Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL!

**nwagenaar** · June 28th, 2003

The author(s) from Virtual Jaguar Project stopped working on the Atari Jaguar emulator and released the sources under the GPL license. Unfortunately they developed the emulator using MS Visual C++ with SDL (<- this is a good thing

) but the difference between VC++ and the GCC (GNU C/C++ compiler) are enormous. So, we from sdlemu have tried to convert the sources from VC++ to GCC so we can enjoy Virtual Jaguar on other platforms as well. Well, within 2 hours we got it compiled on GCC (it took some heavy changes in the asm sourcecode) and I got it running on WIN32 (using mingw) and Linux (RH7 on i386). Caz got it succesfully running on BeOS

The current sources are a straight port from the original sources but only some debug stuff was disabled to boot the emulator much faster. Here are some screens to enjoy you with :

Here we have it running with Kusami Ninja and 2nd one is running Alien vs Predator. The 2nd screenshot is garbled but could be because of a bad dump I used.

More info soon

Adam Green · June 28th, 2003

Looks great. Did you rewrite the asm into gcc-syntax x86 asm or C? I'm interested in the source for an OS X port when you're done.

**nwagenaar** · June 28th, 2003

The asm syntax was ported to gcc x86 asm. But I reccon it's easy to port to PowerPC CPU's. An other thing is, the video blitting isn't very well written and it doesn't see if it uses SDL_LIL_ENDIAN.

The video blitting is so integrated in the entire sourcetree, that I'm not able to use OpenGL or scaling without breaking up much portions of the code.

Adam Green · June 29th, 2003

I've begun rewriting the opcodes into PowerPC asm, since there's really no reason to write it in C. The conditional flags were a bit tricky because we don't have setc, setz, etc. on the PowerPC side, but I figured it out eventually. I haven't even looked at hooking up a 68k core, but I assume m68k will work fine in place of Starscream.

**nwagenaar** · June 30th, 2003

Hello Adam,

it's cool to see you're working on a PowerPC port of Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL. The current sourcebase is based upon the Starscream core but it's possible to hook it up on an other core but will take some serious hacking in the sources

If possible, could you use #ifdef __GCCMAC__ definition in conjunction with the #ifdef __PORT__ definition? So we could integrate it in one sourcebase.

I'm trying to get a SF account as we speak so we can make use of CVS. This works a lot better with developers everywhere over the Internet

Feel free to say if you don't want to use SF or that the code to be seperate from Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL!

Adam Green · July 1st, 2003

Sounds fine to me. I think __GCCPPC__ is more appropriate though, since the core is not going to be tied down to just Mac OS X.

**nwagenaar** · July 3rd, 2003

That's fair enough

There are indeed many PPC platforms besides MacOS (X).

Atm, we have a working CVS repository over at icculus.org. But I first need to commit something before people can use the CVS. If you want, I could e-mail you the last changes directly through e-mail.

BTW, we now have an other M68K which is much more portable (Musashi 68K core). Also, much of the assembly is now being rewritten in standard C so that we can enjoy more portability. Many thanks to James L. Hammons for this!

I'm currently working to filter out the SDLptc.h from the sources works and started with "normal" SDL coding. The SDLptc.h is a utter mess and hard to understand. If I've filtered out the console.crap then I'm going to implent some OpenGL code in it to

Adam Green · July 4th, 2003

Sounds nice. adam at victoly dot com, if you want to send over the latest until CVS is set up.

Edit: Just grabbed it off CVS at icculus, no need to e-mail it.

**Shamus** · July 5th, 2003

You might want to grab the sources again once the 1.0.3 source tree is up on icculus--last time I checked, they were still 1.0.2-ish.

I would post the sources myself, but I don't yet have CVS access there...

Adam Green · July 5th, 2003

The CVS seems to be updating rather slowly (have the changes been committed yet?). Can someone upload a tar of the 1.0.3 source somewhere so I can work on this?

**Shamus** · July 6th, 2003

Check your mail...

Last time I checked, 1.0.3 still wasn't up on icculus. I'd bet that Niels hasn't had the time yet to update it, but I could be wrong about that...

I should note also that this is only *my* contributions to 1.0.3--I'm very interested in seeing what Niels has done with it myself!

**nwagenaar** · July 8th, 2003

This is entirely correct. I got the sources on thursday/friday and I was unable to update the cvs since I was at a LAN Party this weekend (Drome @ Hengelo/NLD with 2000+ people ruled!) so I was unable to code or do anything.

I'm planning to update the CVS with Shamus' contributions tonight. My contributions will be available somewhere this week (my sources are currently broken) which will hopefully compile correctly

Oh btw, my contributions. I'm ripping out all SDLptc.h and I'm rewriting Jagem.cpp (removing all Visual Crap++ stuff) and start over with new SDL core. This way I'm sure I can incorperate other stuff like OpenGL, (mmx) scaling, filters, etc. I want the sources be clean as possible to which is related to SDL.

**Shamus** · July 8th, 2003

I'm looking forward to see what you've done with it--I agree that SDLptc.h was a really, really bad hack.

I'm still trying to track down some bugs in the GPU/blitter code that are causing Rayman to show an offset screen as well as bad collision detection... Hopefully I'll have something available soon.

Stay tuned!

**nwagenaar** · July 8th, 2003

I will stay tuned

BTW, I've updated the source branche with the new v1.0.3 sourcebase. Still no patches from me, I need to debug some more

Stay tuned for the SDL rewrite. I hope to update it tomorrow night!

**Shamus** · July 12th, 2003

Hmm... This bug seems to be more elusive than ever. I've traced through the GPU code and even tried two other GPU cores but the problem remains.

Either the problem doesn't lie with the GPU or the functioning of the GPU isn't fully understood.

More later...

**Shamus** · July 15th, 2003

I'm still looking at Rayman, though I'm still not getting anywhere with it. I fixed a problem with Tempest 2000 (bad blits) that I thought would clear up the Rayman problem, but it only fixed Tempest 2000.

BTW, how about write access for CVS?

**Shamus** · July 15th, 2003

Now after looking at the Tempest 2000 code I'm not sure that my fix is a real fix. It's going to be awfully difficult to make things work without the official Jaguar documentation...

Apparently this guy (http://www.starcat-dev.de/products.php) is selling it, but I'm sure that it's on the web somewhere. As I've just spent the last four hours searching in vain for it, I'm going to take a break for the moment.

In short, if real development (instead of making blind guesses) is to continue at all, we need the real docs!

Update: I've found something that may be of use... It's already cleared up the T2K problem (it seems there is a bug in the blitter which ties a bit in A1 to A2). There may be more bugs in the GPU & DSP that we're not yet aware of (cf. Rayman).

BTW, how about that CVS write access Niels?

Or do you prefer to do diffs from my source?

I'm about to go through and remove all the !__PORT__ stuff, since it isn't necessary anymore (as well as a bunch of other miscellaneous updates/goodies

)...

**Shamus** · July 17th, 2003

Ok, I've made more headway into the Rayman problem. It seems to be undocumented behavior as far as I can tell from my information, but it makes sense and it doesn't seem to screw any other games up (as far as I know). What it doesn't do is clear up the collision detection problems.

Assuming I can fold Niels' changes into my codebase, it looks like 1.0.4 should be coming soon.

How are those changes coming Niels?

**nwagenaar** · July 17th, 2003

Slow, very slow. I'm in my last week before I have a 3 week holiday. And the company I work for have filled up my entire week making a 70 hour workweek

I hope to do some heavy coding in the weekend. And I hope to have CVS writing for you

hoyoyo80 · July 20th, 2003

oh,yes btw last time how many jaguar game r publish?I think is not so many,isnt it?

June 28th, 2003	#1 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! The author(s) from Virtual Jaguar Project stopped working on the Atari Jaguar emulator and released the sources under the GPL license. Unfortunately they developed the emulator using MS Visual C++ with SDL (<- this is a good thing ) but the difference between VC++ and the GCC (GNU C/C++ compiler) are enormous. So, we from sdlemu have tried to convert the sources from VC++ to GCC so we can enjoy Virtual Jaguar on other platforms as well. Well, within 2 hours we got it compiled on GCC (it took some heavy changes in the asm sourcecode) and I got it running on WIN32 (using mingw) and Linux (RH7 on i386). Caz got it succesfully running on BeOS The current sources are a straight port from the original sources but only some debug stuff was disabled to boot the emulator much faster. Here are some screens to enjoy you with : Here we have it running with Kusami Ninja and 2nd one is running Alien vs Predator. The 2nd screenshot is garbled but could be because of a bad dump I used. More info soon __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

June 28th, 2003	#3 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! The asm syntax was ported to gcc x86 asm. But I reccon it's easy to port to PowerPC CPU's. An other thing is, the video blitting isn't very well written and it doesn't see if it uses SDL_LIL_ENDIAN. The video blitting is so integrated in the entire sourcetree, that I'm not able to use OpenGL or scaling without breaking up much portions of the code. __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

June 30th, 2003	#5 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Hello Adam, it's cool to see you're working on a PowerPC port of Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL. The current sourcebase is based upon the Starscream core but it's possible to hook it up on an other core but will take some serious hacking in the sources If possible, could you use #ifdef __GCCMAC__ definition in conjunction with the #ifdef __PORT__ definition? So we could integrate it in one sourcebase. I'm trying to get a SF account as we speak so we can make use of CVS. This works a lot better with developers everywhere over the Internet Feel free to say if you don't want to use SF or that the code to be seperate from Virtual Jaguar GCC/SDL! __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

July 1st, 2003	#6 (permalink)
Adam Green Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Sounds fine to me. I think __GCCPPC__ is more appropriate though, since the core is not going to be tied down to just Mac OS X.

July 3rd, 2003	#7 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! That's fair enough There are indeed many PPC platforms besides MacOS (X). Atm, we have a working CVS repository over at icculus.org. But I first need to commit something before people can use the CVS. If you want, I could e-mail you the last changes directly through e-mail. BTW, we now have an other M68K which is much more portable (Musashi 68K core). Also, much of the assembly is now being rewritten in standard C so that we can enjoy more portability. Many thanks to James L. Hammons for this! I'm currently working to filter out the SDLptc.h from the sources works and started with "normal" SDL coding. The SDLptc.h is a utter mess and hard to understand. If I've filtered out the console.crap then I'm going to implent some OpenGL code in it to __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

June 28th, 2003	#2 (permalink)
Adam Green Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20	Looks great. Did you rewrite the asm into gcc-syntax x86 asm or C? I'm interested in the source for an OS X port when you're done.

June 29th, 2003	#4 (permalink)
Adam Green Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20	I've begun rewriting the opcodes into PowerPC asm, since there's really no reason to write it in C. The conditional flags were a bit tricky because we don't have setc, setz, etc. on the PowerPC side, but I figured it out eventually. I haven't even looked at hooking up a 68k core, but I assume m68k will work fine in place of Starscream.

July 4th, 2003	#8 (permalink)
Adam Green Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20	Sounds nice. adam at victoly dot com, if you want to send over the latest until CVS is set up. Edit: Just grabbed it off CVS at icculus, no need to e-mail it. Last edited by Adam Green; July 4th, 2003 at 02:17.

July 5th, 2003	#9 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	You might want to grab the sources again once the 1.0.3 source tree is up on icculus--last time I checked, they were still 1.0.2-ish. I would post the sources myself, but I don't yet have CVS access there...

July 5th, 2003	#10 (permalink)
Adam Green Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20	The CVS seems to be updating rather slowly (have the changes been committed yet?). Can someone upload a tar of the 1.0.3 source somewhere so I can work on this?

July 6th, 2003	#11 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Check your mail... Last time I checked, 1.0.3 still wasn't up on icculus. I'd bet that Niels hasn't had the time yet to update it, but I could be wrong about that... I should note also that this is only my contributions to 1.0.3--I'm very interested in seeing what Niels has done with it myself! Last edited by Shamus; July 6th, 2003 at 08:33.

July 8th, 2003	#12 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! This is entirely correct. I got the sources on thursday/friday and I was unable to update the cvs since I was at a LAN Party this weekend (Drome @ Hengelo/NLD with 2000+ people ruled!) so I was unable to code or do anything. I'm planning to update the CVS with Shamus' contributions tonight. My contributions will be available somewhere this week (my sources are currently broken) which will hopefully compile correctly Oh btw, my contributions. I'm ripping out all SDLptc.h and I'm rewriting Jagem.cpp (removing all Visual Crap++ stuff) and start over with new SDL core. This way I'm sure I can incorperate other stuff like OpenGL, (mmx) scaling, filters, etc. I want the sources be clean as possible to which is related to SDL. __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks! Last edited by nwagenaar; July 8th, 2003 at 11:01. Reason: contributions added

July 8th, 2003	#13 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! I'm looking forward to see what you've done with it--I agree that SDLptc.h was a really, really bad hack. I'm still trying to track down some bugs in the GPU/blitter code that are causing Rayman to show an offset screen as well as bad collision detection... Hopefully I'll have something available soon. Stay tuned!

July 8th, 2003	#14 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! I will stay tuned BTW, I've updated the source branche with the new v1.0.3 sourcebase. Still no patches from me, I need to debug some more Stay tuned for the SDL rewrite. I hope to update it tomorrow night! __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

July 12th, 2003	#15 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Hmm... This bug seems to be more elusive than ever. I've traced through the GPU code and even tried two other GPU cores but the problem remains. Either the problem doesn't lie with the GPU or the functioning of the GPU isn't fully understood. More later...

July 15th, 2003	#16 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! I'm still looking at Rayman, though I'm still not getting anywhere with it. I fixed a problem with Tempest 2000 (bad blits) that I thought would clear up the Rayman problem, but it only fixed Tempest 2000. BTW, how about write access for CVS?

July 15th, 2003	#17 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Now after looking at the Tempest 2000 code I'm not sure that my fix is a real fix. It's going to be awfully difficult to make things work without the official Jaguar documentation... Apparently this guy (http://www.starcat-dev.de/products.php) is selling it, but I'm sure that it's on the web somewhere. As I've just spent the last four hours searching in vain for it, I'm going to take a break for the moment. In short, if real development (instead of making blind guesses) is to continue at all, we need the real docs! Update: I've found something that may be of use... It's already cleared up the T2K problem (it seems there is a bug in the blitter which ties a bit in A1 to A2). There may be more bugs in the GPU & DSP that we're not yet aware of (cf. Rayman). BTW, how about that CVS write access Niels? Or do you prefer to do diffs from my source? I'm about to go through and remove all the !__PORT__ stuff, since it isn't necessary anymore (as well as a bunch of other miscellaneous updates/goodies )... Last edited by Shamus; July 16th, 2003 at 08:35.

July 17th, 2003	#18 (permalink)
Shamus Emu author Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 130	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Ok, I've made more headway into the Rayman problem. It seems to be undocumented behavior as far as I can tell from my information, but it makes sense and it doesn't seem to screw any other games up (as far as I know). What it doesn't do is clear up the collision detection problems. Assuming I can fold Niels' changes into my codebase, it looks like 1.0.4 should be coming soon. How are those changes coming Niels?

July 17th, 2003	#19 (permalink)
nwagenaar Emu author Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 114	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! Slow, very slow. I'm in my last week before I have a 3 week holiday. And the company I work for have filled up my entire week making a 70 hour workweek I hope to do some heavy coding in the weekend. And I hope to have CVS writing for you __________________ Better a penguin that rox than Windows that often locks!

July 20th, 2003	#20 (permalink)
hoyoyo80 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Darkside Of Xeen Posts: 1,124	Re: Virtual Jaguar ported to GCC/SDL! oh,yes btw last time how many jaguar game r publish?I think is not so many,isnt it? __________________ Signature filesize too large

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