Sega GG + Nintendo GameBoy emulator for SP beta test

[Guest bitbank]

Well, I do have many saved games, but I guess I don't mind replaying them. However, will this repeat itself with each new major release of SmartGear? Will SmartGear 2.0x game saves be forwards-compatible with SmartGear 3.0x?

I don't plan on touching that code once it's in good shape. The beta releases may have changes, but once I release an official 2.x, then it will remain the same.

L.B.

[Guest jeiyuu]

Larry, I can't wait for the new version. I will be sure to be more responsive with my feedback and support the development. Thank you for you continued efforts in updating your software.

[Guest jonsmodaco]

I'm glad to be working on it more intensely again too. What probably got me putting more effort into the project was getting my TP2 which doesn't have a d-pad and pushing me to check out bluetooth wireless controllers and that led to the idea of bluetooth networking and all the rest.

Hi LB,

I have a Touch Pro 2 but am struggling to find a decent Bluetooth controller, let alone one that works with Smartgear. Are there any that you have managed to get working?

Can't wait for the new version of Smartgear,

Jonathan

[Guest bitbank]

I'm sorry about the delay. I've still got a bit of work to do before releasing a new copy, but I wanted to give you a peek at some of the things I'm working on. Here's a view of the previously played games all animating (running on my HD2).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhsKp0XqaJo

I would like some feedback on a new feature I'm writing. Here's the new file "browser". As you select files, a live preview window is displayed showing the game running. Right now I have this as a new option on the file menu (File->Browse) as well as the original file selector. Should this replace the original file selector, or should I keep both? Should I make the preview window full size on WVGA devices (e.g. 320x224) or is a mini-view ok? Would you like the option of sound enabled for the preview or keep it silent? Here's a screenshot of it in action:

L.B.

Edited April 12, 2010 by bitbank

[Guest jonsmodaco]

I would like some feedback on a new feature I'm writing. Here's the new file "browser". As you select files, a live preview window is displayed showing the game running. Right now I have this as a new option on the file menu (File->Browse) as well as the original file selector. Should this replace the original file selector, or should I keep both? Should I make the preview window full size on WVGA devices (e.g. 320x224) or is a mini-view ok? Would you like the option of sound enabled for the preview or keep it silent?

A good idea and my vote goes for the option to have options. There are a few games (such as Sunset Riders on the Genesis) that crash SmartGear so having the option is preferable to me.

[Guest ScreamingFalcon]

I would like some feedback on a new feature I'm writing. Here's the new file "browser". As you select files, a live preview window is displayed showing the game running. Right now I have this as a new option on the file menu (File->Browse) as well as the original file selector. Should this replace the original file selector, or should I keep both? Should I make the preview window full size on WVGA devices (e.g. 320x224) or is a mini-view ok? Would you like the option of sound enabled for the preview or keep it silent? Here's a screenshot of it in action:

I think just the miniview would be fine and keeping it silent would be nice for those of us sneaking in a game during work. ;)

[Guest bitbank]

A good idea and my vote goes for the option to have options. There are a few games (such as Sunset Riders on the Genesis) that crash SmartGear so having the option is preferable to me.

I'll check on Sunset Riders, but in the future, please let me know which games cause SG to crash. On the NES, certain mappers are not supported, but games should never make SG crash.

Thanks,

L.B.

[Guest jonsmodaco]

I'll check on Sunset Riders, but in the future, please let me know which games cause SG to crash. On the NES, certain mappers are not supported, but games should never make SG crash.

Sure. I'd only just downloaded and tested the different Genesis ROM variants (all crash by the way) before posting so you got this straight from the pony express horse's mouth.

Jonathan

[Guest bitbank]

Sure. I'd only just downloaded and tested the different Genesis ROM variants (all crash by the way) before posting so you got this straight from the pony express horse's mouth.

Jonathan

I found and corrected the problem. It was the new Genesis sound code that didn't have a large enough space for the sound events. I'll have a new build up later this week for you to try.

L.B.

[Guest Frapple]

Hey there BitBank, I emailed you earlier in the week about SNES/GBA emulation. Thanks for getting back to me.

Was reading through this thread and noticed that you fixed the The Real Time Clock but it doesn't appear to be working for me, Pokemon Crystal, SmartGear.2577.CAB, Windows Mobile 6.5.

Any tips?

[Guest jeiyuu]

Larry, I second the silenced preview in the new browser. Glad to see that I wasn't the only one having problems with the sound on Genesis ROMs (was trying to play Aladdin). I saw your youtube video.. nice HD2, I hope you haven't given up your TP2! Will be checking back for the update, Thanks! ;)

[Guest bitbank]

The new beta code is up and so is a new webpage with info:

http://www.bitbanksoftware.com/SG_Beta.html

The savegame logic is looking good, so please delete old savegame files and test the new code on all systems. Let me know about any problems you encounter and please give me some feedback on the new features.

L.B.

Forgot to mention that I enabled all of the new features for non-registered users also.

Edited April 19, 2010 by bitbank

[Guest Alexvrb]

The new beta code is up and so is a new webpage with info:

http://www.bitbanksoftware.com/SG_Beta.html

The savegame logic is looking good, so please delete old savegame files and test the new code on all systems. Let me know about any problems you encounter and please give me some feedback on the new features.

L.B.

Forgot to mention that I enabled all of the new features for non-registered users also.

Thank you for all your hard work, L.B. I recently picked up a Samsung Omnia II, loaded with WinMo 6.5. I've been looking around for a Genesis emulator, and none of the ones I've come across seem to work well with this phone. Yours looks like it has the most potential to run properly. Most of the other emulators loaded the roms and ran OK (sound, framerate), but the screen was incredibly small, did not rotate, and touchscreen controls were borked.

However, so far no luck with SmartGear either. With the latest beta (downloaded directly onto the phone and extracted via Zip Mobile) it just displays PAUSED, and when I try to resume it, it either crashes or shows a blank screen. Sometimes both. At least it doesn't lock the phone up, like one of the other emulators. I can move through the menu and change settings fine, before I start up a game. The only two games I've thrown at it so far are Phantasy Star II and IV (US, although I own both US and Japanese carts for PSII, 'cause the art on the Japenese one is 1000x better). The ROMs load fine on other emulators, they just have the other problems. They also work fine in Kega Fusion, my favorite Windows-based Sega system emulator. I can try to fiddle with it more later.

OT: I wonder how locked down Phone 7 will be. I was thinking after 6.5, I was either going to have to move to Android or Phone 7, but I don't know if Phone 7 is going to be viable for emulators. I guess I'll just have to wait and find out.

[Guest Jahulath]

However, so far no luck with SmartGear either. With the latest beta (downloaded directly onto the phone and extracted via Zip Mobile) it just displays PAUSED, and when I try to resume it, it either crashes or shows a blank screen. Sometimes both.

Hi first I would like to praise you and your software for a bit, I bought a license when I got my HTC Touch (yes as in the first one like 3 years ago) and have been a massive fan of this software ever since, no problems and plenty of improvements! I am chuffed to bits to see that this is still being developed and I'm excited to see this running on my HD2 (Yay a PPC thats better than my first windows desktop!).

I do have a snag though, it seems that the latest release (19/04/2010) is not working as intended, the software is very slow and unresponsive from loading and struggles to show me the menu's on the start screen. I haven't managed to get it to play any roms due to this, and it seems to just hang whenever I try and load one.

As I said this is running on an HD2 and fyi I also have a couple of tweaks on there:

Cookies Hometab

JCM Dev CHT Editor (to edit Cookies)

fpseCE 0.10

I did have Chainfire-HD2 2d graphics drivers installed but I removed them (and have soft reset since) as well as BSB Tweaks.

I don't think that this is a problem with the apps listed but in my experience more information is ALWAYS better than less.

I should also point out that I know these things are called Beta for a reason ;) SmartGear has been rock solid on previous versions for years!

[Guest Talsi]

Hi,

well I must say that at my device (B7610 stock rom) genesis games does not run with sound enabled - it runs but with black screen and smartgear freeze - have to slide out keyboard and close it forcefully (nes games work even with sound thou). Also, there is a loud “crack” sound every time I open a ROM!

The create icon function is interesting, but it makes my games folder a little bit confusing (cca 5-7 games shortcuts) - have you consider making separate folder in programs/games menu?? Also, the icon is always the same which look a little bit dull - how about icon generator from last save position (but that is too complicated I guess)?

At the moment, auto save/load function seem not working properly - after some testing (closing, opening, restarting, ....) I get only black screen and had to delete save game folder.

The games runs little bit better now, but fit2win (in genesis best perf.) is still better than fullscreen - it is playable (depending of system), but not as smooth.

The game preview is also very interesting feature, but in my opinion it is little bit small (but I have large screen of course); also in landscape view it has weird position.

[Guest bitbank]

Thank you for all your hard work, L.B. I recently picked up a Samsung Omnia II, loaded with WinMo 6.5. I've been looking around for a Genesis emulator, and none of the ones I've come across seem to work well with this phone. Yours looks like it has the most potential to run properly. Most of the other emulators loaded the roms and ran OK (sound, framerate), but the screen was incredibly small, did not rotate, and touchscreen controls were borked.

However, so far no luck with SmartGear either. With the latest beta (downloaded directly onto the phone and extracted via Zip Mobile) it just displays PAUSED, and when I try to resume it, it either crashes or shows a blank screen. Sometimes both. At least it doesn't lock the phone up, like one of the other emulators. I can move through the menu and change settings fine, before I start up a game. The only two games I've thrown at it so far are Phantasy Star II and IV (US, although I own both US and Japanese carts for PSII, 'cause the art on the Japenese one is 1000x better). The ROMs load fine on other emulators, they just have the other problems. They also work fine in Kega Fusion, my favorite Windows-based Sega system emulator. I can try to fiddle with it more later.

OT: I wonder how locked down Phone 7 will be. I was thinking after 6.5, I was either going to have to move to Android or Phone 7, but I don't know if Phone 7 is going to be viable for emulators. I guess I'll just have to wait and find out.

I'm not having any issues with Genesis. Phantasy Star II runs fine. The issue you may be seeing is that the key definitions got messed up because I started adding support for Genesis 6-button controller. Re-define all of your key settings and see if that solves the problem.

L.B.

P.S. Further investigation has confirmed that reset, quick load, quick save are broken in the new build and you are probably hitting them accidentally because of the wrong key definitions.

P.P.S. Would anyone be interested in Capcom CPS1 emulation? I've written tons of coin-op emulators and that system would be a good place to start (if I were to add them to SG). The 384x224 image would fill a 800x480 display nicely. The only issue would be sorting through the various rom dumps and figuring out which file means what. I could leave the key definitions the same and just use SELECT in place of COIN. Thoughts?

Edited April 21, 2010 by bitbank

[Guest ironlight]

I'm not having any issues with Genesis. Phantasy Star II runs fine. The issue you may be seeing is that the key definitions got messed up because I started adding support for Genesis 6-button controller. Re-define all of your key settings and see if that solves the problem.

L.B.

P.S. Further investigation has confirmed that reset, quick load, quick save are broken in the new build and you are probably hitting them accidentally because of the wrong key definitions.

P.P.S. Would anyone be interested in Capcom CPS1 emulation? I've written tons of coin-op emulators and that system would be a good place to start (if I were to add them to SG). The 384x224 image would fill a 800x480 display nicely. The only issue would be sorting through the various rom dumps and figuring out which file means what. I could leave the key definitions the same and just use SELECT in place of COIN. Thoughts?

why dont u try GBA on smartphone. that would make money. i can make it run on my samsung jack but the screen is to small. i need someone who can code to figure out a way to make it fullscreen. it also runs at full speed with sound (frameskip of 1) although a bigger screen might slow it down. my jack has a 528 mhz processor if that matters at all. could u make it work?

[Guest bitbank]

why dont u try GBA on smartphone. that would make money. i can make it run on my samsung jack but the screen is to small. i need someone who can code to figure out a way to make it fullscreen. it also runs at full speed with sound (frameskip of 1) although a bigger screen might slow it down. my jack has a 528 mhz processor if that matters at all. could u make it work?

Your request is perfectly valid, but it doesn't line up with what's practical for this project. All of the SmartGear code is written by me; I don't borrow/use anyone elses source for my products. I can write a GBA emulator, but it will take quite a while to work properly and I don't have much time to spare. I offered CPS1 because I've already written it and it works well on ARM. It won't take too much effort to integrate that code into SG. Now that my reasoning is made clearer, I hope you understand my decisions with SG. I would love to have my SNES code working better, but I've spent many hours debugging it and I am stuck. I don't have more time to throw at it and I don't want to take other people's SNES code. I will eventually work on GBA, but I've got a lot of projects going on right now and a tiny bit of time to work on SG each week.

L.B.

[Guest Talsi]

P.P.S. Would anyone be interested in Capcom CPS1 emulation? I've written tons of coin-op emulators and that system would be a good place to start (if I were to add them to SG). The 384x224 image would fill a 800x480 display nicely. The only issue would be sorting through the various rom dumps and figuring out which file means what. I could leave the key definitions the same and just use SELECT in place of COIN. Thoughts?

I would be very interested indeed.

[Guest Jahulath]

P.P.S. Would anyone be interested in Capcom CPS1 emulation? I've written tons of coin-op emulators and that system would be a good place to start (if I were to add them to SG). The 384x224 image would fill a 800x480 display nicely. The only issue would be sorting through the various rom dumps and figuring out which file means what. I could leave the key definitions the same and just use SELECT in place of COIN. Thoughts?

Are you saying that I can play SplatterHouse on my PPC? HELL YES! I also would be most interested in this ;)

[Guest bitbank]

Are you saying that I can play SplatterHouse on my PPC? HELL YES! I also would be most interested in this ;)

Splatterhouse is Namco System 1, not CPS1. You can already play Splatterhouse (TG16) and SH2/SH3 (Genesis). I've emulated those systems, but I wanted to work on CPS1 first since it's more challenging due to its large memory requirements. In Windows CE, a single process (application) can't allocate more than 16MB of RAM no matter how much free memory is in the system. This is fixed in CE 6.x (not WM6.x because WM6.x is based on CE 5.2).

L.B.

[Guest Jahulath]

Splatterhouse is Namco System 1, not CPS1. You can already play Splatterhouse (TG16) and SH2/SH3 (Genesis). I've emulated those systems, but I wanted to work on CPS1 first since it's more challenging due to its large memory requirements. In Windows CE, a single process (application) can't allocate more than 16MB of RAM no matter how much free memory is in the system. This is fixed in CE 6.x (not WM6.x because WM6.x is based on CE 5.2).

L.B.

LOL fool that I am ;) I read "CapCom" and heard "Generic Arcade" - I always wondered what a "TG16" is ;) (Hangs head in shame) research research research ;)

Edited April 22, 2010 by Jahulath

[Guest PolloLoco]

I'd be less interested in CPS1 emulation - largely because Finalburn (from Masterall on this forum), handles CPS1, CPS2 and Neo Geo emulation perfectly. It's the best overall emulator I've ever tried.

For that reason, I'd like to see you work on stuff that others haven't worked on - or doesn't currently work well for Windows Mobile. Like MAME, GBA, Amiga or SNES - though I understand the difficulty in working those projects.

Edited April 22, 2010 by PolloLoco

[Guest ScreamingFalcon]

LOL fool that I am :huh: I read "Coin Op" and heard "Generic Arcade" - I always wondered what a "TG16" is :P not to mention that SH2 and 3 where available on Genesis... (Hangs head in shame) research research research :blink:

TG16= NEC TurboGrafix 16

SH2=Sega Genesis Generation 2 (the most common version of the system)

SH3=Sega Genesis Generation 3 (the "broken" system not actually made by Sega, the crummiest of them all)

[Guest Alexvrb]

I'm not having any issues with Genesis. Phantasy Star II runs fine. The issue you may be seeing is that the key definitions got messed up because I started adding support for Genesis 6-button controller. Re-define all of your key settings and see if that solves the problem.

L.B.

P.S. Further investigation has confirmed that reset, quick load, quick save are broken in the new build and you are probably hitting them accidentally because of the wrong key definitions.

When I try to manually define a key, it doesn't matter where I click on the touchscreen, it just beeps at me and ignores me. I can define keys to hardware buttons, but alas I have so few of those. Maybe a bluetooth controller? Anyway, I can reset the key definitions to defaults, and enable on screen keys. The on screen keys display fine, but the game does not load (top half of screen is black, no sound, bottom displays on screen keys which appear to do nothing). If I fiddle with it the best I can get it to do is display PAUSED (the emulator, not the game) and selecting "Resume" from the menu only returns that black screen with the on screen keys.

I look forward to your next build!