#31790 - ferrisb - Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:28 pm
Been reading the forums for a while now, and I've never posted because I never had anything to say until now. But when arrived at the forums today, I saw the total articles count below, and it just seemed fitting to this forum.
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#31791 - Lupin - Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:38 pm
come on, join some discussions! ;D
yeah, gbadev.org is really 1337, it's the first website that i check when i get to my PC and the last one before i go sleep ;)
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#31792 - SimonB - Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:45 pm
| Lupin wrote: |
| it's the first website that i check when i get to my PC and the last one before i go sleep ;) |
Thats just sad :=) Unfortunately same goes for me...
Thanks for sharing the pic ferrisb.
Simon
#31797 - ferrisb - Tue Dec 14, 2004 8:45 pm
I'd love to join in on some discussions, but when it comes to coding, I know next to nothing. I'm trying to learn right now, but I end up getting lost reading through some of these threads. I'm currently a Flash developer, and if the GBA/DS ran Flash, I could rip it up, but until then, it'll be awhile before I get any of my own stuff running on my DS.
#31817 - ScottLininger - Tue Dec 14, 2004 11:31 pm
I spoke with a guy at a company who tried to get a Flash player running on the GBA, and their conclusion was that the GBA just isn't fast enough, which I'd agree with based on my coding experience. Flash is all about floating point calculations, so even doing a low-color Flash player would be unlikely.
Of course, a few years ago people said that using the GBA for video playback was impossible... In any case, I think that if someone could get a Flash player running it would be AWESOME and really open GB homebrew to all the Flash people.
The DS is possibly more realistic, since its processor is faster.
Has anyone said that the DS has a floating point unit?
-Scott
#31823 - keldon - Wed Dec 15, 2004 12:57 am
I can just about get flash running at a decent speed on a 500Mhz PC. It spends a lot of time doing vertex graphics and alpha blending, because that's what most of a flash movie is made up of.
As good as flash is at times, I think Java is a better option for web games, etc. It runs so much faster than flash.
#31825 - sgeos - Wed Dec 15, 2004 1:13 am
| keldon wrote: |
| I can just about get flash running at a decent speed on a 500Mhz PC. It spends a lot of time doing vertex graphics and alpha blending, because that's what most of a flash movie is made up of. |
Keep in mind that your PC has to fuss with the OS. That takes a lot.
-Brendan
#31853 - tepples - Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:27 am
Once I ran TOD M1 at 15fps (3 frameskip) in VisualBoyAdvance on a laptop with a PII 333 MHz processor running win98, at full speed. The OS doesn't take that much of the time away. The same laptop wasn't very good for viewing the more complex SWF movies. (I have to be careful about using the word "flash" on a GBA board.)
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#31854 - sgeos - Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:33 am
| tepples wrote: |
| Once I ran TOD M1 at 15fps (3 frameskip) in VisualBoyAdvance on a laptop with a PII 333 MHz processor running win98, at full speed. |
I guess my point is that the GBA always runs at full speed and it has a 16.78 MHz processor. 10x for emulation takes us to a 167.8 MHz processor. Windows used, say the other 165.2 MHz or so just to run the OS. (These numbers are bogus, but you get the idea.)
-Brendan
#31855 - tepples - Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:47 am
| sgeos wrote: |
| tepples wrote: | | Once I ran TOD M1 at 15fps (3 frameskip) in VisualBoyAdvance on a laptop with a PII 333 MHz processor running win98, at full speed. |
I guess my point is that the GBA always runs at full speed and it has a 16.78 MHz processor. 10x for emulation takes us to a 167.8 MHz processor. |
The GBA has two processors: one a CPU and one a PPU. The PC doesn't have a PPU that maps cleanly, so its CPU must emulate it. Now you have 10x for the CPU and 10x for the PPU, and you get 333 MHz. I'm guessing the difference between frameskip 1 (TOD M1 ran natively at 30fps before I learned the various cheats I used to handle mode 7 in M2 and M3) and frameskip 3 is OS overhead.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#31856 - keldon - Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:42 am
To know how much time a program gets:
(1) - set your stop watch when you start your game
(2) - press Ctrl+Alt+Delete after 10-20 minutes of playing
(3) - divide the time on your stopwatch by the CPU time your emulator got
#31859 - blinky465 - Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:29 am
| keldon wrote: |
I can just about get flash running at a decent speed on a 500Mhz PC. It spends a lot of time doing vertex graphics and alpha blending, because that's what most of a flash movie is made up of.
As good as flash is at times, I think Java is a better option for web games, etc. It runs so much faster than flash. |
For creating games in Flash, you can use bitmap sprites - you don't have to use vectors for everything. I wrote an iso game engine (surprise surprise) entirely in Flash and it worked fine on my scabby old 233Mhz laptop!
Flash on the GBA would be fantastic and really would open up the homebrew scene to loads of developers.
[plug]
http://www.multiedge-net.co.uk/wally
[/plug]
#31860 - blinky465 - Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:41 am
| ferrisb wrote: |
| I'd love to join in on some discussions, but when it comes to coding, I know next to nothing. I'm trying to learn right now, but I end up getting lost reading through some of these threads. I'm currently a Flash developer, and if the GBA/DS ran Flash, I could rip it up, but until then, it'll be awhile before I get any of my own stuff running on my DS. |
Flash "developer" - do you use actionscript?
Do you mean you "know nothing" about coding in general, or just coding for the GBA in particular.
If you can create simple games using actionscript, you should be able to put something together in C - the syntax is very similar.
It also depends how you implement an 'object oriented' approach with your movie clips (e.g. I tend to create a movieclip for each object and put a two-frame loop with the functions on the first frame, and code and function calls on the 2nd).
If you want to discuss moving from Actionscript to C, PM me or we could set up another thread for anyone else who is interested...
#31874 - ferrisb - Wed Dec 15, 2004 4:25 pm
| blinky465 wrote: |
| ferrisb wrote: | | I'd love to join in on some discussions, but when it comes to coding, I know next to nothing. I'm trying to learn right now, but I end up getting lost reading through some of these threads. I'm currently a Flash developer, and if the GBA/DS ran Flash, I could rip it up, but until then, it'll be awhile before I get any of my own stuff running on my DS. |
Flash "developer" - do you use actionscript?
Do you mean you "know nothing" about coding in general, or just coding for the GBA in particular.
If you can create simple games using actionscript, you should be able to put something together in C - the syntax is very similar.
It also depends how you implement an 'object oriented' approach with your movie clips (e.g. I tend to create a movieclip for each object and put a two-frame loop with the functions on the first frame, and code and function calls on the 2nd).
If you want to discuss moving from Actionscript to C, PM me or we could set up another thread for anyone else who is interested... |
Sorry - let me clear that up a little. I mostly do actionscript. The best way to describe what I do at work is to take the designs from our designers, and make them actually do something. They make it pretty, I make it work. I'm pretty good at the actionscripting. But coding for the GBA or in C - C++ is where I get lost.
Lately I've been really digging into the AS 2.0 thing and trying to go to a straight OOP approach in my actionscript. If you know of some good resources that can help in learning to code in C, that'd be great.
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