Sega GG + Nintendo GameBoy emulator for SP beta test

[Guest tgwaste]

YAY and YAY!!!

awesome! Finally, a step up in emulation on my kaiser!

kaiser is a good phone for this too cause the d-pad is on the proper side. i hate when they reverse the slideout keyboard. :rolleyes:

[Guest kburkhart84]

kaiser is a good phone for this too cause the d-pad is on the proper side. i hate when they reverse the slideout keyboard. :rolleyes:

I agree with this one as well. I just hope bitbank has it well enough optimized to match the kaisers lack of 2d video drivers. I would love to be able to play SNES full speed with sound, but I may be asking for too much :) . We will see soon enough.

I still appreciate your efforts bitbank. I don't think I myself could do what you are doing.

[Guest Chaos-Zero]

Hi Chaos-Zero,

I don't have a Touch Pro to test on, but I haven't seen this issue before with other devices. Are you sure you're setting up the keys for the correct emulator (each one has its own key settings). Anyone else experiencing this problem?

These are the devices I have for testing:

HTC Juno (Shadow)

HTC Vox (S710)

HTC Touch Dual

T-Mobile MDA

T-Mobile SDA

Motorola Q

Motorola Q9h

Samsung SGH-i320N

Palm Treo 700w

HP iPAQ h2210

HP iPAQ h1910

HP iPAQ rx1950

HP iPAQ hx2190

Motorola MPX-200

HTC Star trk (At&t 3125)

L.B.

Yeah ofcourse, i wanted to set the a b and c keys on a s and d. But when i defined them there was a strange square.

[Guest Seberus]

Well, on the XDA Orbit 2 there are simply not enough buttons to play any of the Emulators, SNES would miss now several more.

Pretty bad to handle the Emulator on Phones with only Touchscreen and no real Keys :rolleyes:

[Guest PolloLoco]

Yeah ofcourse, i wanted to set the a b and c keys on a s and d. But when i defined them there was a strange square.

Go to the Touch Pro forums on ppcgeeks.com and xdadevelopers.com and look for a program called "k for touch pro". It allows you to map key's to the TP's keyboard. It's a problem with the Touch Pro and not Smargear - so stop taking this thread off topic. However, most people (me included) note severe lag when you use the keyboard's buttons for controls. There's zero lag and great speed if you use the buttons on the outside of the phone - or a bluetooth gamepad or keyboard. It's a defect in the Touch Pro that hasn't been resolved. However, some users of the unlocked European Touch Pro report no lag for whatever reason.

[Guest bitbank]

Things are moving forward on the new features and fixes. Here are some screen shots to show you some of the things I've been working on:

1) Quick-run feature - last 10 games played (any system) can be instantly run by pressing ENTER or L/R to select

2) In the key definition dialog you can copy the current definitions to all systems with a single menu click

3) I've added key definitions to quick load/save a game and take a screen capture as a BMP file.

I'll try to get a working beta up for you guys to try, but what are your thoughts so far?

L.B.

Edited December 13, 2008 by bitbank

[Guest tgwaste]

Things are moving forward on the new features and fixes. Here are some screen shots to show you some of the things I've been working on:

1) Quick-run feature - last 10 games played (any system) can be instantly run by pressing ENTER or L/R to select

2) In the key definition dialog you can copy the current definitions to all systems with a single menu click

3) I've added key definitions to quick load/save a game and take a screen capture as a BMP file.

I'll try to get a working beta up for you guys to try, but what are your thoughts so far?

L.B.

this is just hot. :rolleyes:

maybe for the 'last 10' feature make it recognize keyboard keys to jump to a game?

so if the first game is araknoid and the seventh is mario bros you can hit 'm' to jump to the first

'm' game in that list

any luck with the settings fix?

--

i predict this will be the best emulator ever made for a mobile phone device.

[Guest thevictor390]

I second the time emulation. Very few emulators on any platform have this! Just purchased a registration code, as this is the only gb emu that works on my phone (Blackjack II) with sound and scaling (even keeps aspect ratio). Sound is a bit delayed, though. Not sure if this is just lack of power on the phone's part. The delay is less than half a second but noticeable, and occurs on both NES and Gameboy so far.

[Guest bitbank]

this is just hot. :rolleyes:

maybe for the 'last 10' feature make it recognize keyboard keys to jump to a game?

so if the first game is araknoid and the seventh is mario bros you can hit 'm' to jump to the first

'm' game in that list

any luck with the settings fix?

--

i predict this will be the best emulator ever made for a mobile phone device.

I fixed the settings dialog. A real pain in the rear. Microsoft made dialog scrolling automatic on SmartPhone and manual on Pocket PC. I have to treat the dialog box like a custom drawn window and deal with all of the scrollbar messages.

[Guest bitbank]

There are too big things I'd like to see eventually added to SmartGear.

1. I would like a way to tie the Gameboy emulator clock in with the system clock so that games depending on the time of day function properly.

2. I would also eventually like to see some support for cheat engines such as Gameshark or Game Genie. I don't know the technical difficulties of this, but it would be a pretty cool thing to have.

I'm ready to work on the RTC issue. Can you point me to a GBC emulator (Windows Desktop or Windows Mobile) which supports the RTC in the way that you describe?

Thanks,

L.B.

[Guest tgwaste]

I'm ready to work on the RTC issue. Can you point me to a GBC emulator (Windows Desktop or Windows Mobile) which supports the RTC in the way that you describe?

Thanks,

L.B.

GNUBoy for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/gnuboy.html

notes (from readme):

MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 (including clock), and MBC5 mappers.

** says its opensource

---

PlayGuy for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/playguy.html

notes:

MBC3 Real Time Clock Supported - SRAM and Save State consistency.

---

Gest for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/gest.html

notes:

MBC3 and HuC3 RTC emulation

hope this helps.

[Guest bitbank]

GNUBoy for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/gnuboy.html

notes (from readme):

MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 (including clock), and MBC5 mappers.

** says its opensource

---

PlayGuy for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/playguy.html

notes:

MBC3 Real Time Clock Supported - SRAM and Save State consistency.

---

Gest for PC

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gameboy/gest.html

notes:

MBC3 and HuC3 RTC emulation

hope this helps.

Thanks for the additional info. I found one small error in my RTC code that would probably not affect anything, but otherwise it looks correct. When I run ET, it starts the clock at 12:57 (same as the other GBC emulators). If I set the rtc registers to the current date/time before the game starts, then it shows up as the current time with an offset of a few hours (the offset seems to be constant). In Pokemon, it always asks me to set the clock and then appears to keep the correct time. Saving/loading a game state appears to properly save and restore the time.

What exactly is wrong with the way the RTC works? Can you please provide a short list of steps to reproduce the error and let me know what the correct output should look like?

Thanks,

L.B.

[Guest tgwaste]

Thanks for the additional info. I found one small error in my RTC code that would probably not affect anything, but otherwise it looks correct. When I run ET, it starts the clock at 12:57 (same as the other GBC emulators). If I set the rtc registers to the current date/time before the game starts, then it shows up as the current time with an offset of a few hours (the offset seems to be constant). In Pokemon, it always asks me to set the clock and then appears to keep the correct time. Saving/loading a game state appears to properly save and restore the time.

What exactly is wrong with the way the RTC works? Can you please provide a short list of steps to reproduce the error and let me know what the correct output should look like?

Thanks,

L.B.

hopefully asrrin29 can. ive never played any games relating to this :rolleyes:

[Guest mikeeey]

Hey bitbank, being that now you own a qualcomm device, have you experienced the clicking sound problem? To fix it you have to disable 16-bit sound and then re enable it. Or maybe it was enabling stereo...

anyway, now I really look forward to updates now that you can test on a qualcomm device.

[Guest bitbank]

Hey bitbank, being that now you own a qualcomm device, have you experienced the clicking sound problem? To fix it you have to disable 16-bit sound and then re enable it. Or maybe it was enabling stereo...

anyway, now I really look forward to updates now that you can test on a qualcomm device.

Hi Mikeeey,

I haven't noticed any clicking sounds on the qualcomm CPU, but it does seem to run slower than it should. I had to turn on the auto frameskip option. I'll take a look as to why this is happening.

L.B.

[Guest tgwaste]

Hi Mikeeey,

I haven't noticed any clicking sounds on the qualcomm CPU, but it does seem to run slower than it should. I had to turn on the auto frameskip option. I'll take a look as to why this is happening.

L.B.

we all need to use Auto Frameskip for the laggy Qualcomms :rolleyes:

[Guest bitbank]

Another request that I'm going to implement is file associations. My idea is to just register them from within the installation (CAB) file. That way the changes will be removed if you uninstall it. Would anyone object to this happening automatically? Hopefully you don't need your .NES and .GBC files associated with any other application. The program should already work with manually set file associations. Has anyone tested this? Should I just leave it the way it is, or is it better to do the file associations automatically at install time?

Comments?

L.B.

Edited December 16, 2008 by bitbank

[Guest tgwaste]

Another request that I'm going to implement is file associations. My idea is to just register them from within the installation (CAB) file. That way the changes will be removed if you uninstall it. Would anyone object to this happening automatically? Hopefully you don't need your .NES and .GBC files associated with any other application.

Comments?

L.B.

hmm.. personally I dont like when programs force me into a file association. although in this case I use all .zip files so it probably wouldnt apply nor would I want the association for the zips to be changed.

interesting idea though.

on another topic.. I found a temp work around for the fullscreen issue i was having. I used regedit to change all the values from '2' to '3' for each system causing fullscreen'ness

however in this mode if I tap the screen (to pause).. the top bar and bottom bar (File/Options) shows up for a split second then vanishes. Its probably something weird with my

320x320 screen and the area where those buttons should be still works. just thought I would mention it. I can give you a video if you would like.

[Guest kburkhart84]

Hi Mikeeey,

I haven't noticed any clicking sounds on the qualcomm CPU, but it does seem to run slower than it should. I had to turn on the auto frameskip option. I'll take a look as to why this is happening.

L.B.

HTC devices with qualcomm processors are lacking real video drivers. The processors are supposed to be fast, but in this case there isn't much difference. For example, with PocketSNES, on my dash(200Mhz TIOMAP, I think the same as your vox), I never could get full speed, even without sound, unless I OCed it to run around 260Mhz. Now with my Kaiser(400Mhz Qualcomm), I can run full-speed, but still no sound. I would think that if the qualcomm is the next-gen processor, on top of that it is 2x the speed, then I logically should be able to play full-speed with sound. This is not the case, due to the lack of video drivers. I can't confirm whether other devices that aren't HTC are affected, but I have it understood that they are not affected, and it is an only HTC problem. So you could possibly test using a pantech duo smartphone with the same 400Mhz processor, and it would run much faster. I can't confirm this though.

[Guest asrrin29]

Thanks for the additional info. I found one small error in my RTC code that would probably not affect anything, but otherwise it looks correct. When I run ET, it starts the clock at 12:57 (same as the other GBC emulators). If I set the rtc registers to the current date/time before the game starts, then it shows up as the current time with an offset of a few hours (the offset seems to be constant). In Pokemon, it always asks me to set the clock and then appears to keep the correct time. Saving/loading a game state appears to properly save and restore the time.

What exactly is wrong with the way the RTC works? Can you please provide a short list of steps to reproduce the error and let me know what the correct output should look like?

Thanks,

L.B.

I did not realize that you had a RTC in the previous versions of smart gear. What happens is that you set the current date and time within pokemon, but if you save the game, either through the game's built in save function or with the save/load states and go back later (hours, days later) the time remains unchanged, as if the RTC has been "paused" while the game/emulator wasn't loaded. I had hoped that there would be some way for the RTC in the emulator to sync with the system clock whenever it starts up to fix this.

On another related note, I noticed another bug when playing through any of my GBA games involving saving inside the game as opposed to using the save/load state. in 1.0.3 I could use the in game save functions, but since I have installed 1.0.4 I noticed that it won't let me save at all. no errors appear, and it says that it saves successfully, but exiting the game and restarting it will not have the save load when the game starts.

[Guest mikeeey]

Hi Mikeeey,

I haven't noticed any clicking sounds on the qualcomm CPU, but it does seem to run slower than it should. I had to turn on the auto frameskip option. I'll take a look as to why this is happening.

L.B.

really? the clicking sound is only produced when there are other sounds (sounds and music). It's not as bad as it once was, where there was just constant clicking (but if I turn off 16-bit sound then I hear that horrible clicking).

This clicking sound I'm talking about is quieter, but still annoying lol. If you still cant seem to find the problem I suppose I could record a video and upload it here.

Try a game such as Super Mario Brothers DX for GBC. Again, I can record a video if you would like.

[Guest bitbank]

really? the clicking sound is only produced when there are other sounds (sounds and music). It's not as bad as it once was, where there was just constant clicking (but if I turn off 16-bit sound then I hear that horrible clicking).

This clicking sound I'm talking about is quieter, but still annoying lol. If you still cant seem to find the problem I suppose I could record a video and upload it here.

Try a game such as Super Mario Brothers DX for GBC. Again, I can record a video if you would like.

From my observations there's something strange going on with the video or audio or timer. The CPU executes code twice as fast as the OMAP 200Mhz devices I have, but the display update stutters. I'm not depending on any video driver, I'm writing directly to VRAM, so there's something strange going on with the timer or video hardware. The worst part is that I can't debug what's going on. If I set a breakpoint, the app won't run at all. Apparently this is a weird problem specific to the Touch Dual and I can't find a solution. Anyone seen this?

[Guest tgwaste]

From my observations there's something strange going on with the video or audio or timer. The CPU executes code twice as fast as the OMAP 200Mhz devices I have, but the display update stutters. I'm not depending on any video driver, I'm writing directly to VRAM, so there's something strange going on with the timer or video hardware. The worst part is that I can't debug what's going on. If I set a breakpoint, the app won't run at all. Apparently this is a weird problem specific to the Touch Dual and I can't find a solution. Anyone seen this?

I notice a high pitched beep whilst playing rolling thunder.

[Guest kburkhart84]

From my observations there's something strange going on with the video or audio or timer. The CPU executes code twice as fast as the OMAP 200Mhz devices I have, but the display update stutters. I'm not depending on any video driver, I'm writing directly to VRAM, so there's something strange going on with the timer or video hardware. The worst part is that I can't debug what's going on. If I set a breakpoint, the app won't run at all. Apparently this is a weird problem specific to the Touch Dual and I can't find a solution. Anyone seen this?

That is part of the lack of drivers I'm telling you about in my above post. The VRAM is really slow, due to lack of drivers. If you had a Kaiser, it would be easier for you to see. Just doing a display rotation on the today screen by opening the keyboard takes anywhere from 2-10 seconds for the screen to refresh. I bet your vox did it instantly, and with half the processor speed. With the lack of drivers here, the updates to the VRAM aren't showing on the screen as quickly as they should.

This bug also applies to video playback, and anything I've tried. I've used morphgear, which has a feature of trying 3 different rendering methods, such as GDI, and I don't remember what the other two were called, but they all three were extremely slow compared.

Like I said earlier, I don't think it is anything to do with the processor, rather the lack of drivers for the video system the qualcomm processors use. That's why your processing speed is 2x the vox, but the video isn't right. If you had a qualcomm device from another brand, maybe you could confirm that it isn't just qualcomm's fault, rather HTC for lacking drivers. I've never used another qualcomm phone, and couldn't tell you.

EDIT**

This Linky has more information about the issue.

Edited December 16, 2008 by kburkhart84

[Guest Rudy A Winchester]

I have the latest version of SmartGear installed on my Blackjack II. I have the program and the games stored on my storage card. When I try to save games (I've tried with Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red, and Pokemon Silver), they don't show up when I try to load them. I'm not talking about save-states, I'm talking about regular saving in a game. I don't even see save files created when I try this.