219 replies to this topic

[Shannon]

I'm just curious. What "feature" is in the prosystem emulator that everyone likes so much?

[mimo]

Personally I like the fact that I can use .bin files. Makes keeping up with homebrew easier and quicker since I don't have to wait for someone to add a header/sign the rom.
I think it is easier to use, and prefer the colour and sound

[Mark Wolfe]

I'm kind of late to the party here but I have three Xbox consoles, two are soft modded, the other is chipped with a hard drive upgrade.

I primarily use it for the great emulators available and have been using them for that for years now and love it.

One feature that I have found lacking in emulators for the Xbox is the ability to utilize the USB adaptors which Xbox Linux uses. These are little xbox controller male on one end and usb female on the other end. Very few homebrew apps make use of them and it seems to me that adding support for them would allow for retro external controllers which would make the Xbox the ULTIMATE emulation machine.

-

[Shannon]

Well on the last release X-port added the ability to choose between 5 different palettetes. MESS-NTSC, MESS-PAL, New Stella NTSC, Old Stella NTSC, Z26 NTSC. Makes for a nice confusing scenario. Looking at the prosystem emulator code, though, it apparently uses a diferent palette.

I was looking at the prosystem database code earlier today and it looked like something that would be fairly easy to implement.

As for sound. Could you give me some examples of sound differences? I'm not familar enough with 7800 games to really know which ones sound differently. Glancing at x-ports sound routines, though, gives me the impression he had some issues getting it working right.

I'm only asking cause I'm not sure how successful my attempt to port prosystem will be. Considering this is the first time I tried anything like that. You are aware that it would end up having the x-port interface right?

Anyways although I am new to porting a whole new emulator over. I have gotten pretty good at copying over features from other "sources" so to speak. That is why I was asking. At least then I could implement the favored features until I have some luck with prosystem.

I suppose I better start an a7800 thread so I can get some discussions going on what things need to be done with it.

In regards to USB adapters, from what I understand the XDK does not really have support for such devices (outside of a keyboard and mouse). And I've seen some people say it would require custom code, or something like that. Although SDL does seem to have better support in that regards.

Whenever I do get around to trying to set up SDL I'm thinking maybe I'll be lucky and will only need to "borrow" a small amount of code in regards to third party "adapters". But projects like that (and porting new emu's) do tend to eat up alot of time, so I've been kinda hesitant to try it.

Edited by Shannon, Wed May 7, 2008 7:33 PM.

[Shannon]

Wow... a7800 is even more F'ed up than I thought. Apparently save states in the latest version were not even functioning properly..

ok I take back what I said. Seems MESS/MAME uses a "scheduling" system to save/load states so the actual save/load does not occur until the use "exits" back into the game.

Edited by Shannon, Thu May 8, 2008 6:45 AM.

[Shannon]

Here are some tracker files sent to my by Piotr Fusik for anyone who is interested in trying them out...

Attached Files

•  a8music.zip   955.65K   9 downloads

[Shannon]

Well while packing away my 5200 I did a quick play of Pengo and Galaxian and they pretty much act the same way as the emulator does. So I suppose in the name of accuracy it works out ok...

I'll have to try switching Galaxian to Trackball mode to see if the auto calibrate issues still exist (and whether it is playable with both the analog and dig pad). I suppose on the 5200 if you connect a stick thru the trackball you would get similar results. It didn't cross my mind to try that before I packed it though...

[Shannon]

Hey run088. I tried everything I could to get the relax shares to NOT work and I just cannot seem to do it. The relax I setup is fairly simple...

Share name A800..

directory is C:\install\5200

rlx: = A800@192.168.1.107:1400

I tried doing the usual stuff that tends to thwart x-port emu's like filenames greater than 42 characters, filenames with commas, brackets, multiple periods, exclamation points. No problems, not even when saying Yes to selecting a config file.

The only issue I did run into is if I gave the directory name a space ("c:\install\5200 roms\") it gave me problems until I exited an reloaded the emulator, then it worked.

I'm completely at a lost on this one. Maybe you can give me more details on how your shares are set-up and I can try that and see what happens...

Attached Files

•  Relax_No_really.JPG   47.74K   15 downloads

Edited by Shannon, Mon May 19, 2008 7:12 PM.

[mimo]

Shannon, on Fri May 9, 2008 4:46 AM, said:

Here are some tracker files sent to my by Piotr Fusik for anyone who is interested in trying them out...

erm, what do you do with them?

[Shannon]

Copy them somewhere onto your xbox. Probably best to put them in the atarixlbox directory under something like "e:\emu\atarixlbox\tracker" and then you can play them with the built in music player.

Press down on the left analog (so that it clicks) and the playlist editor will come up. You can either play an individual song, or create a playlist and play that. The menu is not the most intuitive. I left it alone for the most part.

Only glitch is for some reason if you select a playlist, getting it back to playing the default skin music can be a bit of a hassle.

In case anyone is interested. The latest XBMC contains support for the SAP player and is not capable of playing these music files as well. Pokey music forever!!

Edited by Shannon, Wed May 21, 2008 6:22 AM.

[mimo]

Silly question for you, is it possible to re-map (configure) the joystick ports?
Ideally I would like to have the standard xbox controller in port 0, an arcade stick in ports 2 and 3.
That way I could configure/select/use all the functions and still use a nice stick for playing the non 5200 games.
Sorry only just thought of this option-finally getting to put some play hours into it

Thanks for your replys to all my other questions btw

[run088]

I have my shares setup exactly as they are setup on the tut that I sent you here is how mine is setup

LOCAL_IP=192.168.0.9
SUBNET_MASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY_IP=192.168.0.1
smbshare=SMB:\MSHOME\PUDDLEY\Emulation
smb_nameserver=192.168.0.2
rlxshare=atari5200@192.168.0.2:1400

here is what relax xml looks like for the atari5200

<PATH>atari5200</PATH>
<RECURSIVE>Y</RECURSIVE>
<ALLOWEDIP />
<HIDDEN>N</HIDDEN>
<DISPLAYNAME />
<FLATTEN>N</FLATTEN>
<INTERGRATE>N</INTERGRATE>
<EXTENTIONS />
- <ITEM>
<ATTRIBUTE>16</ATTRIBUTE>
<PATH>c:\Emulation\atari\atari5200</PATH>
</ITEM>
</ITEM>
- <ITEM>
<ATTRIBUTE>0</ATTRIBUTE>

Edited by run088, Wed May 21, 2008 5:39 PM.

[Shannon]

Well not sure what to say. Your setup seems to be about as simple as my setup. Normally I'd say something like check your router settings or your firewall settings, but if the other x-port emulators work fine..

Which rom set are you using? No-intro, Tosec? Maybe I can take a look in that direction.

The only other thing I can think of for me to try is too hook up my xbox thru the router (right now it's directly connected to the machine with the samba share) and seeing if any issues come up.

Drives me crazy when I can't replicate an error someone else is getting. :grr: I'll have to think about it a little bit. If we dont come up with any ideas maybe I can compile a version that writes what information it gets to a text file and you can send it to me. Maybe doing that will shed more light into the situation.

[Shannon]

Well looks like they've been kinda busy over at the A800 CVS. Someone added event recording and even implemented (sorta) the changes needed to make playbacks consistent. They reset the random scanline counter to 0. In atarixlbox I just merely made it part of the save/load state.

They also have a few pokey sound changes that I may try out and see how good they do.

Not sure what else. I guess I'll have to peruse some more.

Update... Well I tried out the sound updates, volume only sound was still not working. The mailing list kinda implied this would fix those issues. Maybe I missed something. I'll just wait till someone compiles it for windows and see if it works.

Edited by Shannon, Mon May 26, 2008 11:12 PM.

[mimo]

Possible bug?
Playing Wavy Navy for the HSC, the points column on the right hand side of the screen, and the options on the left of the screen in the options menu are cut off. I have tried 5 or so .xex and .atr files, and tried changing the screen settings, but still have the same problem.
Screenshots show the whole screen?!?

[Shannon]

I missed Wavy Navy for the HSC!! Drat! I'll have to take a look. I think I did shift the screen at one point, so it is possible that it affected some titles.

[mimo]

you didn't miss it,we are still playing|)

[Shannon]

Try configuration->Video/Skin Configuration->Set Game Screen Size/Position

Press X so you can see the game. Press start until "Current Aspect Ratio Mode" says "Best configuration".

Size the screen so you can see it (right analog stick). They must really push this one to the max cause I had to shrink it down quite a bit just to get it all to fit!!

Download the cheat I made for the game. j/k...

Edited by Shannon, Tue Jun 10, 2008 4:10 PM.

[mimo]

do you think it will be possible to add VBXE support to the emulator?

[Shannon]

lol... Funny you should mention that. But I think altirra is the only emulator and atari++ maybe? Anyways Atarixlbox is based off of atari800 source which I believe does not have VBXE support just yet. Would be nice, though..