Gens for Linux, anyone?

[DancemasterGlenn]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=290008

Over the last... amount of time (it's been a couple of years, I guess), a couple of people on this thread picked up development on the linux build of Gens (which if you tried some of the older builds, was... not amazing). They did a lot of stellar work to making Gens more playable, and to make the gui better looking, among other code cleanups.

However, current work is stalled, as the main guy who has been working on the code (wryun) has gotten a lot busier in real life, as people generally do. He apparently does not have time at this point in his life to be working on this port, but he's offering anyone who wants to permission to make changes to cvs.

According to his recent post, these are some of the things left to implement/refine:

For those who want to code, priorities to fix from what I remember:
- add the ATI patch in
- clean up joystick support
- work out what's going on with the GUI updates, and put the OpenGL option into the Glade files
- fall back properly to no OpenGL when OpenGL fails
- rework the config files parsing (it's kinda ugly, and more significantly relies on unique chars which potentially conflict with things in filenames. I changed from [] to *? for this reason).
- work out why it loses the plot sometimes on fullscreen/window switch

Enhancements:
- XVideo support for those whose OpenGL isn't working - see the latest generator source
- J-Cart support - one of the recent console emulator releases has it, can't remember which (PSP?)
- run all the files through a code beautifier so the indentation/style gets half-way consistent (didn't do it myself because it would make the repository a mess of changes; wanted to wait until the basic patches were in and 2.13 was something stable)
- rewrite the terrifying joystick code

Anyway, I'm sure this won't get an overwhelming response, but I know a lot of you on this forum are really amazing coders, so if this happens to tickle your fancy (har har), I know a lot of people would be pretty pumped to see this project picked up again (myself included).

Now, let's see if anyone bites...

[byuu]

I know it's not what you're looking for, but Derrick put together a nice build of Gens with OpenGL support. It works great for my purposes, at least ... perhaps his build will work better than the ones you tried.

http://repository.cinnamonpirate.com/

The cool part is that it's a Debian / Ubuntu repository. Add to your list of sites, and you can just apt-get install gens, and get free automatic updates whenever they come out. There's lots of other cool emulators there, too.

Sadly, I barely have time to maintain my own apps. Which really sucks, so many people help me out yet I can rarely return the favor. So no help from me to fix those issues in Gens. However, if anyone wants to, you can use the XVideo code in bsnes, as public domain, to add to Gens.

[wah_wah_69]

You might remember me from useless threads as:
http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... sc&start=0


It was me who added opengl to gens long time ago.
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-20 ... art-0.html

I know the joystick code is ugly it's something I've always wanted to rewrite I have a cvs co from some time ago (I think there are no recent submissions,checked the sf page a while back),in fact I do not use gens now because my joystick which is a xbox1 pad with usb cord ,constantly gives axis movement events (bad calibration I think) and when configuring all the buttons events are detcted as axis 1 up.

I can't edit the config file by hand because the dpad of the joystick I want to use is not being considered in the joysick code (It reads the first 3 or 4 axis but the dpad is axis 5 or so).

But prior to that I'd like to write a custom gui a la Zsnes for gens It's something I really like to do, as ugly and difficult to maintain as custom gui's are,I don't care if it's not added to the main gens source,I'll do it anyway.

I have 2 years old code, for a very basic menu and file navigation,never have the time (or will) to finish it's something I really like to do but is always "on hold".

I think is because I started writing code instead of designing everything first.

It's written in plain good old c,my main concern was to use less libraries as possible and to be as portable as possible.

I've also thought about making a gui with opengl,but that's another story.

Here's a screenshot:

http://omploader.org/vNWV2/CustomGuiGens.PNG

[DancemasterGlenn]

Wow, I actually really like that. It's all artsy and classy. Care to post on the ubuntu forum topic in my original post? The work that got done in that thread was extremely beneficial to the linux port, and if you have some way to improve what we've got right now... well, that would just be excellent!

Please do post in there if you're interested, everyone's all bummed because wryun (the guy who was doing all the great work) was no longer able to maintain the build. Some fresh progress would definitely bring people back.