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Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

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Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#41

Post by throwee2000 »

Thaxll wrote: post #37

There are millions of emulator for the GB it's like a week-end project, what's different here?

As someone who appreciates emulator development projects, I'd like to offer some perspective:

Several aspects make every new GB emulator implementation valuable to the community.

Some technical challenges in emulation are approached differently by each developer.

Handling edge cases and accuracy testing requires significant effort beyond basic functionality.

Often the learning process and personal growth are the primary goals, not just the end product.

Languages like Rust bring modern benefits like memory safety and performance to classic emulation.

Emulator development teaches low-level hardware concepts in an engaging, practical way.

Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#44

Post by hananova »

Thaxll wrote: post #37

There are millions of emulator for the GB it's like a week-end project, what's different here?

A GB emulator is definitely not a weekend project if your goal is any kind of accuracy. And even if it was, that doesn't devalue the project or effort that went into it.

Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#45

Post by darknavi »

zxvkhkxvdvbdxz wrote: post #17
jvanderbot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enthusiast noob question. What do you use for display / rendering / gui when doing emulators for wasm?

Wasm executes as its own VM, so you'll need some js glue to display something in the browser. This means you can go both ways, either embed something like imgui in your wasm, or build a ui using html.

Or go full circle and use something like GameFace to render react in your app, in the browser!

Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#46

Post by djtango »

lxgr wrote: post #27
gwbas1c wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super Mario Land, 1 and 2. Dr. Mario. Game Boy games tended to be limited due to space constraints.

There are definitely limitations, but later games have a lot more depth than these. Link's Awakening feels like it shouldn't be possible in a single megabyte of mask ROM, for example. The fact that it was makes it almost more impressive by today's standards.

Games back then were a bit of a dark art...

I feel like I don't really encounter stories of heroics in making games work on their hardware anymore. Even at the end of PS1 with Final Fantasy their hand drawn backgrounds were too big to fit into VRAM iirc

Or in the PS2 era Jak and Daxter using the principle of hot reloading from lisp to figure out open worlds without loading screens

Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#48

Post by RetroSpark »

lxgr wrote: post #27
gwbas1c wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super Mario Land, 1 and 2. Dr. Mario. Game Boy games tended to be limited due to space constraints.

There are definitely limitations, but later games have a lot more depth than these. Link's Awakening feels like it shouldn't be possible in a single megabyte of mask ROM, for example. The fact that it was makes it almost more impressive by today's standards.

> Link's Awakening feels like it shouldn't be possible in a single megabyte of mask ROM

Half a megabyte, even! (For the original monochrome game - the later color version is a full megabyte.)

Re: Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

#50

Post by johnisgood »

nosrepa wrote: post #35
noeatnosleep wrote: post #18

Avid millennial gamer here. Wasn't raised with games. Can someone recommend a good classic game to try?

It's always good to see usernames I recognize from the other site.

I know right. :D
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