Official TI-Boy SE Beta Thread

[calc84maniac]

List of current releases from newest to oldest:
Beta 0.2.04 (Ticalc.org Release)
Beta 0.2.03
Beta 0.2.02
Beta 0.2.01
Beta 0.2.00
Beta 0.1.07
Beta 0.1.06
Beta 0.1.05
Beta 0.1.04
Beta 0.1.03
Beta 0.1.02
Beta 0.1.01
Beta 0.1.00

I decided to continue my releases in a topic in the TI-Boy section because I feel like the topic in the News section is too hard to find. I'll post a link to this thread at the beginning and end of the news thread and then lock it.

So, here is Beta 0.2.01! I fixed the Super Mario Land freezing glitch (which was caused by the timers being emulated too quickly relative to the CPU speed) and fixed more games that use the STAT register.

[Xeda112358]

First download Awesome job, calc

[nxtboy III]

So is this one only for older ti-84's?

EDIT: Level 7, Elite!! 500 posts!

[calc84maniac]

The Beta version works on all TI-84+ models, except for games that require 32KB cartridge-RAM (such as the Pokemon games)

[nxtboy III]

Oh, cool!

If only I had an SE... I could play Super Mario Land 2

[Darksider]

Oh, cool!

If only I had an SE... I could play Super Mario Land 2

Is Super Mario Land 2 too big for the regular TI-84+? Or is it one of the games that require more RAM?

Also, is there an easy way to tell if a game will require more RAM than is possible on the newer TI-84s before I just go ahead and start testing games?

Last, thanks for an awesome update to this emulator

[nxtboy III]

Also, is there an easy way to tell if a game will require more RAM than is possible on the newer TI-84s before I just go ahead and start testing games?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it says so in the game converter program (the makeapp).

[Darksider]

Also, is there an easy way to tell if a game will require more RAM than is possible on the newer TI-84s before I just go ahead and start testing games?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it says so in the game converter program (the makeapp).

Cool. Thanks.

[nxtboy III]

Cool. Thanks.

No problem.

[uiblis]

Updates! Awesome! 

I also found a glitch.

In Pokemon Red, certain moves caused the game to loop things. Not freeze up, but repeat something over and over. Some attacks have an effect on the screen where it makes the screen flash or shake or become wavy and whatnot, and when performing certain moves, the shaking effect repeats forever, and it is impossible to continue without quitting by pressing ON. The moves "Night Shade" and "Psychic" have this effect. (might be more, I haven't tested everything) "Psychic" in particular is making the game almost unplayable since it such a common move, and I have to quit and restart and hope that trainer doesn't use psychic.

In beta 2.00, these moves caused the screen shaking effect continually

In beta 2.01, psychic no longer loops at the "shaking" effect but now loops when the screen has a "wavy" effect.

Any ideas as to what's causing this?

[calc84maniac]

I suppose it might be caused by a false positive in the waitloop detection method. In beta 2.01 I removed one false positive (which might be why the shaking effect is fixed), but maybe there are more that I need to detect.

[calc84maniac]

Thanks to Runer112's provided Pokemon save file with Mewtwo, I've solved this issue. I decided to stop handling the STAT register hackily and finally implement it properly. Now it changes state thrice per scanline as it should, rather than once per scanline. I had to increase the interrupt rate to accomplish this: 2/3 of these interrupts *only* change the STAT register and then return to execution as quickly as possible, and the other 1/3 handle all the rest of the hardware as usual. Since this is a fairly significant game changer (pardon the pun), I should probably do more testing before I release the next version.

[DJ Omnimaga]

I didn't realize there were that many betas! All I have tried was the first one you posted in that news article months ago.

I will probably try to give the latest version a try when I have some chance. Glad to see this is still alive and getting new updates by the way.

[calc84maniac]

Okay, I'm fairly convinced now that this change didn't break stuff or kill performance, so here you go. The STAT register is implemented the correct way now, so Pokemon animations and various other things don't break.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Does that includes Super Mario Land too? Because that seems to be one hell of an hard game to emulate lol.