ReGBA v1.45, Gameboy Advance Emulator for GCW Zero

[VatoLoco]

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Nebuleon has updated reGBA, the Gameboy Advance emulator for the GCW Zero to version 1.45. This release brings the emulator out of alpha, and also puts the front-end UI features on equal status with TempGBA, which is also at 1.45. See the change log below for a list of what's new in this build.

• Per-game settings. You can press Select in the menu and you can edit settings that are applied to only the currently-loaded game. For example, you may want to start only some games from the BIOS for compatibility (e.g. Sonic Advances) but start the rest from the cartridge, or full-screen most games and leave a few at the original pixels due to being text-heavy.
• Settings files are saved only when changing the settings inside a submenu. This causes fewer erase cycles to be used up on the internal flash storage of the GCW Zero and the Dingoo A320.
• A manual. You can see this manual on your GCW Zero by pressing Select on ReGBA in gmenu2x and activating the "Show manual of ReGBA" option. This manual is also on the GCW Zero Community Wiki: see ReGBA.
• A bug that caused a crash when entering the Display Settings menu on the Dingoo A320 has been fixed.
• When opposing directions of the GBA d-pad would both be pressed -- that is, both Left and Right, or both Up and Down, whether by the GCW Zero's d-pad or its analog nub --, Left and Up are ignored, respectively.
• Add a version information screen in the Main Menu's Performance and Debugging submenu.

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[The Catboy]

I am running it on my Dingoo right now! It's running amazingly!

 

[Deleted member 319809]

It may be worth noting that the version for the GCW Zero also compiles for the Dingoo A320 running OpenDingux, although I do not maintain that version. On the Dingoo A320, ReGBA suffers from the lack of multiple optimisations I could apply to the GCW Zero:

* Reading in a whole ROM, even if it's 32 MiB. The Dingoo A320 has 32 MiB of RAM, some of which is in use by OpenDingux, ReGBA, its compiled code cache and the GBA emulation state (about 1 MiB), so it loads on demand from the card and requires swap space.
* The SYNCI instruction, which allows user-mode programs to force the CPU to re-read some instructions without the need to call the kernel, is not present. The Dingoo A320 constantly enters and exits kernel-mode instead, which slows down Golden Suns, Dooms, Mario Golf & Tennis, Duke Nukem Advance and a few other games.
* Extended bit-twiddling instructions which reduce the time taken for some essential calculations.

It's still much better than on the DSTwo, though. Many simpler games can actually reach 60 FPS on the Dingoo A320.

I am pretty proud of this release, and of the open-source BIOS by Normmatt derived from VBA-M which makes it entirely legal to distribute an emulator that you can download and use right away.