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Monday, February 20, 2012

Unreal Speccy Portable

Here we go again, come on, boom boom shake da room!

Port of Unreal-Speccy emulator for the Blackberry Playbook.

http://code.google.com/p/unrealspeccyp/

Playbook ported code is currently stored here ...
https://github.com/trevornunes/speccy

Since this is a computer emulation it's a little different. The top left of the screen opens up a menu and file selector option. From the menu selector you can navigate around your filesystem and load .sna .tzx .zip speccy games.  For now you'll have to also select beeper, tape or AY for audio depending on the mode of the emulator so it's a couple of steps to get a game loaded.

Unreal Speccy Portable v1.0.0.2  OS2 signed bar

updates: smoother input handling , less sensitive on menu and games in general.
              create zx dir unders roms and default open to this directory











Top left is the menu button
The second icon on top left is the 128k speccy mode
Then we have the cursor for navigation
You'll also see QAOP  0,1,2,3 buttons on the screen
Enter on the bottom right.

Loading snapshot .sna files ( Fastest and easiest way to play games )

Step 1:  Click top left icon to raise menu
Step 2:  Navigate down to 48k mode and press enter ( or don't if you want 128k mode )
Step 3:  Navigate down to Reset and press enter

You should see the white screen speccy 48k screen appear!

Step 4:  Press the menu key to close it, then press again to highlight ...
Step 5:  Use the file browser and find a snapshot file and select it, it will automatically start the game



Loading tape archives ...  ( for the real experience open the menu, select 'Tape' for audio ... )

Step 1)  Click the 128K speccy icon and select enter for Tape Loader
Step 2)  Click the top left icon to highlight the menu
Step 2)  Press enter key to start the Open... file browser
Step 3)  Locate your tape archive file Speccy game
Step 4)  select it  ( it won't start up immediately )
Step 5)  navigate down to the Tape option and select Start ( it will toggle between start and stop )



14 comments:

  1. Looks good, thanks for doing this.
    I cannot load any games, when I press top left icon and then [open file] is selected I hit the [enter] icon and the emulator crashes (disappears).
    What am I doing wrong?

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    Replies
    1. Nothing! The file navigation allows you to snoop around the playbook OS, some directories like /PIM /pps etc are sadly visible but as soon as you attempt to access them the entire app will exit. This is a security mechanism, create a directory called /misc/roms/zx and place your rom files in this directory I think I will automatically jump to this directory by default. Also when your browsing stick with /misc/xxx and don't snoop around other areas otherwise you get the dreaded exit.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. This post is related with all possible emu for the PB...

    Don't know if you are familiar with zottd work under iOS. He ported multiple emulatos (gb/gbc, gba, snes, n64, genesis, psx, mame) to this platforms and hosts the sources at github:

    https://github.com/zodttd

    Considering the target platform specs I bet these are already arm optimized (may be preferable sources for the Playbook project?). Other emulators adapted for smartphones or consoles (such as the GP2x and the Dingoo A320) may be less resource hungry and as such possible interesting sources for the PB ports.

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  4. Thanks for the link I've heard zodttd and it would be great to get his emu ports on Playbook for sure. It's actually time and not lack of performance for the Playbook ( we don't use any GLES acceleration currently for example it's all cpu ). Contact RIM and tell 'em you'd rather I worked on games and emulators than radio stacks!

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  5. Hello! :)

    What about comitting your code to main project repo? http://code.google.com/p/unrealspeccyp/source/browse/

    I can give you commit access, or you can send me svn patch.

    Remember - license is GPL v3 ;-) So, source code must be opened.

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  6. Source code is stored on github.com//trevornunes/speccy same for all the emulators here. Having the tweaks in the main tree would be neat though.

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    Replies
    1. Hello, Trevor!

      I found sources, thanks.
      And thank you for supporting this project.

      But maybe the right way is to officially add blackberry platform support?

      You can place all your platform specific project & resource files in unreal_speccy_portable/build/blackberry/, and source files in unreal_speccy_portable/platform/blackberry/ (see unreal_speccy_portable/platform/mac/* files for some additional initializers, etc).

      And can you rename your project to "unreal speccy portable" ? :)

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    2. There really wasn't that much code change to get it working it's linux+SDL with some tweaks ( QNX is POSIX API compliant, very easy to code for). However I'm using the Momentics IDE 'managed build mode' currently so no Makefile changes. The name 'speccy' for the project is the target name also, I just shortened it!

      Anyway I agree we should fold changes back to your main tree ...

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    3. Hello! :)
      There is another multi-platform zx-spectrum emulator called 'speccy'.
      http://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/
      It is not free and not open-source.
      Please, rename project)))

      Also you can write build instructions like this:
      http://code.google.com/p/unrealspeccyp/wiki/build_qt
      or this
      http://code.google.com/p/unrealspeccyp/wiki/build_symbian_s60v3

      so..
      Please arrange your new project/resource/code files in source tree as described in my previous post and send me svn patch :)

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    4. I've generated an SVN delta to get Playbook compiling and readme guide ...

      http://www.mediafire.com/?yso8sc2jfv7c1d7


      png images, bar file generation ... playbook.tar.gz
      http://www.mediafire.com/?g2ydd0v99y1s90o

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    5. Ok, thanks! I will integrate your changes soon :)

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  7. Trevor,

    It's a KICK-ASS emulator. I'm so pleased you wrote it.

    One question: Once a game has loaded, how do add more keys to the overlay, i.e. only QAOP SPACE 103 keys are displaying - - how do I add the rest?? Lots of games require more than 5 keys or they can't be redefined...is there an .INI file somewhere??

    I would really recommend having a way to add all the keys...maybe within the swipe down option, have a toggle switch between limited keys (like now) and entire keyboard superimposed...that way, we can at least always press "S" to start (like Chuckie Egg). I don't know how to type " because I'm not sure how Symbol Shift has been mapped, so when doing LOAD "", I can get LOAD (J) but then I'm stuck.

    This would take it all the way. Right now, some games are off limits and it's too bad, since the emulation is so good.

    Or -- fully support Bluetooth keyboard entry so we can play using the BB Remote...:)

    Anyway, take this as a pat on the back, WELL DONE

    Jeff

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  8. I never coded the emulator, just ported it to playbook which is more of a twesking and fiddling deal so i didnt code up a z80 core or model ram, video etc I got it compiling and running from a fairly portable codebase. Thank the unreal speccy guys for getting the core emu so accurate. On my part getting sound to not glitch was tricky and i did optimize some of the code so it wouldnt glitch so i accept a very tiny pat!

    The bridge doesnt work properly but a bluetooth hid device like the MS6000 does work fully. At the moment a seperate bt keyboard is probably the best method ... Or the virtual keyboard might work awkwardly...

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