First of all, I've already tried to come up (without success) to do something similar to aid AngerFist's project (run 8~9 FCEUX with predefined ROMs in one click and control all emulators through 1 app / keyboard). Inactive forum thread
here.
The difficulties I had were:
- if the emulator uses
DirectInput, you need to use background input, otherwise they only process input if they are focused (the window itself).
- multiple emulators / games will decrease performance, which leads to desynchronization. (
Wiki: DesyncHelp)
- losing the unique features of emulators because of input driven solution (bye TASEditor)
1. Communicating with the emulators
The probably fastest method as feos suggested was linked in that thread: using IPC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication.
There's a LUA WinApi
http://github.com/stevedonovan/winapi with a few examples on making asynchronous NamedPipes.
This way you could communicate in a server (your program) - clients (the emulators) network. Also note that many emulators supports LUA scripting and you can rely on others like TCP.
However, performance is a must and I would suggest using
ØMQ with many
language bindings and you should have freedom in creating network communication.
2. Initial setup
- You need to launch the N (number of) emulators using parameters to open ROM and movie (winapi.spawn_process() @ LUA WinApi)
- You need to check every client finished and no errors happened
- Rewind to last finished position. Refer to
http://www.fceux.com/web/help/fceux.html?LuaScripting.html for example.
The communication is up to you, I used a client.lua script on the emulators with predefined functions for example, to restart emulator when it's crashed or something bad happened.
It'll send keys too all emulators it was detected. Then we can run unlimit emulators/games in same time for make TAS. Can send unlimit keys to emulators in same time (it's impossible with normal keyboard)
Well, what do you think about my idea?
How to use:
- Open emulators and open your movies
- Run my tool
- Press (or click) any buttons then click Send button. It'll send them to all emulators
