GP2X Red Dragon Virtual Boy Emulator Quick Port.


dj jack

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Nov 2, 2007
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QUOTE
Ok, here's a quick port I made of this Virtual Boy emulator.

What I've got is a veeeeeeeery slow emulator with no input
support at all.

It's programmed with the Allegro libraries, so an SDL conversion
is really needed if we want to get a decent speed.

Please remember that I made this port with very little knowledge
about the compiling process etc... I just used informations found
on the net and in the project's makefiles. So please don't kill
me if you'll find some horrible source code hacks that I used to get
it working.

I used the Code::Blocks IDE found on the archive, so inside
the zip you will find the sources and a folder called "Rage"
containing the code::blocks project file.

To use the emu you need to launch it via telnet or serial port
typing:

./rage romname.vb

or

./rage -help

for a list of possible commands.

You have to kill the emu with ctrl+c, because controls aren't implemented
yet.

I think that's all. The source isn't that complicated and you won't have
any problem understanding it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, what do we need now?

- SDL conversion
- Working input
- Mouse to joystick redirection for using the inbuilt GUI
- Some works on the cheat code system, since I got a lot of errors regarding
strnicmp and had to comment out all the section that used it.

If somebody wants to help me my email is

dj -dot- jack90 -at- gmail -dot- com

(lol at stupid antispam thing)

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to give you the link to the original sources

http://www.vr32.de/content/tech/emulators/...les/rd38src.zip


I think this says almost all. ;) I need some help from professional coders out there, because I think a Virtual Boy emulator would be pretty nice running on our :gp2x .

Here you can find some homebrew roms for trying the emu.

And here is the port, complete with source code ;)

Thanks in advance to all of you who will help me ;)

Oh, sorry for my strange English but I'm Italian. :)

Cheers,

Dj Jack
 
Heh, I have a VB... definitely not the best console in the world, but it would be much more comfortable to play VB games on a GP2X rather than an actual VB! xD
Yeah you'd lose the depth perception, but at least no headaches and neck ache...
 
The 3d effect is supported trough the use of red-blue glasses ;)

Anyway, I got the controls to work and also the GUI is now mostly working.
 
I would be interested if it could be playable. I think we are thinking that playing a super slow VB game with no sound is probably not too fun. I am not too sure if the GP2X hardware is capable of running this at a good speed with sound.
 
DaveC said:
I would be interested if it could be playable. I think we are thinking that playing a super slow VB game with no sound is probably not too fun. I am not too sure if the GP2X hardware is capable of running this at a good speed with sound.
Certainly doesn't look likely, Virtualboy is in many regards more powerful than GBA (low color and no pesky blending to worry about though)
 
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dj jack said:
It's programmed with the Allegro libraries, so an SDL conversion
is really needed if we want to get a decent speed.
A lot of good stuff is written with Allegro, especially in some homebrew scenes... What we really need is for someone to step up and produce some hardware accelerated and ARM-optimized allegro libs.
 
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Exophase said:
DaveC said:
I would be interested if it could be playable. I think we are thinking that playing a super slow VB game with no sound is probably not too fun. I am not too sure if the GP2X hardware is capable of running this at a good speed with sound.
Certainly doesn't look likely, Virtualboy is in many regards more powerful than GBA (low color and no pesky blending to worry about though)

I kind of figured something like that especially since it has to calculate two screens to do the 3D effect. It is also 32 bit 20 MHz too. Rendering is usually the bane of most emus though (see:SNES, GBA) not CPU emulation, and the graphics on VB are only 4 color so maybe could it be possible with super optimised code?
 
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Sparr said:
dj jack said:
It's programmed with the Allegro libraries, so an SDL conversion is really needed if we want to get a decent speed.
A lot of good stuff is written with Allegro, especially in some homebrew scenes... What we really need is for someone to step up and produce some hardware accelerated and ARM-optimized allegro libs.
GP2X Allegro _is_ hardware accelerated... ie blits, maskedblits, line drawing, etc...
I shall be releasing my game soon to demonstrate :) (I've gotta slow it down(!)).
( gfoot did the work on gp2x allegro - http://www.glost.eclipse.co.uk/gfoot/gp2x/allegro-accel.html )

Unless you know of improvements that can be made; I'd be interested in adding them if I can.
Dunno why more people don't use Allegro :( (I've never used SDL btw, so maybe I'm just 'special').
 
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Heh. no problem - we all use what we're used to I guess :)

I'd be interested to know if there are improvements that could be made to gp2x allegro to make it even faster, but my guess is that people haven't been using the HW acceleration correctly due to not creating 'video bitmaps' - these are the only blits (ie video to video) that are accelerated..

In fact I wasn't using HW acceleration to start with and it wasn't clear until I created a flag in the Allegro lib that (by setting a variable) drew a pink box around sprites that were HW blitted - I found none of mine were ;)

Fixed the problem in my code and now the whole thing runs way too fast - so am looking at using the extra cpu power for extra 'stuff'...
 
Allegro don't work for Gp2x f200, the sound part is not working. Ma sofware have to port there games to SDL for more speed and F200 compatibility.
 
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