GNUBOY README INTRO Welcome to gnuboy, one of the few pieces of Free Software to emulate the Game Boy handheld game console. Written in ANSI C with a few optional assembler optimizations for particular cpus, gnuboy supports a wide range of host systems, and has been tested successfully on: GNU/Linux FreeBSD OpenBSD BeOS Linux/390 (IBM S/390 Mainframe) SunOS/Sun Ultra60 IRIX/SGI O2 IRIX/SGI Indy AIX/Unknown DR-DOS MS-DOS Windows DOS box Windows 9x/NT/2k Additionally, gnuboy should run on any other *nix variants that have ANSI C compilers and that are remotely POSIX compliant. As gnuboy is Free Software, you're welcome to fix any problems you encounter building it for a particular system, or to port it to entirely new systems. For build instructions, see the file INSTALL. For information on the structure of the source tree, program flow, design decisions and guidelines, porting, and so on, read HACKING. GENERAL USAGE Just pass the name of the rom to load on the command line. Default keybindings are as follows: esc - exit arrow keys - d-pad alt - a ctrl - b space - select enter - start 0-9 - select savestate slot ins - save current state del - return to saved state joypad - d-pad joy0 - b joy1 - a joy2 - select joy3 - start (Note: joystick is not available on all platforms at this time.) If you want to change these or other options, you should create a gnuboy.rc file. See the system-specific info below for where to put it. The rc subsystem is very similar to Quake's console in many respects. You have commands and variables. First, the commands: quit - exit gnuboy (saving sram) reset - reset to powerup state source - process another rc file set - set a variable's value bind - bind keys unbind - remove a keybinding unbindall - remove all keybindings savestate - save current state loadstate - return to saved state Additionally, each gameboy pad button has two commands, one to press it, and another to release it -- for example, +start and -start. When a key is bound to one of these commands that starts with a +, it will perform the corresponding - command when it's released, as expected. Here's a list of the + commands, though they should be obvious: +start +select +a +b +up +down +left +right Now for the variables. To set any of the rc variables, just put the command of the form "set variable value" in your gnuboy.rc or other rc file. Some of the more interesting variables are: rcpath - search path for loading extra rc files savedir - the directory where save files will be stored savename - base of filename to use for sram and savestates forcedmg - set to 1/true/yes to force color roms to play mono framelen - delay in microseconds between frames framecount - run only the given number of frames, then exit dmg_bgp - specify 4 custom colors to be used for mono background dmg_wndp - same thing, but for the window layer dmg_obp0 - and for sprite palette 0 dmg_obp1 - and sprite palette 1 scale - factor for screen scaling; currently only 1 and 2 work density - density level for screen scaling; see description below sprsort - x-sort sprites for correctness on dmg roms syncrtc - fake elapsed time on rtc since last session at startup trace - output a complete cpu trace to stdout sprdebug - display bars indicating sprite count per line There are a few others which may or not be useful. Also, certain system and display targets have their own variables, which will be described in the relevant sections below. For more info on how the variables work, read the source. For sample rc files, look in the etc/ directory. Finally, to display help, version, or copying information, use the --help, --version, or --copying options respectively on the gnuboy command line. USAGE - *NIX SYSTEMS The file gnuboy.rc should be placed in ~/.gnuboy/. If it is not found in this location, the current working directory will be searched. The following defaults will be used: rcpath - ~/.gnuboy:. savedir - ~/.gnuboy/saves If you don't like these, override them with gnuboy.rc. There are presently four *nix targets supported: X11, SDL, and Linux fbcon and svgalib. In the future other fb devices (such as the Sun console) should be supported as well. If you have problems with gnuboy running too slowly on svgalib, turn off the vsync option, i.e. set vsync 0. Putting --no-vsync on the command line works as well. At this point svgalib is the only one that supports vsync, so it's a non-issue on the others. USAGE - DOS and Windows Place your gnuboy.rc in the same directory as gnuboy.exe. You need to specify a save directory in it; otherwise the working directory will be used, which is probably not what you want. For example, if you've installed gnuboy.exe in c:/gnuboy, and you want your saves to be stored in c:/gnuboy/saves, place the following in a plain text file called gnuboy.rc in c:/gnuboy. set savedir c:/gnuboy/saves By default stereo sound is disabled on DOS since it doesn't work right on some of the systems we've tested; to enable it, add the following line to your gnuboy.rc: set stereo 1 VIDEO MODES Now all the display targets except Linux fbcon support the uniform "vmode" rcvar to set the video mode. From the rc file, you can specify a video mode like this (for 640x480, 16bpp): set vmode 640 480 16 Or you can specify the mode on the command line, as --vmode=640,480,16 If the requested video mode is not available, gnuboy may either give an error message or use a similar available mode. SCREEN SCALING Scaling by integral factors 1-4 is now supported. Just set the rcvar "scale" to the desired scaling factor. Most of the display targets will automatically choose a video mode appropriate to the chosen scale, but DOS and Linux fbcon users should be aware they they need to set the mode manually, as described above. Of course, if you prefer, you can always set it manually. By default, for performance reasons, vertical scaling will not be fully dense but will leave some blank scanlines. This behavior can be adjusted by means of the "density" rcvar. Density 0, the default, skips every other line. Nonzero values N fill in the first N copies of the scanline, and leave the remaining scale-N scanlines blank. So, if you want a fully filled in display (and the worst performance), you should set density to the same value as scale. Please be aware that this code is still slightly experimental, and the ways of configuring scaling may change considerably in the next few releases. HARDWARE ACCELERATED YUV-SPACE SCREEN SCALING If you're using the SDL display target and your video card/driver supports it, hardware screen scaling is available. This feature provides scaling to any size with almost no cpu usage! It's enabled by default if the screen resolution is set to 320x288 or higher; manually set the "yuv" rcvar to 0 or 1 to force it off or on, respectively. Scaling will be performed to fill the entire requested video mode. For example, to scale to 640x480, either add the following line to your gnuboy.rc: set vmode 640 480 or put --vmode=640,480 on the command line. A better alternative is to just request a particular scale, for example with: set scale 4 or --scale=4 on the command line; this way the gameboy's near 1:1 aspect ratio won't become distorted. SOUND SUPPORT At this point all features are implemented and everything should be right, so any incorrect sound output should be treated as a bug, which we'll try to fix as soon as possible. JOYSTICK AND GAMEPAD SUPPORT At this time, the Linux and SDL joystick devices are the only ones supported. We hope to have DOS joystick support soon. Binding joystick controls works the same way as for the keyboard. Just use the key names joyup, joydown, joyright, joyleft, joy0, joy1, joy2, etc. Default bindings should probably be ok for most users, except that A/B might be backwards on some gamepads. PERFORMANCE Here are some performance estimates i've gathered (given in percent cpu utilization, running at full 60 fps)... Optimized C Assembly AMD K6-2/450 12% 8% Pentium/75 (too slow) 70% SGI O2 25% (no asm) SGI Indy 70% (no asm) Sun Ultra60 3-20% (no asm) IBM S/390 about 0.3% (no asm) Note that these figures were computed before sound was implemented. Until the sound code is further optimized, gnuboy may run somewhat slower than these numbers suggest. SUPPORTED MEMORY BANK CONTROLLERS (MBCS) At this time, gnuboy supports MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 (including realtime clock), and MBC5 (including the version with rumble support, although that functionality is omitted). GRAPHICS SUPPORT Color Gameboy roms are supported completely, including so-called "highcolor" tricks. Yes, even in 256-color mode, although in games that use too many colors on one screen, the later ones will only be approximated. Use a 16 bpp (or higher) display mode if this is a problem. Alternatively, for games that look bad in 256 color mode, you can run in simulated 3/3/2 bits per channel truecolor. Just set the variable rgb332 to something nonzero (or just putting --rgb332 on the command line will work). Color precision is lost somewhat, especially in smooth gradients, but for the most part it looks very good. Much care has been put into ensuring that the lcd timings and interrupts behave as closely to the real hardware as possible. A few features remain unimplemented, such as reduced length HBLANK depending on the number of sprites visible on the scanline, but the vast majority of display tricks used in current roms work fine. We do, however, lack information on proper GDMA timings, which could theoretically cause problems for some roms. If you can provide us with accurate information, please do! COMPATIBILITY Eventually I'll put detailed information here. For now, just see known bugs for the few cases where roms fails. KNOWN BUGS The portal between the temple and the Talon in FFL3 is glitched and the game freezes for a second or two building the incorrect animation when entering those screens. GDMA finishes instantly, whereas it should take time. Making it take time breaks Wacky Races, last I checked, so apparently the documents I have on GDMA timing are incorrect. Same goes for HDMA. Good information would be much appreciated. The main loop in emu_run is very sloppy and not quite right, but it works. Sound mixing is taking way too much cpu time. I have some ideas for fixing this, and I plan to write optimized assembly code for sound eventually. If it's a problem try turning down the sample rate. YUV-space hardware scaling only supports the common "YUY2" mode so far. More modes will be added in the future. REPORTING OR FIXING BUGS Found a bug not mentioned above, or better yet, fixed one? Send bug reports or patches to gnuboy@starfox.org. Please be aware that distribution of any code based on gnuboy must follow the provisions of the GPL, so if you don't agree to this, don't send code to us or anyone else. Let us know if you wish to be included in the credits. For guidelines regarding code contributions, see the file HACKING. Please be aware that evaluating contributed code and figuring out if or how to work it in can take time. If we haven't done anything with your code yet, please be patient. THANKS Thanks goes out to everyone who's expressed interest in gnuboy by writing -- users, porters, authors of other emulators, and so forth. Apologies if we don't get a personal response out to everyone, but either way, consider your feedback well appreciated. EPILOGUE OK, that looks like about it. More to come, stick around... -Laguna