VBA with link support

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1)Am I posting a topic about an application I would like to see created?

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Alright, has anyone done any work on getting the VBA-Link patches for link support (yes, pokemon trading) put into VBA-GX? Is there another game boy emulator that I didn't see that does support link trading?

The goal is wireless -- playing on a PC emulator and Wii emulator at the same time.

No. This has been asked about before; You can use the search function.

vba link
vba pokemon
Both only turn up this thread. What should I search for?

Funny, I just started to work on a gameboy(-color) emulator this week. Because I wanted to learn a bit more about emulation and the gameboy is a pretty simple system.

I have the following goals in mind:
-Emulate multiple gameboys on 1 wii (screen should allow up to 16 gameboys, but that would be silly, as you only have 12 possible controllers)
-Link support between gameboys
-Running different games on each gameboy

Currently it can only run ROMs of 32k size (no MemoryBankController yet) doesn't do sound or button input, stops on some unimplemented instructions. But I did get the boot rom (showing "NINTENDO") to run without issues, and some freeware roms to run till the start screen. (ROMs from pdroms)

Nice.

Now, any chance of being portable to Linux, Mac, and Windows? Simple SDL graphics should port easily.

Any chance of that link support working over the lan? Two wii's, or a wii and a computer, or two computers?

Err ... 16 GB's at once? Are you planning on actual-size screen display? :-)

How about 3x3 for normal displays, and 4x3 for wide displays? That gives 9 or 12 machines. (But I think two side-by-side displays will be enough for 98% of the users).

And you could have a way for the controllers to be changed between screens (Maybe the + and - buttons?). That way one person could play both games ... ehh...

(Yellow and blue, both stopped storing saved games. Battery could not be replaced. Le sigh. I actually don't know if that combination gets all 151 or not. But yellow ... I know "I gotta have pikachu", but it's worthless in the first gym battle.)

When I search "VBA link" I get more than this thread, which is what I was talking about. Also, "GBA link" will also do.
[forum.wiibrew.org]

EDIT: I guess in all fairness, your talking about multiplayer with a PC; Most others are about linking 2 emulated games running on one console, or linking to an actual GBA through the GBA to GameCube cord.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2010 07:22PM by bg4545.

[daid2.mine.nu]

Not bad for a few days work. It currently runs on my windows machine, but should be easy to run on the Wii. The screenshot is not photoshopped. I made it easy to run multiple 'instances' of the emulator.

Few things:
-Link support works, the 2 tetris emulators are linked and I could play a game against myself. Looking for more link games...
-NO sound yet
-Pokemon blue works, but colors are not correct yet. Turns out it's not a GB-Color game but an normal GB game with SuperGB support.
-Saving state works, so pokemon (blue/red) is fully playable.
-Zelda doesn't work right yet, loads of graphical glitches. Might be a problem with my video emulation, but could also be a CPU problem.
-Most public domain (pdroms) seem to run, except for those that depend on GBC features. Even those that depend on fancy graphic tricks.
-Pokemon silver doesn't do anything yet (might need GBC support?)

Nice.

May I try to see if a mac port is feasible? :-).

Does the link support work on pokemon? (Probably).
Can the link support cross machines (Wii versus Computer)?

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Apple has an API with public reference implementation for allowing service providers and users to find each other through DNS lookups instead of hard-coded port numbers. "DNS Service Discovery" [www.dns-sd.org]

1. Can someone familiar with network programming on the wii look at this and see if the reference code will run on the wii?
2. If so, can we use this to implement this "Find other end of the link" for this?

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keybounce
May I try to see if a mac port is feasible? :-)

It should be, it currently runs on windows and linux with SDL.

Updates:
-Hacked up SGB color support to work with pokemon, battle colors are correct now, as well as the title screen. The intro has some wrong colors (falling start thingy)
-Fixed the DDA instruction (Bug here caused me to have over 3k$ in pokemon now :P)
-Fixed the "zelda bug" I was surprized that this didn't cause almost all games to lock up. I fired off interrupts that where disabled. "Zelda - Link's awakening" works without glitches now.
-Added first version sound support. Channel 1 lacks the frequency sweep, channel 2 is fully implemented, channel 3 still sounds wrong, and channel 4 is unimplemented. Also, no volume control and stereo yet. Sound support is hard, and I was really happy when I produced something that sounded a bit right instead of random high pitches.
-More GBC support, "Zelda - Oracle of seasons" starts, but grapics are glitched. "Zelda - Link's awakening DX" starts, runs, but colors are off.
-No link timeouts, which causes some problems, Tetris hangs if you choose 2 players without a link connected for example.

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Does the link support work on pokemon? (Probably).

I tried that after I posted, I got as far as entering the trading center, but when I tried to setup trades something went wrong. But this was before I fixed the "zelda bug", which very likely caused the problem.

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Can the link support cross machines (Wii versus Computer)?

Currently it's only a "same machine" link, but there is no reason why network support couldn't be added.

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Apple has an API with public reference implementation for allowing service providers and users to find each other through DNS lookups instead of hard-coded port numbers. "DNS Service Discovery" [www.dns-sd.org]

1. Can someone familiar with network programming on the wii look at this and see if the reference code will run on the wii?
2. If so, can we use this to implement this "Find other end of the link" for this?

I think that's beyond the scope of this project. A simple UDP broadcast should be enough to find services on your own subnet, and IP/name entry should work in the rest of the cases.

I would love to see this expand beyond the Gameboy front perhaps to NES or (preferably) the SNES systems. Online multiplayer would be great.

I'm only doing the gameboy/gameboy color/super gameboy (No GBA for those that might think that, the GBA is a whole different device)

Multiplayer on consoles (instead of handhelds) is a whole different league, as you suddenly have 2 emulations running that you need to keep up to date with each other.

Just a status update:
-Fixed a color bug (only the first 4 colors where used in GBC mode, but there are 8)
-Started work on a GUI (loaded rom is hardcoded right now, as well as key mapping)
-Implemented hardware scaling, 2x, 3x, 4x
-Sound still not correct, but a bit improved.

My list of test roms:

-Tetris: Works, with link support.
-Pokemon Blue: Works, but link support failed.
-Pokemon Red: See Pokemon blue.
-Ninja Ryuukenden (AKA Ninja gaiden shadow): A+B+Start on the main screen starts a sound test, combined with very good music this is a great sound test rom.
-The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Seasons: Fails, to many graphical errors to make sense of it. And 
-The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening: Works 100% (I love this game)
-The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening DX: GBC color fix seems to have fixed this one. But there might be a bug in the special color level.
-Pokemon Silver: Intro works, fails after that.
-Bomberman GB: Fails, rom starts, menu shows, but when you select play it skips a bunch of menus, then it won't let you walk ingame.
-Final Fantasy Adventure: Hangs on intro.
-Rampage - World Tour: Works
-Final Fantasy Legend III: Works

And the following public domain roms:

-2560_Colors_Demo: Just shows a lot of colors, was nice to verify the colors.
-Boxes: Simple game, works 100%.
-Minesweeper: Simple minesweeper. First rom that actually didn't crash and showed video, 100% working
-mc-mrder: Fancy demo, 100% working
-Little_Fantasy: Some silly RPG game without sound. But uses many GBC features. Few color glitches to resolve here.
-wario_walking: Very silly, just wario walking on a background. 100% working. But one of the few roms that didn't use an MBC
-Egg_Racer: Some strange racing game with eggs. GBC so good test for colors. But the game is to fast to be playable :P
-Dawn: Another demo. Keeping this one because it make very basic use of sound. Which makes sound debugging easier.