[PanaSama]

Actually the controls need a lot of work, I just quickly through these together.

In all honesty I hate touch interfaces for games, you lose so much not having that tactile response that you get from a normal controller. Hopefully it will work well with a blutooth keyboard and maybe in the future we will get some controller support through the usb.

But for now I will do what we can with what I have

True i think touch interfaces for controller based games kinda suck, specially for fighters but it shouldnt be a problem for RPGs, which is what im looking forward to, FF4, 6 and Chrono Trigger would be awesome to have on my PB.

[chrism_scotland]

I hope that RIM will allow full access via Bluetooth and then hopefully we can get some Joypad Support like they have on Android!

[bounce007]

Why is RIM preventing full access to these features (bluetooth, USB, etc) anyway? Security reasons? What?

[sushistew]

Sorry I don't have an eta on this, there are still many items that need to be developed and or improved but I am making progress.

no rush, we all want quality products, thanks for this i can't wait. loved the emu's on my psp. i don't even get my pb till xmas, lol.

[FourOhFour]

Why is RIM preventing full access to these features (bluetooth, USB, etc) anyway? Security reasons? What?

They're not preventing them. They're just not finished yet.

[bounce007]

They're not preventing them. They're just not finished yet.

What's your source?

I guess by "not finished yet" you mean not finished by RIM's opinion? The Rooters (or dinglers lol) seem to have USB access working as well as The Astonishing Tribe with their "alien milk thieves" gizmo.

[Snake785]

The screenshots look great so far! Which version of snes9x is this based on?

[downphoenix]

if it comes I hope they support bluetooth controllers. Some games would be hard to poay with touch. rpg type games like final fantasy would be great though.

[chrism_scotland]

Looking forward to this!!!!!!!

[JAGWIRE]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
i want now!!! to late hopes are skyrocketing!!! CHRONO TRIGGER!!

[iSin]

I want this now! lol nice work dude, it would be awesome to get a N64 emulator, im pretty sure the PlayBook can handle those games what we need is someone to develop..

[meltbox360]

Finally... now all I will need is a gba emulator

[mob_]

Just a quick suggestion, move the start button closer to the left side arrow keys and the select closer to the right side buttons. Looks great though.

[f1mx]

Awesome! Please keep on the good work

[simpsonsguy316]

I know it has been the holidays, but are there any status updates A7omic?

[A7omic]

Hi Everyone,

I would like to give you all a status update.

My work has been based off of the active snes9x-sdl project on Github found here: https://github.com/domaemon/snes9x-sdl

It was very easy and straight forward to this project up to build for the Playbook, most of the work was to set up the IDE to build the project linking it to SDL12 and TouchControlOverlay.

I made some modifications to SDL12 to run snes9x in it native resolution and not stretch it out, I added the controls from TCO and I hacked in a ROM name and file location to load since this snes9x version is command line based.

I have had snes9x running for quite some time now but that the performance is less then desirable. In fact the performance is downright awful.

At first it was only running at 6 fps and the sound was extremely choppy. With some modification to the config variables I have been able to get it to render between 20 and 35 fps but the playback is slow too. What I mean is its not like it is skipping frames to make the game run at normal speed, the game simply runs slow. For example Super Mario Kart takes just over 2 seconds for the timer to count 1 second.

For the sound, I can get rid of the choppiness or pausing if I reduce the frequency to 11050 from the standard 32000 but the tone is way off and it slows down the game as well.

I think there is a direct relation to the choppy/pausing audio to the slow rendering of the games. It is like the audio fills the sound buffer, plays the sound but then has to pause and wait for the game to catch up. I can increase the buffer and it plays longer but the pause is still there.

I don't know if the issues are with snes9x-sdl, SDL12 or perhaps even the BPS library.

As a last ditch effort I will look into the blitting functions in snes9x but I fear I do not have the knowledge base required to resolve this....or I am just too dumb.

I say last ditch effort because I have spent way too time on this and cannot spend any more, right now it just feels wasted.

So if anyone thinks they can help and would like to take a look that would be fantastic. I would be happy to zip up what I have and pass it to anyone that wants it.

[offthahorseceo]

Sign me up for the BETA please!

[froggyface]

Hi Everyone,

I would like to give you all a status update.

My work has been based off of the active snes9x-sdl project on Github found here: https://github.com/domaemon/snes9x-sdl

It was very easy and straight forward to this project up to build for the Playbook, most of the work was to set up the IDE to build the project linking it to SDL12 and TouchControlOverlay.

I made some modifications to SDL12 to run snes9x in it native resolution and not stretch it out, I added the controls from TCO and I hacked in a ROM name and file location to load since this snes9x version is command line based.

I have had snes9x running for quite some time now but that the performance is less then desirable. In fact the performance is downright awful.

At first it was only running at 6 fps and the sound was extremely choppy. With some modification to the config variables I have been able to get it to render between 20 and 35 fps but the playback is slow too. What I mean is its not like it is skipping frames to make the game run at normal speed, the game simply runs slow. For example Super Mario Kart takes just over 2 seconds for the timer to count 1 second.

For the sound, I can get rid of the choppiness or pausing if I reduce the frequency to 11050 from the standard 32000 but the tone is way off and it slows down the game as well.

I think there is a direct relation to the choppy/pausing audio to the slow rendering of the games. It is like the audio fills the sound buffer, plays the sound but then has to pause and wait for the game to catch up. I can increase the buffer and it plays longer but the pause is still there.

I don't know if the issues are with snes9x-sdl, SDL12 or perhaps even the BPS library.

As a last ditch effort I will look into the blitting functions in snes9x but I fear I do not have the knowledge base required to resolve this....or I am just too dumb.

I say last ditch effort because I have spent way too time on this and cannot spend any more, right now it just feels wasted.

So if anyone thinks they can help and would like to take a look that would be fantastic. I would be happy to zip up what I have and pass it to anyone that wants it.

Hmmm qnx is balls on accurate with timing and there's enough horse power for it to run full frame rate.
I would try the stretched mode , fceux runs like crap in the higher res modes. Disable any super sampling that makes sprites look nice.

The timing thing is weird it should be running at pal or ntsc rates ( frame skipping should be on ) so I think something hasn't translated to playbook properly.

I would also look at the profiling in momentics. Did you pick up the 23rd dec sdl release ?

[A7omic]

Auto frame skip is what makes it run at 6 frames per second. Frame skipping off gives me 30FPS with basic blitting, HIRes blitting drops it to 15FPS.

No difference between streched mode or native, this is just a small change to SDL12 and should be the way its done(imo). I am using the latest SDL12, I am not using 8 bit so it should make no difference from the older version anyways.

I tried profiling, man it runs slowww. I am not familiar enough with it though so I was just looking at execution times to see if anything was too high but I did not find anything useful.

This is why I need someone else's eyes on it.

@offthahorseceo - I am not looking for beta testers I am looking for a developer or developers with the know how and willingness/desire to help.

[jtokarchuk]

I would get it up on a github, and a few of us can take a swing at it. There's enough want for it here to get it done.

[A7omic]

A small correction:

The display Frame count setting displays:

FPS which is calculated as:
calcFps = (IPPU.TotalEmulatedFrames - lastFrameCount) / (uint32)(currTime - lastTime);

Followed by the "Rendered Frame count" and then "Rom frames per second".

On Mario Kart(PAL)

With Auto Frame skip we get:
40 to 50 FPS
5 RenderedFrameCount
50 RomFramesPerSecond

With this setting the game runs close to normal speed except its jittery since we are not getting enough rendered frames.

With No Frame skip:
20 to 30 FPS
50 Rendered
50 RomFPS

So we are rendering but only displaying about half the frames per second which explains why the game is running at half speed.

[HaTaX]

So if anyone thinks they can help and would like to take a look that would be fantastic. I would be happy to zip up what I have and pass it to anyone that wants it.

I can get you a SVN repo setup and it will definitely get some attention. Would be kind of fun to see if there's some optimizations that could be done to get this working smoothly. Sounds like it almost renders enough frames, but not quite enough for full rendering speed.

Anyway, let me know how you'd like to give the source and I'll take a peek at it.

[KermEd]

I can get you a SVN repo setup and it will definitely get some attention. Would be kind of fun to see if there's some optimizations that could be done to get this working smoothly. Sounds like it almost renders enough frames, but not quite enough for full rendering speed.

Anyway, let me know how you'd like to give the source and I'll take a peek at it.

I would definitely contribute time to this as well. I tried to port over PocketSNES in the past as well. Its quite time consuming for one person, especially when your busy as heck and trying tonfigure out whats up with the librarys . But I think you should take 2 weeks off work, polish it to usable with HaTaX and ya both should release it on AppWorld for 7.99 a download.

[A7omic]

Awesome guys, since there are a few people who have said they could help I will definitely drop it into a repo but first I will zip everything up and make it available for you all. I will PM you the details.

About the repo, I have been using Github so I would prefer to use it unless HaTaX has a valid reason why not to.

[HaTaX]

Github works for me! I'd say we just let the project live there, if you don't mind giving a few of us access to it after we start making some contributions to the code base.

Thanks again for not letting this just die off... Looks like maybe KermED and I have a project to work on.