Sadness about Emulators

[Mas]

today at www.PDArcade.com , I read about an interview with one mister Aaron Oneal, maker of a very powerful Emulator called the "Morphgear" that emulates a lot of systems including NES, Super NES, Turbographx and some others...

read it here:

http://www.pdarcade.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=38

Now, I only own a NR70V and I know its processor isnt the best for emulation at 99mhz (if I crank MegaSfot's FastCPU program to the max - and then I may need to reset occasionally) But I believe that the NX and NZ shoudlnt have much of a problem with it.

Why hasnt anyone yet thought of it yet???? I was looking for the word "emulators" in a search but coudlnt find anything because of the current problem that the site here is having...90% of stuff deleted?..YIKES!!!...thank the gods for backups!..

[Mas]

You can vote more than once here..i know many of us played more than one of these systems in our day

[utahjazz85]

Other-

Game Gear and Sega Genesis.

[chrilith]

...or ScummVM :)

[Mas]

aH..I forgot about the Genesis...I was a hardcore Nintendo partonizer...

I want to re-read that post on ScummVM Chrilith. Im still confused as to exactly WHAT it is. From what I understand, it seems like a kind of emulator for some old-school PC games ala "Leisure Suit Larry"..am i right?. If not, could you just perhaps PM me the description again?. Thanks

[ClieMarty]

will the only thing which makes me think about upgrading to nx is xcade for the nx. look at codejedi.com (think that was the url). good old games are there

[ClieMarty]

btw with all the new devices from sony coming i think an atari emulator would be good. i remember that i killed a lot of joysticks with decathlon those days. now think about a jog dial or button or even better hinge/rotating display powered clie version. a couple of games and you are ready for a brandnew device ,-)

[Massman82]

I just do not understand why more emulators are not out there right now.

Almost every other system has them except Palm. (They have many less emulators...)

[ClieMarty]

have probably been hard to code for palmos/dragonball? don't know? i think that currently there are only liberty and xcade with xcade running only on nx. with the arm cpus i do think that emulators are coming.

martin

[JackAxe]

Before the Clie', PALM's were very limited. PALM devices did not have the resolution, CPU power, memory, or storage space to handle a good emulator. The Clie' is a major step up, but realistically I personally don't think that the current NX will be able to handle some of the higher consoles like the SNES or Genisis at a playable speed.

<]=)

[Massman82]

Yes, but at the rate Sony is going, by the time the emulator is released, (assuming it is started now) a Clie that could hand the emulator would probably be on the market. (Probably more than one! :))

[quintuss]

Here's a list of emulators i know of, for everyone interested:

ScummVM: http://membres.lycos.fr/chrilith/
(An engine for the old Lucas Arts Games like Monkey Island)

Liberty: http://www.gambitstudios.com/liberty.asp
(A commercial Game Boy emulator)

Phoinix: http://phoinix.sourceforge.net/
(A free Game Boy emulator from Bodo Wenzel)

Frobnitz: http://www.palmgear.com/software/showsoftware.cfm?prodID=9360
(Free interpreter for Infocom textadventures, there's also Palmfrotz)

Palmspec: http://sourceforge.net/projects/palmspec
(Sinclair Spectrum emulator for Palmos)

pal64: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pal64/
(C64 emulator for Palmos, still in development (i hope it is =) ))

XCade: http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/xdownloads.html
(Arcade game emulator for Palmos 5 devices)

MIZX: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html
(MIZX - Sinclair Spectrum 48K Emulator)

If you know of other emulation projects not listed here please post the. thx =)

[Zork]

ScummVM isnt emulation software at all. Its a interpreter for SCUMM script files. Same goes for Frobnitz. Thats an interpreter for the Infocom text adventure scripts. Real emulation software for Palm avail right now is Liberty for GameBoy which works really perfect and shows that emulation works with the Dragonball too and indeed XCade for Palm OS 5 devices.

[quintuss]

... you would have realized i wrote "engine for Lucas Arts Games.." and "interpreter for Infocom adventures.. ".
I know that those are no emulators, but its about being able to play old games, so they fit into this list quite well.

And why do you say the only emus are Liberty and Xcade ?

Phoinix in my opinion works better than Liberty and its free, test Phoinix if you don't believe me.

MIZX and palmspec may be far from perfect, but they do emulate the spectrum.

To list pal64 is little to optimistic (they actually plan to code some emulator so far), but i wanted the list to be as complete as possible.

[Mas]

Looks like good ol-Nintendo takes the top spots with the super old-schoolers taking strong second place finishes...thanks all

[nevarDeath]

isn't the sega master system the same thing as the genesis just named differently in japan? Like Famicom and NES?

[Berto2112]

If I remember correctly, the Sega Master System was THE ORIGINAL Sega system, and Genesis was the next one up. Like Nintento and Super Nintendo.......I think, that was a while back....

Berto

[JackAxe]

The Japanese Genesis was called the Megadrive.

<]=)

[iebnn]

It was called that in europe too, afaik.

[Zork]

Like to see something really trivial like a Atari VCS 2600 emulator on my Clie T625. With its 33 MHz its more then fast enough to let 4 VCS emulators run at the same time, cause the architecture of the VCS were extremely trivial. Sometimes its really strange that there isnt any development at all done for the Palm. Even a C64 emulation software should be possible on the T625 when I compare it with my 25 MHz 68030 Mac i once had which also had lots of working emulation software (even w/o the graphics accelerator we all have inside our Clie PDAs). So there isnt any technical problem at all. So time to start some serious development for the Palm. And yep, it surely take some time, but there are dozens of sources avail out there to learn from other emulation developers how the VCS or the C64 worked.
For the Sega Mega Drive (thats the correct name in europe folks ;) ) or the Super Nintendo its clear that we need the OS 5 power (thos emulators never were playable (although they alos already existed on 68k Macs) before I got my PowerMac).
So the road should beclear. Sega Master System, Atari VCS 2600 and (small) Commodore 64 emulators for the OS 4 Clies and the Sega Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and fully compatible Commodore 64 (thats the prob with C64 emulators. When you want them not just compatible with 80 % of the software but instead with all games they becoming really slow) emulators for the OS 5 devices. Both arent any real technical problem at all. Its "just" a lot of work ;) . But im sure that most folks out there will pay as they already doing for the only fully working emulator for the Palm : Liberty. And for the beta test cycle im also sure that a lot folks out there will help too with testing.
Palm OS devices are the monopoly at the PDA market. And since OS 5 they are way faster then any Pocket PC offered. And sicne HiRes, HiRes+ and OS 5 Palm devices they offer way more screen resolution (up to double the screen resolution of any PPC) then any PPC out there. Its time that developers start to realize that and build really kewl software for our platform.
BTW Congrats to chrilith whom cleverly proved whats possible on our platform. And that should be only the beginning.

[ChipMobiWiz]

Originally posted by Zork
Like to see something really trivial like a Atari VCS 2600 emulator on my Clie T625. With its 33 MHz its more then fast enough to let 4 VCS emulators run at the same time, cause the architecture of the VCS were extremely trivial. Sometimes its really strange that there isnt any development at all done for the Palm. Even a C64 emulation software should be possible on the T625...

Actually the biggest problem with emulators for the Palm is the resolution of most OS 3.x/4.x systems (160x160). The Atari 2600 had a resolution of above 160x160 (plus almost all the popular platforms/consoles of the 80s). In order to do an emulator, you'd have to scale down the graphics on the fly. This is somewhat slow. Another problem is pixel drop out for scaled down images (aka a bullet might be a 1x1 pixel and might not even show up). All these problems aside, it's still "possible" to do an emulator for any of these system. The question is do people want old system like this? I'd be curious of people's opinions.

Chip Kerchner
MobileWizardry

[Massman82]

I just want an emulator of a GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, Gamegear on my Clie NX. It's possible and I hope someone makes one!

[deadlyfoez]

Agreed. I'm sorry to say it, but I have an nx70, and thats all I care to see emulators for. It doesn't matter to me personally if they don't make any other for any other device. My nx is powerful enough to do many things, and for $600 I want to see it at it's full potential

[Zork]

chipmobiwiz, youre right, almost any console out there used more then 160 * 160. So forget bout the 160 * 160 devices. Thats clearly some limitation which makes thos devices a complete waste of time for emulation. But since the Sony Clie supported HiRes this sint a topic anymore, cause that way Palm OS devices had way better resolution then any other PDA out there (and Sony doubled his PDA market share within a year and is now the second largest PDA builder out there (far behind Palm, but still far in front of the largest PPC builder), so its surely enough market out there already ;) ).
So the resolution shouldnt be any prob at all anymore. I once thought bout porting the SCUMM engine too (cause the 4 bit grayscale of most Palm devices would have been perfect for most of the 16 color Scumm titles) but i realized then, that even with bicubic antialiasing (used from Photoshop) that the text would be unreadable. So your resolution argument is perfectly proved that way ;) . But now with the Clie chrilith proved what amazing games could be done w/o any lose in quality on our OS 4.x PDAs.
And bout the old consoles : First point is the figures here : There is some need for Atari VCS 2600 and CBS ColecoVision emulation (and C64 emulation, but that would be possible on OS 4.x in a appr. 80 % compatible way IMHO ;) ). And the second point is : Take a look at the games : You could theoretically fit almost every Atari VCS 2600 game ever released on even inside the 16 MB internal RAM (not to mention that every title ever released would fit on the MS w/o too much wasted space ;) ). For the ColecoVision thats almost true too, cause they were only 2 to 4 times larger then average VCS titles. So that way you could carry around dozens of titles (which you bought indeed) w/o thinking bout memory at all (even at devices w/o memory sticks). C64 emulation would be surely something else. There one disk image file has appr. 340 KB. That means that even internally a few games would fit, but on the MS there would be place enough for dozens of them (one fine idea surely would be to support the standard disk image file format for C64 emulation (.d64)).
However .... cant wait to see any VCS, ColecoVision (perhaps even IntelliVision (from Mattel) or Vectrex ?) or C64 emulation for the Clie. Chrilith started to prove what the Clie is capable of and im hoping that many other awesome developers would follow him by showing the full potential of our kewl PDAs.

[Zork]

massman, GBA wont be possible on a PDA. The GBA also uses some real fast RISC CPU and two custom chips (which means that you have to emulate three different cores at the same time (thats the prob with almost any emulation software otu there, but the components from the past werent that fast)). Thats possible on a Mac or Windows PC (there are different GBA emulators avail already), but releasing one for the RISC Clie would be almost (!) impossible.
Deadlyfoez, if emulation software runs on OS 4.x Clies, the potential market would be many, many times larger. And beside that economical problem, there is no prob for you, cause this software would run on your device too (as most 4.x titles).
But for "newer" emulation like Genesis, SNES or Amiga the 5.x devices are surely the only way to go.

[Massman82]

There a GBA emulator for the Pocket PC.

Maybe it will be possible when our Palm's are 400mhz :).

[Zork]

massman, if its possible on the PPC, then its np on the Clie, cause the ARM Clie is way faster then any PPC (cause of the custom chips and the missing wasted system ressources (PPCs usin Win CE which take away tons of ressources for the system alone)).
But i presume, that this "emulation" software is just for testing purpose. Means a few fps just to view some slide show.

[Zork]

Massman, checked bout the GBA hardware. Its a 16.78 MHz ARM7tdmi RISC CPU which surprisingly do all the work w/o the help of any further custom chips (thats really some surprise when you are familiar with the usual Nintendo hardware design. Thats why i mentioned above that its almost impossible). There is also one memory IC indeed and a I/O processor, but thats nothing to really think bout, cause emulation software has to handle I/O and memory their own way anyway.

So its a 17 MHz ARM CPU which does all the work. And the NX users have a 200 MHz ARM RISC CPU (Intel XScale PAX250). Emulation should be surely possible with that configuration, cause both ARM complaint CPUs have their own subsets which have to be emulated by software (like the thumb mode for example where the GBA could not only execute one 32 bit instruction, but also 2 16 bit instructions), but also a common set of ARM instructions which could be executed directly by the Clie CPU. Thats why for example the good, old AMax Mac emulation on the Amiga 500 with 7.14 MHz worked as fast as the Mac Plus with i presume 8 MHz - cause both had the same 68000 CPU.

The prob with PocketPC applications is, that Windows programmers never learned to optimize their code (thats why XBox titles looking that horrible beside having access to the the best GPU on any console). So they surely simply recompiled the open source codes for the common Windows GBA emulators and didnt routed ARM core instructions directly to their ARM CPU (which is the CPU inside many PPCs too). But Clie developers like chrilith know how to optimize code. So if there are other competent developers a GBA emulator for the Clie surely is more then just possible.

BTW Some good point to start searching for GBA tech specs seems to be http://www.devrs.com/gba/

[GoldenTiger]

Originally posted by Massman82
I just want an emulator of a GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, Gamegear on my Clie NX. It's possible and I hope someone makes one!

&nbsp;

Same!! Keyboard (built-in) and/or gamepad support would be ideal...

[deadlyfoez]

Well, what could even make it more easier on the processor, you could make a utility to convert the games prior to loadin them on your pda or memory stick. Then it will make the code a little bit more native and the emulator would have to work so hard. I could easily deal with that

[Massman82]

Then what are you waiting for? ;)

It seems as if you and Zork are very knowledgeable. Maybe you should start on the project? :)

[Mas]

Quick question for those who use liberty (since its really the only old school system emulator for the right now)

what was your favorite old school Game Boy game to play? jsut curious to what sort of games tickle our fancies..mine was Final Fantasy, BattleToads, Tetris and Tennis (simple good ol tennis)

[ajg23]

Anyone able to get a Frotz (Infocom interpreter) to run on an OS 5 Clie?

I had to go and try it and now I'm obsessed with it...(I have the Lost Treasures of Infocom set...)

I've tried both Frobnitz and Palm Frotz.

[ashVID]

Dont get too excited people, current Clies are not capable of emulating most consoles or handhelds. May be able to make something that limps along at a low frame rate or painfully slow with no sound but what fun is that? Xcade is great and prolly as good as it is gonna get. GBA is not at all possible at any reasonable speed. You cant simply compare processor speeds, doesnt work that way.

Zork I am not sure I understand you at all? You say its not possible but then say it is.... then you say Xbox graphics are crappy... uhh.... I am a diehard PS2 guy but also have Xbox...when hooked to my HDTV the Xbox simply blows away the PS2, like comparing VHS to DVD...

The sad truth is that until we see MUCH fast processor speeds and more programmer friendly OS's you wont see decent emulation on the Clie. BUY XCADE if you want retro games, 17 games for under $10...



ash =o)

[iebnn]

When games are released on PS2, Gamecube, and XBox (the same game on all three), XBox always has the best graphics, gamecube the second best, and PS2 the worst (or all the same, being at the lowest common denominator, the PS2's graphics).

[s_n_m]

iebnn, isnt it such a shame that all the systems end up with ps2 like graphics? I've seen my Gamecube do the smoothest graphics, and I've seen the most amazing filters on Xbox, yet they go to waste on multi platformers.

Anyone hyped about the new game palm? It shows thps4 and spyhunter being run!

[GoldenTiger]

Oyeah, I can't wait for the Helix!

[ashVID]

Helix does look cool but I just hope they dont rip you on the software. The device seems to be set up as a marketing tool to resell old games. Fine but they should be $5 not the $20 that they probably will charge. As for me I will stick with my NX and my GP32


ash =o)

[mattyj2002]

I've had a snes emulator running very playable on a 120MHz PC, with WINDOWS 95 and only 16mb of ram, i mean come on, if you can run a decent emu on that kinda spec of a PC, why not on a FASTER Palm OS PDA?

Palm OS is definately not taking up processor/ram like WINDOWS 95 would be.

Like ashVID says, its not the processor speed, its the coding. On PC ive had to wait ages for a decent emu for the SEGA 32X and N64. But alas, i waited, and now they are all excellent, good speed, game support etc.

And, if you look at the original processor speeds of these consoles, the SNES/Genesis is not more than 50MHz i think, and even Sonys PS2 is only running at a mere 297Mhz, PSOne i think is around the 100Mhz mark.

So, we all need to wait a bit, i mean it would be nice to have lots of lovely emulators to play with right now, but realistically its not gonna happen, you HAVE to wait.........


Matt

[chrilith]

You cannot run native ARM apps on PalmOS5 so don't expect to have a fully working emu on that platform...

[iebnn]

Hehe you say you'll stick with your GP32 because the Helix is just a marketing tool for old games... the GP32 games are even older... and THPS4 and Spy Hunter aren't that old. But they're only old for PS2/etc. THPS4 blows away any recent skateboarding game for any handheld device. Well that's not saying much, but look at the current top Palm OS games. They don't compare to something like that (graphics wise/etc). BTW, they were $50 when the first came out, so $20 is not out of the question. It's only a bit over what a lot of the bigger Palm OS games cost.

And mattyj: your logic is terrible. Windows is a completely different platform to develop for. And pentiums and ARM are apples and oranges. As for waiting for N64 etc emulators -- if it took that long for an OS that most computers in the world have, just think about how few people have an OS5 Palm device. Think about it. Don't get your hopes up for new emulators until either the helix is released (which may motivate people more) or until OS6 is out. OS5 makes things too difficult.

[iebnn]

And do you really think helix could survive on $5 games of that scale?

I get tired of most palm games pretty quickly, but PS2 games last you a lot longer

[ashVID]

Originally posted by iebnn
Hehe you say you'll stick with your GP32 because the Helix is just a marketing tool for old games... the GP32 games are even older... and THPS4 and Spy Hunter aren't that old. But they're only old for PS2/etc. THPS4 blows away any recent skateboarding game for any handheld device. Well that's not saying much, but look at the current top Palm OS games. They don't compare to something like that (graphics wise/etc). BTW, they were $50 when the first came out, so $20 is not out of the question. It's only a bit over what a lot of the bigger Palm OS games cost.


It has been confirmed that the games in the Helix demo are NOT actual screen shots so take them with a grain of salt. You are correct, many of the GP32 games are older but they are FREE. Even the ports of games are FREE! Only the games developed specifically for it cost money, and they are $20 AND YOU GET A CART! Charging $20 to DL a port of an old game is a crime IMHO. You are prolly gonna want THPS4 because you have owned it before and you will enjoy the novelty of playing it on a handheld. The specs are great and it seems like a cool device but I promise it is a marketing gimmick to rehash and sell old games, trust me on this. I think it will ultimately fail but may develop a niche crowd similar to the GP32...



ash =o)

[iebnn]

Okay, never mind that then.

But on the point of free GP32 games:

Most of the games you can play for it are emulated (that is a good feature of the unit), but that means you're supposed to already own the games you play on it. If you're just downloading them, then your argument that $20 for a game is too much doesn't make sense because you might as well be pirating those too.

Also, assuming they did develop THPS4 for it:

I would rather be playing that than a "new" sports game for Palm OS. New Palm games tend to resemble old games for other platforms. There are exceptions though.

And.. I have not owned THPS4, so it wouldn't all be "recycled" for me.

Allowing one to play these games anywhere instead of in front of your tv at home is not just a "gimmick". That's like saying laptops are just gimmicks, because they just let you use the software anywhere instead of just at home.

There will be plenty of either other exclusive games for it or games that are enchanced by playing on it. (due to the widescreen having to be used when you use the game buttons on the unit). Don't think that midway etc have exclusive development rights.