New Versions Of All Emulators And Source Release, Major Announcement Options

[XPort]

The following emulators have been updated with the most recent feature set
(rewind, slowdown, rumble, better cheat code options, etc, etc)

Note that some of these do not have rewind support enabled for a variety of
reasons. Check the README.TXT files for information specific to each port.

I know that I said that I was going to try and resolve bugs and update cores
to more recent versions, but I don't have nearly as much free time as when
I first started doing ports. I made it through most of them, but the last
dozen or so were taking too long to finish and I really wanted to get these
out the door.

AdamX
ArnoldX
Atari7800X
AtariXLBox
BlissX
BlueMSXBox
Chip8X
Classic99X
DidntXSpectrum
DOSXBox
FCEUltraX
KegsX
MednafenX-Lynx
MednafenX-NES
MednafenX-PCE
MekaX
NeoGenesis
NeoPopX
OdysseyX
PCSXBox
PokemonMiniX
SoftVMUX
SuperVisionX
Vice20X
Vice64X
VicePETX
VirtualBoyX
WinstonX
WinUAEX
WonderswanX
X68000X
XBoyAdvance
Z26X

...and Snes9XBox

I know, I know...but it's not really a finished product. It's something that I threw
together about 3 years ago and have been updating with my current user interface along
the way. Purists will still want to use ZSnexBox. Compatibility is better in ZSnesBox
as well because it's based off of ZSNES and this is based off of Snes9X v1.43. There
is no lightgun support, no mouse support, and rewind support is flaky. All the other
features like save states, cheat code searching, etc, etc are working.


The sources to everything are now up on xbins under emulators/xport_src_new along with
a readme file for (brief) instructions on how to compile. I can't give instructions
on how to make XBox programs in general (that's left as an exercise for the reader)
but I can assure you that I've tested these packages to make sure they compile correctly
under MSVC with the XDK installed. It's all the source - every last bit.

My involvement in the XBox era is winding down. I guess it already has been winding down
for a while. There will probably be a handful of updates in the future and perhaps a new
project or two, but it's possible that this is it for me. I hope others will pick up these
projects and improve them. There's still a lot that can be tweaked/improved.

There's a very good chance that incorporating the new DOSBox core will result in a usable Dynamic
CPU which would give it a very nice speed boost.

Mednafen core might be worth updating, but note that as of v0.8 PCE CD emulation is supposed
to be much more taxing on the CPU. However, it might be worth it to strip out the Wonderswan
core into a separate project since that's supposed to be a better/tweaked version of oswan
(which is the core of WonderswanX). It might make more sense to find the changes in the oswan
portion of Mednafenx and implement them into WonderswanX though. There is also a PCFX core
(probably too taxing for the XBox) and a NGPC core (but the ngpc core is based on neopop
and I don't think much has changed in it - don't know if the emulation is improved at all.)

Atari7800 source is basically a stripped down MESS but all the MESS source files are included
in the package. One should be able to copy the atari7800x source package into another dir
and adjust the project settings to exclude A7800 files and include another machine's files
to make a new port of something else in MESS.

NeoGenesis could be patched to allow for >32MBit games - but this is surprisingly more
work than one might expect because of the memory constraints of the XBox. It
could be done more easily using virtual memory, but then general emulation performance
would suffer. It's doable without VM, but requires more time than I feel like giving -
especially because it's only useful for one or two games.

Many other projects could use core updates like BlissX, BlueMSXBox, etc to improve
compatibility.

Then of course there could be all sorts of new projects using my core as a base.
Potential projects include BBC, Bally Astrocade, Vectrex, Coco, Arcadia, and Sam Coupe
which all have decent open source emulators available for them. They've been on my todo
list for quite a while, but I just haven't found the time for them.


Oh...as an aside, if anyone knows of anyone who still does xbox tweaks who can construct a
completely silent (or nearly totally silent) XBox, please send me (XPort) a PM on
forums.xbox-scene.com. There's a lot of antiquated information on the 'net on this
subject and I just don't have the time to go the trial-and-error route.

And as always....enjoy!

[turner3d]

I couldn't agree more with all of the praise posts in here - awesome contribution you've made to the community, and now an even bigger one by releasing all the sources.

BTW, I had a little trouble getting the DosXBox source to compile - seemed to be complaining about a single missing file, sdlnetx.lib. Anyway, there's more on the problem and my hacked up solution in the dosxbox thread - it'd be cool if somebody could tell me if i'm just missing something.