Porting my GB emulator.

dospro · Post by **dospro** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 9:31 am

Hi.
I have recently "finish" my Gameboy Emulator. It works fine on windows. I tried to make a port of my emulator to dreamcast myself using SDL, but speed was terrible. I must admit tht i have poor knowledge of Dreamcast programming. I just used SDL for graphics, sound, controls, etc.
If anyone else wants to work int it ot wants to help telle me in this post. I will release the new version with source as soon as i see some people interested.
By the way you can test the last version of my emu in my web. http://www.geocities.com/instructivus
This one is still buggy, but as i said, if i see people interested in this, i will relese everything as soon as posible.
Any cooments here in the post or in my mail found in my web.

DcSteve · Post by **DcSteve** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 3:39 pm

There is already a gb/gbc emu for dc that is almost perfect speed and great compatiblity. The sourcecode is also on the site so you can look at.

http://www.pqrs.org/~tekezo/dcgnuboy/

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 5:28 pm

This should be in programming discussions.

dospro, I'd be pretty interested in your GB/C emulator. As far as my very limited knowledge goes, SDL slows things down a lot. I'd also suggest using CZ80 by Stef D or even to wait for FAZE by Fox68k. The first one mentioned is a very fast Z80 core written in C & the DC in mind, the second one I mentioned is unreleased as of yet but will be a Z80 core in SH4 assembly, the DC's native language.

I am not sure if you know it already but GPF has ported Chui's VBA32 from GP32 to DC. It's still pretty slow, but maybe you can improve the GB/C emulation ? The source code is available at his site.

dospro · Post by **dospro** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:54 am

Well.
As you want.
I mean, its better to have more options than Boob or Dcgnuboy(which has a bug in sound that my emu doesnt have). I tried to optimize it as much as i can and i got 9-12 fps. Its playable, controls work perfectly, sound sounds accurate. And well, it has little bugs in graphics which im fixing in the new version.

I used gnuboy lonmg time ago, but nobody is working on it. I was trying to fix the problem with the sound(it freezes) but coulndt find it and well, now that im getting my BBA maybe will be able to do some more work in it. Anyway, the new version of my emulator is written using allegro. If someone wants to port it or help me to port it using different methods for graphics, i will be thankfull. My emulator was made with "porting" in mind, so it wont be difficult to make a better port. All what it is needed from a graphics/sound API is "Init systems", "put pixel"(or maybe better stretch pixel), and for sound, well, a pointer to a buffer where all sound data will be passed. THats it, with that and a pretty interface which im also working in. IT will be.
The only problem now is speed. Im thinking in new optimizations, but that after the new port.

Tell me what you think.