#42359 - Toffe - Tue May 10, 2005 5:02 pm
There is a great MSX emulator called fMSX, and it's open source.
The emulator is written in C.
What would it take for me to port it to Gameboy?
Some japanese guy has started but there is no indication that it will ever be finished. Neither am I able to get in contact with this guy.
fMSX has been ported to several platforms, even mobile hones and Amiga.
If the code is in C, will there be a awful lot of work to port it?
#42367 - Miked0801 - Tue May 10, 2005 6:09 pm
Enough topic spam please.
You have no idea how much work goes into an emulator do you? Writing a good emulator is one of the hardest things that you can do. Not only do you have to have Intimate knowledge of the target platform, you need even more for the source platform. To write it correctly, you not only have to emulate the to written specs, you also have to emulate hardware quirks and bugs. Imagine for a moment trying to emulate all the quirks of the C64 machine: CPU (easiest), video (can be done), sound (getting harder), hblank/vblank trick timings (harder), I/O, etc. All while maintaining a decent frame rate. It takes x100 processor power or so to do it right - hell they couldn't get a good C64 emulator running at speed forever even on a PC.
Yes, you have some C code, but that isn't enough. You need to be a world-class programmer on both systems and have an abudance of spare time on your hands to pull it off.
#42383 - Toffe - Tue May 10, 2005 8:24 pm
I'm truly sorry for posting three different topics on one day.
I will never post a thing again, promise. Also I'm TRUUUULY sorry for not knowing all those hard facts on emulation,
thus insulting you when asking.
Anyway, thank you so much for the information.
It was helpful, I now understand that there is no way in this world I could ever make one,
so I will not attempt learning it.
Thank you, and once again I'm sorry.
#42399 - Deanonious - Tue May 10, 2005 10:55 pm
You should not get so down man, Emulator Coding is extremely hard, I doubt that I could ever manage it, but with the proper training, research, and sweat if you really want to write an Emulator then you can do it.
I found a link to a really good Emulator Coding Site on here awhile back, you should check it out:
http://how.to/emulation
Just don't expect this project to be a walk in the park, it is going to take a lot of time and effort, but if you really want to do it then go for it and if you have any specific questions relating to the project I am sure that the good people here would be glad to help out where they can.
Good luck!
Dean