I found a cool thread by Franxis mentioning if anyone wanted to port Final Burn Alpha. Well Franxis and I had a quick conversation and decided I should do it. Final Burn Alpha is my new project for the GP2X.

From what I gathered (its been awhile since I used Final Burn!) it's matured from an Afterburner emu to supporting:
Quoted from Franxis' thread:
Air Gallet
Armed Police Batrider
Batsugun
Battle Bakraid
Battle Garegga
Battle K-Road
Dangun Feveron
DoDonPachi
Dogyuun
DonPachi
ESP Ra.De.
Final Star Force
Gaia Crusaders
Gunbird
Guwange
Hyper Pacman
Mahou Daisakusen
Oh My God!
Operation Wolf
Out Zone
Rainbow Islands
Samurai Aces
Shippu Mahou Daisakusen
Snow Bros. 2
Strikers 1945
Tengai / Sengoku Blade: Sengoku Ace Episode II
Truxton II / Tatsujin II / Tatsujin Oh
Uo Poko
V-Five
Capcom CPS-1 (all games)
Capcom CPS-2 (all games)
Cave (do donpachi, donpachi, esprade (ESP Ra.de. - A.D. 2018), fever sos, Gaia Crusaders, guwange, sailromn, uopoko (Puzzle Uo Poko))
Neo Geo (all games)
Toaplan
Taito Rainbow Islands/Operation Wolf/Rastan
Psikyo 68EC020 based hardware

Now if I can just get the Cave shmups working, all is well! This should be fun as I love shmups!

Discuss. Fetching source now.

You're the man, Zod...

Do you anticipate these games would run close to full speed?

I will donate to show my extreme appreciation for this (after I purchase new underpants, that is ...)

Cool stuff Zod

Good luck and I'm glad you're excited about doing it.

I havent a clue yet, but considering i'm porting it from a PocketPC-based phone I have a good chance. SmartPhones are usually faster than the GP2X, but I might have some advantages. It looks promising and I will try extremely hard to see Final Burn Alpha Plus play at very least the Cave/Psyiko games, as they're some of my favorite games out!

So far so good.

Sounds like a good choice. Challenging to do, but many of these games especially the CPS1 should be very doable seeing as CPS2 ported fron NJ runs so well now.

You joke about scaling but for CPS2, CPS1 check out how the CPS2 emu on the GP2X does it now. The "software horiz only" scaling option looks decent (even to me) as it uses averaging only for the pixels in the column where they were removed. It leaves the others intact. It would be nice to include such an option.

Good luck.

hmmm he left and came back..
he needs his own religion!

Go Zod,
I love shumps!

wait... he doesn't have one already?
...
what the hell did i sign up for then?

nooooooooo

These are all 68000/Z80 games, right?

The only thing is that some of them are 68EC020, which is a different beast to 68000.

If you are intending to use Cyclone for the 68000 games that's awesome. What's your intention for the 68EC020 games?

That's really a good news...
Kudos to you for all your work.

So nice zodttd!

It would be great to play that games on a GP2X....expecting results :D

Wow, this Final Burn has matured very well. Last time I checked it only supported CPS1 & CPS2.
Now It´s like GP2X MAME on steroids

Looks promising!

CPS2emu has hardware and software scaling. It's the hardware iteration that offers the horizontal only option. It would be great if Zod could implement something like this. Good thinking, DaveC.

zod do you have an alpha/beta yet you would like testing

This is very awesome news. I am also a Cave/Psykio fanatic as well as a Raizing fanatic. I wish you the best of luck in getting this emulator running on the GP2X. Any effort you do is much appreciated, and will be shown with a nice donation. BTW I didn't see any SEGA games in the list. The very first versions of Final Burn supported After Burner I&II, and Galaxy Force II. Will this one have those games added as well or does the version that you're porting not support the X or Y Board Hardware. I'm guessing no, but figured I'd at least ask. They seem like pretty beefy hardaware to emulate on the gp2x. Just the fact that Cave games will be playable is good enough for me. Thanks again!

Great news zodttd and nice project.
I wish you good luck with this one.

No Amiga? Boo.

Miika: We could always use our C64 SX-64's if we wanted portable Commodores!

As for Afterburner and Galaxy Force, I was wondering what happened to them as well. I'll look into the source some more and see if they are still supported. It would be strange for them to be gone, as it's how it started!

Thanks for the support. I also didnt realise hardware "fine scaling" was figured out on the GP2X. Is CPS2emu using fine or coarse scaling?

Yay but that's just a Commodore 64, which we already have portable. Amiga is the best
Umm can you give Amiga a shot in the future?

imhotep was mistaken.

The hardware scaling gives the standard ugly "blocky scaling". There is a mode called *sw* scaling horiz only which is a SoftWare scaling mode that eliminates 1 column of pixels (every 6 I think) to get the image to fit. It then averages the pixels only in that column so that it looks smooth without blurring out the entire image. I think it uses a similar tecnique that Pico Drive does to scale horiz only but to compress rather than stretch. Notaz says that scaling and averaging one horizontal direction only is possible in software without killing the CPU time alot. The averaging routeen was in ASM. Look in the Picodrive thread. CPS1 and CPS2 games are very close to full screen vertically with tiny bar at the top/bottom. This mode leaves the image size alone vertically and only compresses horizontal. It looks alot better than trying to stretch vertical too making the image blocky only to gain 1 mm or two.

Does that mean its changing the aspect ratio?? Not sure I like that... Of course... it would be an option... so I wouldn't have to use it ...

Definitely changing the aspect ratio, yes. Although there remains the question with regards to aspect ratio as to whether the pixels on the respective original displays were square (if not, then the aspect ratio has already been changed by rote of playing on a squre-pixel-based LCD).

DaveC: I believe that technique is very dependant on what the aspect ratio and which rows are removed for how the image will look. On psx4all for example, we have every horizontal/vertical resolution "predefined" for which pixels are removed.

Well CPS1/CPS2 were all 4:3 so changing the aspect would be a correction. The pixels were not square with those systems.



Yes it is dependant on aspect. With CPS1 you just need to remove the correct amount of columns to fit the image on screen horizontally (leave vertical. it is close enough and isn't worth the distortion to add a couple of rows of pixels). This was done very well with ell's CPS2 emu. Play around with it, you will see the differences right there.

Since Final burn emulates alot of systems you may want to tailor and pre-define the scalers (and also have a 1:1 option) to each system.

I didn't realize that PSX needed any scaling, I thought it was 320x240 or very close.

So that means the pixels on the original were something like this.

###
###
###
###

and Gp2x

####
####
####

If it is stubbier and wider than the Gp2x screen when displayed 1:1. So then in this particular case, this type of scaling will actually make it look better on the Gp2x, though lower res than the original.. Cool.

Dang weirdo formatting...

Final Burn with Powerdrift, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force and OutRun support would be wonderful. But I am afraid that Powerdrift, Outrun or another decent arcade racer will never happen on GP2X.

EDIT: Oh I just saw on the Final Burn Alpha website, that Powerdrift is supported:

See:

Nice games.....I still have hope in Outrun (arcade version) running in my GP2X!!

Which version? C64 version works fine for me As does the megadrive one.

Neither are arcade perfect.

Good luck on the new project Zodttd, if you need a beta tester with too much time on his hands to make a compatibity list or bug report, I'm pretty much free for the next month

Maybe I might even have time to do some coding, and release something that isnt meant to be crap

Powerdrift on the GP2X would be the best thing ever with all its meaty 3x 68000 goodness...

many happy hours spent in the arcade playing that!

If Powerdrift and Outrun run at fullspeed we all can be eternally grateful.

One Word Zodttd !....

If I get DoDonPachi Close to playable on my gp2x. You'll get my eternal gratitude and a donation !!!

DoDonpachi as beeing one of my favorite shmup along with Ikaruga and others !

Thanks YOU Zod !
paxl13

For now I've been cheating and playing the psx version of Dodonpachi on my psp. It's a decent substitute till Zod releases a beta. Man just thinking of playing Guwange and Dangun Feveron on the GP2X is getting me excited. I was really hoping for something like this ever since I bought my GP2X. I will definitly be donating for this. Zodttd thank you again for taking time to do this.

So, Zod, when am I going to... "feel the burn"?

ourun arcade on gp2x omg .............
the shooting games are nice but x & y board sega ..that would be the bomb..
it would be only topped if someone would make a driver in mame for wrestlefest

I haven't got it working yet, but I'm slowly getting progress made.

Btw, I tried DoDonPachi for the PSX. On the PSP with 3.40 OE-A and POPSLOADER it didn't get past the "Please wait" loading game screen after selecting the ship. It gets stuck. Could it be a bad rip? If any help on this can be had, PM me.

Btw...This will suck for some but...I don't believe this FBA Plus port supports Sega X & Y...very strange since its where Final Burn got its start! I'll look into it.

Honestly I would be happy with just CPS1 running as good as the current CPS2 emu does now on GP2X. If that was all that became of this emu it would still rock, good luck

Totally agree with you

You say x and y board are not supported. X board means Afterburner, Thunder Blade. Y board means G-Loc, Galaxy Force, PowerDrift, Rail Chase.

What's about the out run board, this is a different hardware and means Out Run, Hang-On and turbo out run. Would these games be supported by your Final Burn port for the gp2x? I am afraid that if the x and y board are not supported, this will be the same for the out run board.

A hint for arcade racer enthusiasts: Pole Position 2 on PSP via the psx game namco museum vol. 3. Really authentic and better than Pole Position 1 via Namco Museum for the GBA.

Hi Zottd have you tried Masterall Finalburn on the Gizmondo ??? The Emu runs near fullspeed.
Maybe you can ask him to share the code ? If you need a new project why don 't you make a Raine Arcade port.
Link>http://www.rainemu.com/ that is also a great Emu that must be ported to arm.
Hope you will you make ports for both Handhelds.

With best regards

Jens

Just look at the complexity of those X Y games. It should be no suprise that those will be very difficult/impossible to emulate well on the GP2X with Final burn.

I'm glad you've said that, Dave, I really am. Given the alarming regularity with which your "impossible to do on the GP2X" predictions fail to come true, it gives all of us Outrun fans some real hope :-)

D.

Heh, Dunny.


There may be a delay in which I can get this emulator up and going. I'm working on it slowly, but I won't mind if someone beats me to it.

Since I really want to see this emulator done on the GP2X, if someone wants to do the groundwork for the emulator and just get it up and running while I tweak things to get them running optimal, let me know.

The issue is I have been speaking to wd of DOSBox and with Boingball's help we can get his port and my eventual dynarec put into their main CVS for upkeep. This is a very important step for me, and I assume boingball.

Basically, I could use a partner on this FBA Plus project.

And all of these failed predictions are? When I say "impossible", I mean impossible at full speed with sound. I don't consider 1/2 speed with no sound while OC to 300+ MHz "possible", sorry. So far the only "failed prediction" was Sega CD. N64, PSX, Jaguar, Dreamcast are still not anywhere near fullspeed with sound



That doesn't sound promising

How about just CPS1 then? Might be quicker/easier. That emu is just begging to be ported to the GP2X given the high quality of the CPS2 emu we have now. That was ported from NJs PSP emu. If CPS2 was used as a reference (source for both of NJ'S emu plus Ell's are available) surely it would not be super difficult to do I wouldn't think.

Stop being so damn greedy, if zod wants to work on a Dosbox dynarec let him do just that, it's now like he gave up on this project, he just put it on hold.

Besides, Dos games > cheesy arcade :-]

how feasible would it be, to join forces with pepone and the porter of NJ's cps2 emulator (who did that anyway?) and merge their knowledge and code with an eventual fba port? Could that work out? Then we would have an emulator which would combine the already great features of the other ones into one emulator collection.

DOS games at 1/2 speed without sound and requiring a cumbersome virtual keyboard < "cheesy"(only some of the best shooters and platformers made ) full-speed and actually playable arcade games to me




Ell ported CPS2 from the PSP. He has seemed to have vanished after he ported CPS2.

I have a strong feeling Zod has his heart set on Final Burn.

Well the whole point of ZodTTD working on it would be to turn those half speed games without sound into fullspeed games with sound.