Messages

1

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: April 24, 2020, 07:45:16 pm »

I have fixed enough that I deemed another video was in order, so here you go:



There are a lot of graphical bug fixes and a whole bunch of extra features added.
Thank you.

2

Graphics / Re: Different Shaders on different sprites

« on: March 28, 2020, 02:08:32 am »

My engine is designed so the origin of any sprite can be changed fairly easily and is handles.
Thank you very much for the quick response, id have never thought of using the largest sprite. I have methods of obtaining the largest already but realised that the gpu bandwidth wouldnt allow me to repeatedly create render textures.
I also realized the fact that i needed to draw to a rendertexture to get global effects, I just really had issues with figuring out positioning.
This should work great,
Thank you again.

3

Graphics / Different Shaders on different sprites

« on: March 28, 2020, 12:16:28 am »

So, I have a game engine I'm working on and I want to have multiple shaders applied to some sprites. However, not all sprites have the same shaders being applied to them and I plan on having support for shaders that all drawables go through.

I understand that I have to chain it using render textures, however I am unsure how to position the individual sprites properly.

So it would go a little something like this

1) Sprite gets drawn to a small render texture with first applied shader
2) render texture gets drawn to a large render texture with second applied shader
Repeat 1 and 2 for all sprites
3) Large render texture is applied to screen with the global shader.

What I'm having an issue with is choosing the size of the small render texture (because it needs to fit a possibly rotated sprite) and keeping it positioned in the center, but drawn in the right position for the global texture.

If anybody has any insight, I would be greatly appreciative.
Thank you.

4

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: January 19, 2020, 06:40:40 am »

Hello! I am back.

I have fixed some minor bugs with the graphics, however there is still more work to be done there.
I did some more documentation and added support for SRAM as well. Its coming out very nicely.

Iv debated on adding dynamic recompilation, despite it being a boatload of work. For those who don't know, dynamic recompilation is basically converting the Gameboy machine code to native machine code and running it in an environment so it works properly. It's done as it's run (as opposed to static recompilation, where the rom is entirely recompiled into a whole new program). Give me your opinion on adding this feature, but really it'd not be for speed but rather be for fun and learning experience.
Thank you.

5

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: December 21, 2019, 10:29:59 am »

Hello, didn't expect to be posting again so soon, but I managed to churn out another feature a lot quicker than I expected to. So Iv gotten key bindings, xml configuration loading, and save states implemented now. I just finished it up and committed (It is super late) and figured I'd give a little update now that I'm done.

It now has a dependency on tinyxml2 (for the xml configuration loading), but tinyxml2 is extremely light and easy to work with.

Tinyxml2: http://www.grinninglizard.com/tinyxml2/

Next I'm probably going to be working on getting battery backup ram (save game ram) working as well as fixing some bugs.

6

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: December 19, 2019, 03:10:03 am »

Roms are essemtially a direct dump of the different gameboy memory banks next to each other in order. The emulator takes the rom data and pretends to be a memory bank controller, allowing it to memory map certain banks to certain addresses.
 It didnt take an excessive ammount of time to get the basic functionality down, but the hardest part was tracking down bugs in the instruction code. Those took many hours to track down.
I will add some more features and optomize a few things before I add it, as I have some other basic features and bugs i wanna work out.

If you want to know how to get started in making one:
https://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Main_Page

Gameboy memory map:
http://gameboy.mongenel.com/dmg/asmmemmap.html

Gameboy Instruction Set:
https://www.pastraiser.com/cpu/gameboy/gameboy_opcodes.html

Bgb Doc (Super in depth and is a must have):
http://bgb.bircd.org/pandocs.htm

7

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: December 17, 2019, 11:57:01 pm »

In a little while i will probably start implementing a bunch of quality of life things and some other basic functionality
 Things like save states, sram support, button remapping, and some general optimization and bug fixes.
Please tell me what you think, any possible improvements you might see, and any cool features I could implement.

8

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: December 13, 2019, 04:55:25 am »

Hello everyone, I am back now that I have a breath with finals being done.
I have put up the code on my github as well as put up a release version. I cleaned up the code a bit but didn't have the time to finish the documentation. Thanks to the computer I am working on, I do not have git so I had to put up the files manually.
Here is the link to the repository:
         https://github.com/aracitdev/GameBoyEmu
Feel free to check out the code, however there  is still a lack of commenting and a few spots that I do say are fairly difficult to understand because of it.

9

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: November 30, 2019, 12:35:18 am »

Thank you,
and when i get a chance ill put it up on github so people can get a look at it. For the moment I am away from the computer that has it on it, so I shall do it when i get back to it.

10

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: November 20, 2019, 12:31:16 am »

Sorry about the late response, school has been busy as you might imagine.

I am concidering putting it open source, although if i do its a ways off (as I have quite a bit to clean up). When i get some time ill clean some stuff up and try to get it put up. Ill post a link when i do.

11

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: November 11, 2019, 09:16:20 am »

Most of the waves that the gameboy outputs are really simple and can be calculated fairly quickly. So, it works nicely to generate them on the spot. The only issue i have noticed is that i need to provide at least a certain ammount of samples into the future, so there is a tiny lag in changing the audio registers and it actually being reflected.
However, it is excessively small and doesnt diminish audio quality. Im not sure exactly how many samples should be provided by my custom audio stream each time though...

12

SFML projects / Re: SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: November 10, 2019, 07:16:43 pm »

I created custom sound streams that were essentially waveform generators that were controlled by the values in the hardware registers. The audio is completely disconnected from the CPU clock cycles other than the length counter, sweep, and envelope.
This ensures that the audio keeps at the propper frequency at all times. It is kinda a non purist way of doing it, because of how gameboy hardware works if the cpu slows down so does the audio, but I think it still worked nice.

13

SFML projects / SFML Gameboy Emulator

« on: November 09, 2019, 09:17:37 am »

Hello there everyone!
Long time no see.

I have been working on a project for the last 4 months or so during my spare time, and I decided to show it off here a bit. It isn't anything overly complex as far as emulators go, and it's still got heaps of bugs and inaccuracies, but it can run a few games and looks/sounds okay.

I posted a video I took here:


There is still quite a bit to to for it before I am fully content with it, but as always I am never content with it.
A few TODOs:
Implement the 4th audio channel (the noise channel)
Implement some more cartridge types (right now it only does MBC1 and rom only carts)
Add support for gameboy color
and add a per channel waveform renderer (this is just for style, and because I love old video game music).

SFML is used for audio, video, and events (so basically everything).
Let me know what you think, like, ect.

14

SFML projects / The Aracit Game Engine

« on: February 12, 2017, 08:39:57 am »

Aracit Game Engine

For the last few months I have been working hard on a game engine for me to use in future games of mine. It is specifically going to be a tilemap game engine for use in top down games, but it would not be difficult to repurpose for other types of games.

I have done major reading on proper game engine architecture for the last year, and managed to finally find an architecture I liked that should be not too difficult to implement. I have pulled together a large portion of the engine within the last month, and luckily made everything flexible enough for my needs.

I still have a long way until I'm done, but I decided to post what I have and get some opinions. This engine is going to be using sfml and the windows api (I am using it for plugin loading but also plan to implent lua)

I currently have the game server running at a good speed and have managed to optimize it extremely. I plan to fully implement mulithreading.

The engine itself is layed out to be networked and multiplayer, and a single player game could just have it so nobody else could connect.

I currently have a full architecture for game objects of tile types and entities, a fully working event manager, a client and socket handler, updating time management, the structuring of the colission and physics system, and plan to create and implement an ai component soon.

I have decided to make this engine my primary programming focus, the only other being 1602 assembly (for the nes),

I plan to keep everyone updated and use my brand new capture card (applause) to create a few vidoes about the engine. Once I actually release the code in a little while (cause I'm a perfectionist and want everything I can do done) I would like some feedback on what I could have done better.

Plugins will be using dll with a custum DLL loading system (because the windows api didn't fully support loading DLL from memory) that is already created. I used this because I need to be able to stream a plugin and load templates for tiles and objects dynamically based in the area they are in. Games using this system probably won't want to be generated and rather built (unless I find a system to help).

I would like your opinion on what I have said here as well, as you may have your own solutions to my issues.

For the moment I have a few things I am yet to create and have on my list to implent:
        A streaming rather than full loading system
        The full client
        A GUI (fully implemented)
        Full integration of the plugin loading system
        TinyXml (for use in systems for generic things) 


The client really doesn't do overly much yet, as it only displays tiles and objects, and allows messages to be sent to the server with key binds.

I hope to release at least some code or video soon, but I think I have struck gold (as I have made some pretty cr**** things in the past)

Thank you for reading this to the end and I will keep you updated.

15

General / Re: SFML Built With CMAKE

« on: November 11, 2016, 05:22:46 am »

It's the procedural entry point crash, I don't understand why it's crashing either. I built it with the same compiler, using a static build.