ZX ULAX emulator

[Lethargeek]

public beta 24 - fixed some frame doubling/skipping issues related to sound and rzx
2 new games in the pack - Comando Tracer and a lazy mod for Somewhere in Hell (SiH)

[Weiv]

Some time ago I suggested Lethargeek to make ULAX in the form of a DLL so that any emulator author could add support for ULAX in his emulator. People, what you think about it?

[Pegaz]

Some time ago I suggested Lethargeek to make ULAX in the form of a DLL so that any emulator author could add support for ULAX in his emulator. People, what you think about it?

This is one of my favorite emulators and I definitely support any idea to make its recoloring engine available as a feature in other emulators.
Something like ULA+ for example...

[Lethargeek]

Some time ago I suggested Lethargeek to make ULAX in the form of a DLL so that any emulator author could add support for ULAX in his emulator.

куку, а что там с кодом, который я персонально для тебя подготовил и с которым ты уж год разбираешься?

[Weiv]

куку, а что там с кодом, который я персонально для тебя подготовил и с которым ты уж год разбираешься?

I could not figure it out, I'm sorry(

[Lethargeek]

I could not figure it out, I'm sorry(

then why you think dll interface will be any easier to figure than those headers

[Eugene C.]

We need ulax for Retroarch!

[Tommo]

Some time ago I suggested Lethargeek to make ULAX in the form of a DLL so that any emulator author could add support for ULAX in his emulator. People, what you think about it?

This is one of my favorite emulators and I definitely support any idea to make its recoloring engine available as a feature in other emulators.
Something like ULA+ for example...

As the author of another emulator, I would definitely have a go at implementing this. My computer is making too much of a hash of the documentation's encoding for me even to be able to copy and paste into an online translator right now, alas, and I'm virtually monolingual. So the problem is mine, but there it is.

Of potential relevancy: the Spec256-ish recolour of Dan Dare was mine, about 15 years ago. But that was overtly a shadow 64-bit processor, [almost] no code changes required, type affair. Completely distinct from what I think I understand ULAX's much more realistic hardware-grounded approach to be.

I'm very impressed with the ULAX results shown so far.

[Lethargeek]

[mention]Tommo[/mention], english docs is wip (2 nice guys from this forum are helping me with it)

btw what's that "another emulator" you mentioned?

[Weiv]

the Spec256-ish recolour of Dan Dare was mine, about 15 years ago.

Can I download your recolour of Dan Dare? And, maybe, other your recolored games?

[Tommo]

Ugh, I'm dragging this way off topic, away from the interesting stuff of ULAX.

My current emulator is this one, which only recently started emulating the +2a and +3, with the other models coming soon. But from a positive point of view, it has a fully-native Mac build so that would bring ULAX support to an additional platform.

My Dan Dare thing is so old now that the only binaries I have are for PowerPC Macs. But the source code survives and it was an SDL 1.x project so it should likely still be buildable far and wide. There's a dandare.rc file in there, i.e. a Windows resource file, and a .ico so clearly I built for Windows at some point.

Of potential relevant reuse: the sprite sheets in there are just plain BMPs. If memory serves, in my version of this sort of thing attributes are preserved hence tiles.bmp being in monochrome (and incomplete, but since most of the background already looked good I didn't consider that too troubling). There are good full-colour replacements for the Treens, for Dan, for the bombs and for the Mekon. Alas I've lost a record of their authorship, suffice to say it wasn't me as I cannot draw.

Much more on point: I like that, per my understanding, the ULAX is designed as the spec for a real hardware device, and my current emulator keeps things relatively disjoint, with the Z80 being a sealed unit that just shouts out bus activity so I think I'm in a good position to be able to do the sort of access capturing and write redirection that it sounds like are part of the ULAX design.

So I'll watch this thread and wait for specs.

[Lethargeek]

Brick Rick: Graveyard Shift added after a long break

[^m00h^]

Can be ulax added to the unreal speccy emulator ?

[Lethargeek]

Can be ulax added to the unreal speccy emulator ?

in theory - to any emulator with at least machine-cycle precise z80 emulation

in practice - it's a question to the developers of that emulator

[Lethargeek]

one more - Stunt Man Seymour

meanwhile i'm testing a basic PPU debugger for the emuL, planned for the july release

[Lethargeek]

while still, er, debugging the debugger...

CJ's Elephant Antics and CJ in the USA were added

unexpectedly, these two have very different gfx engines despite looking the same

[Eugene C.]

A hope for Yie Ar Kung fu?

[Lethargeek]

A hope for Yie Ar Kung fu?

depending on the free time, as the result won't look good without a per-pixel repaint
also the sprite gfx needs to be not compressed for this (unlikely for such an old game)

[Lethargeek]

[mention]Eugene C.[/mention], here's a quick dux without the sprite data:

Code: Select all

; buf2scr
10E863	0111

; bg2buf
10E8C0	0111

; scr2buf
10EA8F	0111

; Oolong
10E97B	C301
80E97C	fffd 0 67B9
10E97D	0130 0 0413
10E987	0130 0 0213
; opponent
10E996	C301
80E997	fffd 0 67B3
10E998	0130 0 0213
10E9A5	0130 0 0413
10E9AC	C888

(it's for 48k version, didn't check with 128k one)

[Lethargeek]

public beta 25
basic debug mode finally added (don't forget to read info-debug.txt)
new save/load sna - now it happens after INTR, not just before it at the frame start
other less important things (see changelog)

[Lethargeek]

game pack:
Wonderful Dizzy updated to v1.5 (both disk image & dux)
The Lost Treasures of Tulum - new sna, fixed bugs in the official release

WIP pack:
Travel through Time added - very rough and not tested much but playable
not sure when i will be satisfied with it enough to move in the main pack

[Lethargeek]

this time it's Crime Busters (the Players one) with full sprite repaint and dynamic lighting (sort of)

a fun game, the only thing it lacks is an animation or at least some pause/sound when Bennie is busted before teleporting him in jail

[Lethargeek]

public beta 26 - Fixed and improved some minor things. Fixed AY noise emulation. Major change - added second set of reference colors for attributes. This makes a global palette a bit less global, in most cases allowing to change the default attribute colors of the action window(s) separately from the rest of the game (menus, panels, maps, cutscenes, etc). Updated 12 dux files in the game pack to use this feature (the most prominent example is Comando Tracer now using a darkened version of the standard palette for its action window).

[Lethargeek]

public beta 27 - improved block instructions undocumented flags emulation
also two new titles in the game pack - Exterminator (Indescomp) and RAM

[Gvan]

game pack:
Wonderful Dizzy updated to v1.5 (both disk image & dux)
The Lost Treasures of Tulum - new sna, fixed bugs in the official release

WIP pack:
Travel through Time added - very rough and not tested much but playable
not sure when i will be satisfied with it enough to move in the main pack

Hello and thanks for your wonderful work.

I don't manage to run the Wondeful Dizzy disk image, the emulator stays on the prompt; what I am doing wrong ?