Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
is a Multi-platform emulator, for windows systems (currently). It emulates a number of cores and provides full rerecording support and all the tas tools that the community has become accustomed to.
Currently BizHawk emulates NES, SNES, GB, GBC, SMS, GG, SG-1000, PCE, PCE CD, SGX, and TI-83 at release quality. It also includes an experimental Genesis core.
BizHawk is built with a modular design that allows for complete separation of client and emulation cores and provides an object oriented design that allows for reuse of material between cores easily. Most cores are written in C#, but it also provides support for pure C++ cores to be integrated and interact with the GUI client. It currently uses the bsnes and gambatte cores in this manner
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
My long term plan would be for bizhawk to replace our current rerecording emulators, yes. However, that is a very aggressive long term plan, but that what I am working towards!
My long term plan would be for bizhawk to replace our current rerecording emulators, yes. However, that is a very aggressive long term plan, but that what I am working towards!
Do you guys replace emulators one by one, or several at once?
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Location: Tennessee
It depends, that's not really how it works. Someone works on a specific core because that interests them or because it meets a long term plan. Maybe someone else works on another core at the same time. In general nobody is working on cores with the purpose of obsoleting a TASing emulator, they are working on a core because they love it and are interested in it, and do quality work.
is a Multi-platform emulator, for windows systems (currently). It emulates a number of cores and provides full rerecording support and all the tas tools that the community has become accustomed to.
Currently BizHawk emulates NES, SMS, GG, SG-1000, PCE, PCE CD, SGX, and TI-83 at release quality. It also includes experimental Genesis and Gameboy cores.
BizHawk is built with a modular design that allows for complete separation of client and emulation cores and provides an object oriented design that allows for reuse of material between cores easily. While the current cores are all written in C#, it can and will provide support for pure C++ cores to be integrated and interact with the GUI client.
Have I ever mentioned how much I love you, adelikat?
And just so that my comment isn't a waste of space, will Bizhawk's movie files be backward/cross- compatible with "standard" emulators?
Is there a debugger or a way to step through code while viewing registers etc...?
I noticed there was one for NES, are there plans to add debuggers to the other consoles (in particular TG16)? Thanks.
That looks very ambitious. Nice!
Two questions though:
* can you elaborate on the origins of the cores? Which of them were developed from scratch, which weren't? And what are the origins of the re-used ones?
* are you planning to provide linux support eventually? Would it be a matter of porting the GUI, or is there still windows-specific code left in some of the cores? Has the new code been developed with portability in mind, or did you introduce new dependencies?
@Tub:
The existing cores are all developed from scratch. zeromus and adelikat are the primary authors of the NES core. I wrote the SMS and PC-Engine cores.
We did use the Z80 core from "Cogwheel", although we have modified it and made it our own. Cogwheel is also MIT licensed.
The primary reasons for developing these cores from scratch were 1) We favor MIT/BSD/APL style licensed cores. 2) We were experimenting with the best ways and interfaces to abstract the emulation core logic from the client logic while still maintaining the sorts of rich features people expect.
The emulation cores (in Bizhawk.Emulation.dll) contain no windows-specific code and were designed to be portable. However, the client is significantly complex, so unfortunately just "porting the GUI" to another platform is a major undertaking.
Joined: 4/2/2009
Posts: 376
Location: Porto Alegre - Brazil
I have a question =P
1- When did this happen?? Just now when I was getting used to Dega-S ... ._. that's not the question, this is:
1- Will hex-editing be a list of frames or that hexadecimal hard thing to read? ... looking this way, I'll just download this net framework thing and start being a TASer on 2012 already ... XD
2- (I wasn't gonna but..) .. ( ... forget it, the prereqs thing worked) >_>
2- (remembered something else) ... what happens to MMV files? all I did in 2011 will be just obsoleted in a blink of an eye? ._.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Joined: 11/3/2004
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Location: Tennessee
Just because we have a new emulator doesn't mean anything happens to .mmv files or any filetypes. Hell, we had famtasia movies up until about a year ago?
If you are working on anything currenty, there is a .mmv importer, but the sync compatibility is quite different (*cough better *cough) than dega. But I suspect large chunks of a TAS would sync, or would after some small editing.
Yes! I love the MIT-style licenses. I also love C#. I'll definitely look into helping with this.
I look forward to help! As you can see, we have no shortage of tasks.
If you want help, might I inform you that Google Summer of Code is currently accepting applications for mentoring organizations for this year's internship program. Upshot: if accepted, we could get free programming work, sponsored by Google, plus $500 per student programmer who does work.
But the application deadline is Friday March 9th, 3:00PM PST/6:00PM EST/23:00 UTC.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 4/2/2009
Posts: 376
Location: Porto Alegre - Brazil
Is this name the final version? I keep forgetting it and calling BizMark, or BizRock ... x_x
*making first tests, it really looks better .... but it's not running any NES, or GB, or Gen ... I think it's just a SMS emulator for now o_o
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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It runs NES games, GB and GENS games are not released (we have very crude experimental cores, don't consider them useable), please read the list of support consoles!
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What does DiscoHawk have to do with games? Emulation? TAS?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
DiscoHawk converts bolloxed-up crusty disc images to totally tidy cue+bin.
Do you have a cue+iso+ape? cue+bin+mp3? cue+wav? Do you have a cuesheet that nothing else can open without crashing? Try DiscoHawk!
It's positively useful right now for pce-cd emulation in bizhawk, but other folks have used it for other things entirely with other emulators.
The emulation cores (in Bizhawk.Emulation.dll) contain no windows-specific code and were designed to be portable. However, the client is significantly complex, so unfortunately just "porting the GUI" to another platform is a major undertaking.
You are aware that Mono supports WinForms, correct?
It would be nice if you keep this in mind when referencing native code, if you ever plan to go multi-platform. That way if you can't get someone to do a native UI for a platform, you can at least fall back to the WinForms one.
I just stumbled upon this project a few hours ago, it's very nice to see these emulators implemented in C#. I may wish to make some contributions at a later date...
Don't get your hopes up. If and when the time comes, multiclient isn't going to sacrifice anything for portability unless an advocate appears to test and make workarounds.
It would be nice if you keep this in mind when referencing native code, if you ever plan to go multi-platform. That way if you can't get someone to do a native UI for a platform, you can at least fall back to the WinForms one.
I just stumbled upon this project a few hours ago, it's very nice to see these emulators implemented in C#. I may wish to make some contributions at a later date...
