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Post by luckyluke on Nov 5, 2009 11:46:08 GMT 1
Well, I wonder how many LJP users are still there. Somewhere in my data stuff a VirtualBox image is placed with Win2k, CW and the newest LJP sources (by me) in it. Would it be worth? What do you think? Would enough users be happy if I dig the image out and do a last thing on LJP?
What I may try to do (by small chances):
- Creating a basic preference dialog with the most preferences hidden away and set to default values
- Stripping away stuff to decrease the size of the launcher application
What I will NOT do:
- Creating new emulation modules for LJP or fixing bugs on the old ones
- Working further on the Wiimote support; I think it works well enough now; What do you think? Well there are still nasty bugs like that preferences are only applied after a device reset on some older OS 5 devices. But I don't own any of these devices so I can't work on this really.
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Post by beavis on Nov 6, 2009 3:36:48 GMT 1
Count me in as one of the long time, current, and into the future LJP users. I think there are still a lot of LJP and Palm users who have not jumped ship and will not jump as long as the device is useful enough to carry around.
That is very gracious of you to offer to do a few more fixes. If I may offer a suggestion?
This doesn't seem like a big thing to me, but I'm no programmer so I may be totally wrong. It's somewhat related to the Wiimote. The BGP100 gamepad support is sorely lacking any button configuration. I thought perhaps some of the code for the Wiimote configuration could be used for the BGP100 gamepad button configuration?
Thanks for listening; you may be our last hope, luckyluke!
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Post by coder12 on Nov 6, 2009 22:59:08 GMT 1
Thank you obiLUKEkenobi. You are our only hope  |
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Post by luckyluke on Nov 7, 2009 0:35:00 GMT 1
Well, the image is working and still contains the newest source codes (by me).
Now I have some questions about your opinion:
What do you think can be stripped away?
Things which make the launcher application big:
Mod playing in the launcher? (~ 300kB)
Images of emulated systems? (~50kB)
Many beltbars to choose? (~ 30kB)
Other stuff?
Which preferences do you think do we really need and which not?
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66 
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Post by palmdoogie on Nov 7, 2009 1:32:47 GMT 1
Hello All, Sorry about the lack of updates. Work got super busy and I'm also finishing building my house in my "spare time". LJP lite is NOT dead, however! The PMame-Lite module works and has about 30-40 games I think. I still need to implement a belt-bar in MAME and fix the belt bar in the LJP modules. I kind of got rat-holed in some scaling stuff I was trying to do, but now that the project has sat, I realized I should just leave the scaler thats already there as it's good enough. I do want to add back in some of the Zod stuff. Now that the winter rains are coming upon California, I can spend some time again. Funny that LuckyLuke brings up Virtual Box running W2K as about two months ago, I moved my development environment from a BootCamp Win XP setup to a Virtual Box W2K drive image so that I can use my MacBook Pro with SD Card Reader for quicker turnaround  One thing on screen shots, Anyone know a tool that can take screen shots WHILE one of the emulator modules is running? Zgrab seems to only work for the launcher environment. Zgrab can't grab a screen shot while an emulator is running from what I can tell... |
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Post by luckyluke on Nov 7, 2009 14:08:00 GMT 1
Nice to hear that you are still plan to work further on your LJP version, Palmdoogie! Win2K I think is the best operating system Microsoft ever created since it is quite powerful while using only few hardware resources. Growing problem is the lack of driver support. For example I just bought a AMD HD4350 graphic card and had to "upgrade" my natively installed Win2k Prof. to XP Home. (Prof. > Home) :-( Anyway Win2K runs still pretty fast and well in a Virtual machine. So I can use CW and some other Win32 only stuff while running Linux. About the screen shot stuff: We could build a screen shot tool into LJP. Everytime the user presses a specified key a function is called. This function then "simply" copies the content of the display window in a bitmap file on the SD card. ZGrab saves the screenshots as PNGs which is nicer, I know but this we could add later on. I'll give it a try. Edit:  screenshot made of LJP 1.2wiimote4 + screenshot support; GB; Pokémon About the screenshot tool until now: - works stable and quite quick - saves a screenshot of the current screen into "/LJP-screenshot.bmp" on the first card (may be the internal; but should be the SD card on most devices) - It's a 24bit uncompressed bitmap file => 300KB at 320x320 resolution - can be invoked pressing the power button (it is still hard coded) - can't be invoked in the ingame menues of LJP (yet) - Source code is mainly spread over one additional C and a header file - Small changes (~5 lines) to PNOMain.h were done Palmdoogie, if you are interested I'll upload the two files and describe the change done to PNOMain.h. |
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Nov 9, 2009 22:22:12 GMT 1
Hi LuckyLuke, Sure, I'd love to try the screenshot code! Just link me to where I can download it. I plan on resurrecting my LJP-Lite work this week and would love to upload some screenshots so that you all can see what I've been working on three out of the last 6 months(work kind of tapered off in August as other things came up...). Thanks for the help |
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Post by luckyluke on Nov 9, 2009 23:57:31 GMT 1
You're welcome! lukas-grundmann.de1.cc/Stuff/LJPScreenShotAdd.zipI hope I've not forgotten anything! Have a look at HowTo.txt and on the code if you like. If you have questions feel free to ask here or over E-Mail. (I included the address in the howto) |
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Post by vilmos on Nov 20, 2009 19:36:17 GMT 1
PalmMAME actually has a screenshot button you can use if you took the latest sources. You would have to config a button to the screenshot button and then it will put an image on the card for you when you use it. PalmMAME did already have a beltbar sort of thing, although you may have sacrificed it already. Oh and the Zodiac optimizations for PalmMAME make it way faster, and if you use ZodMAME there are other optimizations as well. |
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Post by luckyluke on Nov 20, 2009 23:57:24 GMT 1
Well I see that I spend some hours to much time on coding the "copy screen content to bitmap file" function if there had already been ARM/Palm OS code open sourced for that purpose. Yeah doesn't matter since nuts happens. It's ok.
I've taken a look at the download times of LJP 1.2 wiimote 4. Taking them as indicator the interest in LJP decreased obviously. For the at most amount of 200 users LJP 1.2 wiimote 4 should really be enough what Yoyo, Tinnus, Metaview, Palmdoogie and I made so far. But the bigger problem I see is following: I asked for the public opinion which preferences/stuff can be stripped away from the launcher or are the not so important ones. Nobody answered. This show two things in my eyes:
- The interest in LJP dropped dramatically.
- I´m supposed to decide.
Well let me decide. I like preferences. I like being able to choose between some offers and to have a flexible game experience. I´ve a 4GB SD card and so for myself it´s regardless if LJP uses 32MB or just 1MB. I mostly use only the Gameboy module of LJP and this is working perfect on my Centro. I have great FPS with sound, auto skip, smooth scaling and even Wiimote support. You see in my own opinion LJP is just great and satisfied. This is my decision.
Well I´m just a little bit upset and had to speak it out. I really hope I didn't annoy anyone with this post.
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Post by coder12 on Nov 26, 2009 6:03:57 GMT 1
Sorry Luke, I haven't been on the web in a while. Too busy with life. Long story short. I had a big band concert, went to the hospital, and I like preferences! |
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Post by mrpropre on Nov 29, 2009 18:41:15 GMT 1
I own a zodiac, so I would say that all zodiac specific stuff is under interest But I don't pay much attention for the beltbar stuff. The interest in LJP dropped dramatically because there is no news since a long time... I am sure that if someone can bring it further, a lot of sleeping users will come! |
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Dec 15, 2009 1:04:20 GMT 1
I've gotten back to LJP-Lite, although it has a new name: GameDog! Don't ask why, it came to me in a dream  I reverted my pMAME Lite module as I had reduced it down to only 37 base ROMs (Not including clones). My goal is to stick with 50 Parent ROMS and later add back in anything that doesn't require additional machine support. I plan on posting screen shots within the next week and If I can clean up the MAME integration, I'll post a Beta over the holidays. Sorry about the Looooong Hiatus, the last 6 months got real busy... |
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Post by haisook on Dec 15, 2009 21:58:52 GMT 1
Thanks palmdoogie! GameDog,... I think it's not bad!  I wonder if you could as well fix some bugs in the original LJP, like 1. autofire not getting saved per game, and 2. no color schemes in GB non-color games. |
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Post by coder12 on Dec 18, 2009 22:14:45 GMT 1
Im sorry, but think the name should be GameDawg -- in reference to the Zodiac's code name "RoadDawg". I'm excited to see your work! |
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Post by blackylol on Dec 22, 2009 8:00:41 GMT 1
I'm a Palm T|T user, and I can wait for a release >.<.... I hope to c snes in ljp asking less than 12mb, its annoying delete apps to play snes, and when I stop playing it only used like 5MB D: . Are you going to release the app soon? i want a xmas present xD
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Dec 24, 2009 10:37:46 GMT 1
I'm a Palm T|T user, and I can wait for a release >.<.... I hope to c snes in ljp asking less than 12mb, its annoying delete apps to play snes, and when I stop playing it only used like 5MB D: . Are you going to release the app soon? i want a xmas present xD Hmmm, truly sorry to disappoint you, especially at XMAStime, but the SNES module has been stripped out of LJP-Lite(AKA GameDog). It really has too much overhead especially for an original T|T. All of the specialty hardware in the SNES requires a lot of code to emulate, and the speed requirements are pretty heavy. GameDog only has the Original NES, GameBoy, Sega SMS, Atari VCS(not very good quality), and (New!) a MAME-Lite module which supports about 50 base ROMs(Mostly old 80s 8-bit classics.) In addition, I've greatly reduced the configuration screen down to a single prefs panel. I hope to post screen shots soon, but I'm also trying to finish construction on a house on my holiday. Bear with me. I hope people will still be interested by the time I finally release. BTW, this is my first AND last Palm project. My hope is to Port or really Re-Create this app for the iPhone/iPod touch and continue development on that platform. I figure after the PAIN of developing for Palm and with CodeWarrior, developing for OS-X with X-Code will be a joy |
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Post by haisook on Dec 25, 2009 0:40:31 GMT 1
By Sega SMS, do you mean Sega Game Gear as well? Because I regularly play the latter. I hope so..
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Post by coder12 on Dec 27, 2009 17:39:53 GMT 1
Hmmm, truly sorry to disappoint you, especially at XMAStime, but the SNES module has been stripped out of LJP-Lite(AKA GameDog). Not GameDAWG?  Epic Win! I'm also trying to finish construction on a house on my holiday. Bear with me. Happy Holidays! I hope people will still be interested by the time I finally release. I'm still interested! BTW, this is my first AND last Palm project. So much for Clonekeen  My hope is to Port or really Re-Create this app for the iPhone/iPod touch and continue development on that platform. I figure after the PAIN of developing for Palm and with CodeWarrior, developing for OS-X with X-Code will be a joy Xcode is waaaaaay better than codewarrior! No joke! |
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Post by haisook on Apr 17, 2010 0:44:50 GMT 1
Not a single update in more than 4 months, I think this project is dead, sadly.
RIP LJP-lite.
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Post by janisl on Apr 25, 2010 6:59:08 GMT 1
thats too bad! Ive been following its development from the start |
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Post by coder12 on Apr 28, 2010 23:15:32 GMT 1
 I think that may mean this is goodbye, boys. Actually I think I'll wait for the project to be officially declared as 'dead' since I still love my Zodiac |
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Post by luckyluke on Apr 30, 2010 22:36:57 GMT 1
Well for my part:
I've replaced my Centro with an Android OS phone now. So don't except me coding for Palm OS any longer. With WebOS Palm decided to bury this great OS. Anyway I think that this decision was really wise since Palm OS was simple to old fashioned compared to other operating systems.
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Aug 16, 2010 19:38:31 GMT 1
 Hey, what happened to my post that had screenshots of LJP-Lite showing the simplified UI and the new beltbar? Did the post get lost in a server crash, or did they get pulled due to some violation of terms?
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Feb 18, 2014 4:21:21 GMT 1
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Feb 23, 2014 3:58:51 GMT 1
Looks like I was farther along than I remembered! The only major task I see left is to finish incorporating the LJP Beltbar into the MAME module and a small number of clean up tasks including figuring out how to pull the MAME codebase into the main LJP Project. For now, I still have to compile the MAME module in a separate project directory with it's own .mcp file as there are some dependency conflicts with the LJP source base.  |
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Feb 23, 2014 4:01:44 GMT 1
Oh, also as evident from the pic above, I need to change the white background of the MAME icon from white to transparent mask. Hopefully GraphicConverter will be able to do the trick!
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Post by tesla75 on Mar 1, 2014 7:50:19 GMT 1
Wow, nice. I actually just came here recently to download the sourcecode and look through it since I am finally able to code half decently. I also wanted to make a point to my friends that a palm pilot from 2004 could run emulators as well as their android phones now which they claimed is only possible to run smoothly with at least a 1Ghz processor. I used this app so much as a kid and was always impressed by how well it worked.
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Post by coder12 on Mar 2, 2014 1:38:13 GMT 1
Wow, I never recalled the development being that far ahead. Thanks for the share, PalmDoogie!
Also, with all of these different builds of LJP... has anybody been keeping a list of branches? I know there's strict LJZ >> LJP, then there's LJP Lite, the WiiMote edition, the WiiMote + Screenshot uncompiled edition, and probably some others that I've lost track of.
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palmdoogie
Junior Member
Re-living the 80s
Posts: 66
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Post by palmdoogie on Mar 8, 2014 8:05:59 GMT 1
I haven't really kept track, but I believe mine (LJP-Lite) Was branched off of either LJP 1.01 or 1.0rc7. I recall that one of the newer versions ran really slow on a Tungsten T2 for some random reason that I never figured out.  I've made quite a bit of progress since I last posted. I've managed to get the LJP-MAME Module to be part of the LJP-Lite master project. I had to rename some files to eliminate conflicts and I've started finding shared code between the LJP Console PNOs and the MAME PNO. One of the first things I notices was that the both used slightly different versions of ZLIB. I managed to get MAME to like the newer version that the console PNOs were using. Then I started to figure out how to combine and eliminate some of the static libraries. What I'm working on right now is eliminating the MSL_C_PNO library from the MAME module by using existing functions shaed by the console modules. I have it down to the memory *alloc and mem* functions and file I/O. FOr some reason, when I try to use the console versions, MAME craps out. I may need to add some temporary debug code to see what's going on. Once I finish merging shared functions, I'll get back to the mostly final task in the MAME module which is incorporating the BeltBar. There won't be Save or Load for MAME, though as the version of Pmame I used, didn't have that working yet. But the BeltBar display with battery, FPS, and Clock along with Reset and Exit will be implemented. I may need to add a new beltbat resource graphic with the load and save greyed out for MAME. The main task involved in the above functionality is bringing the full implementation of the PNOBridge as the consoles use it. MAME decided to use alot of native PNO calls for screen size and other parameters that are passed into the console modules from the 68K side via the pnobridge struct. The beltbar relies on these for getting environment parameters as well as the raw VRAM address. I have some of the beltbar kludged in and noticed something funny. My BeltBar draw routines for the consoles seem to treat the screen as 160x160 doubled for beltbar drawing (The battery icon for instance). WHen I use the same code to draw the battery in MAME, it is half the size and in the middle of the screen. For some reason, the same commands executed within the MAME environment act on a full 320x320 resolution. Maybe when I pull the pnobridge stuff in it will behave like the console modules do. BTW how do you like the new beltbar icons and battery fuel gauge? The outline of the battery gauge changes color as the battery runs low, from Blue to Green to Yellow to Red. There's also a different color if it's charging, but I forget offhand... OK. Thats all for now, but I'll keep you all posted. Welcome back! |
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I reverted my pMAME Lite module as I had reduced it down to only 37 base ROMs (Not including clones). My goal is to stick with 50 Parent ROMS and later add back in anything that doesn't require additional machine support. I plan on posting screen shots within the next week and If I can clean up the MAME integration, I'll post a Beta over the holidays. Sorry about the Looooong Hiatus, the last 6 months got real busy...
Hey, what happened to my post that had screenshots of LJP-Lite showing the simplified UI and the new beltbar? Did the post get lost in a server crash, or did they get pulled due to some violation of terms?
