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Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

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Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#61

Post by cladopa »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #31

I have an Analogue Pocket, which works really well, but the fact that it uses an FPGA is essentially meaningless to me. Is there really any significant difference compared to software emulation? I know how they're different, I understand the mechanics of it, I just don't understand why it's not possible to make a software emulation that is as good as FPGA emulation. Or maybe it is possible. I always felt like doing i…

It deeds on the game and technology that you try to emulate. I wrote home-brew emulator software for the Nintendo DS. I could play Sega Genesis games without problems but some SNintendo games like StarFox game me literally headaches. Why? Because the SNES included special chips in the cartridge that were painful to emulate, badly documented and gave you screen flickering and stuff.

Those consoles are so old now that you could emulate them with anything, a Chinese chip that cost dollars will do. But you will be extremely wasteful, consuming tens or hundreds of times more energy(less battery time) for a worse result.

Software is way more flexible. Everything is prototyped first in software. In the past there were machines that consumed a hundredth of a watt of energy. Emulating them using 20Watts is so wasteful.

With software you had only one thing that needs to do totally different things. With hardware you can choreograph a chip working in parallel among others in an independent way.

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#63

Post by varispeed »

Author missing one important point in their "A brief rant about FPGA retrogaming" rant. Sure FPGA systems are emulations, but key thing is that they typically are real-time systems, whereas software emulations typically are not.

That's actually a huge difference.

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#64

Post by varispeed »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #31

I have an Analogue Pocket, which works really well, but the fact that it uses an FPGA is essentially meaningless to me. Is there really any significant difference compared to software emulation? I know how they're different, I understand the mechanics of it, I just don't understand why it's not possible to make a software emulation that is as good as FPGA emulation. Or maybe it is possible. I always felt like doing i…

Software emulations typically are not real-time, so that's one substantial difference.

For instance when you press a button, it will take few ms to register with software emulation, whereas on FPGA it should be very much instantaneous.

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#65

Post by Yossarrian22 »

This is fantastic! Perhaps I missed it but do you go over why you chose a portrait layout as opposed to a GBA-style landscape layout? With the existing equivalents in the FPGA space all being GBC style I'm curious if that's just a personal preference or if there was something that led you to select that layout.

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#66

Post by elipsitz »

Yossarrian22 wrote: post #65

This is fantastic! Perhaps I missed it but do you go over why you chose a portrait layout as opposed to a GBA-style landscape layout? With the existing equivalents in the FPGA space all being GBC style I'm curious if that's just a personal preference or if there was something that led you to select that layout.

Good question, I didn't talk about this in the writeup.

It's because I think that this design is the most efficient use of space, if you want to ensure that Game Boy cartridges don't stick out (like they do on the GBA). The device is divided into a front half and a back half, with the PCB in the middle. The screen and buttons are all in the front half, and the cartridge and battery are in the back half. If the device were landscape, you'd have the cartridge take up the entire middle space in the back half, leaving smaller spaces to the left and right (under the Dpad and face buttons) for the battery. So you'd either need to use two smaller batteries (and deal with that), or use a single battery (and have worse battery life and an empty space).

It's definitely possible, this just seemed like the simpler way forward. I probably would actually personally prefer a landscape orientation. Maybe in a future version!

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#68

Post by elipsitz »

archontes wrote: post #67

Apologies for the tangent, but may I ask what you use to write your blog? I love how clean it is.

Thanks, it's generated with Hugo using the https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod theme.

However, I made some modifications to the theme for the first time recently, and learned that I absolutely hate Hugo's templating language. I might switch away at some point in the future (perhaps to https://github.com/getzola/zola -- the templating is Jinja2-esque).

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#69

Post by timw4mail »

elipsitz wrote: post #11
ConanRus wrote: post #8

Why only GB/GBA? Mister FPGA support lot's of cores which can use the same Screen and controls: NES, SNES, various Sega consoles, C64, MSX etc. And any cheap Chinese retro-console of the same sort support even more of them. So from a practical standpoint I don't see any advantage of this (no doubt cool) project.

This main distinguishing feature of this project is that it supports physical cartridges, whereas MiSTer and almost every other emulation handheld doesn’t. The FPGA cores here are written from scratch by me with hardware support in mind, and it’s quite a bit of work! Plus, SNES cartridges don’t exactly fit in a handheld :)

Funny you should mention SNES carts...the only way I can use a Super Game Boy portably is with a Supaboy, which looks very silly :D

I realize you don't have the resolution needed for such a thing on your project, but it would be interesting to see a full SGB setup via FPGA.

Re: Show HN: Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld

#70

Post by tourmalinetaco »

You have not only created an open source Analogue Pocket, which is amazing, but you’ve also perfectly voiced the problems I have with the MiSTer project: that as cool as FPGA technology is, the MiSTer completely misses its sole advantages (which is better support for official hardware) due to a mix of limited I/O on dev boards (which is a fair point) and the community’s irrational hatred of cartridges as “unnecessary”. There is literally zero reason for the MiSTer to exist by their own logic, because why do you need a dedicated platform? That’s so unnecessary, just use a computer. Just as if not more accurate in most cases too.

Regardless, this article alone is like my holy grail of emulation and project design. And there’s more of them? I can’t wait.

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