Homebrew [Release] Vice3DS (C64 Emulator)

AikoT_T · May 7, 2019

first of all, THANK YOU!!

Ive been enjoying this alot recently,

Question,

I just switched to a new sd card, i redownloaded vice3ds to install on this one, but for some reason after installing, (installed fine)
When going to delete it, fbi gave an error,
the cia is 'read-only'

Thats odd, it wasnt like that 2 weeks ago when i installed it on the other SD card..

Badda · May 9, 2019

Elwyndas said:
True Drive Emulation turned OFF leads to a device not present error. I think this is new in version 1.0.

Just found out that turning off true drive emu actually works - you just need to turn on "virtual device traps" as well. Then loading is blazingly fast ...
Virtual device traps will be turned on per default in the next version.

Elwyndas · May 10, 2019

Badda said:
Virtual device traps will be turned on per default in the next version.

Jack Tramiel rising from his grave, giving you a fat Polish smile and a high five!

Jack-Tramiel-Commodore-Atari-Tough-Man-1984-newsweek.jpg

Badda · May 10, 2019

New version v1.1 is out. Some nice new features :-)

Customizeable soft buttons on bottom screen. To customize a button, touch "M" in vice menu, then touch the button. The selcted menu entry will now be bound to the button.
Changed standard assignment of autofire buttons: Joy1=R, Joy2=ZR
True drive emulation now turned off by default
Emu-speed adjustable with 3d slider (0=100%, max=Warp)
Added menu 'Misc' with some helpers: RUN/STOP + RESTORE; LOAD"*",8,1
Bugfix for loading external ROMs and other sysfiles (@Elwyndas: Loading jiffy-dos should work now)

Important: If you're updating from a previous version, make sure to delete the config directory on your SD-card /3ds/vice3ds/config before starting the emulator. Otherwise new config settings, hotkeys and key mappings will not be updated and will not work.

I'm too lazy right now to update the initial post, will do this weekend.

By the way, I suck at designing graphics (you can see from my button icons), so I'm looking for the following:
- Icons for the soft buttons (need to be 40x40px png with transparency)
- A new banner image (I hate the current one)

If anybody can help here, that would be highly appreciated :-)

https://github.com/badda71/vice3ds/releases

snoofly · May 10, 2019

Looks good Badda.
Some nice usability improvements there!

spinal_cord · May 10, 2019

@Badda I don't know if @gamesquest1 is still active, but that's who made the 3D c64 banner for breadbox. Not sure how easy it would be to rip that from one of the breadbox.cia files, but it's a really nice banner, I wouldn't have any issue with you using it.

Mikitok · May 10, 2019

please made a version for O3ds TT

P34ch · May 10, 2019

This is great Badda, the emulators really shaping up nicely now. So much so I bit the bullet and installed b9s on mine lol.
Thank you.

gamesquest1 · May 10, 2019

spinal_cord said:
@Badda I don't know if @gamesquest1 is still active, but that's who made the 3D c64 banner for breadbox. Not sure how easy it would be to rip that from one of the breadbox.cia files, but it's a really nice banner, I wouldn't have any issue with you using it.

yeah he is more than welcome to re-use the breadbox banner, afaik it should be fairly simple to rip the banner from the CIA to re-use

Elwyndas · May 11, 2019

A small step for Vice, but a giant leap for 3DS, this is. Thank you.
I ran some tests.
1) Alternative system ROMs like Jiffy DOS for faster disk loading (10x) and improved BASIC commands work now.
In order for it to work you must
a) in settings, go to DRIVE, Drive 8 settings, and double check that 1541-II is selected as type
b) Still in DRIVE settings, ensure that True Drive Emulation is ON, and Drive Sound Emulation is ON (fun).
c) Still in DRIVE settings, go to Autostart settings, and DEACTIVATE Autostart warp
c) go back, and then to Machine Settings, then ROM settings, then Drive ROMs, and select the appropriate JiffyDOS ROM .bin for the 1541-II floppy drive which you have sourced from somewhere. You can also install, while you are there, the ROMs for all the other drives like 1581, as default ROMs
d) Go back, and under Computer ROMs, select Kernal, and select the JiffyDOS C64 ROM from your collection. No other ROMs need to be changed.
e) Go back to main menu. Go to Settings management, and save current settings. If you don't do this, you will have to do all of the above again next time you load the emulator.
f) Restart the emulator. For some reason JiffyDOS will not really kick in otherwise.

As a result you will have a fast disk loading that is truthful to C64, without warping, and it's 99.999999 compatible. JiffyDOS also has improved command functions: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/JiffyDOS

2) Screen button (widgets) and virtual keyboard
a) They cause some kind of distortion if used. You will notice if you run software that uses sound. For example if you press any of the widgets, or keyboard keys like shift, there is a distortion. Ideally, this kind of distortion wouldn't happen
b) the Load "*", 8,1 should be followed be the RUN command to make sense.

I have some more observations and ideas but that's it for now. Very grateful to see this emulator developing nicely.

Badda · May 11, 2019

spinal_cord said:
@Badda I don't know if @gamesquest1 is still active, but that's who made the 3D c64 banner for breadbox. Not sure how easy it would be to rip that from one of the breadbox.cia files, but it's a really nice banner, I wouldn't have any issue with you using it.

Thanks for the offer, but the image does say "Breadbox" ....

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Mikitok said:
please made a version for O3ds TT

I would love to but as of now, vice needs more CPU power than the O3DS can offer. Vice emulation actually emulates the C64 hardware - that's why most programs run on it (including the ones using undocumented hardware features). However, this is also the reason why it is very CPU intensive. I might be able to strip some functionality to make it run faster - but I think I won't be able to optimize it to run on O3DS.

spinal_cord · May 11, 2019

Badda said:
Thanks for the offer, but the image does say "Breadbox" ....

Oh no, not that one, this one

Badda · May 11, 2019

spinal_cord said:
Oh no, not that one, this one

Ah, ok. Yes that's pretty cool. I would, however, like to change the textures a bit before using it. Need to read up on how to do that ...

gamesquest1 · May 11, 2019

Badda said:
Ah, ok. Yes that's pretty cool. I would, however, like to change the textures a bit before using it. Need to read up on how to do that ...

from what i remember the 3ds is quite strict on how big the textures have to be when it comes to the banners so it was kinda tricky finding the right balance with the texture, but i think since then the 3DS official dev tools for making banners was leaked that might allow more options, another option was splitting things into separate pieces to allow bigger texture sizes as you could save space by using much smaller textures on areas that don't need detail so you could make the areas that need detail have more space allocated to them

Elwyndas · May 13, 2019

Some small things:

One of my favorite features is the drive LED and drive "noise" emulation. It's so realistic. My understanding is that this originates from the original VICE project? Anyway, the LED used for this is red. But the LED on the original floppy drive is green. I know that the 3DS LED is able to be green (or at least yellow). I have seen this when there is some kind of Nintendo online activity. I'm assuming that there are actually two or more different LED's behind that "light". Having it blink in green would be more realistic, and also different from the default Nintendo low power warning blinking in red. Also, I noticed that as soon as a non-1541 drive is assigned, or used, the sound emulation is gone.

There should be a way to turn off/on the bottom screen. Like a soft button to turn off, and tapping the lower screen to turn on. This is more interesting than just turning off/on the soft keyboard.

To further the goal of continuity in emulation, the settings menu should open on the lower screen, while the upper screen with emulation continues to run uninterrupted. The keyboard and soft buttons are not being used while in settings, so this should be ok in terms of usability

One of the soft keys should be for pausing/unpausing the emulation.

Putting the 3DS to sleep with lid closing sometimes crashes the emulator. Haven't tried this often enough to know why it sometimes happens or not.

Sound setting should be 48Khz frequency by default to create the best experience from the get go. It would only make sense on O3DS to have a lower setting.

Having the Start button assigned to quitting the emulator doesn't make much sense. We have the home button to get out, or Rosalina combo (left shoulder, directional pad down, and select). The start button should be assigned to something more glorious, like auto-starting something.

Once an alternative system ROM like Jiffy was selected, it's not possible to change back to original stock, because the ROM files are not available. It seems that those ROMs are built-in and hard coded. If that's a case, there should be an option to return to stock ROMs.

On the soft keyboard it would make sense to have all F keys visible. These are often used in games, or ROM mods like JiffyDOS, and it's inconvenient to have to press shift. Also, some keys are used all the time, while others are practically never being used. For example: Return, direction keys (even though we have our own cool little joystick assigned to that - eat that, WinVICE), shift (we can eliminate one of the two to create real estate, because the ergonomic requirement of having one on each side is obsolete on that mini screen of ours), run/stop and also inst/del. The space key doesn't have to be that wide, for the same reason as we don't need two shift keys. The shift keys are effectively triggering shift/lock, so that key is now obsolete and the real estate can be re-used. The keys available by pressing shift and the number keys, like $, are used often and deserve their own always on line, perhaps next to F keys. I know redesigning the keyboard is a big deal, so this should maybe be put on the backburner because there are more pressing issues.

Muxi · May 13, 2019

@Badda Is it necessary to delete the entire config folder of the old version after an update, or only certain files, so that the setting up of individual key bindings does not have to be set up again after each update?

Badda · May 13, 2019

Muxi said:
@Badda Is it necessary to delete the entire config folder of the old version after an update, or only certain files, so that the setting up of individual key bindings does not have to be set up again after each update?

The keybindings ("Start"-button and all the soft buttons) are defined in sdl-hotkey-C64.vkm. You can merge these two files manually is you don't want to delete everything.

Badda · May 17, 2019

Elwyndas said:
Some small things:
One of my favorite features is the drive LED and drive "noise" emulation. It's so realistic. My understanding is that this originates from the original VICE project? Anyway, the LED used for this is red. But the LED on the original floppy drive is green. I know that the 3DS LED is able to be green (or at least yellow). I have seen this when there is some kind of Nintendo online activity. I'm assuming that there are actually two or more different LED's behind that "light". Having it blink in green would be more realistic, and also different from the default Nintendo low power warning blinking in red. Also, I noticed that as soon as a non-1541 drive is assigned, or used, the sound emulation is gone.

Yes, the drive noise emu is built into vice originally. I believe the green LED on the 1541 was the power led, the red one was the LED to signal access and/or errors. Vice3DS is actually showing drive access or errors with the LED, so I think red color is good :-)

Elwyndas said:
There should be a way to turn off/on the bottom screen. Like a soft button to turn off, and tapping the lower screen to turn on. This is more interesting than just turning off/on the soft keyboard.

That's doable - but what would be the benefit of that?

Elwyndas said:
To further the goal of continuity in emulation, the settings menu should open on the lower screen, while the upper screen with emulation continues to run uninterrupted. The keyboard and soft buttons are not being used while in settings, so this should be ok in terms of usability

This will take away some functionaly - e.g. you would not be able to use soft buttons or the keyboard while in vice menu (and thus not be able to map anything to these buttons). Not sure if this is a good idea ...

Elwyndas said:
One of the soft keys should be for pausing/unpausing the emulation.

In the next version, the functionality of the 3d-slider will be configurable (disable, speed-up or slow-down). If set to slow-down and the 3d-slider is on max, the emulation will be paused. Does this meet your suggestion?

Elwyndas said:
Putting the 3DS to sleep with lid closing sometimes crashes the emulator. Haven't tried this often enough to know why it sometimes happens or not.

Can't really reproduce this. Can you say more specifically when this happens?

Elwyndas said:
Sound setting should be 48Khz frequency by default to create the best experience from the get go. It would only make sense on O3DS to have a lower setting.

The current default is 44kHz. Are you sure that you can actually hear any difference between 48kHz and 44kHz?? ;-)

Elwyndas said:
Having the Start button assigned to quitting the emulator doesn't make much sense. We have the home button to get out, or Rosalina combo (left shoulder, directional pad down, and select). The start button should be assigned to something more glorious, like auto-starting something.

That's actually 3ds-homebrew standard.

Elwyndas said:
Once an alternative system ROM like Jiffy was selected, it's not possible to change back to original stock, because the ROM files are not available. It seems that those ROMs are built-in and hard coded. If that's a case, there should be an option to return to stock ROMs.

Yes, the stock roms are built-in. I need to check how to get this done (->ToDo list).

Elwyndas said:
On the soft keyboard it would make sense to have all F keys visible. These are often used in games, or ROM mods like JiffyDOS, and it's inconvenient to have to press shift. Also, some keys are used all the time, while others are practically never being used. For example: Return, direction keys (even though we have our own cool little joystick assigned to that - eat that, WinVICE), shift (we can eliminate one of the two to create real estate, because the ergonomic requirement of having one on each side is obsolete on that mini screen of ours), run/stop and also inst/del. The space key doesn't have to be that wide, for the same reason as we don't need two shift keys. The shift keys are effectively triggering shift/lock, so that key is now obsolete and the real estate can be re-used. The keys available by pressing shift and the number keys, like $, are used often and deserve their own always on line, perhaps next to F keys. I know redesigning the keyboard is a big deal, so this should maybe be put on the backburner because there are more pressing issues.

I like the idea with the F-Keys (->ToDo list). As for the others, do you have a suggestion on what the keyboard should look like exactly?

urherenow · May 18, 2019

Wow. I went out to sea for a week, just built the latest source... man, all I can say is that @Badda you're on fire! This emulator is superior to the Windows version!

Edit: C128 next? :bow:

Badda · May 18, 2019

urherenow said:
Wow. I went out to sea for a week, just built the latest source... man, all I can say is that @Badda you're on fire! This emulator is superior to the Windows version!

Edit: C128 next?

Thanks, always nice to get positive feedback :-)
As for C128, I need to check if that can be done easily or if I would have to start from scratch ...

Homebrew [Release] Vice3DS (C64 Emulator)

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