106 Replies

For the DOS challenged:

Refer to pictures for step 1 and 2. If you don’t have a folder setup like in the picture then set one up like it.

Step 3: Take file output from the command prompt and flash to your flashboy. File MUST end up as 2 megabytes. Just use different combinations of ROMS to get the output file to that size.

to make sure you didn’t mistype anything, let the DOS shell do the typing for you. just type the 1st letter and then press TAB to complete.

Thanks for the update MK!

Things I’ve noticed:

The status text indeed no longer scrolls in Mario Land. Still blinky graphical glitches (this occurs in every game though)

Mario Land 2 still won’t get past the title screen. I have noticed if you wait for the demo the demo level works, so it’s just the save select screen that’s borked. Oddly enough all is fine with Mario Land 3, even though it incorporates a similar save select screen.

Bomberman is now playable as the characters are now visible.

The lady at the Pokecenter still steals your Pokemon from you in Red.

Something I’ve wondered, is it possible to have an option to switch the A and B buttons? It’d be nice to be able to have it like the gameboy originally is, it appears to be backwords.

Thanks again, really appreciate the update and the possibility of further work on this project.

Here’s a version with swapped buttons and a video of the emulator.

Attachments:

Awesome, thanks man! Much easier! I’m gonna strive to beat Mario land on my VB now =P

Wow, that runs awesome for you in that video. This is what it looks like on my Virtual Boy.

Probably best to view at 720p or 1080p. It’s hard to see in Mario land in this video since they happen so quickly, but you can sometimes see the garbled game bits that blink in and out. It’s much easier to see in the zelda portion, where character sprites get kinda messed. Does it do that for you on hardware?

Thank you, finally worked
I was wondering why it never worked after seeing a image tutorial and I noticed the GBEMU.vb file was always empty then I tried the output file i named output1.vb and voila the games where in them
I read you need 2 mb to make it work on the vb hardware but whats the max mb that the flashboy will accept, 16 mb?

speedyink wrote:
…It’s hard to see in Mario land in this video since they happen so quickly, but you can sometimes see the garbled game bits that blink in and out. It’s much easier to see in the zelda portion, where character sprites get kinda messed. Does it do that for you on hardware?

Yes, that’s something I have to fix. But at the moment it’s a bit difficult to test it on real hardware, because my displays are extremely glitchy.

Here’s a new version with fixed 3D feature.
BTW the 3D effect works best with vertical shooters:

I have to say that I really am amazed. Not only did you bring us an emulator, but you went even further and added 3D visuals. This is really amazing and I am enjoying the heck out of it! Thanks a lot for all your hard work.

M.K. wrote:

Yes, that’s something I have to fix. But at the moment it’s a bit difficult to test it on real hardware, because my displays are extremely glitchy.

Here’s a new version with fixed 3D feature.
BTW the 3D effect works best with vertical shooters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXST36pj2oQ

Alright, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. Ahh, yes, that would make it a bit hard I suppose.

Another update! Thanks for the continued work on this!

After fixing my glitchy displays, I finally fixed that annoying flickering.
I also improved the emulation speed for a few games.

Attachments:

M.K. wrote:
After fixing my glitchy displays, I finally fixed that annoying flickering.
I also improved the emulation speed for a few games.

Just gave at a short try. Good job on fixing that flickering. Super Mario Land is now as good as glitch free. I also noticed that it’s not as slow anymore as before.

Also tried Metroid II again. I don’t what you changed but it seems more glitch free as well. Before I would always fall in an endless pit of glitches right after the beginning. Now I could play without problems for quite some time.

I got Chalvo 55 to work (without sound). Felt nice to play that on a VB 🙂

Super Mario Land worked with sound but the framerate went downward as the stages went on.

Mega Man 2 didn’t work at all.

And for some reason, only on the first try did the injection work, all other times no matter what roms of what size, the file always became 4 MB, which is too big.

Nice update MK! The glitching has practically disappeared. Good job, man!

Proto, Did you perchance name your output file gbemu.vb? That would make whatever games you flashed that time to permanently be injected into the emulator. I accidentally did that once, just wasn’t thinking. I just redownloaded it and all is good now.

Protoman85 wrote:
all other times no matter what roms of what size, the file always became 4 MB

it sounds like you were adding roms to a previous compilation. you should always double check that you are injecting roms to a clean copy of the emulator.

This is amazing! I, too, hope you keep working on this project. To some extent, I have lost interest in the GameBoy due to the overall color/graphics. But your emulator would make games playable again since sharp red and black 3D graphics are a HUGE upgrade.

Maybe someone can help me…I feel like I’m still doing something wrong with the setup. I’ve gotten it to work a few times, but it often happens that I get a 1MB output file, pad it to 2MB, and then the menu is blank once I get the loaded FlashBoy into my console. Last night, I tried using “>rominjector.exe gbemu.vb rom1.gb rom2.gb”, and I feel like that did in fact work. Then this morning, I had to re-download the program or it would say “0KB read, 65886 expected!” or whatever. Of note, when it worked last night, it WAS a 4MB file, and my FlashBoy would only flash to 50%…but the ROMs I had loaded definitely worked on my VB.

HP Lovethrash wrote:
This is amazing! I, too, hope you keep working on this project. To some extent, I have lost interest in the GameBoy due to the overall color/graphics. But your emulator would make games playable again since sharp red and black 3D graphics are a HUGE upgrade.

Maybe someone can help me…I feel like I’m still doing something wrong with the setup. I’ve gotten it to work a few times, but it often happens that I get a 1MB output file, pad it to 2MB, and then the menu is blank once I get the loaded FlashBoy into my console. Last night, I tried using “>rominjector.exe gbemu.vb rom1.gb rom2.gb”, and I feel like that did in fact work. Then this morning, I had to re-download the program or it would say “0KB read, 65886 expected!” or whatever. Of note, when it worked last night, it WAS a 4MB file, and my FlashBoy would only flash to 50%…but the ROMs I had loaded definitely worked on my VB.

padding somehow breaks the rom. You have to put enough .gb files to reach 2mb. You can use the same one multiple times.

HP Lovethrash wrote:
Last night, I tried using “>rominjector.exe gbemu.vb rom1.gb rom2.gb”

You shouldn’t give the output ROM the same name as the “empty” emulator. After a quick look at the code, the injector doesn’t seem to make any check to prevent overwriting the original. (@MK, you probably should have stuck with the name “gbemu.bin” for the empty emulator binary.)

Here’s an updated injector. I added automatic padding and renamed the empty emu to gbemu.bin.

Attachments:

Still awesome, any chance we can get saving in the future?

thx

Thanks, good advice everyone…I had a funny feeling about naming the output file after the emu., but when someone mentioned that in a post earlier I went and tried before reading how it messed up their program o:).

I could swear that I did get a padded ROM to work once or twice, but I’ll just learn to use the program right I guess haha.

So far I’ve played Mortal Kombat 2 and Super Mario Land 1. Did anyone get SML 2 to work yet? I see the gameplay demo come on, but get booted out of the saved file menu before I can play.

Has anyone else played Mortal Kombat on this? I would love to say I was the first person to do a fatality on the VB!

 

Write a reply

The forum ‘PVB Coding Competition 2013’ is closed to new topics and replies.