maemo.org - Talk

maemo.org - Talk (https://talk.maemo.org/index.php)
-   Games (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=12)
-   -   Atari Lynx emulator (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58421)

whaleyboy 2010-07-14 08:49

Atari Lynx emulator
 
Are there any coders out there willing to try porting Handy/SDL over to the N900? An Atari Lynx emulator would be amazing on the N900!

Here's a link to the source code:
http://sdlemu.ngemu.com/handysdl.php

Should be a snap for you gifted hackers out there! :D

Who wouldn't want this awesomeness on their N900??!
http://www.retrogamer.net/users/99/t...adblasters.jpg

tlex26 2010-07-14 08:54

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
I had an Atari Lynx and really liked some of the games on it.
i.e. 'Blue Lightning' and Xenophobe.

It would indeed be really cool if someone could build an N900 Lynx emulator.

sdstrowes 2010-07-14 08:56

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
+1

I've been running Hatari for some of my old Atari ST games. Hooked up to the TV? Pretty cool... Would be good to try out some Lynx stuff too!

Bazza 2010-07-14 11:07

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
yep same here i had one too battery usage was poor.

But it would be great to have this on the N900 with six axis control. :)

California games,Blue lightning,Pacland, and Gauntlet to name a few.

oh and Road blasters thanks whaleyboy.;)

ishurmer 2010-07-14 11:56

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by whaleyboy (Post 751270)
Are there any coders out there willing to try porting Handy/SDL over to the N900? An Atari Lynx emulator would be amazing on the N900!

Here's a link to the source code:
http://sdlemu.ngemu.com/handysdl.php

Should be a snap for you gifted hackers out there! :D

Who wouldn't want this awesomeness on their N900??!
http://www.retrogamer.net/users/99/t...adblasters.jpg

Is 0.5 the latest version? If so, the source is available here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~shalafi/handy_sdl-0.5-src.tar.bz2

ishurmer 2010-07-14 12:00

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Also, the graphics use OpenGL, which is going to be problematic (at best) for someone experienced to port it... [edit] Although, it does only appear to be used for 2d texturing? Did the Lynx even have 3D hardware - surely it was a bit early for that!?

HtheB 2010-07-14 12:26

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
I just bought a Lynx and a Lynx 2 for my handheld collections...
Very funny that those things were VERY huge :p

But at that time, it had actually pretty good graphics. (colors, backlight 16 bit) while the gameboy was only monochrome, no backlight and was only 8-bit

whaleyboy 2010-07-14 13:09

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ishurmer (Post 751403)
Also, the graphics use OpenGL, which is going to be problematic (at best) for someone experienced to port it... [edit] Although, it does only appear to be used for 2d texturing? Did the Lynx even have 3D hardware - surely it was a bit early for that!?

Nope, the Lynx didn't have any 3D hardware, but it did have hardware rotation and scaling and "unlimited" sprites on screen! Wow! It used it to great effect in the conversion of Stun Runner, which was probably the best on any system. Speaking of great arcade conversions, Klax was probably the best on the Lynx...the sound blew me away at the time!

ishurmer 2010-07-14 13:12

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by whaleyboy (Post 751470)
Nope, the Lynx didn't have any 3D hardware, but it did have hardware rotation and scaling and "unlimited" sprites on screen! Wow! It used it to great effect in the conversion of Stun Runner, which was probably the best on any system. Speaking of great arcade conversions, Klax was probably the best on the Lynx...the sound blew me away at the time!

I remember playing on a Lynx and thinking it was quite good, but you're talking to someone who was brought up with Amigas, so I know exactly what you mean ;) Note: the OpenGL usage seems very limited (just a few functions use the fixed pipeline), so I imagine someone who knows what they're doing can port relatively easily.

whaleyboy 2010-07-14 13:19

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ishurmer (Post 751473)
I remember playing on a Lynx and thinking it was quite good, but you're talking to someone who was brought up with Amigas, so I know exactly what you mean ;) Note: the OpenGL usage seems very limited (just a few functions use the fixed pipeline), so I imagine someone who knows what they're doing can port relatively easily.

Funny you should mention the Amiga because the two designers of the Lynx (Dave Needle and R.J. Mical) were also part of the team that designed the Amiga, and the Amiga was used as the development platform for the Lynx I believe.

ishurmer 2010-07-14 13:26

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by whaleyboy (Post 751479)
Funny you should mention the Amiga because the two designers of the Lynx (Dave Needle and R.J. Mical) were also part of the team that designed the Amiga, and the Amiga was used as the development platform for the Lynx I believe.

Yep, that rings a bell. I believe R.J. Mical also worked on the 3D0, and is involved with the PS3 at some level too nowadays? I might have a play with the emulator on the SDK when I've got some time if no one else is going to, but I don't really know a great deal about OpenGL so it may take me a while to achieve anything!

smoku 2010-07-14 13:41

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by whaleyboy (Post 751270)
Here's a link to the source code:
http://sdlemu.ngemu.com/handysdl.php

"The emulators on this page are CLOSED SOURCE until quoted otherwise. The emulators will stay closed source until the original developers have agreed that the sources may be distributed to the public. Don't e-mail use about sourcecode, no awnser will be given!"

aironeous 2010-07-14 13:48

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
KillListOfVideo games
or KLOV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_List_of_Videogames

includes the atari game tempest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28arcade_game%29

I want tempest and there are ports of the emulators on that wiki page i just gave.

ishurmer 2010-07-14 14:10

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by smoku (Post 751508)
"The emulators on this page are CLOSED SOURCE until quoted otherwise. The emulators will stay closed source until the original developers have agreed that the sources may be distributed to the public. Don't e-mail use about sourcecode, no awnser will be given!"

Hi Smoku, as I said on an earlier post, sourcecode is available on the same site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~shalafi/handy_sdl-0.5-src.tar.bz2, although not sure this the most recent version.

OpenGL usage seems to be limited to 2d texturing, and there isn't a great deal of OpenGL code, although I'm not sure whether it will be trivial to port to GLES2?

smoku 2010-07-14 14:42

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ishurmer (Post 751554)
Hi Smoku, as I said on an earlier post, sourcecode is available on the same site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~shalafi/handy_sdl-0.5-src.tar.bz2, although not sure this the most recent version.

It's not. Latest is 0.82.

ishurmer 2010-07-14 14:46

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ishurmer (Post 751598)
But confusingly it says:

Code:

Handy/SDL v0.5
--------------

* Ported the original Handy v0.95 WIN32 code to GCC;

The source code is timestamped 2008, whereas those original download links (on the first post) are timestamped 2001, so I can only assume they changed the numbering scheme at some point when producing the SDL version, and the source code is a more recent version...

Found the answer whilst going through the code:

Code:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Revision History:                                                        //
// -----------------                                                        //
//                                                                          //
// December 2005 :                                                          //
//  Since the 14th of April, the WIN32 of Handy (written by Keith Wilkins)  //
//  Handy has become OpenSource. Handy/SDL v0.82 R1 was based upon the old  //
//  v0.82 sources and was released closed source.                          //
//                                                                          //
//  Because of this event, the new Handy/SDL will be released as OpenSource //
//  but is rewritten from scratch because of lost sources (tm). The SDLemu  //
//  team has tried to bring Handy/SDL v0.1 with al the functions from the  //
//  closed source version.                                                  //
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

So the source is definitely for a newer version than the closed source ones.

ishurmer 2010-07-14 14:53

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
^ As above

smoku 2010-07-14 14:53

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Oh. So it seems.
Handy was opened in 2004 with 0.90 version. And the OP link is for 2001 version.

So you might be right that 0.5 is newer. It's a confusing change though.

slaapliedje 2010-07-14 23:21

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
If Handy can't / won't be ported for the N900, there is also Mednafen, which is a command line emulator for multiple game systems (including the Lynx) and has a GTK frontend written in python called mfe.

http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/

http://mednafenfe.sourceforge.net/

That's what I usually use to play Lynx games, because for a long time there weren't a version of Handy/SDL that I could get to work.

slaapliedje

ishurmer 2010-07-15 10:59

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by slaapliedje (Post 752205)
If Handy can't / won't be ported for the N900, there is also Mednafen, which is a command line emulator for multiple game systems (including the Lynx) and has a GTK frontend written in python called mfe.

http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/

http://mednafenfe.sourceforge.net/

That's what I usually use to play Lynx games, because for a long time there weren't a version of Handy/SDL that I could get to work.

slaapliedje

Interesting, this seemed to build from vanilla source on the SDK. I'll test it on my N900 shortly.

Bazza 2010-07-15 12:04

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
There is a Lynx emulator for the GP2X F200, did whoever port this need permission to do so or can anyone port this version?.

Game Park GP2X F200 Atari Lynx port

ishurmer 2010-07-15 13:10

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by slaapliedje (Post 752205)
If Handy can't / won't be ported for the N900, there is also Mednafen, which is a command line emulator for multiple game systems (including the Lynx) and has a GTK frontend written in python called mfe.

http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/

http://mednafenfe.sourceforge.net/

That's what I usually use to play Lynx games, because for a long time there weren't a version of Handy/SDL that I could get to work.

slaapliedje

I can confirm that I've managed to build the emulator and tweak the config options, so it plays lynx games fullscreen rather nicely! Problem is theres no GUI at the moment (mednafenfe doesn't scale down very well), so if I was to upload a package to extras-devel it would be command line only.

If anyone is interested I can send them the archive for testing purposes.

Bazza 2010-07-15 13:58

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
@ishurmer

I am interested in the emulator but would prefer a deb file with GUI. Can you add a GUI to it or do you need a little help with it.

Also (this is the noob coming out of me) when installable programs need to be optified to install correctly this doesn't include using programs from the command line does it?

ishurmer 2010-07-15 14:17

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazza (Post 752833)
@ishurmer

I am interested in the emulator but would prefer a deb file with GUI. Can you add a GUI to it or do you need a little help with it.

Also (this is the noob coming out of me) when installable programs need to be optified to install correctly this doesn't include using programs from the command line does it?

Sure, I can do a GUI, but it's a fair amount of work and I'm very pushed for time at the moment, so no promises as to when it will be completed - the command line emu is there if anyone wants it.

Optification (as I understand it) is installing the programs under the /opt path and symbolic linking to the relevant system paths. This means the software doesn't take up much rootfs space, so clearly this is preferable. In the case of the current version of the emulator, the folder is installed under /home/user anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Bazza 2010-07-15 14:50

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
What are the instructions to run it through xterm?

ishurmer 2010-07-15 14:54

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazza (Post 752875)
What are the instructions to run it through xterm?

It's very simple to run through XTerm, once installed you simply use the command "mednafen <pathtorom>".

If you made a folder called roms in the main folder using the File Manager, and downloaded a file called "ARom.zip", you could "mednafen /home/user/MyDocs/roms/ARom.zip" to run it.

Installation is fairly straightforward, if you want I'll PM you some instructions?

Bazza 2010-07-15 15:13

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Yep, i will give it a go. thanks

Bazza 2010-07-15 15:40

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Are there any problems with installing it this way and then later on installing the deb version from extra-devel once its released?

ishurmer 2010-07-15 15:42

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Nope, will just be a case of removing a couple of files.

Bazza 2010-07-15 15:48

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Nice one, i will be on it as soon as i get home from work.

EDIT

I sound like a kid with a new toy ' i will play with it when i get home from school'

Dear oh dear what is the world comin to. :rolleyes:

Bazza 2010-07-15 18:12

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
i know u put in your guide to install dependencies, i have the latest firmware on the tablet,

Do i still need to install them?

whaleyboy 2010-07-15 18:25

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Looks like some progress is already being made! Thanks guys! I can't wait to see the results!

whaleyboy 2010-07-15 18:31

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ishurmer (Post 752883)
It's very simple to run through XTerm, once installed you simply use the command "mednafen <pathtorom>".

If you made a folder called roms in the main folder using the File Manager, and downloaded a file called "ARom.zip", you could "mednafen /home/user/MyDocs/roms/ARom.zip" to run it.

Installation is fairly straightforward, if you want I'll PM you some instructions?

I'd be happy to give the command line version a try, could you send me the instructions please?

ishurmer 2010-07-15 18:38

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazza (Post 753083)
i know u put in your guide to install dependencies, i have the latest firmware on the tablet,

Do i still need to install them?

You may have some installed already, but there's no harm in checking. Could you send me the instructions I sent you back via PM so I can forward them on please (the original copy is on my work machine, and it seems you can't access sent PMs)?

Bazza 2010-07-15 18:43

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
No probs...

slaapliedje 2010-07-16 04:52

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
That is awesome, that it was that easy to get working. Emulators are usually the worse to port because of processesor architectures and optimizations. I know, for example, that both gens and zsnes don't compile as x86_64 native because of the cpu emulation bits.

mednafen is a multi-platform emulator as well, if you'd PM it to me, I'd be more than happy to test all the platforms that it supports. I'm kind of a retro junky.

slaapliedje

whaleyboy 2010-07-16 07:37

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
I can confirm Mednafen works really well! How awesome is this phone...I posted a request for a Lynx emulator on the 14th and am playing Lynx games on my N900 on the 16th! Big thanks to ishurmer!

The only real issues are that you can't control the sound (it's always on, even when phone is on silent) and the image isn't scaled up to fit the screen, which I think might be because openGL isn't supported...?

ishurmer 2010-07-16 08:15

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by slaapliedje (Post 753519)
That is awesome, that it was that easy to get working. Emulators are usually the worse to port because of processesor architectures and optimizations. I know, for example, that both gens and zsnes don't compile as x86_64 native because of the cpu emulation bits.

mednafen is a multi-platform emulator as well, if you'd PM it to me, I'd be more than happy to test all the platforms that it supports. I'm kind of a retro junky.

slaapliedje

And that's why, to me, the N900 is a brilliant, brilliant device which other smartphones can't really touch :D i have sent you a PM. Hoping to get a package sorted later today.

I have only set up a keymap for the lynx files - if you look in the main mednafen.cfg there are numerous settings for screen res and buttons for other platforms if you could set some of these up, using standard ASCII key codes (check the lynx inputs), that would be excellent! Fairly confident we can then get a multi-platform emulator ported across.

ishurmer 2010-07-16 08:23

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by whaleyboy (Post 753600)
I can confirm Mednafen works really well! How awesome is this phone...I posted a request for a Lynx emulator on the 14th and am playing Lynx games on my N900 on the 16th! Big thanks to ishurmer!

The only real issues are that you can't control the sound (it's always on, even when phone is on silent) and the image isn't scaled up to fit the screen, which I think might be because openGL isn't supported...?

Don't thank me, thank the authors of mednafen. It was an unbelievably straightforward port, so obviously a very well written emu! The scaling issue is deliberate - I had it full, full screen, but thats over 6x the res of the original Lynx - e.g. looks awful when scaled up that much. I think 3x is a good setting for now, although I think there may be an option for 2xSAI scaling, which may look better fullscreen.

Sound is a concern, I will have a play with ALSA settings, see if I can get it using the mixer.

Bazza 2010-07-16 08:43

Re: Atari Lynx emulator
 
@whaleyboy

I can't install this, i can't get passed:-

'gtar -xjf mednafen0.8.D-maemo-devel.tar.bz2'

i just get - permission denied -


All times are GMT. The time now is 02:14.

vBulletin® Version 3.8.8