A comment and a small work in progress report.

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March 23rd, 2006, 00:11
hamsterbert

A comment and a small work in progress report.

After reading a few comments on my emulator releases, and trying some other emulators, I have decided that I need to dramatically increase the capabilities of my ports. Before I give a little progress report I want to respond to some of the comments I have received and read on the various psp news sites. Some argue that there are already decent enough emulators for the systems my ports emulate so why waste my time? I agree that there are decent ports already out but:

a) I don't consider porting other emulators a waste of time, as different emulators are good for different things; especially when the existing emulators have quite obvious flaws or other short comings in the emulation.
b) Its more fun for me to play games in my own ports.
c) I need to get some more practice with pspsdk before I will attempt ports of emulators for more powerful systems, and even then I don't really have much interest as I prefer to play the games I played on or missed out on growing up, not ones I have had a chance to buy and get bored of as an adult.
d) I like making random internet people angry, so if I get any apparently angry comments, I am even more motivated. ;)

Anyway, Here is a little progress report:

I've spent a few hours getting to grips with the pspsdk sound API, and now PSPFCEUltra and PSPadrive have sound. Spurred on by this, I spent another hour or so working on PSPFCEUltra, and now it has an in-game menu where you can change options such as the screen rendering mode (stretched, correct ratio, bilinear filtered, etc), as well as save and load save states. I've started to rewrite the rendering code as well, as it seems a bit slow occasionally.

I'll be spending a few more hours on PSPFCEUltra in the next few days, and hopefully I will be releasing another version on the weekend. PSPadrive will take a bit longer than that, as what I plan on adding will take a little while.

PSP-gnuboy is probably dead at this point as I have ported a much better gameboy emulator over. Not only is it quicker, it seems to be a bit more polished.

Finally, thanks to wraggster and the dc-emu staff for the hosting. It’s much appreciated. :)
March 23rd, 2006, 00:47
wraggster

Thanks for the update :)
March 23rd, 2006, 00:54
FrozenIpaq

Hey Hamsterbert,

I had no idea that you would continue these projects, seeing how there were three ports sharing the same "missing features", best of luck on them. I would persue the PSPadrive emulator seeing how that is the one that we need the most out of the other two, and if you were to perfect that one, we would all be very grateful :)

I'm sorry if you read a QJ.net post saying that your emulators lacked "good emulator quality", that was totally unprofessional and I regret that. Although, the emulators were not ground-breaking they did offer a re-look (look back) at the emulators that have been considered good enough and I wish you the best of luck with these three emulators!
March 23rd, 2006, 01:03
repuken2

Double Dragon 1 works on PSpadrive wich is the only emulator that runs it right now, the other ones cant't even load it. I we can have sound then that would be great.

Cheers!! Good work!!!

P.D.: What about adding Sega CD emulation??
March 23rd, 2006, 03:12
migsgiz

keep it up bud! any chance on porting any type of mame emu i think it a be good for your rep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you cant alwell a man can dream right??
March 23rd, 2006, 03:47
ByteMaster

I'm glad we have another coder who does emulator ports. Over 99% of my 'PSP time' I'm playing emulators (PLynx mostly).

Plus, there are still lots of unemulated and abandoned systems left that have great emulators available on Windows.

Atari 2600 VCS: abandoned (Aenea's Stella 0.2)
Atari 800(XL): abandoned (Aenea's Atari800 0.1)
Atari 7800: unemulated
Commodore VIC20: unemulated
..
..
ZX-81: unemulated
March 23rd, 2006, 12:19
hamsterbert

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrozenIpaq

Hey Hamsterbert,
I'm sorry if you read a QJ.net post saying that your emulators lacked "good emulator quality", that was totally unprofessional and I regret that. Although, the emulators were not ground-breaking they did offer a re-look (look back) at the emulators that have been considered good enough and I wish you the best of luck with these three emulators!

I wouldn't worry about your comments. I read them as what they were: Your opinion. I was joking about enjoying making people angry (hence the winking smilie) but I am also quite think skinned so unless anyone attacks me personally I take everything said about what I do in my stride. Besides most of what you said is true, they are not groundbreaking, but I had to start somewhere and get some feedback on what features, etc, people want. I was thinking of making the tag line for the next release either:

Quote:

" . . pretty much "worthless" pieces of junk since there are much better emulators out for the SAME console. . . " - TheMarioKarters, PSPUpdates comments

or:

Quote:

" . . I will be honest with everyone...All of these emulators lack the key qualities of a good emulator . . " - Justin B., PSPUpdates News post

But that might be construed as being a bit childish. Hehe. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by repuken2

Double Dragon 1 works on PSpadrive wich is the only emulator that runs it right now, the other ones cant't even load it. I we can have sound then that would be great.

Cheers!! Good work!!!

P.D.: What about adding Sega CD emulation??

Thanks for the comments. PSPadrive does now have sound (tho it needs a bit of work) so that will be in the next version. I have also added an auto frameskip option while I work on optimising the graphics rendering for psp so it appears to be a bit 'faster'.

Sega cd emulation would be cool, but I might have to look at porting gens which could be a cool project, if a lot of work, as genesisplus lacks segacd emulation. Never say never. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ByteMaster

I'm glad we have another coder who does emulator ports. Over 99% of my 'PSP time' I'm playing emulators (PLynx mostly).

Plus, there are still lots of unemulated and abandoned systems left that have great emulators available on Windows.

Atari 2600 VCS: abandoned (Aenea's Stella 0.2)
Atari 800(XL): abandoned (Aenea's Atari800 0.1)
Atari 7800: unemulated
Commodore VIC20: unemulated
..
..
ZX-81: unemulated

Most of my 'PSP time' is spent with emulators as well due to sony being unable to get anyone to release more than 2-3 decent psp games in Europe so far. I have been looking to see what other emulators I might like to port, and the 2600 did come up, as did the virtual boy, the zx range of computers, the obvious arcade emulators, and a couple of others. I guess we will see what I can come up with. :)