ZodTTD: Home Of Homebrew

I’ve made two new releases to the ZodTTD Cydia repo since my last status update. Available now are:

psx4all – via Cydia Store

psx4all is the continuation of psx4iphone. It now supports all devices, including the iPad. Note that it isn’t iPad native resolution yet, but playing in portrait mode with 2x seems to work very well at the moment. It now supports the WiiMote, WiiMote Classic Controller extension, and has built-in download support. This emulator has come a long way, and on 3rd gen and 4th gen hardware it runs many games amazingly well. There’s still some compatibility tweaks to be made but overall you should be able to find a compatible game and have it perform well on a 3gs or iPad, for instance, with ease. On 2nd gen hardware the number of well performing games decreases, of course. An update is coming shortly to improve compatibility and fix slowdown issues reported when the device is offline.

OpenStreamer – via Cydia and RockApp

OpenStreamer is a fast media player. With the same capabilities, it replaces vlc4iphone and adds new features. OpenStreamer plays back local media as well as internet streams of all sorts of formats. It does so on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad (non-native currently). It’s a lot faster than previous versions of OpenStreamer and vlc4iphone, and has better options for playback in terms of performance and quality. Aspect ratio is now maintained during playback as well.

Check these releases out.

Thanks,

ZodTTD

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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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