Mu/SquirrelJME Dual-Release

cuttlefish

Mooey Quaaasmas!

Hi! We are pleased to announce the release of Mu and SquirrelJME!

Mu v(1/3*3) (by meepingsnesroms)
SquirrelJME 0.2.0 (by XerTheSquirrel)

Mu is the first Palm OS emulator capable of actually playing Palm games, it is currently capable of playing most 160×160 Palm OS 4 software perfectly, there are a few hardware abstraction glitches and sound FIFO inaccuracies but other than that the device works and the audio plays normally, this is with no hacks done to the OS. The main target is RetroArch so it runs on everything, an additional Qt port is available for desktop and Android with debug tools, but Qt itself is horribly broken on Android right now for multiple reasons.
– GitHub: @meepingsnesroms

SquirrelJME is a Java ME 8 Virtual Machine written purely in Java, which also intends to be compatible with J2ME! If you do not know what J2ME is, it is the Java of old flip phones which run MIDlets. In 2014 a new embedded Java standard was released and this is the standard which SquirrelJME is based on, meaning that it is easier to program and far more modern. This is a work in progress and not every single application will run (currently just basic applications), but support for more applications is coming in the future! Currently it runs on existing Java SE VMs so you will need a Desktop Java SE installed. SquirrelJME will see a port to RetroArch in the future as well, however that is still a few months away.
– GitHub: @XerTheSquirrel

Check them out here:

* https://github.com/meepingsnesroms/Mu
   * https://discord.gg/4fBHrHT
* https://github.com/XerTheSquirrel/SquirrelJME
   * https://multiphasicapps.net/uv/download.mkd
   * https://discord.gg/9PkMMKt

We hope that you enjoy them!

BeetleDC Libretro Progress Report – December 2018

flyinghead

It’s been a pretty busy end of the year for the BeetleDC core. Most of the work consisted in finalizing and improving support for Naomi and Atomiswave arcade ROMs.

Naomi / Atomiswave

Naomi GD-ROMs are now supported and this adds more than 120 Naomi games to the list of supported arcade games.
ROMs archived with 7zip as well as parent/split ROMs are now supported as well.
Another new feature is the use of per-game input descriptors: so instead of binding “Button 1” or “Axis 1”, you’ll have descriptive names such as “JUMP” or “STEERING WHEEL”. Not all games have input descriptors but more will be added in the future (and pull requests are welcome.)


In addition, many bugs have been fixed allowing many arcade games to now be fully playable: 18 Wheeler, Airline Pilot, Cosmic Smash, House of the Dead 2, Jambo Safari, Ninja Assault, Shooting Love, Virtual Athlete, Virtual On Oratorio Tangram and probably more.

Dreamcast

On the Dreamcast front, a recent but notable improvement is the automatic setting of the BIOS date and time at boot. So you should never see the date/time setting screen again. In the same area, a new core option allows to choose the BIOS language, so you don’t have to boot the BIOS to change it.
Using the Libretro disk control interface, disk swapping has been implemented. When asked by the game, you can now virtually eject the current disk and select a new one without restarting. Some multi-disk games require this feature such as D2 or Pop’n Music 3 and 4 append disks.

Another new feature for both console and arcade is the Synchronous Rendering core option. This option is only active with Threaded Rendering. When activated, it will pause the emulation thread instead of dropping a frame, which results in less dropped frames and thus a better and smoother frame rate.
Finally, Restart has been implemented so one can reset a game without having to restart the front-end.

 

Happy and Peaceful Holidays!