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vibri2001
Joined: 12 Jan 2005
Posts: 575
Location: Superior, CO
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| Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:09 pm |
For a keyboard, would you be able to implement Scott's thumboard app (assuming he OKs that)?
Also could all modules/systems be included and then allow the user to configure which modules/systems they want to use to make the PRC smaller?
Obviously, I have very little programming experience beyond 'Hello world" apps. So I don't really know what it takes to get a program/port running, but I have a pretty good idea of what a user would like.
BTW if this would be entered in the contest I would bet you have a very good chance. |
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Vilmos
Joined: 14 Jun 2004
Posts: 1633
Location: Guelph, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 4:01 pm |
Well the problem is that each computer or system has a unique keyboard, and that it will need some blending...I think 50% alpha blending so the keyboard and computer screen can be seen at the same time.
The systems have to be compiled into the prc, so they are either there or not, can't change it at runtime. In PalmMAME I just split it up so there are about 100 drivers per module and you can install whatever modules you like. I would probably do a similar thing in this case and split by cpu used. (That was too much of a nightmare with 3500 mame games so I split by manufacturer for MAME)
I'm a long way from done, but it is always fun when the alpha version is actually somewhat usable. I've been playing Gateway to Apshai on both the Coleco and Atari800. For a long time that was the only game I had for the Atari 600xl (my second computer -- the first computer was the zx81).
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Vilmos
Pocket Dimension 2 - 3D RPG on your PalmOS PDA!
http://www.pocketdimension.com |
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dmccunney
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Posts: 2366
Location: Second to the left, and straight on till morning
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| Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 5:13 pm |
| Vilmos wrote: |
| The problem is that even with 100M free you only get about 10M of heap, which means you will need UDMH to emulate some of the systems (Amiga springs to mind with all the extra cpus and graphics) |
Is there a relation between free RAM and available dynamic heap? I thought the latter was a fixed quantitiy unless you resorted to UDMH.
| Quote: |
Anyway the dos prompt is nice and easy to understand for us old computer hacks, but it really is a pain on the palm...might be better when I get around to remembering the last command typed in.  |
I was kind of hoping for a command line editor, ala CED or other ancient DOS helper app... 
| Quote: |
| I'll get a GUI going, at least for choosing images, some of the filenames are a pain to type in. I've taken to renaming all images to a single word. |
That makes a lot of sense.
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| Portable keyboard? Well in all honesty the chances are almost none since emulation has to go full tilt and if you let the system handle events you get around 1/100th the speed. It isn't that I can't do it, it is really easy to get keyboard events, but it isn't practical. That's why most games only use the hardbuttons which can be polled in real-time. This just cries out for a hack though and I hope someone can pull it off because I don't have the time to look into it. |
Understood. I didn't think it was likely, and you've confirmed it.
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| I've removed all but a few systems just to test the major features of MESS, most things are taken from MAME so it isn't that much to check out really and I didn't bother to remove the cpus, machines, etc. I just disabled the drivers and let CodeWarrior's optimizations pull out enough code to bring the size down. It's a lazy way, but it works out. I'll likely split up the prc once everything is working, much like MAME is. |
I haven't looked at MAME yet. I'll have to look at how you have things organized.
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| If you are interested I can probably let you test it out. I don't want to release it yet as it would make a good candidate for the coding competition (or porting competition more likely). |
It would be a good candidate indeed.
And I wouldn't mind testing, but I'm not sure I'm the best person to do it. My interest is in emulating other functions of the systems, rather than playing games. I'm currently seeing if I can get GEOS for the 64 to run under Frodoz.
And I'm wondering if I can get TOS and GEM desktop up under Castaway, with StarWriter running on that. Why? Because various folks I know would excrete a rectangular building block when they saw it, that's why... 
______
Dennis |
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