ZodTTD: Home Of Homebrew

Update: I have released heavily updated versions of n64iphone. Current version 0.7.0 improves performance and sound quality. – ZodTTD

It is finally out as of 22nd of December. This is an early release version however so not everything is finished. Everything is included except save states and landscape screen modes. You can still save games via the memory card.

This emulator is currently only compatible on the iPhone 3gs and iPod Touch 3rd Gen. No first or second gen devices will run this emulator due to requiring a newer version of OpenGL ES.

Controls work either by onscreen display controls + accelerometer or by connecting via BlueTooth a Nintendo WiiMote controls and it’s own accelerometer, just like the nes4iphone release.

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I would like some constructive user feedback from nes4iphone users on ways to improve the software. I’d like to avoid the flame wars that have occurred over this software.

That being said, I am working on bringing both snes4iphone and nes4iphone to Cydia so that it will no longer be exclusive to RockApp. So the hardcore Cydia fans will get what has been highly requested assuming all goes well.

From what I gather, there is still room for compatibility. I’ve heard reports of games like Punchout having issues though I haven’t confirmed whether it’s a “hacked ROM” issue. There is also the issue that the WiiMote control system, while it works fine, does take up more CPU processing power than it seemingly should. I am planning on working on performance of nes4iphone so that it runs 100% smoothly even with WiiMote on the slower 1st gen iPhone and iPod Touch.

I am purchasing a PS3 controller in the morning thanks to two very kind donators. It seems PS3 controllers for use with my emulators will become a reality like WiiMote is. This is all thanks to the BTstack project!

Thanks and eagerly awaiting feedback,

ZodTTD

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I just got back from my vacation. I was speaking to Craig “Craigix” Rothwell who is leading the OpenPandora homebrew gaming handheld just now. He showed me a picture his partner Michael Weston took of a fully manufactured Pandora.

After contacting “MWeston” I found out he just uploaded this video of the Pandora on YouTube:

For more information on this awesome gadget making it’s way into the hands of many very soon, check out these links:

Pandora Homepage

Pandora Wikipedia Entry

I am eagerly awaiting a fully assembled Pandora to continue my work with psx4pandora, the Sony Playstation 1 emulator for it. My Pandora MK2 (second generation test board) is somewhere around Michael Weston’s place. In the meantime I can just stare at this lovely picture:

And now I go back to work on the iPhone sort…whipcrack anyone?

- ZodTTD

P.S. Anyone else find MWeston’s name familiar? It could be due to watching the USA TV series show Burn Notice. So while some may think of MWeston as a hardware hacker, I think of him as a super spy. Perhaps the TV series’ writers are avid OpenPandora fans. If not, they should be.

Hi everyone! Just a quick note that I’m currently taking a much needed vacation and will be back into the full swing of things by December 7th. I have limited internet connectivity, but feel free to use the contact page to reach me.

Thanks so much!
ZodTTD

Yesterday I did my daily scan of Twitter and noticed an interesting question sent to at me. The person, TehMillhouse, asked if I could support the BTstack project.

Don’t know what the hell a BTstack project is? It basically implements a whole lot more of the Bluetooth stack than previously allowed by Apple. This is no easy task, so I was surprised to see a video of the author of BTstack already showing it off on YouTube by controlling an application wirelessly…with a WiiMote!

The author of BTstack and I spoke and I ran out to buy a WiiMote today. Moments later I had success! I was playing mame4iphone on my iPhone 3gs with a WiiMote. No wires! Here’s what it looked like:

So needless to say, I really want to get a PS3 controller next and implement that.
While I could use accelerometer data from the WiiMote, I chose to use button input. It fits emulators a lot better, and that is where the PS3 controller wins out. But using the WiiMote’s tiny dpad and oddly placed buttons is still much nicer than overlay touch controls. This should at least hold you over until the upcoming iControlPad release.

Once I refine this code a bit more, I will make some public releases of my work with WiiMote support included.

Thanks!
ZodTTD

I updated mame4iphone to version 1.5.0. It is now available on my Cydia Community Source repo allowing all people with Cydia, RockApp, or Icy to download it. I also updated the source which is available on my GitHub. I am not taking donations for mame4iphone, and want everyone to enjoy the 100% free release.

So what’s new in this release? While you should be able to notice more performance, I didn’t get to update things to the assembly CPU cores just yet. I did update it to the latest MAME4All v2.4 release by the talented Franxis. I also updated the iPhone/iPodTouch specific user interface to allow for even the entire romset to be loaded. This also fixed some bugs with some screen orientation plus scaling options to not render correctly.

There is a known issue where ROMs can not be switched mid-game. There is also no way to use save states due to the older version of MAME being used. Both of these issues occurred in v1.0.0 as well.

This should help ease the wait for my proper NeoGeo+CD emulator release, as a good amount of classic NeoGeo games are supported.

Give it a go, and hope you enjoy!
- ZodTTD

This has been a long time coming, but my schedule is just now starting to free up. I have updated psx4iphone to also support the 3.1.x series of firmwares. Included in psx4iphone v1.1.0 is a fix for a bug causing the non-scaled landscape screen to display properly.

Don’t expect too much difference in performance. This emulator will still require an iPhone 3gs or iPod Touch 3rd Gen to really shine. I will be working more on this emulator as I get more free time.

You can download psx4iphone from the ZodTTD Repo which is built-in to Cydia via the included community sources package. This means it is also available via RockApp, Icy, etc. Brief installation instructions are provided within the package info.

If you run into any issues with psx4iphone v1.1.0 feel free to ask for support via the comments. Just remember, don’t ask for ROMs/ISOs or where to get the BIOS.

Thanks,
ZodTTD

For those in the Unites States, you may be eating up turkey with the family…But me, well I’m giving my thanks in a different way. I couldn’t stop playing with this framebuffer code for the iPhone I mentioned earlier. I now know of the two framebuffer addresses and how to retrieve them individually.

Why is this important? Well it’s all about my emulator’s performance in our case!

But are you willing to give up transparent overlays in landscape mode for this performance boost? Remember for this to work it will draw on top of every area I write to. So if you are in landscape mode, for performance reasons I can’t draw an opaque overlay on top of each frame I draw. And blending a semi-transparent overlay is out of question. What we are left with is possibly to center the emulator screen in the center, and have controls on the sides. Leaving the controls outside of the emulation screen could let things work.

Some quick benchmarks I ran show the average blit to a CoreSurface buffer to draw to the screen takes between 5 and 13ms per blit. It spikes constantly from that 5ms. If I simply have it write to a different buffer that is malloc’d, the blit takes less than 1ms. While this isn’t scientific, it indicates to me that the traditional way of writing to the screen via CoreSurface, while better than OpenGL ES (for this type of blit) and CoreGraphics, is still very slow. This is where getting a lower level access to the screen’s pixel data comes into play, and hence the framebuffers.

I noticed writing to the first framebuffer with CoreSurface ID 1 (more on this in a sec) is about the same speed as writing to a CoreSurface you can create on your own. The magic happens when you write to the second CoreSurface ID 2. The above test of 5ms – 13ms goes down to 2ms! Much better, considering you only have 16ms to deal with when running at 60 FPS.

So how do you access these framebuffers? Leaving behind the complex code mentioned earlier, here’s how. First add the CoreSurface framework to your project. Then:

extern void* CoreSurfaceBufferGetBaseAddress(CoreSurfaceBufferRef surface);
extern void* CoreSurfaceBufferLookup(long lookup);
...
void* framebufferID1 = CoreSurfaceBufferGetBaseAddress(CoreSurfaceBufferLookup(1));
void* framebufferID2 = CoreSurfaceBufferGetBaseAddress(CoreSurfaceBufferLookup(2));
...


Simple as that! You now have a pointer to each framebuffer. Simply write your ARGB pixel data straight to it!

Maybe psx4iphone could use this technique for an added performance increase?

Thanks,

ZodTTD

Description:

Whats up guys? I’m guessing you will all enjoy this video!

Download Link:
http://www.multiupload.com/Y7V6JBBBS6

The Directory To SSH into is:
/private/var/mobile/Applications/XXXXXXX X-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX/LiveFire.app/quake3cd-demo/baseq3

Other Quake 3 Map Sites:
http://lvlworld.com/
http://www.map-factory.org/quake-3

ZodTTD
http://www.zodttd.com/

The video is pretty much self explanatory. If you have any questions post them in the comments or @reply me on twitter.

Note: These are NOT PERFECT. Sometimes they will crash. Like i put in the video they will have a few bugs. But don’t complain to me about this, I’m aware of this.

Be sure to put on all these maps and spread the news! Lets make the biggest Eliminate Pro community out there!
Add me as a friend to play: jones1

Twitter: http://twitter.com/0ChrisJones0

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That should be about it.

The video says it all. If you want to post, give credit to me for the maps.

I am NOT trying to advertise with this. I’m spreading the video to make a huge eliminate pro online community. Note that i did recommend this site in the video.  Thanks

Quick status report for psx4iphone and gpSPhone coming right at cha!

psx4iphone v1.0.0 currently does not work on any device with firmware greater than 3.0. I have a build that now works with newer firmwares and will be releasing it shortly. Hopefully tomorrow, but don’t hold me to it.

gpSPhone currently works with all 2.x and 3.x firmwares on all devices. But there’s a catch. DevTeam messed up a kernel patch in the latest 3.1.x jailbreaks (confirmed by saurik) that affects only the iPhone 3g. If you have an iPhone 3g and use 3.1.x jailbroken with pwnagetool, there’s a fix for gpSPhone (as well as the upcoming psx4iphone). Simply run blackra1n on your current iPhone 3g firmware. It won’t erase anything or do any harm. It will however fix the issue at hand, and allow gpSPhone and the next psx4iphone to run.

Thanks,

ZodTTD