I now understand the ARM core reasonably and I started rewriting the complete graphical subsystem.
I can already process VRAM data and the video registers to produce bitmaps of (character mode) BG layers. (See screenshot)
Instead of rendering only a single line, I process the whole BGs at once, so that should give some nice speed boosts.
I plan to let this new C++ class for managing the GBA's graphical subsystem produce 128x128 ... 1024x1024 bitmap planes, which a hardware accelerated OpenGL renderer will further process with special effects like scaling, rendering, color manipulation and of course combining, clipping & rendering it all to the screen. Maybe this will also look better in higher resolutions. With a few hacking it might even be possible to get real widescreen support on some games.
Sprites are also perfect work for OpenGL instead of a software renderer.
If you want to help me and have a good knowledge of OpenGL, don't hesitate to contact me. I will do the preprocess work and you do the rendering.
General Info:
VBA-M is a [Super] Game Boy [Color / Advance] emulator for Windows, Linux & Mac. Here you can get information about the latest development build of the Windows version and download it while you're at it.
Changes in this release:
Spacy: Kodes GBA LCD patch.
Here's a funny binary of the cleaned & stripped core + GUI version.
http://spacy51.sp.funpic.de/VBA-M/VBAMin.7z
Not using assembler, so it might be slower. Also a lot of features removed. Just use it if you are curious. Has automatic save detection though. Save states not compatible anymore. Save states will not be comaptible with anything, only battery files. Screen capturing&recordning might not work anymore.
Next step will be rewriting the core to a clean C++ class in a static or dynamic library. After that is finished & working correctly, features will be readded in a clean manner. Don't expect any binaries soon.
General Info:
VBA-M is a [Super] Game Boy [Color / Advance] emulator for Windows, Linux & Mac. Here you can get information about the latest development build of the Windows version and download it while you're at it.
Changes in this release:
Spacy: added Save type detection feature, improved it some, improved it again and applied some behind the scenes compiler improvements.
Changelog:
Again with spacy51 (thanks for coming back btw, twas wondering where you went): Update DevInfo.txt.
Add the new SoundDriver.h file to the project file.
also please note this is the actual svn release I didn't regress anything and I did this as a user asked for a full release. Installer format to come soon when I have more time
The current developers' activity is quite low. We need more developers. If you have some experience, don't hesitate to help us. Even small changes in form of patches are appreciated, as long as they improve the overall code quality and readability.
You are especially of value for this project if you are able to help improve this software in the following fields:
ok this is a modification of 886 as I'm not a fan of having my settings in the %appdata% folder (don't worry spacy I didn't send my code in not without consent and also the fact I suck at submiting stuff to svn >_<)
anyways the changelog
Spacy51: Fix file type associations for Windows Vista.
Use Chip-Like icon from shell32.dll for all ROMs. (disabled in my build since for some reason when I regressed some of the changes it broke this. just in my build anyways)
and I also added a digital signature mind you this isn't a verified signature it's one that I generated on my own, once I get the money I will purchase a trusted signature from verisign
Download: http://zachthibeau.com/dload/vba-m/Visua...SVN886.zip
SVN886:
Settings are now stored in "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\VBA-M" for Vista. XP has a simliar structure.
File associations now work on a per-user basis with Vista and UAC enabled.
EDIT:
I just uploaded SVN888 to SourceForge.
I'd like to know if my current build environment breaks anything:
Windows 7 RTM x64
Visual C++ 2008 SP1
Windows 7 SDK RTM x64
DirectX SDK March 2009
OpenAL 1.1 SDK (ver 3.05)
NASM 2.07
zlib 1.2.3
libpng 1.2.39
* Similar changes as the last compile
* I fixed the DirectSound initialization as well as possibly other issues.
* I left this unencrypted/uncompressed since I know laterza and co. will plagarise this and commit more GPL violations. So, I don't care. And I am still waiting on thier encryptor which is supposed to be better than EXECryptor and Themida combined (to the laypeople, those 2 commercial EXE protectors are like Securom/Tages in strength in your games).
Anyway, there's the compile. Sorry it took so long.
Squall Edit
Download the build from sourceforge, rather then our download section. 7z files are currently being corrupted due to possibly some server side caching or compressing.