Smartgear works great on Touch Pro 2! NES! Genesis!

[bitbank]

I just uploaded 2.0.15. I fixed the choppy framerate and I believe I have fixed the missing sounds in Genesis. Please give it a try and let me know.
L.B.

[illmatic20]

pretty dope

[THE-COPS]

I'm not sure of what exactly changed from the previous version, but I'm not noticing anything. I never had any choppiness issues. The pause function appears to work better now.

I think the issues with the games mentioned earlier are mapper issues.

[bitbank]

Originally Posted by THE-COPS

I'm not sure of what exactly changed from the previous version, but I'm not noticing anything. I never had any choppiness issues. The pause function appears to work better now.

I think the issues with the games mentioned earlier are mapper issues.

The framerate issue was pretty choppy before because of several problems. It was most noticeable on games with smooth scrolling scene like the attract mode of GBC SuperMarioDX or GBC Toki Tori. The Genesis sound is now emulated at a higher "sample rate" and should not have any more missing sounds. i received a good idea for a touch screen control scheme and will be implementing that this week. It basically uses my "delta" method along with some translucent buttons. I'll also be working on a version of SmartGear which runs well on WinCE netbooks and GPS units. Not a lot of changes required, but I need to #ifdef out the dependencies on AYGSHELL.DLL and GX.DLL in order to run on WinCE embedded systems.
L.B.

P.S. There have been a lot of good suggestions and feedback coming from this forum lately. Would anyone like to set up a time to chat with me so that we could discuss these ideas in real time? I'm in the Pacific time zone (GMT - 8:00). Let me know...

[THE-COPS]

Actual sample rate does seem like it plays at a lower pitch than what the games were intended. Do not ask me how I know this, it's just that I played these games so much that I know the music tracks ahhh so well. Again, this is probably a YM issue that you may have to re-write later down the road.

Arcus Odyssey, I downloaded a verified good dump (CRC checksum is good). I am getting the same problem as stated earlier with the garbled up graphics and no sound. This occurs right after the Sega screen disappears. So to say, both ROM images are experiencing the same problem I am unsure as to why this is happening with me, but not with you. Can anyone else out there confirm whether or not Arcus Odyssey works properly on your TP2? I am asking Verizon & Sprint users. LB has a TMO TP2 so there has to be something different with the handset build or drivers.

For the sound, I was hoping to find some source code from Picodrive or Genesis Plus. Both of those emu's have issues with the TP2. So this is why I am resorting to SG. Sound was working quite well on GP, but I am unable to locate source new enough. Picodrive, the only source available is the old and outdated 0.30 version, and the sound on that is not working properly. Any newer builds for ARM CPU on WM devices don't have source available. And I doubt masterall woud be wiling to give out his source. Heck, I cant even find the guy any more.. Just trying to find something that may help you clean up the Gen sound a little quicker instead of having to re-write from scratch.

LB, count me in if you need more detailed feedback in a chat session sometime. Just name the time and the chat area. I am on Yahoo, thats about it . Palringo if you have mobile versions. Whatever works. Hpefully someone ese will chime in. There certainly has to be more than just me giving the detailed feedback on this. Anyone else out there got some feedback?

[bitbank]

Originally Posted by THE-COPS

Actual sample rate does seem like it plays at a lower pitch than what the games were intended. Do not ask me how I know this, it's just that I played these games so much that I know the music tracks ahhh so well. Again, this is probably a YM issue that you may have to re-write later down the road.

Arcus Odyssey, I downloaded a verified good dump (CRC checksum is good). I am getting the same problem as stated earlier with the garbled up graphics and no sound. This occurs right after the Sega screen disappears. So to say, both ROM images are experiencing the same problem I am unsure as to why this is happening with me, but not with you. Can anyone else out there confirm whether or not Arcus Odyssey works properly on your TP2? I am asking Verizon & Sprint users. LB has a TMO TP2 so there has to be something different with the handset build or drivers.

For the sound, I was hoping to find some source code from Picodrive or Genesis Plus. Both of those emu's have issues with the TP2. So this is why I am resorting to SG. Sound was working quite well on GP, but I am unable to locate source new enough. Picodrive, the only source available is the old and outdated 0.30 version, and the sound on that is not working properly. Any newer builds for ARM CPU on WM devices don't have source available. And I doubt masterall woud be wiling to give out his source. Heck, I cant even find the guy any more.. Just trying to find something that may help you clean up the Gen sound a little quicker instead of having to re-write from scratch.

LB, count me in if you need more detailed feedback in a chat session sometime. Just name the time and the chat area. I am on Yahoo, thats about it . Palringo if you have mobile versions. Whatever works. Hpefully someone ese will chime in. There certainly has to be more than just me giving the detailed feedback on this. Anyone else out there got some feedback?

I agree - I'm hearing the same rate issue as well. I'm not seeing missing sounds in Arcus Odyssey. If you run it at less than 22khz sample rate, it will probably have problems, but at 22 or 44khz it should sound reasonable. The sounds of AO are very low frequency and perhaps the little phone speaker doesn't reproduce them well; try using headphones to see if they're really missing.
L.B.

[THE-COPS]

What I was saying is that Arcus Odyssey doesn't run right. I noted in an earlier post that AO has garbled up graphics (not even viewable) and the sound specifically for that game isn't working. I just tried a verified good dump of the game (second copy) and the same problem exists in that one as well. I know what you meant by low frequency tones. I'm familiar with the AO tracks, but as noted, the audio isn't even working at all for that game. Whatever is causing the distorted graphics, is also causing the no sound issue as well. And it's that game only. I Haven't gone through every game in my folder yet. But I will just to see how they work. Sorry for the confusion.

[THE-COPS]

Ok, here is what I have found out so far. In the last half hour, I quicky tested out 15 more Genesis games. Here is the list, and the results. All tests were done with sound set at 44khz 16Bit Stereo sound. Mostly default settings, including display and auto frame rate.

688 Attack Sub - Works + lower soundtrack missing.
Altered Beast - Works , sample rate for voices way too high
Boogerman - Garbled/Distorted GFX. Only character is visble. Music missing in game.
Beyond Oasis - Works. Minor snd gitches
Buck Rogers - Doesn't work. Get ROM generated error code at top "000FE006 03 " . May be a bad rom.
Castlevania Bloodlines - Works but a little slow
Crusader of Centy - Works. Static in some of the lower sound frequencies
Devilish - Works , game is a bit slow though
Flashback - Works , minor snd issues
Hard Drivin - Works, sort of. This one is complicated. Game will start but the road texture continues to vanish as you move towards it, forcing your car to constantly be "Off Road". SG crashed after 20 seconds of this.

Landstalker - Works, But gameplay is slow and a little choppy. Bottom portion of screen gfx don't refresh correctly , showing distorted gfx from another part of the screen
Light Crusader - Works, minor snd issues
Phantasy Star 2 & 3 - Works. minor snd issues.
Rings of Power - Works, suprisingly well. other emu's couldn't get this one right. Just minor snd issues
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Works. However , in 2 player split screen mode, the entire screen gfx are all distorted . Only characters are visible in this mode.

Will test more later sometime.

[eyepoker]

I'll give genesis a closer review tonight - I've been able to play some genesis games that previously didn't work - only thing I've noticed are the little crackling sounds at the beginning of the games. I'll pay closer attention and report back.

and... my friggin bgp100 broke! left arm came off. It still works though but what a bummer! I'll be taking it apart to see if its salvagable... am hoping that either some superglue or jbweld might save it.

[bitbank]

Thanks for the feedback - I'll take a look at the issues you found. It looks like I'll need to rewrite the YM2610 emulator to make the Genesis games sound right. This is a huge piece of code, but worth doing in the long run.

Another user has reminded me that it might be nice to add smooth scaling since most users now have 480x800 displays and the older games are looking a bit blocky. I've avoided doing that due to the performance hit, but if I write some good ARM asm code, it might work reasonably well. Specifically this will be replacement routines for 2x and 3x sizes only (right now you see them as 'best perf'). I'll write a 2x smoothing routine and see how it performs. Anyone have strong opinions about this?

L.B.