ZX Spectrum emulator !

BitboZx

Hi, here is the first release of the BitBoxZx, a 48k ZX Spectrum emulator !

New game : Polar !

Polar is a small game written in ~ half a day.

Here is the link to the github project

Here are some screenshots - a very simple game indeed, <200 lines of C and a few sprites.

 

The game is still missing sound, music and more levels .. but the few levels are perfectly playable !

This game has been inspired by Polarity, a game written for ludum dare 23 by nornagon (
http://nornagon.net/games/polarity/ https://github.com/nornagon/polarity. ) but the code and GFX are original.

New Game : Boulder Dash clone

Why, yes a clone of boulder dash was one of the simple games I wanted to implement.

It's not completely finished (missing new sounds, levels, and ennemies), but the main elements are here in their 640x480 glory, inc. sound&music, basic gameplay, intro screen

Here is the repository (including a binary release for eager testers :)

Everything in the game is tile-based, and the whole game data is in fact just a uint8_t[] array of tile references, with its small finite state machine. The main and only .c file is 380 lines- not that I am so proud of it, it grew quite organically, but eh : now is better than never.

Demo (click on it to see fullscreen)

Presenting bitbox at "le capitole du libre" in Toulouse

I was kindly invited to present the bitbox as part of the "Capitole du libre" meeting, where I presented the hardware and software conception during a nealy one hour talk with many interesting questions after. The project has found a few very welcome new enthusiasts !

It really was a pleasure to discuss with everyone there, working on free / opensource games, awesome operating systems or nice little games that beg to be implemented on the bitbox ...

That, and many interesting more general conferences about opensource or blender (yay). The slides are in french, but I plan to include them

The big problem is that it entails so many new ideas and directions that my sleep deprivation will not be much better for another year I guess ...

rev2 Bitboxes available ! (how to get your gamepad supported)

I dunno if you've seen it, but the Bitbox is now available to buy (look at "get Bitbox" on the blog top banner).

Since people have already ordered a Bitbox, they will need their USB game pad to work. Here is how your device can be supported on the Bitbox. As I cannot buy every gamepad on earth, I will rely on you to provide information to me so that I can add the various gamepads to the firmware.

The process is the following :

• you open a ticket case on the github account, stating a "nice to have" support for joystick XYZ
• you include your model name, VID, PID and USB report descriptor attachments. To get them under linux, you can use the following method:  http://www.slashdev.ca/2010/05/08/get-usb-report-descriptor-with-linux/ please leave a comment if you would like a windows tutorial.
• I add the right values in the firmware to be able to support it
• You test it with your gamepad (using the kernel test application by example) and report if it is ok.
• I can close the ticket !

Please comment here or on the mailing list if you have any trouble !

Blinking Happily

Hi ! Just wanted to share this : the first prototypes of Bitbox rev2 PCBs have arrived (at last !)

So I couldn't resist building one and writing / uploading (using SWD) a very quick test program : it ... blinks ! (meaning I didn't screw up the MCU soldering it :)

Thanks to Marcus for his help on this release !

I'm not dead !

This rev2 will add : 32k colors, stereo sound, USB gamepad connectivity, UEXT expansion ports ...

(edit) Just a small update : VGA gen has been tested OK, SDIO flies at more than 6MB/s on the right conditions, sound is OK (with a small update)  and USB works ! All this needs to be upgraded in a whole new kernel, but independently all reporting OK !

bitbox updates

The Jump game has made progress : coins to collect (and lure you into places where you shouldn't go >:-D ), sounds (not very happy with some of them but it's working) and extra score handling. Game begins to be interesting. Now, level design !

I've also found that the USB port I've used is not the one that is used by the bootloader (duh). So, no upload by dfu for this one unless some fine soldering is done ...

I started to think about bitbox rev2 : getting rid of the bulky minidin to replace it with USB OTG (I've still to figure out if a kernel can work with it sufficiently reliably), getting stereo sound, 15bits colors(?), a proper GPU.

OTG would be huge for using normal keyboards, mice, controllers, (maybe even MIDI) but also less standard controllers.

I'm also preparing a tutorial on making a simple game and, of course thinking about many games that could be done ...

Bitbox repository available.

Just a quick note to say that a Bitbox github repository has been created. Not much in it now, apart from the SDL emulator (very simple), makefiles, preliminary kernel & test kernel demo. Also some articles as wiki pages. Github repo is in the links on the blog front page.