Handheld Cores

[wraith magnet]

I wrote this a good while back but it still a good overview of what consoles we are missing are possible on MiSTer.

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=4902

For the successor board, you can add DS and possibly Dreamcast, but probably nothing else, certainly not any other big hitter.

[rotund flume]

Hey great points!

[mortal dust]

This reads as if there is already a successor board in mind. Is this just hyperbole based on the chipsets that are available if we were to look into a successor today?

[wispy gate]

I really disagree lol

I'm sorry I genuinely wasn't sure, sometimes people goof around and ask for stuff like PS4 core

Non seriously

[mortal dust]

Citra on PC, not on Switch. If it were re-released, they would up the textures for sure. I don't know that they'd remake the game entirely.

[wispy gate]

I've used it on PC, you have to bend over backwards to get Samus Returns usable

[mortal dust]

Ah. I've only ever played on original hardware. I thought Citra had come a good, long way and the first party endeavors were pretty golden. My mistake!

[wispy gate]

For Switch all you need is 1. Remap the dumb weapons touch menu, and 2. Make it so the mini map is always visible and the full map comes up when you pause

[wispy gate]

It's not exactly Citra that's the problem

[hard sinew]

I wonder if a proper ds core on a successor board would increase the chance for a ds core on the de10. Maybe a cut down, demake version, but still.

[mortal dust]

It's definitely the best way to play Ocarina of Time 3D

[wispy gate]

Samus Returns is just meant for 3DS form factor. To see the map you have to pause and swap screens which is awkward, and you have to map the touch screen menu weapons to buttons

It's all kludgy

[hybrid wedge]

I highly dislike the 3ds but I want to experience these games lol

[wraith magnet]

Whatever Sorg decides is the next board, it wouldn't make sense for him to pick something that Robert's DS couldn't run on since that one did hit the limitations of the DE-10 Nano.

[mortal dust]

Man, there are so many good games on the 3DS. I hope you get the chance to play them, no matter how you go about it.

[mortal dust]

Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. I meant to imply that we could probably get more with something like PSP if we don't choose a successor for a good few years still. The way you worded your comment made it sound like there was already a successor board. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't an official eye-balling of a current better board.

[wraith magnet]

There are so many "what ifs" around this stuff, and it is all speculation, so who knows. We will need to wait and see but the future is going to be exciting, I am really looking forward to what we all see for the MiSTer project for years to come. So many possibilities still.

[torn jay]

good thing for 3ds is that the clock speeds are not extremly high(normal one, not new3ds) so modern FPGAs have at least a chance, while for systems like gamecube or xbox the clock speed is so high that they likely have no chance even on high-end FPGAs. But the work to do that is insane. DS at least has good progress with low-level emulation, so many things are known, but 3DS is not just much more complex but also less researched in detail.

[wispy gate]

You say this as if Sorg is interested in DS

He didn't even want SNES lol

[tawdry walrus]

Is N-gage possible on de10 already? I thought it was, but then I looked it up and it has a 104 Mhz ARM chip.

[frank pasture]

It did it again 😭

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Gameboy_MiSTer/issues/132 seems relevant but it’s apparently fixed now…

[wraith magnet]

That I don't know, possibly. Maybe someone with more technical understanding can weigh in on its feasibility, but the big hurdle for that one is still finding someone motivated to try do it.

[rotund flume]

I have the technical understanding and no, n-gage is not possible. You cannot side talk with a MiSTer.

[fathom trail]

The mister is more Hamburger than Taco

[tawdry walrus]

It is not a good system but it has its place in history. 65 games, more than some systems.

[wraith magnet]

Is it only 65 games? I assumed it was thousands as it was a phone

[tawdry walrus]

65 is games specifically made for the system.

[reef marlin]

I wanna try the resident evil game that was released for it. It was also released for early iPhones but who has one of those

https://youtu.be/uTyi3pfegjY?si=tzGEEtLP4z7alk3a

[rotund flume]

I think it has an exclusive elder scrolls game or two

[timber wraith]

This was long before an App Store existed

[wraith magnet]

I worked on phone games back in the mid 2000s and we ported and released games to anything and everything

[wispy gate]

Watch me

[wispy gate]

This was before app stores and smart phones and such

[wraith magnet]

Yeah, I literally worked in phone games during this stretch and the introduction of the iPhone. I would have thought there was a glut of games that were ported to work on N Gage though, are there not loads more than that list of official ones that work on the devices?

[sudden charm]

symbian had an app store I thought. I know before even ngage there was BREW and Get-it-now which were the proto app stores [in America]

[wispy gate]

Nice

[sudden charm]

but n-gage specific games were cart based

[wispy gate]

My first cell phone was kind of a smart phone, it had a built in palm pilot lol

[sudden charm]

Treo?

[wraith magnet]

Company I worked for made a fortune with Fast and The Furious games in the BREW, J2ME, Symbian era

[wispy gate]

Nah I can find it hold on

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyocera_6035

This guy

[sudden charm]

ah those are neat

[wispy gate]

Then I had like three flip phones then maybe two blackberries

[digital pier]

https://youtu.be/ho_Ntx0Fd7U?si=nVFHApr31vXPEIhV. Wonder if they have used the original MiSTer GBC core 🙄

[hard sinew]

This looks like a nice alternative to modding old gbc. Would be nice if it could also play games off an sd card.

[sterile quarry]

Loved the inclusion of the IR sensor, but reading up a little it seems to not be implemented yet but with plans to get it working.
Novelty but something I've wondered if the MiSTer core could do (hardware permitting)

Probably could be done, I remember finding a person that researched in depth for like a single emulator they made that does the more novel GB accessories and features

[cinder peak]

the mister gameboy core is GPL3. I wonder if they modified some existing MIT licensed FPGA core (there are a few) or if they came up with a new one (or if they are like, yolo)

also from the repo

the amp appears to be locked at max volume always and then volume control is achieved by adjusting the audio levels output by the FPGA itself. This is likely why the console buzzes, even when muted. wut

that is hilarious

given teh weird GB_ClrFix option I am assuming it's some other older core out there on the net or a homegrown one

[ashen bone]

Mine is underway. Perfect with a EZ FLASH having a cool GBC for under 100.- total.

[frank pasture]

I’m very tempted but hearing bad things about the audio puts me off. If it weren’t for that, I’d definitely buy one

[ashen bone]

Macho Nacho didn't report any audio issues. Strange

i ordered a pure white with tiel buttons

[frank pasture]

Let me know how you get on. I can definitely be convinced to get one 😉

[ashen bone]

how i ordered it?

[frank pasture]

No, I mean how you find the device once it arrives 🙂

[ashen bone]

oh ok sure. what should i look out for on the sound department? what issues does it have apparently?

[frank pasture]

Ah, I looked into it a bit more. Just some speaker buzzing when playing muted, apparently. Which doesn’t seem like a big deal unless you want to play muted 😄

[rich mason]

i think it's best not to be a beta tester for funnyplaying anymore

[gray grail]

I thought the EZ flash Jr wasn't working with the FP-GBC.
EDIT : We must use the EZ-Flash FW5 1.05e firmware (designed for Analogue pocket)

[rich mason]

so i just happened to look at machoman's channel when clicking the video above and he's got a one hour fresh video with a mod i did a few weeks ago

i think

yeah, i bought that adapter from some random american on etsy

and i shoved another 128gb into it

[ashen bone]

Never

[ashen bone]

Where do you find this info?

[gray grail]

A previous tester and some infos on Reddit, gimme a moment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/187u9pa/received_my_fpgbc/

https://youtu.be/Cesh5OAL4uk?feature=shared&t=669

I've time-coded the exact moment on the YT review from Taki Udon.

[ashen bone]

Thanks

Seems to be some updates available. I will see as soon as i get everything. Might order an everdrive or clone if those work better and sell the EZ no probs.

It should work with FW 1.1 and Eaz FW 1.05e

[gray grail]

That's reassuring.

[ashen bone]

And FP GBC FW 1.1

[rotund flume]

Or for any product!

I know ironic coming from a game dev lol

[frank pasture]

Back to that other company we go, if we want portable fpga gaming 😦

[rotund flume]

Is it fully compatible with the GB/GBC library though?

[frank pasture]

Don’t think anyone has explicitly mentioned the whole library. Compatibility with flash carts seems to be a bit flaky though

[wraith magnet]

Well if it plays carts then the mappers are on the carts not the system so should in theory all play, and then for flash carts it's down to whether the mappers are supported by the cart

[radiant eagle]

I think I’ll get one of those FPGBCs if they release a V2

hell, I might wait for a v3…I did pick up a GBC not too long ago for eventual modding purposes and then this came out right after

[hard sinew]

Yeah looks interesting. But it can't run games off a sd card, can it? Would be nice if that could add that as an option, as it would save the need for an everdrive.

[frank pasture]

Not yet. I read there’s SD card support being planned though

[hard sinew]

Good to know. Some if my friends who aren't as much into retrogaming asked me to mod a gbc for them. I'll wait till it has sd support then.

[hidden dagger]

Does anyone know how to get GBA screen to display larger on a CRT? I'm not a big fan of the play screen having a black border around it

[wispy gate]

Short answer is there's no good way to do it without it scaling horribly

[hidden dagger]

I figured. Too bad we couldn't have a border like the GBA Player or Super Gameboy

[wispy gate]

I've been in favor of that for a while

[hidden dagger]

Can someone elsecplease test this GBA homebrew game on MiSTer? I loaded it and it just hung on the Gameboy Advance logo:

https://pdroms.de/files/nintendo-gameboyadvance-gba/space-twins

[tacit mural]

Does it work on original hardware?

It's made in 2007 so my guess is no

[hidden dagger]

I don't know, I don't have a GBA console

[tacit mural]

Homebrew was too new back then for the GBA.

So it probably was tested on a very old emulator.

Which wouldn't be accurate.

[tawdry walrus]

I just tried it on an Everdrive on a gba. It doesn't work. It not only hung on the logo, the word "Nintendo" was corrupted. An actual gba rom worked fine.

The file extension was .bin, I don't know if that is an unusual ROM format.

I know they used the logo as copy protection. You had to include it for the game to run. Emulators usually won't check for it.

Does mister have an optikn to not run the bios? If so you can try it.

[fresh oxide]

There was GBA homebrew during the first few months of its release

[tacit mural]

I meant that homebrew that early may have less likelihood to have original hardware in mind

[tacit mural]

The extension doesn't matter. But I guess that explains it. If it doesn't work with an ever drive it's most likely not gonna work with the MiSTer

[tacit mural]

I don't think so but not sure.

[hidden dagger]

Thanks for checking, guys. Looks like a fun game and I like isometric action games

[torn jay]

you can activate the homebrew bios option in the core, save settings and reload the core. maybe it works then

this removes the logo check, but the homebrew bios itself has bugs, so it is hit and miss

[rotund flume]

So I looked at this website and they only seem to offer homebrew games that are available to download for free and not sold by their creators. Is that a correct assessment?

I’m asking because we don’t allow any links to sites that distribute copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holders. So I just want to make sure this site is fine.

[hushed raft]

speaking of which, are you faniliar with retrobrews?

I can PM you the link for review, I'd also like to confirm if it is legit

(they claim to only have homebrew with permission)

[rotund flume]

You can send and I can take a look at it! I’m by no means an expert though. I’m just familiar with itch.io and saw a lot of the same content on that site that you can also download for free from there.

It gets a little questionable since on itch you can opt to pay some money for games, which this site obviously bypasses entirely.

[fresh oxide]

Most really early homebrew targeted hardware since the one/few emulators that existed weren’t accurate at all yet, but after a few years I suppose “emulator targeted” homebrew started to emerge. As late as 2007 well, who knows.

[tacit mural]

I would figure we didn't have information needed to make it accurately follow the hardware constraints for a while I guess.

[rotund flume]

while this doesn’t count as homebrew I always loved the 3D engine demos from companies. Like the Blue Roses engine from Raylight - https://youtu.be/s0dS0pzKpyY

[fresh oxide]

We compiled and ran software on real hardware within a week or two of the Japanese launch, and developer docs had leaked months before that. So GBA is probably the console with the fastest turnaround in these regards.

The link cable functionality was great for that since we didn’t even need to build ROM emulators or wait for flashcarts

But those arrived really quickly too

[rotund flume]

lol we used flashcarts for DS development.

[fresh oxide]

Yeah, flash carts and the NO$ debugger were essential dev tools 🙂

[hard sinew]

Yes. We got our r4 golds for development. No other reason. 😅

[hidden dagger]

@rotund flume as far as I can tell that is correct. Outside of this site, that game is barely mentioned

[mortal dust]

I got my R4 for development, that's for sure.

I developed so many core memories

I also developed a case of choice paralysis

[rotund flume]

Thanks for the reply!

[hidden dagger]

@rotund flume If I read it right, MiSTer can run homebrew somehow? Looks like a fun game

[low peak]

#share-media message

a gorgeously produced video on a couple of gameboy games for your consideration

[hard sinew]

Excellent

[wispy gate]

Thanks!

[ebon axle]

It works with the Homebrew Bios. Just activate it in Hardware option, then save settings and reload the core.

[hidden dagger]

@ebon axle ok thanks! edit seems to work

[sweet sedge]

Hello!
Some weeks ago, I released a tool to easily convert png images to Super Game Boy border data, including .sgb format for MiSTer Game Boy core
Just in case anyone here is interested: http://www.marcrobledo.com/super-game-boy-border-converter/

[lost glen]

Thanks Marc 🙂

[fathom trail]

That sounds really cool!

[arctic solstice]

Actually, it does if you have a stick with an LS-62. 😉

Just bought a NGPC flash cart and some games since the Analogue Pocket adapter arrived. So far I have, Sonic, Pac-Man, KoF R2, and Fatal Fury First Contact, with Puzzle Link just ordered.

[proud rivet]

I just noticed some odd behavior with the aspect-ratio of the Lynx core.
I was creating a shadow mask for it, to display correctly on my 4:3 2048 x 1536 iPad display.
LCD shadow masks need integer HV scaling. The Lynx has a wide-screen resolution of 160 x 102 pixels. 2048 / 160 = 12.8, so integer scaling should scale up by 12 times.
I made a 12 x 12 pixel shadow mask, but it looked off.
I created a color-coded test shadow mask and found out that was detecting a 14x scale (1428 pixels vertically, instead of 1224).
Then I noticed the integer scaling options in the core menu force a 4:3 aspect-ratio, instead of the expected 160:102 one. If you force a custom 160:102 aspect ratio, the integer scaling options don't work anymore.
When you use vscale_mode=4 "integer resolution scaling, use core aspect ratio" the display also gets forced to an incorrect 4:3 aspect-ratio.
So there seems to be no way to get this core to display the correct 12x HV integer scale. Maybe this doesn't happen on a 16:9 1080p display, I haven't tried that yet.
@torn jay is there any 4:3 aspect ratio definition in the core, that could get picked up by the integer scaling options?

[torn jay]

there is nothing for 4:3 in there:https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/AtariLynx_MiSTer/blob/main/AtariLynx.sv#L797-L798

[keen laurel]

.ARX((!ar) ? (orientation > 0 && !status[15]) ? 12'd102 : 12'd160 : (ar - 1'd1)),
.ARY((!ar) ? (orientation > 0 && !status[15]) ? 12'd160 : 12'd102 : 12'd0      ),

[torn jay]

probably needs someone who understand what those high vscale_modes really do. For me they always just make the aspect ratio weird on my 1080p output

[proud rivet]

Thanks for looking into it @torn jay really odd how those integer scaling options seem to work incorrectly.

[proud rivet]

Same thing happens with the GBA core.
Thinking about this a bit more, what seems to be happening, is that the vertical resolution is scaled up to an integer multiple and then the horizontal resolution gets squashed down. It would make much more sense to base the integer scaling factor on the horizontal resolution, as we have no portrait aspect ratios (vertical arcade cores are considered landscape orientation as well). Correctly done, it would be based on the largest dimension of the two.

[proud rivet]

The cause of all of this seems to be that the current integer scaling logic assumes you are outputting to a 16:9 display. Integer scaling is based on the vertical resolution of the source image and the destination resolution.
Using a wide-screen display, a wide-screen core's screen will still fit, when basing the scale factor on the vertical resolution (on a 1080p display, the Lynx core scales up to 10x, 1020 pixels total, Narrower HV-Integer). When using a 4:3 aspect ratio display, this strategy fails, resulting in an incorrect aspect-ratio, that is no longer integer horizontally.

[hard sinew]

Any idea when gb and gba will be updated with the new fw?

[torn jay]

gba: yesterday

[hard sinew]

I'm way behind it seems 😅

[proud rivet]

I noticed some odd massive stuttering with the Lynx core (both yesterday's update and the test version I made for the integer HV scaling problem) in the attract mode of Dirty Larry. In the 'getting yelled at' scene, after the scrolling text is done, the whole scene has some massive stuttering a couple of times. Don't know yet if this was in earlier versions as well.

I also had it randomly fail to load a game a couple of times.

[cinder peak]

first time getting ready to try the NGP core

and...

what the...

i hope he's got plans to change that haha

[rotund flume]

Yeah, I beleive its just setup like an arcade core now because that's the process he's familiar with

[cinder peak]

the directory name is jtngp as a result, okay... gotta make that folder since the downloader script isn't creating the folder for me

[wispy gate]

I still haven't tried the core due to the jank

[cinder peak]

now i need to pull from my totally legal repository of every single game in the NGP library that i dumped myself

i'm assuming he'll fix it

[wispy gate]

The guy has a lot of irons in the fire, I would assume so too but it might be a while

[cinder peak]

@fierce tangle the JTNGP folder in ./media/games/ doesn't get created currently btw, FYI

[wispy gate]

Also not sure if he has plans to add color support

[cinder peak]

if he never plans to add color support maybe we can ask Robert to rewrite the core from scratch or something to get that done, since that would be a shame if it never got done.

i hope it doesn't ahve to come to that though

does it take the boot.rom in the regular folder? lemme see...

yup it does

i also just ignored the .mra file

i just put it in the consoles folder

jose could just drop the file there with an exception, i don't see the reason to use an MRA for this imo unless i'm missing something

[rotund flume]

were there any NGPC games that also worked with the original black and white NGP? Kinda like those GBC black carts?

[cinder peak]

can't change between english and japanese in the bios on load

[wispy gate]

Good question I know some threw up an error

Like "this cartridge is made for Neo Geo pocket color"

[cinder peak]

the option button isn't mapped in the input mapping for some reason

[wraith magnet]

He really needs to release the code and let someone else just do it. I saw a video of someone trying to use the core and it looked like a nightmare trying to get into work and when it did it would crash a lot

[rotund flume]

I'm personally really excited for the NGP core. I know there are other handhelds out there but to me this is the last "big one".

[wispy gate]

YUP

[cinder peak]

he left the default mapping in the configuration string that has X and Y in it, that can probably be removed

[wispy gate]

I almost wish he just hadn't bothered to be honest. But if he does finish it and make it more standard console-like core, with color support, that's great

[cinder peak]

probably vestigial from another core copy paste

[wispy gate]

Right

[wraith magnet]

It would have probably been a good post N64 core for Robert to do as well

[rotund flume]

Yeah, it would be awesome!

[wispy gate]

I also wish JT hadn't mentioned Jaguar now I feel like devs might stay away from that one too, between the existing partial core and JT talking about it

[rotund flume]

People should feel free to work on whatever they want.

[cinder peak]

Exactly

[cinder peak]

don't worry, devs don't need special motivation to keep them from working on Jaguar 🤣

[rotund flume]

LOL

[wispy gate]

Why do you hate hope and dreams

Do
The
Math

[cinder peak]

I did do the math.

logic devs_willing_to_work_on_jaguar = 0;
logic devs_currently_working_on_jaguar;

always_comb begin
    devs_currently_working_on_jaguar = devs_willing_to_work_on_jaguar;
end

[wraith magnet]

The irony is JT clearly doesn't want to work on this, seems a bad situation for everyone and now the pocket has it's own core pocket users don't need his core to ever be finished

[cinder peak]

oh i see, so the MRA makes it so the game folder name is actually ngp instead

that's confusing

and the controller works, so it looks like he bypasses the core conf str entirely and uses solely the mra input mapping

[frank pasture]

https://youtu.be/icuTBW6zHaQ?t=440
Relevant (timestamped). I think JT agrees with you with the benefit of hindsight

Ah, dammit - timestamp not working! ~7m20s is what I was pointing at

[cinder peak]

ftfy

it's cuz you had the sharer id in the url i think

[frank pasture]

Ah, my bad. Thanks for clearing that up

[cinder peak]

probably better for his sanity

[frank pasture]

Oh no, I misheard - he’ll do NGP and Jaguar, but no more consoles beyond that

[wispy gate]

😬

[cinder peak]

well, good luck to his sanity

the jaguar is a crazy system

[wraith magnet]

He deleted his repo he made for Jaguar recently

[wispy gate]

I hope he's ready to do the math

[frank pasture]

He may well have changed his mind since that interview. I just remembered him talking about it during the interview so thought I’d pull out the clip so as not to misquote 😄

[cinder peak]

okay so the plot thickens, if tthe game folder needs to be ngp, then why does my boot.rom load in the jtngp folder by default when i load the mra

i tthink the mra method should be basically ignored for this and not used

but i guess he uses parts of that for the pocket distributions too hrmm...

ah i see why, he pulls in the mame driver cpp file and parses it for some of his automation

hrm, well this is something that only he would probably be able to work on given how his workflow is

okay so i can't load any games apparently, hrmmm what the heck is goin on...

jesus is it another beta file complexity thing... ugh... testing that out...

nope still doesn't load, what the heck...

[wraith magnet]

Yeah the video I watched was a nightmare if switching files and hoping it worked, then when it did it didn't the next time tried

It was a PCN video if I recall

[cinder peak]

the coin button resets the core to a white screen

what is happening

https://tenor.com/view/leo-leonardo-dicaprio-calvin-candie-laughing-robert-redford-gif-24254354

okay this is basically unusable to us console core simpletons

i'll wait till it's in a usable state

why is there a coin button btw

so confused

there's also a start and option button, but there should be no start button

this is in an alpha state, it happens

he's just got a lot on his plate and his whole workflow is optimized for arcade core development, i can see how this would be a doozy

[wraith magnet]

https://youtu.be/rdmKMf3q7CA?si=5DBzEzOfEtfs1pxC

[cinder peak]

https://github.com/jotego/jtcores/issues/551

okay i see

he doesn't really ahve the context for cartridge loads with a reset signal and all that in the way that it's done with all the console cores

these kinds of distinctions between reset and power on is present in the megadrive/genesis cores

none of this is meant as an insult, it's more of a stream of consciousness commentary as i try to use it and figure out what is going on

[cinder peak]

yeah this is prior to the save changes he made to the core which apparently made it not work at all to load roms from what i'm seeing

[wraith magnet]

Oh so it doesn't work at all now? Oof

[cinder peak]

the button to turn the screen white is "Coin"

so i press that and i load a game i guess?

i tried loading before i press that, after i press that

then press otehr buttons, it just keeps taking me back to the bios

okay finally got it to work

you have to like setup the bios settings (since it doesn't save it i guess)

then press coin, then load a game i think

samurai shodown doesn't load

core is locked up

yeah... launch core from MRA file, setup your buttons if you havne't yet, setup the bios settings all the way so that gets stored in bram temporarily i think, then press "Coin" button, then load a game and wait

when the core locks up a new game wont' work so you have to start over... hrmm this is definitely in an early state

melon-chan locks up...

oh yeahhhh baby

[wispy gate]

You know why lol

[cinder peak]

it was rhetorical yes

[wispy gate]

Haha

But yeah this is exactly why I haven't touched it

[cinder peak]

because his toolchain automates that stuff

[wispy gate]

I'm not hurting to play NGP

[cinder peak]

yeah you are, look at what you are missing out on

Renketsu Puzzle Tsunagete Pon!

you could also play handheld shougi like some 50 year old salaryman in the 90's

[wispy gate]

I do possess other devices that can play NGP if I so desire lol

[wraith magnet]

Do the games that play seem to play OK? Look and sound as you would expect?

[wispy gate]

on my other devices?

[wraith magnet]

Hah, on this core

[wispy gate]

oh, like I said, I haven't touched it because of everyone else's experience lol

[arctic solstice]

The game that infamously got a sequel months after the color version came out. Aka Puzzle Link.

[cinder peak]

So gud

[arctic solstice]

and Pac-Man was supposed to be working, but wasn't. Then the Analogue NGPC adapter comes out with full NGPC support and it plays Pac-Man!

[gray grail]

Jotego replied to someone asking for NGPC on March, 16th: "It has been on stand-by while we worked on other items. We'll add color support soon."

[novel kindle]

@cinder peak yes not easy to get in game with the current state of neogeo pocket core

[mild glen]

Jotego is busy creating new cores and maintaining his previously developed ones and constantly needs to ensure his automation works. It would be nice if Robert could create his neogeo pocket core and offload Jotego.

[misty heart]

NGPC could probably really benefit from a 2P core too with all those great fighting games… not sure that’ll ever happen from the current core

[fallen linden]

I bet Robert has more exciting ideas in mind. though part of me is curious how fast Robert could whip up a NGPC core.

[cinder peak]

to get it in a full complete state probably 6 months would be a good conservative estimate

[torn jay]

not very fast. I found the kind of games it has always boring and was glad i didn't had to think about working on it when i started with psx instead. And I will not start anymore. It would always look like some competition, no thanks.

[frank pasture]

Just out of interest, what motivated you to take on the Lynx and WonderSwan? (Those cores were before I was aware of the mister, so sorry if you’ve covered this already). Do you think they have better/more interesting libraries than the NGP? 🙂

[wispy gate]

https://tenor.com/view/puppet-red-ball-soon-gif-13188418

[torn jay]

Yes. Lynx has very different games compared to other handheld consoles. More like very early PC games than handheld. They might not be super great, but interesting for sure. WonderSwan sold much better than NGPC so i assumed it has better games and i think it has, but it's hard to play a lot of them because of the language

[frank pasture]

Yeah, the Lynx library (from what I’ve played) is definitely unique. I hadn’t realised that the WonderSwan sold better than the NGPC - I had always assumed it was the other way around, but I guess that’s probably just because the NGPC had a Western release, so I’d heard about it a bit more.

Just looked up the sales numbers - it’s not even close!

[rotund flume]

wonderswan is cool if you speak japanese, not cool if you don't. its why i've always preferred ngpc.

[frank pasture]

I just enjoy playing Klonoa 😄

[rotund flume]

Yeah the translations are great. They’re the reason why I enjoy the handheld, haha.

[arctic solstice]

Thankfully, Wonderswan has a couple games that don't have a language barrier like Mr. Driller and Judgement Silversword. It doesn't have Pac-Man like NGPC and GB or Ms. Pac-Man like Lynx, though.

[torn jay]

i was just going to recommend engacho and while searching i learned there is also a psx version

[hot sparrow]

wahoo!

[mystic barn]

I'm curious about the ngpc versions of metal slug

Would feel appropriate to play on pocket too

[hearty basalt]

Hi! I'm getting around to trying out the GBA core as I haven't before and I really want to use it on CRT through analog out of the mister. Was wondering what kind of options do I have to make the video output larger and remain accurate / better. Got access to a 15khz crt, a multiformat widescreen (D24), and a 110khz PC crt which I reckon should be the best way to go about (?). I assume with the 15khz one I shouldn't change anything as can't scale it up without going out of range, but curious about best options for the other two choices, thanks :), apologies if this has been asked a lot, could not find answers I wanted by searching 🙏

[misty heart]

GBA can look pretty good on widescreen depending on the aspect options it has, 480p is 3x for gba, but you might get some light cropping from overscan depending on the tv

But yeah the pc crt will probably give you the best picture and most flexibility

I’m not sure if you can fill the vga screen with the scandoubler scaling, I think that just doubles up the analog output, but I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong. So if you want to fill the screen you’re going to need to use the vga_scaler setting and pick a resolution your display likes. If you’re using direct video instead of an analog board I don’t know anything about that stuff.

[hushed raft]

#share-media message

new homebrew for MegaDuck (and GB)

[winged jacinth]

Any chance that we'll see the GBC/GBA cores have support for the Mobile GB adapter functionality for things like:

https://github.com/gb-mobile/pokecrystal-mobile-eng ?

Not sure if that is something that can be done or if it could be done over SNAC alternatively

[hard sinew]

I doubt it. I just play romhacks of the pokemon games that have the unlockable events unlocked that way.

[hearty basalt]

8x res on PC crt :)

[rotund flume]

Just wanted to call attention to @cinder peak doing an awesome job and updating a bunch of handheld cores today.

Atari Lynx, WonderSwan, and GBA all received the latest framework updates! 🥳

[hard sinew]

What a legend!

[cinder peak]

it's just framework updates, no biggie, robert wrote the cores lol...

thanks tho

[frank pasture]

ur a framework update

[wispy gate]

Oh shit, thanks @rotund flume !

[cinder peak]

lol, not this again

a random gaming news website will start claiming he wrote it lol

[hard sinew]

Robby invented doom, fpga technology and gifted us mister. Kotaku or ign needs to cover this asap.

[proud rivet]

Cool to see that my integer scaling aspect ratio fix is now in the Lynx, GBA and Wonderswan cores. Thanks for updating them @cinder peak !

[cinder peak]

thanks for the change you made!

[wispy gate]

oh dang, what was wrong with it before

[proud rivet]

On 4:3 displays (or any display less wide than 16:9), in integer scaling modes, a wide-screen image would be squashed horizontally to fit, making the aspect ratio close to 4:3. The aspect ratio of the Lynx is 16:10. GBA and Wonderswan also are wider than 4:3.

LCD display shadow mask patterns, used for handhelds, rely on proper integer scaling, as their pattern should match each individual pixel exactly the same. This wasn't working with these handheld cores on 4:3 monitors (including the popular iPad monitor).

The way I found out, is that I was creating an alternative shadowmask for the Lynx core and the resulting size and placement weren't right at all.

[wispy gate]

That's awesome, excellent work

[rotund flume]

That’s the reason I didn’t include shadow masks for the presets for those cores

[proud rivet]

Thanks! It was really fun to do. I have a lot of software development experience but nothing FPGA related. After that I've been porting Kitrinx' excellent 7800 core paddle support to the VIC-20 core, that is working well. After that I'm planning to port it to other computer cores as well.

[proud rivet]

Wow, really, I had no idea.

[rotund flume]

It sounds like it anyways, you are a cool guy for fixing that regardless

[proud rivet]

Thanks! I have a background in broadcast TV, so correct aspect ratios are a bit of a thing 😄

[wraith magnet]

Oh good work! Would any other cores benefit from this update?

[wispy gate]

If we could just figure some magic that would make the Gameboy cores scale into a CRT that would be a miracle 😂

[proud rivet]

Thank you! Any core with a display wider than 4:3, when used with integer scaling would benefit.

[proud rivet]

How do you mean? 1x scaling on a CRT?

[wispy gate]

no like scaling to fill the screen

[proud rivet]

Ah, okay, so full-screen non-integer scaling? With the original aspect-ratio?

[wispy gate]

precisely

[proud rivet]

I guess that is more tricky to do, if you don't use the scaler

The Lynx core has a 240p mode for CRT output, otherwise the core displays at half-scale at the bottom left.

[wispy gate]

I think even using the scaler it turns out wonky

[proud rivet]

Not sure how the scaler works in combination with the VGA output, but you'd think that should be doable.

[wispy gate]

Well I think the difficulty is the two resolutions are so close and so low

[proud rivet]

You'd have to scale 144 pixels up to 240 I guess

Don't know if the filtering would work in combination with VGA output.

Otherwise the result would look pretty bad

I suppose the Lynx core just doubles its vertical resolution to 204 and fills the rest with black.

[wraith magnet]

Hmm, anyone think of any other cores that display wider than 4:3?

[proud rivet]

The Mac Plus (I think it was) recently got an aspect-ratio fix by meauxdal. Apparently that also has a wider display.

Display aspect ratio: 256:171

[wispy gate]

Yeah it scales rather poorly unfortunately I don't know that there's any way around it

maybe forcing 1.5x integer with the scaler would look slightly better

[proud rivet]

It might, but if there's no filtering it will still not look great

[wraith magnet]

I think all the ropey Asian handhelds that Kitrinx made are narrower than 4:3, but would need to be checked

[proud rivet]

Yeah, any wide-screen ones should now look much better on 4:3 displays, when using integer scaling

[wispy gate]

Right

[hard sinew]

Just watched the latest @mighty isle video on the new gb wars translation. Are now all wars games translated?

[mighty isle]

I think that was the last of them

[hard sinew]

Do you know about mech platoon? It's a real rts on gba and it's very fun.

[frank pasture]

Are the earlier ones (pre advance wars) worth playing?

[hard sinew]

I dunno. 😅

[frank pasture]

Advance wars looks soooo good with the GBA filter

[hard sinew]

Advance wars looks good period. Not a fan of the remake though.

[frank pasture]

I haven’t got it yet. It’s in my Amazon wish list though. What’s wrong with it?

[hard sinew]

They redid the graphics in a chibi 2d style, which I think is just objectively worse than the gorgeous 2d sprites on gba.

[frank pasture]

The battle screens look really good though 😍

[mystic barn]

Played Zelda Four swords last night with my brother on the gba 2P core. I remember being frustrated 20 years ago when you needed 2 copies of the game to play via link cable.

Was cool to play through even if it was a short one

[mortal dust]

I like how they handled the stages on that one. They were different depending on how many players were connected

[wispy gate]

can you actually play the whole thing with only two players

[mystic barn]

yeah you can

and yeah it has roguelike elements in that the dungeons are random, sometimes changing after a game over, even with 2 players

[wispy gate]

I assume you need side by side screens

[mystic barn]

it was pretty seamless just with the 2 gba screens displayed on top of eachother on the 55" oled

learned you can use dual screens with the vga out which is also pretty wild

if were doing pokemon battles and wanted no screen peeking

[hard sinew]

That's also a neat feature for pokemon tcg.

[mystic barn]

Oh that's a good idea

[wraith magnet]

I just had a thought, I think the two LCD handhelds in "Other" that Pierco did may be wider than 4:3. Maybe Game and Watch as well

[sterile quarry]

Having fun with SNAC tonight. Amazing that this is possible with my old GameBoy Pocket

[winged jacinth]

Speaking of GB SNAC, I've noticed that the GBC mobile adapter doesn't work with SNAC gb link (but does work with real hardware), I'm not sure what might cause that though

[wraith magnet]

Oh wow, do you actually have one and a Japanese phone from that era? Can you actually do anything with it these days? Really knew very little about this

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mobile_Game_Boy_Adapter

Not sure if @steady wasp has any insight, maybe missing protocols or some functionality missing from the core. No idea if this has been dug into and documented, is a new one for me.

[winged jacinth]

Thanks to the REON project, the mobile adapter has been reverse engineered and people can make their own that connect to wifi instead of a JP phone 🙂 They also have online servers for the games that work great, although I’m hosting my own. But for all intents and purposes, the device I’m connecting to my mister is a JP mobile adapter!

https://youtu.be/_d60OW_W7ns

Doing it in emu but it works the same on real hardware with the adapter

[wraith magnet]

Oh, that is interesting

Is this something you can make of JLCPCB?

Do you know anything about how support was added to emulators?

[wraith magnet]

https://github.com/REONTeam/libmobile

Ah is an Arduino project

I take it this doesn't work via SNAC on the core either?

[mystic barn]

Translation patch would be epic too

Had no idea that thing existed. But Japan was more online than the US and earlier

[wraith magnet]

I take it all the games that utilise it work on the core fine?

We have solid mapper coverage

Interested in this Arduino project, could be fun. Wonder what it would take to get this and the original supported in the core

[frank pasture]

Inspired by the remake, I tried out Mario vs Donkey Kong on the GBA core. Lots of fun!

[mortal dust]

It was a good little successor to GB Donkey Kong, for sure!

[frank pasture]

I haven’t played that one

[rotund flume]

OMG

plaaaaaaaay it

It’s just called “Donkey Kong”

[frank pasture]

Ur called donkey kong

But okay, boss!

[uneven rover]

Donkey Kong GB is a good one to try on SGB

[frank pasture]

Oh man, this is good!

[rotund flume]

When I was a kid I didn’t know about the rest of the game. I thought it was just game boy Donkey Kong. Blew my mind when I saw the world map and all the other levels.

[frank pasture]

Yeah, it really opens up after the first 4 levels 😄

[weak folio]

I'm positive I already know the answer, but I don't suppose there is an e-reader implementation on the GBA core, right?

[rotund flume]

I don’t think so

[weak folio]

Yeah, just thought I'd ask.

Thanks Robby

[wraith magnet]

No, that would be interesting though. I wonder what it would involve, if there is some ROM or hardware inside the e reader that would need to be implemented or "just" a means of scanning and loading the barcodes

I would like to see barcode scanning support in MiSTer, a few places it could be used and you can get usb ones cheap, would be fun

[sudden charm]

I'm not sure the dot codes on the ereader cards can be read by a conventional barcode scanner

[wraith magnet]

Ah, good point

Have they been converted into a format that any emulators can load?

[sudden charm]

yeah there's even a no-intro set for the data

[wraith magnet]

And core doesn't load these currently?

[sudden charm]

afaik it doesn't. You'd need to be able to load the ereader bios as a "game" and then load the card data, along with whatever hardware magic is in the ereader to do things

emulators that can play ereader stuff seem to have to specifically implement it. The data on the cards appears different than a 'real' cart game

[rotund flume]

Maybe convert it to NFC

[wraith magnet]

Hmm, what hardware is inside these things I wonder...

If you have an e reader in a GBA and you boot it up do you get a BIOS screen?

If so, does anything display when you load BIOS in the core?

I am guessing the Pocket open OS core doesn't support loading these cards as files in anyway as never seen that mentioned

[rotund flume]

Here’s a technical walkthrough - https://hunter-r.com/posts/ac-ereader-tutorial/

Here’s a tool to use the data - https://github.com/Hunter-Raff/e-ReaderCardCreator

Yeah NFC tag application ain’t happening. NFCs have like 80 - 130 bytes of memory. The smaller e-reader dot code is 2.4KB while the largest is 6KB.

[weak folio]

I believe it would only work for the 2P core, as on original hardware you would need to connect whatever game you were playing to a separate GBA with the e-Reader plugged into the game slot.

[wraith magnet]

Ah that is different functionality to loading the game cards, where you would scan a card and it would load a game

[rotund flume]

Yeah I have a bunch of e-reader stuff. Real limited functionality. The Eon Ticket required two GBAs

Scanning in NES games was cool at the time though

So was the Animal Crossing and Mario Advance 3 functionality

[weak folio]

Recently a fan made "DLC" for the GBA games. With custom e-Reader cards you could activate custom events that gave you legal Pokemon.

https://github.com/notblisy/RUBYSAPPHIREDLC

Just wanted to try it out on MiSTer if it was possible.

Which--it seems--it isn't. Aside from save injection. lol

[rotund flume]

I have the Eon ticket still

[sudden charm]

load up game in mgba, do the ereadering, put save on mister

[rotund flume]

I am the most legal of all pokemon players

Even the Jirachi demo disc thing

[weak folio]

Eh, at that point I'd rather just inject the save. But this is totally viable as well.

It's not that I don't have alternatives, I just thought it would be neat if possible.

That's legitimately cool, Robby. I love stuff like that, but I'm not willing to pay the price people ask.

[rotund flume]

Is it pricey now?

[sudden charm]

everything is pricey now

double if retro, tripple if pokemans

[hot sparrow]

this. the colours are really nicely done. if you're playing on a tv there's little reason not to

[winged jacinth]

Oh shoot, I'm so sorry Discord didn't notify me!

[wraith magnet]

No worries, would be good to know what it would take to add support to the core for this (original hardware and the Arduino clone). Maybe worth writing up a detailed feature request ticket and see what responses come in.

[vast raven]

Would it be possible for Gameboy and Gameboy Advance cores to eventually get a cropped 2x scale option for CRTs? Edit: looking into this, it would crop out way too much

Or perhaps something to force a border even if it's a solid color for GBA? My CRT tends to bend inwards on the tops when a full image isn't displayed

[winged jacinth]

Honestly yeah, I think I’m going to write up a GitHub issue for it today

[winged jacinth]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Gameboy_MiSTer/issues/249

Woot 😄

[wraith magnet]

Nice one

[turbid glade]

I was playing Mario Kart Super Circuit on the GBA core and all of a sudden the game goes into turbo mode?! Turbo mode is off in the Menu did I hit a certain combo on the pad or what's goin on 😄

[frank pasture]

Did you hit a hotkey for fast forward?

[turbid glade]

could absolutly be 😄 not ideal have to check my settings then

[torn jay]

yes, that's fast forward. Check the key mappings.

[frank pasture]

Sooo good on the SGB - thanks! I wouldn’t have thought to try it on that

[uneven rover]

Nice, glad you’re enjoying it 😄

[frank pasture]

It’s a lot of fun for sure

[mortal dust]

I'm glad you tried it out! It's one of my favorite GB games.

[mystic barn]

Been playing it on the pocket. My sgb version makes everything orange and red, was kinda hoping there was a color hack

[hot sparrow]

someone was working on one

[sweet sedge]

That someone might be me 😛

[mystic barn]

oh that looks great!

[sweet sedge]

That's not SGB though

You should run the game under the SGB core if you want to experience SGB enhancements

[low peak]

i think you’ve done a great job with this

i’ve been having a blast playing thru it this year

it’s one of only a few games in my favorites folder

hope the development has gone smoothly for you

[sweet sedge]

I let the graphic artists know ^_^

[sweet sedge]

Yeah, we've done a lot of progress lately

We do not want to spoil much, but if things go well, this DX hack will hvae a never seen feature in colorizations

[low peak]

heck yeah

oh, any secrets found in the code, debug levels or cut content?

the Sakura Wars fan translation was absolutely chock full of discoveries

[sweet sedge]

There is little cut content sadly, but that won't stop me from adding very cool things!

[sweet sedge]

looks better in full color!

[mystic barn]

is it released or still wip?

[low peak]

release in progress

[sweet sedge]

we can't promise yet, but we aim for a Christmas release

[low peak]

it’ll be out before grrm releases TWOW

that’s what matters

[mystic barn]

Ok I had no idea that there was a sgb core on the pocket and that the colors would be different

[low peak]

yeah, just for the menus with the standard rom

[weak folio]

Wow, that looks gorgeous.

[hot sparrow]

are you optimising the colours for the original hardware or for emulators or something in between?

[sweet sedge]

original hardware

[hot sparrow]

👏

[sweet sedge]

if it didn't run in real hardware, I wouldn't do it

that's the challenge 😄

[hot sparrow]

i mean like the saturation and such

[sweet sedge]

ah

well, unfortunately, I'm not going to focus on original GBC screen

[hot sparrow]

i prefer to play on the pocket now so it's not a big deal i just know what to set it to now (as in not the original gbc mode)

[hard sinew]

I'm always at the brink of ordering a pocket but I really can't justify it.

[hot sparrow]

it's great besides that shell cracking shit

[hard sinew]

What? That sounds terrible.

I modded a gbc and a gba since I already had everdrives for both when the pocket was hard to obtain.

[hot sparrow]

yeah i bought a game boy light

[hard sinew]

That's also really neat.

[mystic barn]

i bought an everdrive, and was enjoying my SP, as well playing on mister with ipad screen but then analogue put out the transparent colorways and I cracked

[hard sinew]

I've never seen those on sale. Aren't those always limited (even more limited)?

It's also a shame it doesn't have an rtc. That would make the open fpga stuff really great.

[hot sparrow]

did the transparent pocket crack too

[hot sparrow]

i think it does, it just doesn't have access to it or something

[mystic barn]

no shell is holding up really well

since last year

[hard sinew]

Hopefully they don't fix that. My self control isn't endless.

[hot sparrow]

i was confused about the rtc thing, they say it has it, but the board doesn't seem to. i think it's a function rather than how the mister handles it with a battery

[mystic barn]

the transparent glass case got scratched easily, so I got one of those hard cases for 3DS ever since

[hot sparrow]

like i think if the battery for the pocket is removed the rtc would stop

it's used for save states currently but i don't think for cores

[hard sinew]

Just resetting the clock after changing the battery every few years doesn't sound too bad.

[mild glen]

What hardware?

[mystic barn]

that was just a picture of the game running on analogue pocket

[mild glen]

Thanks

[timber wraith]

There’s a GB Donkey Kong game with world levels? What is it?

[uneven rover]

Donkey Kong

Just keep playing after the first 5 mins

[timber wraith]

Just plain old Donkey Kong? That’s the title?

[weak folio]

Mario vs Donkey Kong is the sequel. On the GBA and more recently Switch.

[mystic barn]

It's very fun. It like combines elements from Mario 2, Donkey kong arcade

[timber wraith]

I hope my DK skills haven’t regressed so much I can’t get through the first level or two

[arctic solstice]

and elements from it were used in Super Mario 64

[sly gazelle]

Hopefully we get a framework update for GB soon to support Direct Video

[uneven rover]

https://x.com/mrmoroplays/status/1784588717878870134?s=46&t=xBV38pENd2Kq8W9CSSd77Q

Mr. Moro | Retro Gaming Enthusiast (@MrMoroPlays) on X

Somebody from the @retrotink2 community stepped up in a big way!
Super GameBoy pallets 3H and 4H were some of the closest to DMG you could get without an analog pocket, but community member Billgonzo actually recreated the colors and LCD effects of the DMG. Check out the pics!

Twitter · Apr 28, 2024, 2:21 PM

Coincidentally direct video would be nice for using that new palette with the RT4k 😄

[tropic coral]

Billgonzo GBC profile is even more impressive (from looking at the pix).

[hot sparrow]

oo

that does look nice

[tropic coral]

Zoom in for the pixel structure. Very nice

[hot sparrow]

could these be ported to mister?

[tropic coral]

I hope so. Tonurics said subpoxel simulation is possible on mister but don't know if this tink profile can be ported directly.

[hot sparrow]

i think there's already subpixel masks

[tropic coral]

Not exactly there the last time I looked.

Look at Link's eye. Blue color is single subpixel, 1/3 of a pixel, not whole pixel

Gbc pixel widths are different base on color intensity

[uneven rover]

Awesome stuff

[tropic coral]

I haven't kept up to date with mister filter developments so maybe something like that is there already

[uneven rover]

I’ve been playing on Pocket pretty much exclusively for GB stuff lately so yeah, not sure

I would love something like the filters above for DMG and/or GBP though, if you zoom in you can see the kind of grain that real screens have

[tropic coral]

Oh yeah for sure.

I don't have pocket so 100% sure but their GBC filter doesn't do this variable pixel width simulation from looking at pix.

Also their DMG filter looks like pixels are 8x7, not squared.

[uneven rover]

Their filters for GBC is such a step above everything else, at least in the actual handheld space

I still don’t understand why the LCD (or AMOLED now) driver boards available for real hardware can’t do something similar, instead of just raw over-saturated RGB

[tropic coral]

Totally

I've mentioned before, BGB emulator for windows has the best gb/gbc screen simulation.

It's the only one as far as I know that also lets you pick white point color to simulation light source color temp and intensity.

[rich mason]

@thorn atlas is this doable on mister? i'd like to simulate what it's like playing games in autumn while still enjoying my summer vacation. just need need some of that orange hue.

[thorn atlas]

yes I believe that feature is already implemented, just put the mister between your legs and it will suddenly feel like summer

[rich mason]

https://tenor.com/view/elmo-wwe-wrestling-canadian-destroyer-panama-sunrise-gif-10123938277880340563

[tacit mural]

https://tenor.com/view/eteled-wii-deleted-you-wii-sports-get-real-wii-boxing-gif-22847005

[hard sinew]

This is what the funnyplaying q5 v2 laminated screen can do. It's basically a black square grid over the picture, which is not that easy to photograph.

[uneven rover]

Yep, I have multiple GBCs with this screen, the pixel grid feature is nice but the colours are still pretty much raw RGB values

[hard sinew]

What's weird is that the gbc screen doesn't have a forced b/w or green palette while the laminated gba screen does.

[rich mason]

it is the kit i don't want to order after buying the gba laminated kit which has serious latency i haven't felt on any other kit i bought for my gb's

[hard sinew]

I always got some dust between the lens and the screen which always annoyed me.

I also got boxy pixel shells for those builds, which look super nice but are super impractical.

[uneven rover]

“V3” IPS from FunnyPlaying? That thing is extremely suspicious to begin with due to its non-integer scaling

[rich mason]

i have a gbc ips kit from january 3rd 2020

i think i also have two more. i've not noticed any integer scaling problem

[uneven rover]

Sorry I thought you were referring to a laminated GBA kit, yeah GBC has been fine for me too

It’s just the IPS V3 laminated for GBA which has that issue

[hard sinew]

It's a bit more blurry than the q5 but on the small screen I don't mind it.

[tropic coral]

GBCC emulator for android has pretty nice color correction and subpixel simulation. Samsung galaxy oled screen. Less saturated inperson. Subpixle mode makes things too green so it could be better.

[hard sinew]

I turned the color correction off on MiSTer... am I a bad person?

[uneven rover]

no, the beauty of MiSTer is that you can play and enjoy games however you like

...this message brought to you by your local Robby

[hard sinew]

I guess there is always one master and one apprentice.

[mortal dust]

Who gives a Sith about the rules

[rotund flume]

Yeah the options are there, have fun with them. Contribute too. Doesn’t matter how you play the games, all that matters is you play them in a way that you enjoy.

[primal lichen]

So any word with the Neo Geo Pocket core?

[rotund flume]

[distant rivet]

Is there a bug with shadow masks aligning with pixels in the GBA2P core? I was able to get the primary GBA core looking beautiful, but GBA2P is misaligned no matter what I try

[rotund flume]

shadow masks are built for integer scaling so that could be the issue

[fathom trail]

Are shadow masks made to fit the two screen form factor?

Like, they don't automatically scale down to fit the smaller display, right?

[tacit mural]

afaik the GBA2P core does not run in a normal aspect ratio so there's not much that can be done about this

This had to be done for it to function iirc. (I believe I discusssed the same issue with Robert in the past)

[rich mason]

say what now. i bought it a couple of months ago.

oh you're talking about the integer scaling. nevermind, i think i'm good

the latency is shit tho

[ashen bone]

from my experience you don't need the shadow masks to achieve the original look of the handheld cores.

[distant rivet]

Would you mind sharing how yours are set up? I feel like I was only able to achieve an original look WITH them

[rotund flume]

Yup. @distant rivet I suggest looking at the handheld presets I made for examples. I mimicked the look of the original hardware and opted to not do shadowmasks since it didn’t line up with the pixels outside of 1:1 scaled dimensions.

When you change your video settings there’s a load preset option. Those handheld presets are in the core specific folder.

[weak folio]

Did you make those presets, Robby?

Thanks!

[fathom trail]

I think the question is about the 2P cores, aren't their pixels smaller than the normal cores thereby making the shadowmasks not line up?

[distant rivet]

I love a lot of those presets! this is what the GBA2P looks like for me - is this correct?

[fathom trail]

I'm assuming we'd need 2P variants of the standard gba filters

[distant rivet]

same preset on the regular GBA core

[distant rivet]

The regular core with the preset looks amazing, it just doesn't match up with 2P

[rotund flume]

You’re welcome but the real thanks should go to the people who made the filters.

My presets are because I am lazy and assume others are lazy like me and didn’t want to spend hours fiddling with filter combinations to get something looking decent.

I did actually heavily compare to real hardware I own to make them but I am by no means an expert so please contribute or modify if you think they can be improved!

[distant rivet]

it seems like the filters do not line up just like shadow masks because of the aspect ratio

[distant rivet]

I think you did great! I use most of them across all my cores. Very appreciated!

[fathom trail]

yeah, that's why someone would have to make variants. I'm not sure what the process is though for making the shadowmask pixels smaller

the 2p core looks like it's 2 pixels per 1 shadowmask pixel

or something like that

[rotund flume]

Aw darn, sorry about that

[distant rivet]

No worries! Looks like it cant be done unless they were remade for this aspect ratio

[rotund flume]

Admittedly I didn’t test with those cores. I incorrectly assumed they would work.

[ashen bone]

On GBA you should set it to scale so that the presets work properly.

[distant rivet]

on GBA2P? the best I can get it is 4 pixels per section

[ashen bone]

On GBA 2P it doesn't work properly i think.

[distant rivet]

Ah okay, that's what I was asking. GBA looks great, see my Wario pic above

[primal lichen]

The Game Boy core recently got the DV1 support, so go nuts.

[distant rivet]

Is DV1 for OSSC Pro? I just looked it up, used to have the old OSSC ages ago.

[hard sinew]

It's for scalers in general. I use it with the rt4k but I also heard of folks using it with the morph.

[distant rivet]

Do any of them allow for 4k@120 with BFI?

[hard sinew]

Rt4k does 4k60 max. But you can do 120fps bfi stuff at lower resolutions afaik. Didn't try it yet.

[sly gazelle]

I’m getting crazy flicker with the newest GB Core. This is in DV mode hooked up to a Morph4K

[hard sinew]

I'll update and take a look if it does the same on rt4k.

[hard sinew]

Works fine on rt4k. Any specific game you want me to test?

[sly gazelle]

It starts when loading the core and persists when loading the any game. 😞

[hard sinew]

I take it other cores work fine with dv1?

Dunno if the morph men have a discord or something, but it would be worth it to bring it up there.

[sly gazelle]

Definitely have dropped a line there as well 🤓 I appreciate you looking out 👍

[hard sinew]

We all live in this crazy 4k upscaler world together after all 😅

[primal lichen]

I get the same problem.

[primal lichen]

Other cores work with the DV1 on the Morph 4K, it's just the Game Boy one that is causing problems.

[sly gazelle]

Someone in the MiSTer community said it works fine with their RT4K. So it must be a Morph timing issue

I tested with both Stable and Testing Firmwares

[primal lichen]

You can use the Super Game Boy core as a loophole; I can confirm it works fine.

Game Boy Color exclusives won't work obviously though.

[hard sinew]

This is what the rt4k sees if that is of any help. I'm on the latest mister stable, with the latest gb core thats in update_all and the latest rt4k stable firmware.

But the menu is seriously mangled in dv1. Wonder if there is a way to decouple it from the core resolution. 😅

[sly gazelle]

Thanks for sharing. 🤓👍 - I was getting envious that you had perfection on your end 😂

[hard sinew]

I'm playing star wars episode one racer on the core since I tested it for you, nothing to be envious about.

But dv1 is really nice for gameboy. Before I had the choice between integer scaling or full picture. In pokemon you can see 1 eye of your character beeing clearly bigger with non integer. No I have full screen with 2 eyes of the same size!

[toxic cargo]

Hello there! Looking at the core docs in https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/AtariLynx_MiSTer/blob/main/README.md, it seems that the Lynx was able to change it's screen refresh rate dynamically between 50 and 79Hz.
Shouldn't the core do the same with vsync_adjust=2?

Or maybe I am missing something here?

[torn jay]

75hz is useless on the lynx. The lynx uses a framebuffer internally, unlike other tile/sprite based handhelds like gb, gba or wonderswan and while it could do that high refresh rate in theory, the bandwidth to draw that is not even reached by homebrew. So most games with 75hz(e.g. california games) run with much less fps internally, typically 6-15, some up to 30 but that is rare

maybe some dynamic output frequency could be done, but the improvements to be gained are very low. vsync adjust 2 + triple buffering already has less visible latency than the original screen 🙂

[toxic cargo]

Less visible latency than the original screen? Is that because of the slow pixel response on the original screen?

Other than that, I don't see how triple buffering could have less lag than the original system

Also, smooth scrolls (in the few places where it's visible on a Lynx game, like PacLand's fairy flyby sequence when game starts) are only possible with sync core to 60Hz. Shouldn't buffer video produce smooth scrolls too?

[proud rivet]

I recently fixed an integer scaling related aspect ratio bug in the MiSTer framework. The bug made LCD shadow masks misalign on the Lynx, GBA and WonderSwan cores. However, it was caused by the display being only horizontally scaled down to fit on 4:3 displays.

The GBA2P core will probably not have been updated with a recent version of the framework, but this fix might not help in this case, as the two GBA displays together are tall instead of wide.

[torn jay]

yes, the original screen has about 3 frames of lag and/or afterglow. Some homebrew even requires that to work properly, that's why there is a blend option for up to 3 frames

keep in mind that triple buffer is always for the ~59hz output of the lynx core, with 1.5 frames average lag. If a game runs at 20fps, that is only a half real frame

you could try the scrolling with blending like the real screen has. Maybe it's required for this game to look smooth

again, i'm not saying it's useless to have original refresh rate as output, it's just not really worth for the games and would most likely make screens freak out with the games that often change the refresh rate

[toxic cargo]

Maybe we could have the same "hacks" that the PSX core uses to prevent HDMI black-outs in games that repeatedly change the videomode?

[wispy gate]

wait what hacks are these

[toxic cargo]

The Fixed VBlank and Fixed Hblank options

[distant rivet]

I'll keep this in mind to see if GBA2P gets updated, thanks!

[distant rivet]

Works great. I no longer get black-outs during games. Only when loading a core, at the start of the bios, and whenever loading a game. That's probably just due to me running vsync_adjust=2

[torn jay]

Fixed blanks just fixes the resolution so that it no longer switches when the game switches it. That has nothing to do with the frequency. The same for frequency would mean fixed frequency and is what the lynx core already does today, you just cannot turn it off

[toxic cargo]

Ah, I see! I was confused, thanks 🙂

[mystic barn]

It's all come down to this

[hot sparrow]

nice i should play more

[mystic barn]

If they don't have a level editor in the switch version that's a huge missed opportunity

[uneven rover]

Donkey Kong Maker would be so rad

[sweet sedge]

indeed

this was planned for GBA and GC https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/08/donkey-kong-plus-gba-beta/

but got cancelled

and then...

the project got revived some time after as the Mario VS Donkey Kong game we know now, there is still some usable leftovers of a level editor https://tcrf.net/Mario_vs._Donkey_Kong_(Game_Boy_Advance)#Level_Editor

and now...
we've got a real level editor https://github.com/bailli/eDKit which is being a very useful tool for the DX hack!

[uneven rover]

Wow, TIL

[mystic barn]

very cool!

[hard sinew]

I'm getting audio dropouts in the gameboy core while playing pokemon red. This is with dv1 on a rt4k. It's most noticeable when running into a wild pokemon and their scream is partially or fully cut off.

Can anybody with a rt4k or morph please try and see if they can reproduce it?

[sly gazelle]

Ugh!! Still have flicker on my end with the Morph4K 😞

[hard sinew]

I solved it by turning the buffer on.

Somewhere in the core settings

Try that

[sly gazelle]

Tried that too. Appreciate it tho 🤓

Tried Main and Unstable

[hard sinew]

On rt4k you could see a momentary drop in pixelclock without the buffer, which maybe is related to the audio drop. Edit: momentary not monetary 😅

[wraith magnet]

Is this a bug on the tink rather than the core?

[cinder peak]

sounds like a rt4k issue to me if it's not happening over hdmi normally

[hard sinew]

As mentioned, it went completely away on the tink when I activated the buffer option. Dunno what it does though.

[wraith magnet]

Oh so someone getting this on Morph as well and buffer doesn't fix it

Good for @fallen harbor to be aware of

[primal lichen]

Afaik the problem is known on the Morph 4K and it might get fixed with the next major update.

The Morph 4K also has issues with the subpixels having a yellow tint on that core, which again is a known issue and should be fixed eventually.

[fallen harbor]

we'll have some changes in next morph update that adjust the hdmi input clk/data phase. This should hopefully fix yellow pixels and unstable syncs.

so far the GB core in dv1 is the only hdmi input that needs this adjustment. As long as it works in the end is all I care about

[mild glen]

I thought the buffer was only for hdmi

Maybe I was wrong

[hard sinew]

Dv1 on rt4k uses hdmi

[crisp widget]

Do all the Game Boy cores work with the link cable snac or just original/color?

[gleaming heath]

Just original/color. No one has implemented it in the GBA core yet.

[cinder peak]

it uses hdmi but it bypasses the framebuffer

[hard sinew]

That's weird then. The issue was totally reproducible but went away when I turned stabilize image (buffer) on in the core.

You could also see the drop in pixel clock when it's turned off vs when it's turned on.

[cinder peak]

well let's trace it and find out why

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Gameboy_MiSTer/blob/master/Gameboy.sv#L238

[keen laurel]

"P1O5,Stabilize video(buffer),Off,On;",

[cinder peak]

that's status[5]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Gameboy_MiSTer/blob/master/Gameboy.sv#L755

[keen laurel]

.double_buffer( status[5]),

[cinder peak]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Gameboy_MiSTer/blob/master/rtl/lcd.v#L213-L247

yeah, so it doesn't have anything to do with the framebuffer in the framework

[hard sinew]

I'll try again when I get home.

[hard sinew]

Found an even better place to replicate it, when you take the stairs up and down in your house. The music shortly cuts out and you see the pixel clock drop.

One is with stabilize video(buffer) off and the other is on.

[cinder peak]

so it's more stable with it on? that makes sense then

the rt4k probably is struggling with how to deal with the original signal without that tiny buffer. that buffer won't even be a frame though so you aren't getting any lag from it i don't think

the pixel clock is stable with the buffered mode so this makes sense.

i'm not familiar with gameboy consolizers, do they have a framebuffer built in or some kind of added line buffering?

[hard sinew]

Yes, turning the buffer on fixes everything.

I wonder if something similar could be done with the psx core. That one also has issues with the resolution changes (like opening the menu in ff7) and can drop audio. That the pixel clock is stable on that one, so it's probably something completely different.

[cinder peak]

can you try turning on the Black Transitions option in the psx core and see if that resolves it?

i'm guessing it might

[hard sinew]

Already tested that, it doesn't.

The issue doesn't occur when using the mister scaler, so I guess it's not one of "those" transitions.

[cinder peak]

are you using a really low lag option on the retrotink?

to make it smooth in the transition you would probably need triple buffering or something.

i have an rt5x and it handles it pretty well but when i used the lowest lag option i would get the same thing on my real psx on multiple games that had resolution switches

not shade toward the rt5x, but just a fact that hdmi signals carry both audio and video so when one drops the other drops until it gets synced again

[hard sinew]

Yeah I'm on minlag, I can try 1/2frame and 1 frame real quick before I need to get ready for work.

[cinder peak]

yeah that's what i would probably do on anything where the resolution switches a lot

[hard sinew]

Yeah I've also been thinking it might being an hdmi issue. But goind digital-analog-digital also sounds like weird solution

Still does the same thing with buffer set to 1 frame on the rt4k. Zakk had a theory that the i2c bus is a bit too slow and stalls main and therefor drops audio. The image flicker looks like the rt4k itself is a bit too slow to recalc the picture with the new resolution or something. But I'm not an expert on these things.

[cinder peak]

yeah i could see that being the cause

this doesn't happen with direct video adapters i don't think though, i'd have to test again, been awhile

so must be related to relaying the infoframe data quickly enough, the stuff added specifically for 4k scalers with direct video input capability

[hard sinew]

Hopefully with the proliferation of 4k scalers and alternatives like the morphs there will be more perspectives on the current dv1 issues and solutions.

[timber wraith]

I think it might be the nature of Lynx hardware but, does anyone else have some odd surfer sprite glitching in CA Games?

[torn jay]

I can't remember seeing that and i played the game quite a bit

[timber wraith]

What should it look like normally? It’s been quite some time since I played on real hardware.

[torn jay]

i don't have access to my capture device currently, so i cannot show how it looks here

[timber wraith]

I’ll try to video my tv. 1080p LCD. Though, are there any things I can check? My isn’t smooth like this video. https://youtu.be/mAc8Su1huLE?si=IDuBpbh7FzzB4CxL

[cinder peak]

That's using some kind of software emulator.

[timber wraith]

Oh. How is it supposed to look? I haven’t played on real hardware in 30 years.

[torn jay]

tried some capture. does it look different for you? If not, where is the issue?

[coral vale]

Exported my pokemon blue save file from my mister to my pc to change things in PKHEX, but now the save file is too large (33kb compared to 32kb)

how would I go about fixing this?

[timber wraith]

I believe the surfer is moving the same way on both. I suppose it is the nature of the Lynx hardware. The surfer looks like he’s jumping a pixel or two ahead every now and then. I’m surprised how smooth the emulator I posted above is running. Is that a frame doubler or some other trick? Maybe not possible on the DE-10.

Thanks for confirming the video.

[coral vale]

i'm trying to figure what the GB core did to make my save file go from 32kb to 33kb

this is also preventing me from transferring the save back into my cartridge

[north ice]

It sounds like PKHEX has increased your file size, if the file you took from the mister was the correct size

[coral vale]

Oh PKHEX wouldn’t recognize it because it was already 32 kb

[torn jay]

the video is 60 fps, which mister can do of course. The surfing game itself is only 30 fps, so there is no issue at all. You might want to use vsync adjust 1/2 for best results, if you are not already using it

[weak folio]

Try to view the file in a hex editor (make a backup first!) and see if you can find padding at the end of the file.

Actually, if you want to send it to me, I can take a look. DM me.

[coral vale]

Thanks! DM'd

[timber wraith]

How I can adjust vsync to 1/2 within the core?

[torn jay]

you need to add a AtariLynx section in the mister.ini and add it there, there is no possibility to change it live in the OSD

like this

[AtariLynx]
vsync_adjust=2

[timber wraith]

Ah, I see. Thanks again. 🙂 I'll try it out.

[timber wraith]

The core still shows 60/30 for its frame rate. Is there a certain place in the mister.ini I need to put it or at the bottom is okay?

[torn jay]

that is correct, in the OSD go to the left and check the real refresh rate to the screen

it should be slightly different with vsync_adjust=1 or 2. With 0 it should be exactly 60 hz, which doesn't match with ther lynx refresh rate so you sometimes lose a frame on 0

the fps overlay is just for checking how often the core switches the framebuffer (lynx is framebuffer based unlike most other handhelds of that time)

[timber wraith]

Here is an oddity; when I added
[AtariLynx]
vsync_adjust=2
to the mister.ini, the refresh rate dropped to 59.2 or 59.1, when previously without the ini edit, it was running at 60Hz.
With the ini edit, using any of the core's options, I cannot find a way to get it running smoothly. Is it possibly my TV then? It's only a 1080p set.
My previous setting was vsync_adjust=0 but I've tried it on 1 and 2 as well.
What could I be missing or messing up?

[torn jay]

maybe someone else can verify. for me it looks fine with vsync adjust 2 and 1080p. But the screen must be capable of the correct refresh rate

[ruby delta]

I get a decent picture here with vsync_adjust=2 but the surfer (and other sprites) are jumping back and forth a pixel so it might be the nature of the hardware.

[torn jay]

if it's really back and forth, that doesn't sound like a skipped(non shown) frame as that could only lead to stuttering back or forth, so maybe it's really the game and i just can't see it

[ruby delta]

I recorded some footage on my camera phone so hopefully it'll be visible in that. I'll upload it to yt in a few minutes and share a link. The seagull and the surfer are the only elements that stutter horizontally. Everything else is smooth.

[torn jay]

if only single sprites are stuttering, I don't see how the video output rate could be the reason then, as that would make the whole screen stutter, e.g. the waves

thank you for checking it!

[ruby delta]

Definitely single sprites only. it's very easy to verify by looking at the background water layer also in motion while the guy is surfing. The water pixels move but don't stutter left or right. Also it seems the surfer sprite stutters more as he speeds up.

[ruby delta]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCwzM8SsyRU (15 second video clip showing the surfer spreite stuttering as he slows down.) If you've played it on any non-handheld system (eg Master System or Megadrive) the surfer sprite is locked in position and doesn't do that. On lynx I would guess they added that stutter to simulate action/acceleration and maybe it looked good on actual hardware.

[timber wraith]

I'm glad it's noticeable by you guys. Sorry my incorrect terminology made it hard to understand what I was trying to point out (and maybe it's just how it is on the Lynx version). Does anyone have Lynx hardware? Mine died long ago. Anyway, thanks so much for checking into it.

[ruby delta]

2m30s into this vid you can see the vertical scanlines that (along with the slow refresh rate of the screen/blurriness) would have covered up the shaking of the surfer and help to sell the acceleration and motion of the surfer (and movement of his hair). I'd love to see (and play) california games on a Lynx that still has it's original screen. https://youtu.be/POT89iF0ntY?t=151

[timber wraith]

The original screen really did mask that shaking of the horizontal sprite movement. It's amazing what your mind can forget about gaming flaws from long ago.

[ruby delta]

Yeah it's just a shame that people are replacing those old screens with a brighter after-market LCD screen not realising that. Oh well, I might see if there's a vertical scanline filter and settings that give a similar effect..

[rotund flume]

There’s a lot of surface level analysis that happens with console modding and most of it is not wrong but games are designed for the hardware and its limitations. Often those purposeful designs get lost when interfering with the hardware design.

This is especially true in handheld design when components are carefully selected based on price and performance and aspects of the hardware get modified to account for the weaknesses of components. It’s not like any of these companies slapped a screen in there and called it a day, the behavior of those displays are carefully considered and everything is calibrated around it.

[toxic cargo]

In fact, those incompetents at Funnyplaying include a screen on their FPGBC packs that does NOT match the Gameboy core refresh rate, and smooth scrolling/movement is destroyed.
I contacted them about it and they don't even care.

[rotund flume]

ohhh that’s a bit harsh but I get your frustrations and I’m sorry to hear about it

what’s the game boy core refresh rate? Maybe it’s solvable through software?

[toxic cargo]

My guess (the core is closed-source so who knows) is that the core runs at the original Gameboy refresh rate of 59.727501 Hz, but Funnyplaying used some kind of stock displays that don't do that.

Software... well... since the core is closed, only they know. But as I said, they don't care.

My fault for buying what's basically e-waste

[rotund flume]

I don’t think it’s ewaste. There’s a flaw but maybe they can fix it.

[toxic cargo]

To fix something they must acknowledge there's a problem to begin with 😄
But they don't

[hard sinew]

Afaik the screen they use for the gbc screen is from a BlackBerry phone.

[hot sparrow]

part of why the analogue pocket is actually kind of cool

like, yeah it's not original hardware but it's doing a good job of feeling like it

[hard sinew]

I didn't buy one so far and now I might as well wait till that handheld mister is out to compare.

[hot sparrow]

my mister fits in my hand tho

[hard sinew]

That's the case I had before I went full metal.

[hot sparrow]

i wish i had buttons that matched the colour of the LEDs

[hard sinew]

I never had buttons. I used a cotton stick.

[hot sparrow]

lol nice

[hard sinew]

Now I'm all purple, all the time.

[toxic cargo]

Got any source for that information? I'd love to slap Funnyplaying support on the face with it...

[hard sinew]

If you google it you find numerous sites mention it. Sadly I can't seem to figure out how to copy the link from reddit but it has a lot of information which seems to be genuine

I also think the gbc q5 display they're selling is called that because the display is from the BlackBerry q5, so they're not really secretive about it.

[uneven rover]

It’s the same with the new AMOLED displays, pretty sure they are called q10 because they are also repurposed from a blackberry

[hard sinew]

Do you think it's worth it upgrading from the q5 to the q10?

[uneven rover]

Not sure, I don’t have one. A lot of people are raving about it, which makes sense, it’s an OLED with perfect blacks after all, but sounds like it suffers from the same issues the other displays have, ie. over-saturated colour

Probably the one to get if you were modding a new system, but i imagine if you have a q5 and are happy with it its probably not worth the cost and effort to switch over

That’s how I feel at least with my q5/unmodded systems 😄

[hard sinew]

Yeah I feel pretty ambivalent about it tbh. The black on the q5 isn't too bad. Maybe I'll get it if I manage to break the screen some day or something like that.

[tropic coral]

Macho Nacho video shows comparison of black level but yeah, my biggest problem is also that it doesn't look like it has desaturated color option. Looks pretty nice otherwise.

[uneven rover]

Touch screen might be nice, on a couple consoles I’ve modded with the q5 the touch sensor just refuses to actuate through the case plastic, I end up just opening it up, setting everything how I want and never adjusting it again

[hard sinew]

My touch thingy also doesn't work but you can solder wires to start and select and access the menu that way.

The laminated gba screen has the touch thingy on the lower part of the screen and I don't really like it tbh. Most of the time it's fine but when you accidentally touch something that opens the menu it's really annoying.

I like the gba sp screen mod best for that reason. You can use the existing button for the backlight to control brightness.

[toxic cargo]

Thanks a lot for that! Really, now it all makes sense... Who will you call? Those b***rds!

[full blaze]

Hey does the 75hz output option in the wonderswan core only apply to analog out?

[arctic solstice]

Last I tried, it worked in HDMI on my 144Hz monitor.

[full blaze]

Thank you! Yeah I have toggled the switch in the osd but the resolution output still says 60fps on hdmi (testing at 1440p though, maybe I should try 1080)

Running through an LG C3, should be able to do up to 120

[full blaze]

Ah my ini had limits on max/min framerates from some previous testing, that’s all it was

[steel cliff]

Question: The main GBA core isn't loading my save files of GBA Donkey Kong Country 3 properly. In fact the SAVE RAM, BACKUP RAM AND AUTOSAVE related options are greyed out on the OSD. The GBA2P core doesn't have this problem and is able to load up the save file fine.

[torn jay]

that doesn't really makes any sense. Maybe you put it in the wrong folder?

GBA2P is not any different in detecting if a save exists at all

if you can't figure out, please upload the save file and we can also check

[steel cliff]

Using the main GBA core, here is an example of DKC2, saves load up fine.

Now here is DKC3

The rom filenames match

[steel cliff]

Hmm I going to work soonish but I got an idea once I get back.

[torn jay]

sorry don't have access to my mister currently, maybe i can try in 2 days if noone else does before. I'm surprised that the save size is smaller on the 3rd game, but i haven't checked yet

[steel cliff]

Managed to get it working. I moved the save file from the GBA2P saves folder over to the main GBA saves folder.

[radiant eagle]

perhaps that save file was just corrupted somehow

[steel cliff]

not corrupted per say, just me being a plonker and forgetting to move the 100% save over to the other folder.

I played DKC2 GBA a lot lately which used a GBA save file from my cartridge.

[torn jay]

after reading the other discussion in the dev channel and Kitrinx answer, i think the issue is the file size. 512bytes means that there is only RTC data, but no save type. I don't know currently how that can happen, but just deleting the file is probably enough.

[thorn atlas]

hmm

[atomic hinge]

If my gbc core is starting with a screen that looks like an original dmg does that mean I’ve got the wrong boot rom?

[rotund flume]

Nah, just set your GBC core settings to GBC mode

[atomic hinge]

Oh wait, looks like it was my palette?

I feel more confused now

[rotund flume]

Game Boy and GBC are the same emulation core. They’re just split out in terms of settings so you can have different settings saved for when you want to play GB games versus GBC

[atomic hinge]

Ah okay, It's weird that my palette for gbc version defaulted to the DMG one then

[rotund flume]

Probably thought you were using the gameboy core and saved it earlier

[atomic hinge]

What’s the recommended palette to get a good game boy pocket look?

And preset

[hard sinew]

I think the palettes come down to a game by game basis. Some have special palletes like metroid 2 and look rather nice, but for other games I prefer the black and white.

[frank pasture]

I’m pretty sure there’s some weirdness with the palette saving. Mine (GB config) always seems to revert to DMG whenever I set it to GrayGrafx or whatever it’s called (looks a bit like the GB Pocket to me). I checked GitHub and someone else had mentioned it.

Keeps going back to “Auto” rather than “Custom”, or whatever the setting is

[mild glen]

https://x.com/azumfpg/status/1802348697285546348?s=46&t=j33yLl8p3dP1uKNH2get5Q

FPGAzumSpass (@AzumFpg) on X

I'm currently working on a Rogue-like action game for the GBA. With roughly 10 minute runs it fits perfectly for a portable console. The first test version will be available soon. Once that is out, I really hope for your feedback and suggestions to make it a great game.

Twitter · Jun 16, 2024, 2:33 PM

Very cool Robert!

[torn jay]

Thank you. I really hope it will evolve into a good game. It might take some time, it's my first game for a retro console with limited ressources.
Will need some ideas when it's time. Going all alone is really not perfect if the scope is not set in stone like it was with rebuilding some existing console 🙂

[rich mason]

toss it. start on the 3do core.

that's the promised land

[mild glen]

Crossing our fingers 🙂

[rotund flume]

How’s the state of the Neo geo pocket core?

[mild glen]

Jotego is currently working on it and in the process of adding colour support

[wraith magnet]

I think more accurately is he is paying gyurco to add colour support and finish the core off

[gray grail]

I thought that gyurco was unassigned of the project exactly one month ago.

[rotund flume]

It would be nice to be able to play it

[cinder peak]

looks great so far!

[rotund flume]

If anyone decides to check out the GBVideoPlayer stuff for the GBC from the recent update, make sure to have frame blending on.

It's a pretty cool proof of concept that someone was able to get FMV running on the GBC and write a tool to let anyone convert it.

If you want to be further impressed then check out Dragon's Lair or Toy Story Racer for the GBC, both games utilize video for their gameplay.

[wraith magnet]

What is the GBVideo stuff? Is it encoding videos in a format that can play on the GBC?

[frank pasture]

But is it Shrek on the GBA?

[hard sinew]

Imagine watching lord of the rings extended on a gbc. What a time to be alive.

[frank pasture]

Got a long train ride ahead of me later this week. I know what I’ll be doing

[fathom trail]

I'd use that just to get funny gbc quality screenshots of actors faces

[rotund flume]

LOL

[rotund flume]

I honestly thought this at first and was very excited

[frank pasture]

Not that long - but I have 5 hours on the train later this week. Anyone want to suggest a game that can be beat in approx that time?

(4th gen or earlier, since I’ll be playing on the Pocket)

I realise that’s an incredibly broad request!

[hard sinew]

I was about to recommend tomb raider on gbc but according to how long to beat thats around 12 hours.

[frank pasture]

5 hours is pretty short, but figured it might work for handheld games

I’ve never finished Wario Land, so maybe that

Or maybe frog for whom the bell tolls (a bit long, but I’m sure I can find another hour)

[hard sinew]

I'd probably play pokemon gen1 for the billionth time tbh.

There is a really neat romhack for that but the author is a lazy bum so it's not released anywhere.

[frank pasture]

I actually restarted gen 1 the other week. That’s definitely an option!

[hard sinew]

It's in color and you can catch all the mons.

Also trade evolutions are by level up, charizard can fly and important tms can be bought.

Oh and hm moves are all useful now. Cut and flash are nice moves to have actually.

[frank pasture]

A friend of mine is also replaying a gen 1 game, but the opposite one. We’re gonna go old school the next time we see each other and start trading like it’s 1998

[hard sinew]

How you gonna handle the starters and eeveelutions? Well I guess in the end you can always mew glitch.

[uneven rover]

I'm always of swinging back and forth between wanting to play insane romhacks that cram every single mon and mechanic from every generation, slightly more vanilla "QOL" type hacks, or just yeah, the actual original carts...

[hard sinew]

I can't forgive the fact that they indoctrinated me as a kid with the phrase: "gotta catch 'em all" and then I never had the chance.

[frank pasture]

Probably just accept that we can’t catch ‘em all 😦

We did both mew glitch though for mew itself 😎

[hard sinew]

You can do it for every mon with ditto

And you GOTTA catch em all!

[sterile quarry]

Also gotta recommend the Gameboy SNAC for being ridiculously cool and allowing some trades for other starters and the like.

[tawdry walrus]

I first played Pokemon late enough that I actually did catch them all using Mew glitch.

[hard sinew]

Pokemon dx violet is online! #games-and-patches message

[frank pasture]

Oh, you actually made that?! Awesome! Congrats!

[hard sinew]

Thank you. 🙂 Hope you enjoy it.

[rotund flume]

What did you do on it?

[hard sinew]

all 151 Pokemon are available, no trades needed
trade evolutions evolve by leveling up
important TMs can be bought in Celadon City
Moonstones are also available in Celadon City
Charizard can learn Fly
Cut and Flash have been changed to be desirable moves and not a burden
Poison Type weakness to Bug Type has been fixed to be in line with later Generations and to balance the new Cut move properties
Focus Energy has been changed to raise Attack by 1 level to side step the bug of it reducing crit rate instead of raising it
Moltres learns Flamethrower by level up
Scyther learns Wing Attack by level up
new Titlescreen

Or you could read the description Robby. 😅

[rotund flume]

I don’t know how to read!

I saw four contributors so I was wondering what you did on the patch.

[hard sinew]

The contributions are just for the colorization

[frank pasture]

Didn’t realise you were his manager 😉

Get back to work! Write more code!

[hard sinew]

I guess that's his way of scouting me.

[toxic cargo]

Hello!

Has somebody tried the latest GB core in unstable-nightlies?
Doesn't seem lo load any game or show any bios...

[gray grail]

I was playing with it just some minutes ago, doing some Batman and Pinball - Revenge of the Gator.

No problem at all on my side.

[toxic cargo]

Strange.. did you rename the BIOS or something?

[gray grail]

I haven't changed anything on my config since ages.
Let me take a look.

I have a 'dmg_boot.bin' file inside my GAMEBOY folder.

59c8598e / 32fbbd84168d3482956eb3c5051637f5 for the hashes

[sudden charm]

gameboy core doesn't even require real bios

it has sameboy built in

[gray grail]

Normally, yes. But I wanted the full 'experience' with the original Nintendo logo.

[rotund flume]

It ain’t gameboy without the TING

[thorny apex]

still TINGs, but does not nintendo

[gray grail]

Ting noise, that's it! (Birdy, from Conker).

[toxic cargo]

That was Beardy's line, wasn't it? 😄

[gray grail]

Better.

More seriously, you wanted to know if I've done something differently.

[sudden charm]

yeah I mean, me too, I have the BIOS set up, I'm just saying it shouldn't affect the core actually working for someone

[gray grail]

So, yes I have an original BIOS file on my config and declared as well on the core options.

[toxic cargo]

Well, nightlies core doesn't work here, BIOS or not

So I guess it's an unstable build

Any other cores work perfectly here, including Saturn

[rotund flume]

Yeah but with the real bios you get the gameboy ting

[sudden charm]

I need the core to simulate having a dirty cart randomly

so I get the corrupted logo until I take my mister and blow on it

[gray grail]

We should do the same with the PS1 core.

Refusing 1/10th time to boot if you don't return your MiSTer system upside down.
Like a real system. 😏

[sudden charm]

it's got that accelerator IIRC so that's actually possible

[gray grail]

I know.

😁

[rotund flume]

I also know

[sudden charm]

MiSTerFPGA: Beyond Cycle Accurate

[gray grail]

Maybe, just maybe, remove the core config file and redo it from scratch.

Like when the N64 core didn't work anymore for some people months ago.

[uneven rover]

that's one thing that sucks about Analogue Pocket, no ting when playing from real carts

[sudden charm]

yes but you can cart-nudge to make your game freeze

[gray grail]

Unacceptable.

[sudden charm]

so it's got that going for it

[north ice]

The mister gbc bios has a logo that looks much closer to the original than before, plus has a lot of extra features.

GB bios still has the slow scroll.

[low peak]

wonderswan enjoyers will like what i just posted in #controllers

[gleaming heath]

OMG yes! I need this. I love the Wonderswan core, but it gets weird real fast when you were supposed to rotate the system/controls like in parts of Klonoa

[low peak]

absolutely

not sure if there’s a usb version, but no doubt in time it’ll be a thing

[gleaming heath]

Is that a SNES plug? That would work with several existing SNES/USB adapters as is. Are you planning to sell these or release as project files etc?

[low peak]

i’m not the maker my dude

[gleaming heath]

my bad, got too excited lol

[tacit mural]

The x user plans to release them open source only. Leaving it up to others to produce. But you could probably just take the project files to the many PCB authoring services and have one ordered manually for yourself.

Then you just need a wonderswan shell.

[rotund flume]

Dude that’s cool as hell.

[low peak]

$10 on aliexpress

[tacit mural]

I would worry about the button pads for the D-Pads >.>

[frank pasture]

https://kotaku.com/kien-game-boy-advance-22-years-most-delayed-game-gba-1851578935

[rotund flume]

I hope Beyond Good & Evil 2 beats that record

[timber wraith]

Wait... You mean you don't want to play BG&E2?

[hard sinew]

I'm really not interested in ubisoft games anymore tbh.

[rotund flume]

I do but until it comes out I’m entertained by it being an endless cash pit for Ubisoft

[thorny apex]

you sad little man

[rotund flume]

Sad because I don’t have BG&E2!

[hard sinew]

I'd be suprised if bg&e2 won't end up in a cyberpunk situation.

Which I still haven't played, because they're not finished patching it, are they? 🤡

[rotund flume]

I liked the original and I’d like a sequel. I’m just glad they’re not building hype up endlessly and are being quiet about it until they can show something off. Cyberpunk was really critically dismantled by its overzealous marketing team.

They did a great job though, that game sold tremendously well.

At the cost of the studio’s credibility though.

[fathom trail]

Cyberpunk was alright when I played through. There's one specific character moment that really made the whole thing worth it for me

||talking with jonny while at his grave||

[rotund flume]

I’ve seen Cyberpunk behind closed doors several times leading up to release and it always came across as a complete shit show. If you’re in it long enough you can also intuit what and why they’re showing specific things off and glossing over other aspects. I also befriended a few devs before launch and we had a lengthy chat about the game’s development too. Basically I had front row seats to the car crash and was expecting it.

Then I played the game and had such a great time. No one told me it was open world Deus Ex where the focus was on the side missions and I absolutely loved it.

I guess go in with really low expectations with any game and you’ll likely have a good time lol.

[hard sinew]

If I'm supposed to go in with low expectations I'll wait for a few more years when it's on sale for 10 bucks.

[rotund flume]

I gave them a ton of pointers on weapon combat so I’d like to believe I helped out in some way haha

[fathom trail]

I think I've almost been conditioned into this 😆

But I've also pretty much removed myself from gaming hype cycles

I play most games months after they release

[rotund flume]

I think being excited for something is fun and good but most of it is just marketing to make sure you buy it at full price so publishers can quickly recoup their development investment.

Waiting until months after release is frankly the smarter play.

You get the game for cheaper and with most of its bugs ironed out.

Fomo is bullshit just to get you to spend your money. It’s just a way to condition you to purchase stuff sight unseen.

But whatever makes you happy is important too

It’s just something to be aware of. Sometimes you form a trust in specific publishers and that’s great too. For example that’s me with Nintendo. They make games I like and I feel like they hit the mark for me:

[hard sinew]

I wouldn't call it trust but when I learn something is published by devolver digital my ears perk up. They had some really great games and oh so funny e3 shows.

[hollow sail]

wat

[rotund flume]

That’s pretty cool

[random gazelle]

I'm thinking of modding it

Back into a real gba

[fathom trail]

I saw one of these but it was trex themed and a vita

[random gazelle]

Step 1 of the modding process?

Have a bath and shower.

T-rex themed and a vita!?! That's so bizarre it can only be true

[hollow sail]

https://tenor.com/view/tammy-and-the-t-rex-t-rex-gif-19344541

[crisp widget]

Needs a backlight mod

https://www.gameboy-advance.net/accessories/gba_afterburner_internal_light.htm

[fathom trail]

Found the picture I took

[crisp widget]

That d-pad alignment

[hollow sail]

Finally, a system for playing Q*Bert on the go.