_ _ _ _______ ___ _ ___ ___
| | | (_) | | ___ \ / _ \ | | | \/ |
| | | |_ ___ _ _ __ _| | |_/ / ___ _ _ / /_\ \ __| |_ ____ _ _ __ ___ ___ ______| . . |
| | | | / __| | | |/ _` | | ___ \/ _ \| | | | | _ |/ _` \ \ / / _` | '_ \ / __/ _ \______| |\/| |
\ \_/ / \__ \ |_| | (_| | | |_/ / (_) | |_| | | | | | (_| |\ V / (_| | | | | (_| __/ | | | |
\___/|_|___/\__,_|\__,_|_\____/ \___/ \__, | \_| |_/\__,_| \_/ \__,_|_| |_|\___\___| \_| |_/
__/ |
|___/
VisualBoyAdvance-M
Nintendo Game Boy / Game Boy Advance Emulator
Based on official VBA
Original Project Homepage: vba.ngemu.com
New Project Homepage: vba-m.ngemu.com
The Qt build uses icons from the KDE project:
http://kde.org/
svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdebase/runtime/pics/oxygen
This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Aim:
Combine the best features of the VBA forks in one build.
Multi-platform support.
===================
System Requirements
===================
OS: Windows 2000 - Vista (x86 or x64), Linux
CPU: 700MHz minimum for GBA emulation, CPU requirements increase if filters are to be used.
RAM: ~64MB free
GFX: ~32MB VRAM, DirectX9 drivers
===================
File Dependencies
===================
VBA-M requires the following files, in order to run.
libpng13.dll
zlib1.dll
D3DX9_37.DLL
The first two are available from http://vba-m.ngemu.com/vbam/vbacompiles/msvc2008/dll.7z,
while the last requires an update to DirectX, you can use the following tool to update - http://vba-m.ngemu.com/vbam/vbacompiles/msvc2008/Directx_9c_webupdater.zip
The OpenAL runtime may be downloaded from http://openal.org/downloads.html
==============
To Do List
==============
Important:
- Many games show emulation warnings in the log window (unaligned read, bad read/write address)
- Test: Metroid Fusion, Advance Wars 2
- Gfx.cpp/h optimization
- Test: Final Fantasy 4 airship intro
- Improve automatic 64k/128k flash save detection
- Fix OpenGL issues
- Remove 16 bit hack for filters
- Not compatible to software motion blur (display corruption)
- Add selection for compressed archives with more than one ROM in them
- Finalise Qt4 GUI system
Less important:
- Add GBA cheat editing support (GB already has)
- Look at Cheats.cpp (Core) and GBACheats.cpp (GUI)
- Support D3DFMT_A2R10G10B10 (10 bit per color component) color format
- Add documentation for VBA-M (configuration guide)
- Improve AVI recording (produces asynchronous files)
- Enable audio stream compression for AVI files
- Add stereo upmixing support to OpenAL
- Verify BIOS files by checksum instead by file extension
- Merge HQ2x/LQ2x C code into code for HQ3x/4x
- Apply pixel filter to sprites and BG seperately for better image quality
- Create Visual Studio project using SDL makefile
- Add device enumeration & buffer count selection for XAudio2
- Current buffer count: 4
Performance:
- Apply HQ3x/4x optimizations from C version to ASM version
- Apply pixel filter only to changed parts of the image
- Make even more use of multi-core CPUs
- Make use of 64 bit CPUs
- Have a look at the liboil optimization library
- http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/
====================
Currently Known Bugs
====================
Known Bugs:
- Linking: Doesnt work quite right yet.
- Audio core: assertation error occurs when disabling sound in GB mode
- I think its best we mute sound instead, since some games rely on audio for timing.
Plus, blargg's GB_Snd_Emu is extremely optimized stuff. (Mudlord)
- blargg's core implementation broke Dwedit's GBC emu.
- Wrong bit depth image is displayed for 2 frames when switching from/to HQ3x/4x ASM
- This is caused by the 16bit hack which does not re-process the emulated image.
It results in the display devices treating the image at pix with the wrong bit depth.
=======
Credits
=======
VisualBoy and VisualBoy Advance Developers:
Forgotten
VisualBoy Advance-M Developers:
Mudlord
DJRobX
Nach
Jonas Quinn
Spacy
==============
Special Thanks
==============
chrono:
- Fixed a bug in the HQ3x/4x filters
- Made HQ3x/4x and Bilinear filters (ASM versions) thread-safe
bgKu:
- GTK GUI port
- Various assistance with Linux issues
blargg:
- Assistance with the implementation of his highly accurate GB audio core
- Implemented his unreleased File_Extractor library
ea38858c2e