******* Virtual GameBoy ******* The Portable Nintendo GameBoy Emulator version 0.2 by Marat Fayzullin email: fms@wam.umd.edu IRC: RST38h WWW: http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/fms/ Amiga version by Matthias Bethke & Michael Boese http://wwwstud.uni-giessen.de/~s1089/ ******* original documentation for the X11 version ******* * INTRODUCTION * This package includes C sources for a portable GameBoy emulator, and screen/joystick drivers for Unix/X. Virtual GameBoy has been tested on following Unix systems: SunOS Solaris OSF/1 FreeBSD HP/UX AIX 3.2.5 Note that this is only a second release of VGB and many things do not quite work yet. They will be fixed/implemented in the next releases of the emulator. Following games were checked and worked with this version of VGB: Minesweeper Hong Kong Tennis Bombliss Addams Family 2 Tetris Asteroids Donkey Kong Land Obelix Centipede Monster Truck Wars Motocross Missile Command Twinbee Riddick Bowe Boxing Kwirk Kirby's Dream Land 2 Alien 3 Rescue of Blobette Following games didn't work: Super Racing Pro Am - Hangs Kung-Fu Master - Dies after encountering STOP instruction meaning of which is not known yet If you would like to write new drivers, *please*, contact me by email or some other means. Feel free to look at existing drivers as well as at other code. More explanations follow. * NEW IN THIS VERSION * o Cartridges with battery-backed RAM are now recognized and the RAM is saved into files with .SAV extension. o Colors can now be set from command line. o A GameGenie-compatible cheat option is implemented but doesn't work yet. o Screen refresh routines are fixed. o Line interrupts work correctly now. o Default stack is moved to F000h. o When LCD controller is stopped, VBlank and LCD special interrupts are not generated. o Both Debug() function and disassembler are majorly cleaned up. * FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS * 1. What is GameBoy? GameBoy is a handheld videogame machine produced by Nintendo. It is built around a custom CPU similar to Z80, but with some changes. GameBoy is frequently laughed at because of its reflective green-on-yellow LCD screen which in fact is its virtue. Due to the low power consumption of its LCD, GameBoy can work for 35 hours off 4 AA batteries. There is a lot of good games produced for GameBoy, both classics [Tetris, Pacman, Asteroids, etc.] and specific ones [Final Fantasy series for GB]. It excells in RPGs and classic games where gameplay is more important than graphics. More information about GameBoy is available from http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/fms/GameBoy/ 2. Where do I get GameBoy games? You buy the cartridges. GameBoy software is copyrighted and still sold. Therefore, its distribution is an act of piracy. Nothing prohibits you from backing up a cartridge you own and playing it on the emulator though. 3. Why is VGB is so slow on my PC? Because your PC is too slow to run VGB. VGB is written entirely in C language and therefore is quite slow. Although it works on 486/33 and even 386/33 PCs, it runs best on a Pentium/90 or a DEC Alpha/150. You can try to speed it up by increasing -uperiod value controlling the number of vertical blanking impulses between screen updates to 3-6, and by decreasing -vperiod value controlling the number of CPU cycles between vertical blanking impulses to 2000-5000. Please, DO NOT SEND ME MAIL about VGB speed. 4. Can I compile VGB with my Borland/Turbo C compiler? You can, given that your compiler creates executables using flat 32bit memory model. Two PC compilers which do that are WATCOM [using DOS4GW DOS extender] and GCC [using DJPP extender]. No Borland/Turbo C compiler that I'm aware of can create such executables though. 5. Where is the complete list of command line options of VGB? Use -help option. It will tell VGB to display all options available in your version. Following are the options available in VGB 0.2: -verbose - Select debugging messages [5] 0 - Silent 1 - Startup messages 2 - Illegal writes 4 - Illegal CPU ops 8 - Bank switching -vperiod - Set VBlank interrupts period [10000ops] -uperiod - Number of interrupts per screen update [2] -help - Print this help page -cheat - Activate a GameGenie cheat [not supported yet] -shm/-noshm - Use/don't use MIT SHM extensions for X [-shm] -trap
- Trap execution when PC reaches address [FFFFh] -saver/-nosaver - Save/don't save CPU when inactive [-saver] -color0 - Change color#0 [black] -color1 - Change color#1 [#585858] -color2 - Change color#2 [#989898] -color3 - Change color#3 [white] 6. What are the keys used in VGB? VGB Unix/X 0.2 keys: [SPACE] - A button [LALT] - B button [TAB] - SELECT button [ENTER] - START button [ESC] - Quit emulation [F1] - Turn tracing on/off [F2] - Show LCD controller registers 7. I can't get some games to work with VGB. Try increasing -vperiod value to 10000. If you can't get game to work, send it to me for analysis. 8. Is it legal to spread GameBoy cartridge snapshots? NO. Be aware of the fact that by using commercial software you haven't bought, you are commencing an act of piracy. Not that I care, anyway... 9. When compiling VGB under Unix, I get "undefined name" errors. This means that your linker can not find the libraries necessary for VGB [namely, libX11.a and libXext.a]. Find these libraries in your system and modify the Makefile so that the final invocation of the C compiler has "-L" options. If the errors persist, try #undefining MITSHM option. 10. When starting VGB under Unix, I get X_ShmAttach error. You are probably trying to run VGB on a remote Xterminal while it attempts to use shared memory for interfacing with X. Use -noshm option to tell fMSX not to use shared memory. 11. VGB starts under Unix, but then I get X_PutImage error. Unix/X version of VGB currently needs 256-color X. Neither 2-color nor TrueColor Xterminals will work with the drivers included into "official" fMSX distribution. 12. I start Unix version of VGB but the window stays black. Some other X application took over all available colors so that VGB could not allocate any for itself. Check if you run XV, Netscape, or something similar. Marat. ******* changes in the Amiga version ******* - recompiled with SAS/C V6.30 - requires OS 3.0 and 68020 minimum - key assignments changed, press "help" for an info requester - does not support a filename on the commandline, instead an ASL filerequester is used - tested on: A4000/040, CV64 (playable) A2000/030, ECS (sloooooooowwww!) To do: - speed up graphics We took the graphics routines straight from the X11 version which uses 256-color chunky bitmaps. Speed is quite decent on a 4000/040 with chunky-mode graphics board but unusable on ECS. Rewriting the display format conversions should give a *big* speedup here. - implement sound Pretty difficult to do...as we understand it, you'd need 8 audio channels to do this without too much work for the CPU. - better user interface, maybe some GadTools stuff. NO, we will NOT use MUI for this one :) - support for the CD32 joypad (an ordinary joystick doesn't have enough buttons) - real disassembler and hex editor with save function ("freezer") Not really: - contrast/brightness control - 4-player support (serial cable emu) via AmiTCP sockets - battery LED emulation If you have any suggestions or ideas for future versions, contact us at these email addresses: Matthias Bethke: Matthias.Bethke@sowi.uni-giessen.de Michael Boese : skywalker@sweetdreams.lahn.de ...or on the following boards: ThunderDome (+49-6408-3249) Sweet Dreams (+49-6406-76571)