10 years. GDEMU project is now 10 years old, although the idea itself (including early prototypes) is a bit older still. Is there going to be another version? I sure hope so but every time I think I’m finally going to sit and make a new prototype something happens. Capital S something.
Details are frankly not that interesting, the point is I now have more work and a lot of it is rather new to me so the last few months were challenging. At times it felt like RPG where every skill has to be unlocked first to be used but it’s getting better now. I might even try to sell some ODEs soon.
Speaking of ODEs – the few Wizards that I promised to people who ordered but didn’t get one are almost ready but I simply had no time to do any testing. I’ll get to that in a week or two. I will have some Rheas and Phoebes as well, these are almost done. However starting this year I’ll have to raise the prices – everything is much more expensive now. Electricity, parts, shipping, living in general. I’ll add 15 EUR to each price, that should mostly cover the gap for now. The Wizards on the waiting list will go at current price, it would be unfair to accept the order and then raise the price before delivery.
Being busy somehow made me stop playing games, except on some weekends, so for casual amusement I decided to code another emulator. I’m creating AGI (early Sierra adventure game interpreter) for FM Towns machines. It started as collection of Python scripts to decode the game resources but eventually I wanted to write some C and 386 assembly code so this is how far I got:
It’s actually a composite image of several lower-level routines run on PC VGA (because it’s easier to develop on PC), the logic interpreter is nowhere near complete enough to run the game this far. But I got this far so I’ll keep tinkering with it. I’ve already tested a lot of ideas on Towns hardware, including Tandy sound emulation via OPN2 FM synth – it’s nothing like the SN76489 but at least offers 3 voices for music, instead of 1 like with PC speaker.
GDEMU 
Will there be a future date known for wizards again? I keep missing them 😦 Price increases are understandable and certainly acceptable.
I truly appreciate your continued work on FM Towns. Thank you.
Thank you for the update, glad to hear that you are staying busy and learning new things. Nice work/progress on the Sierra FM Towns emulation.
Rhea/Phoebe is still the most stable Saturn ODE I have. And seems it is the only one that has no software menu dependency, only used menu as an addon. Hope you will have time soon to try porting them into a newer MCU model, and then, add the cue/bin parser logic code. =)
Thank for your work !
Is there an email list that I could be added to if/when you decide to build GDEMU’s again? I would love to get one.
Would like to see what if any changes would be made to the gdemu if any.
Hi Deunan, I’m trying to troubleshoot some major slowdown/stutter/lag that occurs whenever there’s too many things on the screen when playing Ikaruga, currently using an older GDEMU (latest firmware, v5.5, 2015). Especially during boss fights bullet hell segments, the screen almost slows to a halt where you can barely move so it’s borderline unplayable, yet the DC never crashes or reboots. I dumped and using my personal JP copied and verified the checksums of the GDI files against the Internet. It runs perfectly through emulator. I even swapped the PSU with a fresh one and this still happens in the same spots. I tried tweaking .ini settings and swapping SD card brands I had on hand to no avail. So I’m not sure where the problem lies, or does this game have some strict timing I’m not aware of, or I somehow have a bad dump. I don’t think it does. Any opinion would help.
Hi Deunan. I’m going to connect a SPI screen to GDEMU for fun.
In your instructions, your screen has CLK and DIN (and other 5 pins).
I’m searching for 128×64 SSD1306 screens on ebay, and I only find with D0 and D1 or with SCK and SDA, I don’t find screens with CLK and DIN. Is it ok if I use a screen with D0 and D1 or with SCK and SDA?
Thanks 🙂