Joysticks and Game Genie codes

Monday, 3rd March 2008

The biggest update to the emulator relates to input.

ConfigureControls.png

I've added a new control panel that lets you customise key bindings. For the keyboard, you simply click on the button you wish to customise, then press the key on your keyboard you wish to bind. As you can probably tell from the screenshot, I've also added joystick support (via the Multimedia Joystick Functions with a bit of P/Invoke for ease) which means that with a simple adapter and a free driver you can use original SMS pads with the emulator.

I haven't added support for the POV hat, which needs doing as the PPJoy PlayStation controller driver exposes the d-pad as a POV hat.

GameGenieEditor.png

I've also added an interface for adding Game Genie codes. The Game Genie was a cheating device that could be used to patch memory.

I have also started reintroducing (albeit in a slightly buggy fashion) multiple memory devices. Previously I've just been emulating a cartridge ROM and work RAM; the real consoles had multiple memory devices including a card slot, ROM BIOS and expansion slots. By emulating this system one can boot with the original BIOS, and (for example) not insert a cartridge to watch the BIOS animation or play its integrated game.

For ease, there's a quick-load ROM menu option that will load anything into the cartridge slot and disable all others for quick game playing. For those who wish to play with the hardware more, there's an "advanced load" dialog that will let you pick what goes in which slot, and also force various options (such as locale, hardware model, video system and so on) instead of the automatically guessed options. I'd also like it to be able to pick patch files (such as translations) so you don't need to use an external tool. Currently this dialog only supports cartridge ROM and BIOS ROM loading, though.

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