VisualBoyAdvance-M

Well, part of it is that I don't want to bandwidthinate the server I put it on. If it's linked to from the fan translation site, it might get pretty popular.

 

Don't worry. Wherever its hosted on my site or here, you won't have problems. We haven't had a single problem with VBA-M so far....

You could also upload it to BitTorrent or your favorite 1-click-hoster.

 

Are you planning to create a GUI? Have you though about porting the GTK GUI over to MacOS?

Alright, well I can upload it to a one-click place, but I'd rather have the ability to take it down once it's obsolete. I also think Hard Core Rikki is right that a central location would benefit users.

 

Are you planning to create a GUI? Have you though about porting the GTK GUI over to MacOS?

 

The answer to the first question is yes.

 

The answer to the second question is that I don't think that's a good idea.

 

Pretty much the only cross-platform GUI library that works well on OS X without any effort to set up is wx, and even then, it's not as good as native applications. For years, GTK has been available to OS X users only if they install the X11 window manager, which, to be honest, doesn't work as well and is much uglier than Linux and other UNIXes. There is a current experimental port of GTK+ that works without X11, but it's far from complete and not stable.

 

With a native Cocoa GUI, I can accomplish a lot of things that I couldn't with a cross-platform library. I can add video capture with Quicktime and video filter effects with Core Image (In addition to GLSL support). The Quicktime capture can record in a number of formats, including many cross-platform formats, and is quicker than using ffmpeg for the same thing. Core image filters are similar to photoshop filters. Some take longer to render than others, but many work in real time, and there are some really cool effects built in to OS X. There's also small things like animated resizing that make the app feel polished that wx just doesn't do on OS X.

 

In addition, a native Cocoa GUI gets all of the advantages of native applications. The "Open Recent" menu is available with just 1 line of code. There are many people who complain about emulators that lack this functionality. The preferences file would also be a standard XML Plist. This is less useful, but does mean that the preferences will work with a number of tools available on the platform such as rooSwitch.

 

This is the approach that SNES9X and DeSmuME take on OS X, and they are the most polished, most usable emulators on the platform.

Thanks for explaining the situation to me, as I only tested a Mac at the local retailer for 3 minutes in my life ^^

 

 

I initially had in mind to merge VBA-M into one codebase, which could be compiled for either Linux, Windows, or OS X. This would certainly improve improvability of the core, as making changes would be easier, but if only one of these front-ends strays apart, the whole thing doesn't make sense anymore.

 

In this case, the only solution is to modularize the cores and create an interface for them, which does not change greatly over time.

In this case, the only solution is to modularize the cores and create an interface for them, which does not change greatly over time.

 

Indeed. Unfortunately, the high coupling between the core and the GUI is what is holding it back. I know Nach voiced his opinions on how to modularise it, though imo Sinamas's emu does it well.

I think things definitely need to be separated out more. Decompression and screenshots should definitely be handled by the GUI. I find it strange that the core requires libpng. Still, I think it can be modularized out to allow for multiple frontends.

 

Anyway, because the translation is out, I uploaded the frontend to Rapidshare. I've got a kill link for it so I'll delete it from RS later. If anyone wants to put it here or on their site, feel free.

 

EDIT: http://rapidshare.com/files/155080691/VBA-M_Launcher.dmg.zip.html

I'm unable to open the dmg [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/sad.png[/img]/emoticons/sad@2x.png 2x" width="20" height="20" />

It looks like Rapidshare changed the file. I downloaded it, and sure enough, it wouldn't mount. Had a different MD5 sum too. Re-uploaded it as a DMG inside a zip. Hopefully that will take care of it.

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/155080691/VBA-M_Launcher.dmg.zip.html

I'll upload it somewhere stable for you....[img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/smile.png[/img]/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x" width="20" height="20" />

http://mudlord.homebrewheaven.net/downloads/VBA-M_Launcher.dmg.zip