Back from the dead...

First of all, I'm sorry for my long absense, as well as the lack of updates.

To say that I've been very busy for the last months, is a true understatement.
Regretably, I haven't been busy working on DuoS... but on a few other projects more oriented into the commercial side, as well as moving to another city, moving into my new job location... and... well.. it's a long (month's long) story... full of usless excuses.

To what matters... I have like a few hundred unread emails related to DuoS and VTM8 that needs to be answered.

I'm trying to wrap up all the work done on DuoS before my leave of absese, so it can be published.

Wait for more news incoming next week.

BTW, tomorrow is my birthday... and I'm planning to give myself lots of emulator development hours as a present.

VTM8 - Call for testers

If someone has some spare time, and wants to give a hand in testing new emulation technology, please write to vtm8@torum.com.ar , detailing which PC and/or Windows devices you can use for testing.

VTM8 is a quite advanced, and already running, project aimed for Windows 8 devices (desktop, tablet and phone store apps). It basically emulates old PCs, a little similar, but not like Dosbox.
It statically generates new C sourcecode that runs natively on the device... so allowing games to run even on VERY small devices.

I'm even looking for the owners of some classic DOS games that may be willing to re-release them on the Windows Store ;)

Any comment is welcomed.

iDuos is coming...

Well, it's been quite a time since I posted a news update.

I've been very busy, both with my current job, as well as working on the emu.

Although I wanted to make a new DuoS DSEMU release a few months ago, I didn't want to just release a fixed version, but something that might show some real improvement over the last beta.
So far, I remade the entire settings interface, fixed sound issues, added support for compressed files, fixed a lot of games... and made a Windows 8 RT (yes, for tablets) compatible version.

Windows version release is being delayed because I really want it to be perfect, and as far as possible, definitive, in order to be able to focus on other platforms. For that, I really want to thank our users for their patience and support.

As for real news, DuoS DSEMU will, next year, come in two new flavours: iPhone and Windows 8 RT.

Windows 8 RT version is working well so far, and although it supports no sound and has lots of graphics problems, it is almost playable on the emulator (yes, I do not own a Windows 8 tablet, so I haven't been able to test it for real yet).

iPhone (IOS) version codebase, on the other side, is pretty different from Windows 8 RT version. In WinRT I was able to keep most of the code, and only having to remake stuff related to interface, graphics rendering, sound output and such... but not on the emulation engine themselves, except for the Dynamic Recompiler.

iPhone (IOS) version runs extremelly slow... I mean REALLY slow on my iPhone 3G, and doesn't run at all with the IOS simulator in Mac. I expect its performance to be a lot better on an iPad (which I don't own) or iPhone 5. Currently it has no sound, and it's NOT using any kind of accelleration such as OpenGL or Dynamic Recompiler.

Anyway, please, don't expect any release very soon, except maybe for Windows version (which I want to finish ASAP) during the begining of this coming year.

Please do not ask for an Android version yet, iPhone is being quite difficult by itself so far, also I do not own any Android device where to test or develop with.

I, again, want to thank all the people who provided me with feedback needed to fix the emu for its next, and hopefully definitive, release.

Also, I want to give a separate and very special thanks to Angel Diez Fernandez, who was the only person, ever, to make a Paypal donation to the DuoS DSEMU project.

Busy, busy, busy...

Because of the demands from my daily jobs (yes, jobs... and in the plural of job), I haven't been able to work as much as I wanted on the  DuoS DSEMU.

Based on that, plus the fact that I do not want to publish a second Beta that, even if it contains lots of bug fixes and some improvements, might still look too similar to the previous one.. I decided to delay it, maybe until the begining of next month.

Nevertheless, I would really like to thank "testmachine", "Scott Nash" and "Bill_gates" for their continuous support and bug reports, which are the main feedbacks for the development of DuoS DSEMU release.

Fixes, fixes, fixes...

After making a brief pause in the development of the new AdriPSX, I've dedicated the whole weekend to fix lots of bugs in DuoS. Lots of the problems reported by users have been already fixed, most of them related to glitches in GPU, and severe errors with DuoS's Setup Tool; random slowdowns and other miscelanious bugs have been taking care already

Also, support for zipped ROM files has been added, and a full new sound re-sampler is in the works.

DuoS BETA2 will be released as soon as the new SPU engine is ready and playing perfect sound.

Some screen shots...

Plenty of people who downloaded DuoS DSEMU have posted, or even sent me screen shots from working games, here are some:

Brain Challenge

 

Dawn of Discovery

 

Gardening Mama

 

Glory Days

I'm very glad and thankful that so many people showed interest in this first beta.

Now, I just want to encourage anyone interested to send me bug reports or other details regarding any problem you have experienced running it.

Quick fix and update!

Both DuoS DSEMU links at Linkify has been updated.
The version, uploaded there now, doesn't require the Visual Studio 2010 Runtime DLLs... which some PCs might not have previously installed.

Until writing some proper documentation, I can tell the emu requirements here:

- PC running Windows XP or newer, both x86 and X64 seem to be alright.

- PC's CPU must support SSE2 features, basically begining from an old Pentium 4, AMD64 or newer is more than enough. DuoS setup tool will warn you in case SSE2 is not detected.

- .Net Framework 2.0 or newer, only necessary for running the setup tool. If you don't care about the tool, you don't need it. .Net 2.0 is already present in Windows versions Vista or newer, if you still use XP and need it, you can grab it from here.

- If you are running the "not fixed" version, you might need to install the Visual Studio 2010 Runtime DLLs, you can download them from here.

For the next release, I promise that the installer version will handle all this stuff automatically.

Release time!

Well, finally I made it. I hope you all like it.

A few last minute bugs were detected last night, and some quality downgrade happened... but I wanted to keep my promise and release the emu as it is. There's a lot of room for improvements, and stuff to improve... but it's not all that bad for a Beta.

Next week, I'll try to do some touches to DuoS older sister project AdriPSX PSEMU, so I might re-released it with some updates and fixes around next month. I haven't touched its blog in ages, but you can visit it at http://adripsx.blogspot.com.

Please refer to the Download Links section, and send me feedback about the emu... you like it or not!

Thanks to you all for your continuous support!

Roor

A bit too "spartan" ?

This morning I fixed a few last minute bugs from the build...
I created an amiable installer... and coded a simple setup utility.
Since the begining, I wanted DuoS DSEMU to be as lightweight as possible... so far, that goal has been achieved, as the emulator itself is no more than 340kb in size...
With that in mind, I never really cared about features such as keyboard config, joystick support, screenshot support, video recording and such... I've always thougth that when you run an emu, what matters is to be able to play.

But then, I've received more than one complain regarding keyboard config... so, early this morning I coded this:

It certainly achieves its function... and I must admit I'm not a graphics artist myself.
One of my closest beta-testers has already call it "too spartan" (disciplined and conservative with little to no decoration or color)...

Will anyone care if I ship the first release, tomorrow, using it?

I just await for comments...

DuoS almost ready for first beta release

After a very long weekend of testing and last minute improvements, DuoS DSEMU is almost ready for its very first beta release.

Savestate and Savegame support is working very well, and has succeded in all my tests so far; SPU (sound) performance has increased a lot. Only smaller minutae is left, such as manual, licence text files, settings menu and a fully featured installation package.

If no further problems arise: DuoS DSEMU, Nintendo DS Emulator, will see the light this friday.