Hacking TempGBA: NDSGBA revival

[Kouen Hasuki]

Put my support in

 

[BassAceGold]

Perhaps we won't need to ask after all.

 

[cathairmoustache]

Perhaps even the mandarin teaching-heavy forums can elicit a response? (chinese-forums.com, etc)

 

[Rydian]

Perhaps we won't need to ask after all.

Norm cry out with "FUCK DA POLICE"?

 

[Normmatt]

FUCK DA POLICE

 

[WiiUBricker]

wat?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Dad's wife speaks Mandarin, and she's fluent in English. If no one else translates this, I'm sure I could e-mail her a text to translate. Might be tricky since she doesn't know what emulators, ROMs, flashcarts etc. are so she might translate stuff incorrectly... but it's better than nothing I suppose.

 

[chyyran]

Dad's wife speaks Mandarin, and she's fluent in English. If no one else translates this, I'm sure I could e-mail her a text to translate. Might be tricky since she doesn't know what emulators, ROMs, flashcarts etc. are so she might translate stuff incorrectly... but it's better than nothing I suppose.

That could work. Try rephrasing "Emulator" with "Simulator" instead, just an idea, since I couldn't think of any words in Chinese that mean "emulator".

 

[BassAceGold]

Let me add some flame to this fire here:

 

[2ndApex]

Let me add some flame to this fire here:

TempGBA?! Did you start a port or is it just a mock-up to show arg support?

 

[Boriar]

TempGBA?! Did you start a port or is it just a mock-up to show arg support?

Same question and also what is EXPSFC?

 

[ferret7463]

interesting thing there BassAce, option to play files when they are zipped. That would save a lot of space, but would it not slow down the game loading?

 

[Another World]

my only wish is for improved gba homebrew support!

-another world

 

[Aeter]

I eat mandarin, does that count?

 

[BassAceGold]

interesting thing there BassAce, option to play files when they are zipped. That would save a lot of space, but would it not slow down the game loading?

NDSSFC/CATSFC and NDSGBA have supported zipped roms since release. It's not exactly a new thing.

Same question and also what is EXPSFC?

It's just an experimental build of CATSFC used for testing new ideas that aren't suitable/stable for the public release.

 

[ferret7463]

I did not know that BaseAce. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Well, I would not be surprised to see a new GBA emulator for the DStwo. After all, I saw how one person single handedly developed a native GBA emulator for the DS(i)!

 

[Rydian]

Well, I would not be surprised to see a new GBA emulator for the DStwo. After all, I saw how one person single handedly developed a native GBA emulator for the DS(i)!

IIRC it's not actually emulating the GBA hardware, it's implementing it;'s own GBA mode. That's why things are mostly fullspeed, but with all sorts of graphical/sound/compatibility glitches (as he slowly gets the translation layer done).

 

[codezer0]

I really hope that the right someone is reading this... considering how much improved your work has been to NDSSFC (and its many forks), I would LOVE to see what you could do with NDSGBA. And you are exactly right. There is no reason for NDSGBA not to be awesome.

 

[Deleted member 319809]

Alright. It appears that even trying to get through to the Supercard team doesn't work.

BassAceGold, Normmatt and I have started a new "port" of gpSP Kai in the meantime, but it has huge caveats right now.

GitHub: https://github.com/Nebuleon/TempGBA

No .plg release is available at this time. The code repository is there only for those interested in adding missing features. I will accept any pull request that adds something meaningful, as well as add any interested party as a committer. Currently, BassAceGold and Normmatt have committer access.

Improvements (these are not in the official NDSGBA, and are in TempGBA)
* The loading screen appears for a much shorter time, 0.5 second instead of about 5 seconds.
* ROMs load faster, 2x-3x, even (and perhaps especially) in zips.
* The GUI is using the 8 languages from CATSFC, as well as the images from it.
* The file handler has widened names, scrolling faster and sorting correctly (imported from CATSFC).

Regressions (these are in the official NDSGBA, and don't work in TempGBA)
* SRAM (battery-backed saving) may or may not work.
* Saved states can be created, but halt emulation when read. They may be malformed.
* The Cheats option in the main menu leads to an empty menu. Absolutely nothing is hooked in for cheats.
* Rewinding and button remapping don't work.
* Frame skipping is in the GUI but not hooked to the variables that control it.

Basically the only things that work are loading ROMs, loading zipped ROMs, turning the sound on and off, turning fast-forward on and off, changing the CPU speed and changing the language.

To-do list, importing improvements from CATSFC

Spoiler: To-do list

3. Parallelise the Makefile.
Start from CATSFC commit 43bcd26dca5a747953e3a3083d4d4b4bad8e1c7c.
4. Add some appropriate gcc flags:
`-mlong-calls -fgcse-sm -fgcse-las -fgcse-after-reload -fweb -fpeel-loops`
5. Add `make release`.
Start from CATSFC commit 2c5b72137b3028b0e53610c1d2636fc06bf3bb3c.
6. Add BassAceGold's SDK modifications.
Update the README with build instructions.
7. Remove unneeded files.
8. Use CPU level 13 to load the emulator and ROMs.
9. Look at increasing the default CPU level if the emulation needs it.
10. Transplant touch screen support from CATSFC.
Start from CATSFC commit e0e53e874b8943461acc8289200c38adc4e02b11.
[Current touch screen support may incorrectly handle some menus.]
11. Menu initialisation to fix crashes. Also use cppcheck.
Start from CATSFC commit 582b3a23ceeb9e894b0f1d43de09e97a91a4d3b9.
12. Fix up Engrish.
Start from CATSFC commit 81cf5b3cd1c7bae768846a1db1a527f3541feb8f.
13. Use Pictochat up to U+2193.
14. Transplant localised text from CATSFC.
Also add CATSFC commit 100c3bd9e9f9e7fc809434706ddcc2fde96143af.
15. Reimplement Quicksort for the file selectors.
Start from CATSFC commit cfa1c811c65f1b8a10d9034a5974d617cda92ec6.
16. Reimplement 16 arbitrary saved states.
Start from CATSFC commit a6ec18e23f88bd172aa3e13ed3081b3bf4e1996a.
17. Save the game configuration only when a game setting has been changed in
the menu. Same with the emulator configuration.
Start from CATSFC commit b277570daee54faf93804f5ae2d5e82e8fa11708.
18. Sleep on lid close.
Start from CATSFC commits 7c2a30c5b54e000106e466ba44fcc040746a0c90
and 362b28e9372d124ac6602bfc49e9775e510ba929.
[Current sleep support is just in the menu.]
19. Yes/no dialog touch improvements.
Start from CATSFC commit 4ba17a46f649414770b8fcae5a97111c1d161e71.
20. Use CPU level 13 to load and save states and other things as appropriate.
Start from CATSFC commit c7cc65547335fb9ecc10ff011c786387d399396b.
21. Add hotkeys and proper button remapping (because the GBA has fewer buttons
than the DS, unlike the SNES).
Start from CATSFC commit 71a57cc449a42721eb0cd90cab07c57bbd9c9512.
22. Improve cheat support (cannot be transplanted from CATSFC).
23. Fix a resource leak in emulator configuration file reading,
CATSFC commit f0fab191e48f165c551980d724bba2f26a764795.
24. memcpy versus memmove optimisations,
CATSFC commit f385752705de73b04cbbda735a71f14c19e241a6.
25. Screen rendering DMA.
Start from CATSFC commit 461f2406555faaee7191871390192d06625f5a81.
26. Plugin argument improvements by BassAceGold.
Start from CATSFC commit 4ac61d443d5786db1b1e365e0005a1d5740183b0.
27. Look into not initialising the ROM memory at startup, if there is such a
thing,
CATSFC commit c9c91f327a4ded2f52f13c449690a334623e0fdd.
28. Add a full screen (expanded) aspect ratio.

If you're interested in doing one of those things, make yourself a fork of TempGBA on GitHub, look at the CATSFC commit and edit the files, then make a commit to your fork of TempGBA and push it to GitHub before making a pull request, which BassAceGold, Normmatt and I can handle to include your code into the main version. Help is available on GitHub if you want to get started quickly with editing files and making commits.