Homebrew XEGS-DS - Yeah, it's a thing...

[djleviticus]

thanks again for your time on this excellent emulator

 

[wavemotion]

Not ready for a new release yet, but did check in 1.8a into the main branch at: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

I've improved the touch screen handling so that the buttons (START, SELECT and OPTION) stay pressed for as long as you touch the buttons. This more closely mimics the real hardware as I found a few games that did not "see" those buttons being pressed reliably.

I made the same improvements to the keyboard handling - so now things like auto-key-repeat works just as it would on real hardware.

I'm through testing about 3000 games... 99+% are running great!

 

[wavemotion]

Version 1.9: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

Spit-and-polish release only. Added new option to disable key clicks on a per-game basis. Improved keyboard handling so that keys will auto-repeat and be held as long as you press the buttons. Added option to make the B key behave like DOWN (similar to A key behaving like UP). Useful for games where UP or DOWN are integral to the play but due to the standard Atari controller only having 1 button it was necessary to use a clumsy joystick UP/DOWN to handle those functions... these options will make playing more enjoyable for such games.

I'm up over 3500 games tested - pretty much everything is running fine. I don't expect too many surprises at this point.

 

[wavemotion]

Just an update for the 3 people that care. (hi Mom!)

Been working on a revamped main UI interface. I suck at these things - this is not where I shine. But it should be a bit more polished and provide some nice feedback on what's loaded. I'm going to add a second (D2) disk drive for the games that benefit from having a second one around.

 

[MarioKartFan]

Just an update for the 3 people that care. (hi Mom!)

Been working on a revamped main UI interface. I suck at these things - this is not where I shine. But it should be a bit more polished and provide some nice feedback on what's loaded. I'm going to add a second (D2) disk drive for the games that benefit from having a second one around.

View attachment 252398

You say it’s not your thing. But this looks great!!!

 

[djleviticus]

wow that looks really tidy, thanks a lot

 

[wavemotion]

Hey thanks for the vote of confidence, guys!

It's not quite ready but I did check in 1.9a into GitHub with these changes. It's almost ready for a release - still have some cleanup to do on the processing of loading files.

I'm a little disappointed - it was a bit of effort to add support for the second disk drive but really so few games take advantage of it. Most of them are games you probably won't play on the smaller DS screen. But the UI needed a refresh! I'm also adding a global option to disable all the on-screen emulator text for those that just want a clean interface to "select game, play game, have fun".

 

[wavemotion]

I'm almost ready! Version 2.0 will be coming today... I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Edit: Version 2.0: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

 

[CrashMidnick]

Looking really good. Cheers mate.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 2.0: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

Major refresh of the UI.
Added optional 2nd disk drive for those games that can use it.
Small bug fixes and polish across the board.

 

[djleviticus]

brilliant thanks again for all you do

 

[wavemotion]

You're quite welcome.

If you grabbed the 2.0 build from yesterday, grab it again today - I had to pull out one bit of debug :/

 

[wavemotion]

Version 2.1 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

And the inevitable bug-fix release for the big V2.0 changes! Something I discovered was that you are allowed to load/run a .XEX executable that can also write to a disk (for saving / restoring games). Not many games allow this but a handful do... so I now allow you to load a .XEX and load a D1 disk image (say, a blank .ATR disk) for saving/restoring games. Be sure to deselect the Y=BootLoad option when loading the .ATR otherwise it will "eject" the .XEX.

I also finally tracked down a long-standing defect on file selection where if you used the PAGE UP/DOWN (left/right arrows or shoulder buttons) it would sometimes highlight the wrong rom for loading. This has been in the code at least a decade - glad to have it finally fixed.

 

[wavemotion]

I'm working on an alternate "simplified" keyboard layout that you can toggle on a per-game basis. I was surprised in going through the full 8-bit catalog just how many text adventures and graphical adventures there were that just needed some basic text input. So rather than saddle the user on the small screen with a cramped normal keyboard, this alternate text-only keyboard can be selected to make those games much easier to play even without a stylus.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 2.2 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

This includes the new simplified (brief) keyboard handling which can be enabled/disabled on a per-game basis. It makes playing text entry games (text adventures and similar) a bit easier.

 

[wavemotion]

Not ready for a new build yet, but the nightly check-in has cleaned up support for picking a target emulation machine. What used to be 128k vs 320k is now a selection of machine types: XL/XE 128K, XE 320K RAMBO and Atari 800 48K.

The latter 48K machine is for backwards compatibility with some games that won't run properly on the XL/XE line. This brings in the need for the older Atari OSB (or the built-in Altirra replacement BIOS) which is also now supported.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 2.3 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/XEGS-DS

V2.3 : 31-Mar-2021 by wavemotion-dave
* Added Atari 800 (48K) mode with OS-B for compatibility with older games.
* L+X and R+X shortcuts for keys '1' and '2' which are useful to start some games.
* Cleanup of options and main screen for better display of current emulator settings.

 

[wavemotion]

No April Fools joke here... this is ATARI BLAST! running under emulation. It's the largest game made requiring 1088K and running here at full 60FPS which wouldn't be possible except that I figured out how to avoid moving large blocks of 16K memory for expanded RAM which the stock Atari800 emulator does... the DS just doesn't have the horsepower to move 16K chunks of RAM in and out of main memory when bank switching up to 500 times per second - so I redesigned the bank switching to use pointers instead which makes it 10x faster... I lost about 5% speed on non expanded memory games but since most games were running well above the required 50/60 FPS this was no real loss and the gain here is amazing. All of the 128K, 320K and soon the handful of 1088K games will be running on our little handheld!

 

[Deleted User]

the real question is, has anyone tried playing the AMAZING FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2 ACTION on this yet?

 

[wavemotion]

the real question is, has anyone tried playing the AMAZING FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2 ACTION on this yet?

Ha! As it turns out, your post has great timing! Flight Simulator II has "advanced" copy protection which requires decoding the file in ATX format (rather than normal .ATR). As it turns out, I've just enabled support for that. I booted up Flight Simulator II and although it takes a good minute to boot, it plays fine. Can't say how AMAZING it is yet