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This implies that a broad range of people would want to create their own custom gameboy emulators, which seems really weird. Isn't there a single open-source on

This implies that a broad range of people would want to create their own custom gameboy emulators, which seems really weird. Isn't there a single open-source one out there that works and that people can work on together to improve? What's the benefit of having your own? Are there lots of choices to be made, so that each emulator best fulfills its creator's needs?

feirlane 4y ago
Fun! I've been implenting my own to toy around and learn some rust, and has been a very enjoyable journey, specially the debugging part, running test roms, and trying to get all the "bugs" implemented correctly
InvisibleUp 4y ago
For people who want to get started with hobbyist emulator development, the Game Boy is the simplest "real console" that they can get started with, complete with tons of commercial games, community support, an active homebrew scene, existing emulators, etc. Even easier than that is the CHIP-8, but that's arguably too simplistic, and too limited in scope.
Shish2k 4y ago
I’ve personally implemented 7 gameboy emulators and I’m half way through my 8th… In my case it’s mostly a fun way to learn a new programming language - an emulator is enough of a “real program” to exercise a load of different aspects of a new language and its standard library to get a feel for how it works, but also small enough that a new implementation can be done in a weekend[0] [0] Assuming you already have the foundational knowledge - my first emulator took a week to get the CPU working and a month for the first game to be playable, only using one old and inaccurate PDF as a reference; now that I know what I’m doing, and now that I’ve found gbdev.io for more accurate docs, it’s much faster. Funnily enough I also ended up creating a tool like the one in this article, logging every action that happens in the CPU or RAM to make sure they all match up :) ( https://github.com/shish/rosettaboy https://github.com/shish/rosettaboy )

feirlane 4y ago

Fun! I've been implenting my own to toy around and learn some rust, and has been a very enjoyable journey, specially the debugging part, running test roms, and trying to get all the "bugs" implemented correctly

InvisibleUp 4y ago

For people who want to get started with hobbyist emulator development, the Game Boy is the simplest "real console" that they can get started with, complete with tons of commercial games, community support, an active homebrew scene, existing emulators, etc. Even easier than that is the CHIP-8, but that's arguably too simplistic, and too limited in scope.

Shish2k 4y ago

I’ve personally implemented 7 gameboy emulators and I’m half way through my 8th… In my case it’s mostly a fun way to learn a new programming language - an emulator is enough of a “real program” to exercise a load of different aspects of a new language and its standard library to get a feel for how it works, but also small enough that a new implementation can be done in a weekend[0] [0] Assuming you already have the foundational knowledge - my first emulator took a week to get the CPU working and a month for the first game to be playable, only using one old and inaccurate PDF as a reference; now that I know what I’m doing, and now that I’ve found gbdev.io for more accurate docs, it’s much faster. Funnily enough I also ended up creating a tool like the one in this article, logging every action that happens in the CPU or RAM to make sure they all match up :) ( https://github.com/shish/rosettaboy https://github.com/shish/rosettaboy )