And how do you plug the cartridges in? :-)

You have to convert the rom into a usable format. I assume you were joking but just incase you weren't ;).

That's what the little smiley means. Except this one :-) means something else.

Yeah, I was. When will there be a news item that doesn't have to do with emulators for video game consoles. ;)

NEVER :)

This looks like a great program, but I haven't been able to find any games to try it out with. Does anyone know of a site where you can download legal gameboy ROMs to convert?

just google it...took me awhile to find some...

This site (see link) has some nice looking free games. I haven't tested any of them yet though.

This site has a ton of excellent games. <http://www.rom-world.com/>
I got final fantasy and super mario from it.
Note: I highly recommend trying seiken densetsu

Here are two games that I wrote. They were both tested to work on a real Game Boy and Game Boy Color. I am interested to know if they work with GB68k:

http://tinyurl.com/d99er
http://tinyurl.com/a65c7

Yeah, they both run pretty well. Especially pong =)

I got Link's Awakening, Metroid 2, and Final Fantasy Legends working on my Titanium. Link's Awakening and Metroid 2 are kind of slow, but Final Fantasy Legends runs great. The biggest problem is that the 89 screen isn't tall enough. The author should consider including a "crunch" mode...

With a compressed screen, it's very hard to read the text in most games. Since all the games I've found that run well have lots of text, I don't think a 'crunch' mode would be that useful.

A potential idea is to add sprite following. This would make the screen automatically scroll to keep the player character visible. I may give this a shot at some point.

Good point. If you can get an auto-scrolling feature up and running that be awesome. I'd offer to help but I am unfortunately only a Z80 man at the moment.

Although in some games, say Metroid 2 for example a "crunch" mode would be more usful. It is totally up to you but I think you might want to through it in there as an option in the final release. Or you good through it in a beta and ask people what they think... I'm just throwing out some ideas though.

How would the emulator know which sprite is your character?

It would have to be told on a game by game basic. The CartConvert program could reference a database while converting the rom, and add a bit of info which tells the emu which sprite to follow, or where to look in memory for the x and y position. There's an snes emu for the gba which uses this technique.

Um... no. There are no working SNES emulators for the GBA. PocketSNES is only a partially working example.

http://www.snesadvance.org/

I repeat: PocketSNES (which has become SNES Advance) is only a partially working example. Have you actually tried USING it? The only game I've ever had work was Super Mario World, and that was after using a hacked save file that autoloaded when you ran the game.

You'd be surprised how effective line-skipping is. Look at Sega's Game Gear - that's essentially a repackaged SMS (Master System). The only major differences was that the VDP's CRAM is twice the size on the GG (a word per colour, rather than byte) and that the GG had a lower-res screen. You could switch it into a SMS mode, which skipped lines to scale down the display. Some games are horribly illegible (I suspect that "Prince of Persia" is just the SMS game in a GG cart in SMS mode) but for the most part they're totally playable.
After all, it shouldn't be too tricky to implement, just an edit of the code that copies the buffer to the display.

Well, I'll look into it again. No promises though =)

>After all, it shouldn't be too tricky to implement, just an edit of the code that copies the buffer to the display
Right, except I don't draw the entire gb screen each frame, only the part that will show up. So it would either be slower, if I just draw the whole gb screen and copy every third line, or more work/program size, if I actually scale each tile as it's being drawn.

I've not played with the GameBoy's VDP at all, but I'm sure you could always change the code VDP code to switch so that when loading tiles you scale them, and when drawing sprites you scale the coordinates as you go...

Hmm...PocketNES (for the GBA) uses scaling & seems to run fast enough. It just flickers the last line between the last 2 of the actual tile/sprite (8x8 segment, anyway), which rarely messes up text. I know the GBA has a larger screen, but so does the NES. I have not tried PocketSNES (no games for it), but I bet it manages to do the same, & the SNES is a faster machine.

PocketNES uses DMA to change the scrolling location each scanline, so scaling is completely free.
Pocket Snes does not exist, since some profiteering jerk bought a related domain, which made the author rename the emulator. Snes Advance (the current name) does not support scaling, possibly because there's very little ram left to have a DMA table for scrolling, either that or it's just not implemented.

SNES Advance is a practically non-working model.

I disagree. For those of us who have flash carts for the Game Boy Advance, there's an emulator called PocketNES that runs NES games that uses a 'crush' feature to squeeze the whole image onto the screen. Holding down L and pressing Select lets you adjust the compression method, and one of them makes the text almost completely readable. Besides, it's not hard to read text that is slightly smaller than normal...

How do you use the converting program? When I tried it, it just started and shut down immediately.

open the command prompt
type
[name of the program] [name of the rom] [on-calc name max 6 letters]
make sure it is all in the same directory.

By command prompt, do you mean run?

To access the Windows command prompt, click "Start" then "Run", and type in "CMD" and click OK.

Or you can do like me and do an *.bat file (with notepad) with what you want to write on windows console...

Or use a piece of software like rjhExtensions (click in "Web Site" link) that allows you to right-click "Command Prompt Here".

Good one indeed!! I never had looked for that kind of programs... very usefull, thanks for the tip...

Once I bring up the command prompt, how do I tell the computer to use the converter program?

Run it.

120d//!!!

Yeah, just type "[progname] [args]" (without the quotes). Haven't you ever used a command line before? ;-)

You guys just told him how to start a command prompt in the first place. Seems a good bet he's never used one before. :P

I was an insensitive clod, yeah. But I don't think this is really the right place to give tutorials on how to use the command prompt.

I see your point (and I kinda agree with it too). Just a suggestion though, next time tell him to google for command prompt, that's just as short and a lot more helpful. Just my two cents.

I downloaded the ROM image zelda.gb. What exactly do I type into the command prompt to get GameboyConvert to change the game to a TI file under the name "zelda"?

Drag the GameboyConvert prog to your desktop.
Drag the rom to your desktop.
Open the command prompt.
Type (and press enter): "cd Desktop"
Type: "GameboyConvert zelda.gb zelda"
Close the command prompt.
Send the files over to your calc (remember to send the GB68k files too).

When I did this for Pokemon with -pack, it said yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyo. Why?

I am not very good with computers or calculators for that matter, and I was wondering how to get the games for my TI 89 Titatnium. I already have a bunch, but I have no idea about how to use a gameboy emulator and change the ROM files(?). Any help is appreciated.

Where are the files saved after they are converted?

Probably in the same directory as the original files.

well i can't find them! I run the converter with the right parameters, and the line finishes, and a new line comes down, but no files!

What's the exact thing you're typing onto the command line? Are you sure the converter isn't reporting any errors?

And are you in the right directory (in the command prompt). If the files are on your desktop (GameboyConvert, rom.gb), you have to CD to the Desktop when you first open the command line.

yes, i did all that.
no errors reported.
everything was in the same directory.
the command prompt just went to a new line, and no new files appeared.
my comp is a NEW windows XP, so i don't think there's a program conflict or anything.

What's the exact thing you're typing onto the command line?

Where can I get a Gameboy converter?