Pocket Heaven

Dwedit · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 6:52 pm Post subject:

Actually it's just that I changed the memory mapping code to use a different number of bits to look up the page, and forgot to change a couple pieces of code which used the old number of bits, and thus read incorrect memory. As for SMS vs TI83, you'd be Amazed at how similar they are... (look for the WMV file)
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tepples · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 7:34 pm Post subject:

But how many accidental NESisms would make it into an Apple II emulator?
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-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

Dwedit · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject:

Lack of decimal mode, of course Smile

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dantheman · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:01 pm Post subject:

Alright, here's what I was talking about with the capital letters thing.

This is just to give a few ideas of course, as I realize that my version has its own flaws. For instance, in mine the 5 and S are the same, as are zero and capital O. My letters and numbers are blockier as well, which may or may not be easier to read. I've noticed that mine looks very crowded, especially the upper half.

Again, I just made this to give a few ideas if you decide to use all capital letters in the skin. Obviously modifications would need to be made to increase readability.

EDIT: hehe, my post count is now 1101, binary for 13. This must be a very unlucky post or something.

tepples · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:16 pm Post subject:

How many colors are allowed in the skin?

EDIT: I started with dantheman's skin. I rounded O and other letters, which incidentally made 5 and S easy to distinguish. I widened M, N, and W. I anti-aliased several letters.

_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

Dwedit · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:43 pm Post subject:

Right now, the screen is an affine 128x128 tilemap using 256 color tiles, which only actually uses colors 0 (BG), 1 (White), 2 (Black).
I just realized it would probably be better to do the screen as a series of scaled sprites, since you get the ability to use 16 colors that way, but then you'd lose the ease of just scaling one tilemap. Also, the TI85's screen is too wide, it would end up being 256 pixels wide (DS size) instead of 240 (GBA size).
The skin is a basic 16 color tilemap.
All of this is subject to change. I could probably give 224 colors for the skin (maybe save two 16-color palettes for a GUI font possibly?). Or I could even just use a 16-bit bitmap mode for the skin.
Right now the possibilities are endless. But if I continue to use tilemap modes, I'd probably limit a skin to 224 colors.
Just don't do something stupid like resize a photo of a TI83 and think it makes a legible skin.

I had tried using captial letters before for a skin, I found lowercase to be more readable.

There's also a lot of wasted screen space below the calc's image, what should go there?

Edit: Here's an example of a resized photo:

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Here come the fortune cookies! Here come the fortune cookies!
They're wearing paper hats!

tepples · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:20 pm Post subject:

Adrenalin · Member Joined: 10 Apr 2007 Posts: 6

I suppose this is kinda relevant, there was a Ti-85 emulator released for the DS in the past, but unfortunately hasn't been updated in a long time, probably dropped.

Would programming this for the DS be more ideal?

dantheman · Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:11 pm Post subject:

Just wanted to say good job on the emulator. I didn't even know you had made test releases until your post on GBAdev about porting it to the DS. For those who haven't found it, the releases are available from http://www.dwedit.org/dwedit_board/viewtopic.php?id=292

I've been messing around with it this afternoon and have no complaints. The speed buttons are great time savers, so thank you for that. It's not exactly the most ideal platform for playing Tetris, but as far as calculating goes it does what it's supposed to do.

RedNifre · Member Joined: 11 Aug 2004 Posts: 26

That's fantastic!

Please include an option to show a merge of the current and one or two previous frames, so we can enjoy the games that use the low quality of the LCD to produce grey-scale graphics.

Is your goal to just emulate games or will it actually turn the GBA into a respectable calculator?

About the buttons: