction of what's happening during gameplay, I should be able to get some significant performance improvements by going through all of the code and taking advantage of the new optimization. The specific feature that I'm using on the XScale which doesn't seem to work on other ARM CPUs is the ability to pre-fill the cache in anticipation of a future read. This helps a lot since memory is the bottleneck of most performance issues.

L.B.

I think that is the exact same thing I have in my kaiser. The main difference will be that I have a full QWERTY keyboard.

I understand the qualcomm processors overall are supposed to be better. Apparently they have some kind of hardware accelerated video as well. The problem in the HTC devices is the whole driver issue I think most of us already know about. I've never tried it on any other device, so I can't confirm the quality of said processors with actual drivers, but supposedly they are the "better" processors. I can believe considering that they are replacing regular samsung processors in newer devices, like treos, blackberry, and pretty much all new HTC devices.

I think if you get the truly hardware accelerated devices in the smartphones, not HTC crap, you should not need too much optimization, until you start with SNES and GBA emulation. My NES and GBC emulation was full speed with sound on a Dash with 200Mhz TIOMAP processor, which you yourself stated doesn't support the optimization instructions fully. The qualcomms are faster, even without good drivers. With my dash, I used to use PocketSNES 1.53. It would work full speed, no sound, but only overclocking the OMAP to about 260Mhz. With my Kaiser, PocketSNES is full speed, no sound, without overclocking(stock 400Mhz). This processor setup should be fast enough for full speed with sound, but due to HTC's driver issues, it isn't.

[Guest kburkhart84]

ah you should have got the diamond or the Touch Pro (raphael) if you were getting a Qualcomm device. They atleast use the 7200a, with a 528MHz processor. Huge leap from the 400MHz version.

I think for his purposes, he's better with a slower device. I've done some software programming (mostly games) myself, and I have learned you don't want to use the top of the line for testing, unless your system requirements are going to be that high. You really need to test on slower systems in order to make sure your software works well on them. Now if it were a phone for personal use, I'd recommend the Samsung Epix myself. It is the fastest phone I can find, without going for the monolith HTC advantage, considering it has the XScale 624Mhz processor. In fact, theoretically, the Epix should be faster, because it has the same processor, but it does less work due to a smaller screen resolution. The advantage is VGA size, while the Epix is QVGA. I don't know if HTC fixed their driver issues with the Diamond and Raphael yet, but reviews appear to say they don't. The 3d rendering has been well optimized(Touch FLO 3d), but 2d kinds of things aren't well optimized supposedly.

[Guest bitbank]

please delete...

Edited November 29, 2008 by bitbank

[Guest bitbank]

ah you should have got the diamond or the Touch Pro (raphael) if you were getting a Qualcomm device. They atleast use the 7200a, with a 528MHz processor. Huge leap from the 400MHz version.

I've played with the HTC Diamond and found it to be too bulky/heavy. The reasons I chose the Touch Dual are the following:

1) Has the Qualcomm CPU

2) Looked like a fun phone that's different from my HTC Vox

3) Got it cheap on Ebay ($200)

I also agree with another poster's comment that I want to have a slow phone for everyday use so that I can make my software work well on the worst case. That's why I carried the Vox for so long. It's an excellent device in every way, but has the slowest cpu available for Windows Mobile (OMAP 200Mhz).

L.B.

[Guest bitbank]

sorry - Modaco website didn't respond, so I hit it again B)

Edited November 29, 2008 by bitbank

[Guest bitbank]

my bad B)

Edited November 29, 2008 by bitbank