Fourth LJX PalmOS POC (Feb 11 update on pg. 3)

[Tinnus]

Hey hey hey! It's finally freaking here!

Wow! Now that everyone thought LJX would never see the light of the day (although it *is* night here now), much less a Palm version, man, isn't that a cool surprise.

This is a proof-of-concept of the LJX NES module for Palm. Yay! Still no sound though as I just got it to work ;D

Get the files at www.little-john.net/files/lj-palm-poc1.zip

OK, now you might ask what the heck to do with those? Fear not, as I shall explain below.

READ THE FULL INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE DOING ANYTHING WRONG AND COMPLAINING HERE! ;D

Anyway.

- All of the operations suppose you're working with the FIRST VOLUME of your device. This is a proof-of-concept, not a complete, beta, or even alpha product, so for now it just works with the first volume and that's it, sorry.
- "First volume" means internal drive in LD or TX, Left Slot on Zodiac (I think) and the only card for devices that only have 1 slot (duh).
- Some devices seem to have a hidden internal volume, either you get a way to get files in there or wait until it works elsewhere ;D

Now for the installation instructions:
- Create the following folders in your card:
/PALM/Programs/Little John/
/PALM/Programs/Little John/NES/
/PALM/Programs/Little John/NES/Roms/
- Copy emudata.dat to the Little John folder
- Get a ROM (zipped should work but I only tested with unzipped ) and put it in the Roms folder
- Put either lj-nes.prc or lj-nes_tellkeys.prc in your device (they will replace each other). I'll explain later the difference between them.

OK, now for the "select game" screen. That would be your text editor of choice. Open emudata.dat inside something in your PC (or Palm, if you have a text editor in there) and replace "mario3.nes" in the 5th line with the name of your ROM file. Keep the NES/Roms part in there! Actually you could put the ROM anywhere in the card and specify a full path starting with a "/", but I haven't tested that as well. DO not modify any of the other lines (yet) or you will get seriously screwed up.

Now, you should start with lj-nes.prc, which is the real thing, so just HotSync it or whatever to get it running and run it. It *should* work, providing you got the files and configs right. If not, double-check everything and be sure the volume you used is the first (it would be the first FileZ puts in the root list after the internal Palm FS).

Now for the keys. They are configured for a LifeDrive, and some devices have different codes for the directions. If this is the case, send the lj-nes_tellkeys.prc one to your device and run it. WHen you press a key, instead of the action taking place, it will tell you a number in the top-left corner like "Pressed key x" where x is a number. Take note of that number along with the key you pressed, then do it will all the keys you want to change. Now open emudata.dat again and find lines 41-48 (41 should be "1" and 48 should be "4"). These are the key configs, in order: up, down, left, right, a, b, start, select. Now replace them with the key numbers you got earlier as you please. Then save emudata.dat back to the card and send the regular lj-nes.prc again.

Yeah, I know it's ridiculously awkward, but get your keys taken note of once and they will work for all of the other modules I could be releasing in the following days ;D

OK, general remarks:
- It may crash, freeze, etc, but shouldn't corrupt anything seriously. Hmm, maybe if you're using UDMH and screw the emuda.dat thing completely. (DON'T DO THAT.)
- No sound yet. I will do it soon, but wanted to get a POC ASAP first.
- FPS is in the top left corner all the time. 58 should be fullspeed. I'd *really* appreciate framerate reports, especially from weak/underclocked devices like the T|E, Zire 31, Zodiac, etc. (BTW I'm not sure if it will work at all in the Zodiac yet due to the way I access the screen). I know that it runs at ~105 FPS if I uncap the framerate in my LD at regular 400MHz.
- Frameskip is always at zero, so the performance is real. Well, apart from sound, but that's almost free for the NES.
- There's no turbo, save state or anything like that. SRAM should be saved in the NES/Saves folder but I've not tested. Additionally, sava state/load could work if you change lines 75 and 76 in emudata.dat to some key codes like the ones you got before.
- The power key exits. I left this one in the end so everyone has to read everything first ;D

OK, that's it. Please leave your opinions!

[contradude]

i dont think i'll be able to test this on my 755p since it's my cell phone ;-) but i'm glad to see the hard work. I'll let you know if it works on zodiac here a bit later (watching superbowl!)

[Tinnus]

As I said, if you do it right shouldn't cause anything serious, hehe.

It doesn't handle events though, so you'll probably miss any incoming calls.

[samphex]

I was about to try this on my centro when I realized it was a phone....dang...

[tgwaste]

results from test on treo 680

o button map is as it should be on this device
up/down/left/right a(home) b(sms) start(phone) select(cal)

o constant 58fps

o .zip'd game works (testing mario 3)

o no overclocking (but using udmh)

o all button presses are sent back to the phone on exit and thus all screens associated with those buttons pop up (maybe need a buffer clear on exit?)



glad to see it finally in action.. nice job!!

[stranger725]

tried it on a zire 31

after running either lj-nes.prc or lj-nes_tellkeys.prc for 3-4 seconds, the screen goes blank (not really, there's an orange horizontal line somewhere in the lower part of the screen), which means, of course, the system crashed
i can get the key numbers from lj-nes_tellkeys.prc, though

[Tinnus]

- Centro: what's the problem of running it in a phone?
- Zodiac: as I suspected. Did you try portrait and landscape, just to be sure?
- 680: cool Yes, I'll do all of this button clearing, thanks for reminding me
- Zire 31: It doesn't support low-res (yet), sorry.

[Tinnus]

edit: fixed link, it was pointed to poc1. Hehe

New version: www.little-john.net/files/lj-palm-poc2.zip

This one introduces screen modes and filtering. You can keep your old emudata.dat and everything, but change these 2 lines for configuring the screen:

Line 8: Screen mode. 0-normal, 1-double (unavailable for NES), 2-fullscreen/aspect, 3-fullscreen/stretch, 4-fullscreen/stretch/fixoverscan (ie: remove border artifacts)

Line 9: Filtering. 0-none, 1-Scale2x, 2-2xSaI, 3-Super2xSaI, 4-SuperEagle, 5-HQ2X, 6-LQ2X, 7-Scanlines, 8-ScanlinesTV, 9-Scale2xSaI

Yep, the 2x scalers do work for a non-2x screen mode. But the current implementation make them almost as slow as Scale2xSaI (read: they should be a lot more faster in the final version. Probably faster than for full 2x consoles)

Now, I'd really appreciate FPS reports using Scale2xSaI and other filters too (mainly LQ2X) and which do you think looks better from the 2x ones. Oh, and give me FPS for the unscaled/unfiltered too! ;D

Important to note that you won't see the FPS in the fullscreen modes since the game will cover it.

[countbuggula]

Crashed (instant reboot) on launch on my 755 with both UDMH and Lightspeed disabled and enabled (tried it both ways).

[tgwaste]

Treo 680


Screen Mode
o screen-modes 1 -> 4 and filtering 0 - crash device
o screen-mode 1 w/ LQ2X - crash device


Filtering (using screen mode 0)
o LQ2x - 58fps
o Scale2xSaI - 58fps
o No visual change (maybe this isnt working really?)


any way to address the buttons being sent back to the phone on exit issue? just makes me nervous is all.

[Tinnus]

tgwaste: No problem about the buttons, it's just a test for now But I'll try and hack it to fix that in the next release, I promise. Additionally, screen mode 0 does no visual change because it's just... the 1x mode And it's weird that the new version is crashing with the other screen modes since both Scale2xSaI, Scale2x and LQ2X work OK for me in screen mode 3.

[metaview]

UInt32 oldMask = KeySetMask(0);
// Poll the keys...
...
KeySetMask(oldMask);

[Tinnus]

I think that makes the keys in the Zire 31 not work. If you check the latest LJP source, you'll see this is #ifdef'ed in the LoadZippedModuleFromCard right before and after the PNO call.

BTW, have you tested the releases yet?

[samphex]

countbuggula said:

Crashed (instant reboot) on launch on my 755 with both UDMH and Lightspeed disabled and enabled (tried it both ways).

then am not even going to try it on my centro( My dad panics to much whenever my phone crashes. He then yells at me that anyone could be calling me while its resetting)

[tgwaste]

samphex said:

countbuggula said:

Crashed (instant reboot) on launch on my 755 with both UDMH and Lightspeed disabled and enabled (tried it both ways).

then am not even going to try it on my centro( My dad panics to much whenever my phone crashes. He then yells at me that anyone could be calling me while its resetting)

your dad must look at the screen of your phone an AWFUL LOT!

[tgwaste]

tinnus said:

tgwaste: No problem about the buttons, it's just a test for now But I'll try and hack it to fix that in the next release, I promise. Additionally, screen mode 0 does no visual change because it's just... the 1x mode And it's weird that the new version is crashing with the other screen modes since both Scale2xSaI, Scale2x and LQ2X work OK for me in screen mode 3.

not sure man, I tried every one.. not really sure what else I can do to test if it crashes my device

[Tinnus]

Did anyone else try the new screen modes?

edit: just to be sure... these are the lines that should be edited: (quoting start of original emudata.dat):

320
320
0
0
NES/Roms/mario3.nes
NES/Saves/
0
0 <-- this one for screen mode
0 <-- this one for filtering
1
1
100
44100
0
0
(...)

[metaview]

Tested? No, no time atm.
Z31: why shouldn't it work.

[tgwaste]

tinnus said:

Did anyone else try the new screen modes?

edit: just to be sure... these are the lines that should be edited: (quoting start of original emudata.dat):

320
320
0
0
NES/Roms/mario3.nes
NES/Saves/
0
0 <-- this one for screen mode
0 <-- this one for filtering
1
1
100
44100
0
0
(...)

I got:


320
320
0
0
NES/Roms/mario.bros.3.zip
NES/Saves/
0
3
6
1
1
100
44100

[Tinnus]

tgwaste: That would be fullscreen stretched with LQ2X. Did you try unzipped? Or did the zipped version work OK with mode 0 (1x)?

BTW, IIRC, line 7 (below save path) is frameskip. Use 0-9 or 10 for auto.

metaview: the Zire 31 is low-res. The code (for now) presumes at least a 320x320 buffer...

[tgwaste]

tinnus said:

tgwaste: That would be fullscreen stretched with LQ2X. Did you try unzipped? Or did the zipped version work OK with mode 0 (1x)?

hey,
i have not tried it unzipped but mode 0 works fine with the zip.

[icefire]

Tested POC2 on my zodiac -- works, but is like palm nesem on zodiac: it shows in 3 places overlapping but really weird. Tell me if u want a photo...

The savestate saves in the main ljx folder, not in /nes/saves.

edit: I got start, a, and b to work, not move keys. it is always at 28 or 27 fps. Please tinnus use the zodiac for hardware accel!

[Tinnus]

I know what it probably looks and why, thanks for letting me know it actualy worked

The savestate in the wrong place might be a problem, I'll see if I can fix it, thanks. I presume then that the state actually loaded OK also?

Did you try using the tellkeys thingie? Are directions reported in it? I'm afraid the Zodiac might not fire regular 5-way keys. If some numbers indeed are reported, try using them to reconfigure the keys like I explained in the first post.

I'm going to use the Zodiac stuff, don't worry. This is only a first test to check overall compatibility and to give you guys something to hype about

[samphex]

Its good to hear this is only a test because a perfect product will come evatually.

[icefire]

Anyone could make a launcher. If i had a computer that i could put PODS on, i would already have made one....

edit: now off to test screen modes...

edit2: i have udmh running, but it worked without it. my rom is mario3.nes (what tinnus used...)

edit3: screen modes are the same, but on 0 the status bar is partially visible, but corrupted, but not the others.

[Zer0linK]

test on my Tungsten T (103 mhz according to Speedy)
with More Heap Hack active (if not instantly reset)

about 42 fps when no key states working on, and it goes down to 37 when any key is being pressed.

worked with zipped roms.

[metaview]

tinnus said:

metaview: the Zire 31 is low-res. The code (for now) presumes at least a 320x320 buffer...

Well, I thought we talked about KeySetMask...

[semi]

On my NX80V it ran at 58 constant FPS with screen mode and filter on 0, but only lasted for like 30~45 seconds, it froze... not sure if it's the emulator itself or it's because of the overclocking, but I bet it's the emulator because under the same overclock setting, LJP RC8, RC9 doesn't freeze (at least not this fast, and even if it does freeze, it's rather rare.).

I know it's a beta version and crash/freeze would occur, but I think I'll wait until the emulator becomes a little more stable than its current state..

[Tinnus]

metaview said:

tinnus said:

metaview: the Zire 31 is low-res. The code (for now) presumes at least a 320x320 buffer...

Well, I thought we talked about KeySetMask...

Ah, sorry I thought you were talking about why it crashes, heh.

Anyway, I don't have a clue why it's this way, but it seems KeySetMask, in the Zire 31, also masks KeyCurrentState in addition to events.

semi and Zer0LinK: could you test the different screen modes? Just semi: could you try without overclocking, just to be sure?

Thanks for the feedback

[metaview]

tinnus said:

Anyway, I don't have a clue why it's this way, but it seems KeySetMask, in the Zire 31, also masks KeyCurrentState in addition to events.

Which would mean you couldn't even run PalmPDF etc. on a Z31. I rather suspect some other coincidences. Anyone with a Z31 running one of the latest LJP? I would be very surprised if KeySetMask does anything with KeyCurrentState...