Another update of CaSTawayGP. The changes:

NEW: Added floppy disk image for showing disk reads — both Disk A and Disk B are shown as little disk images on the right bottom corner; try using GEM to copy from A: to B: and watch it 🙂 if the Drive B: icon flashes away and wipes out part of the virtual keyboard, it will try and redraw the virtual keyboard to compensateCHG: Added”-“to the keyboard (plus is shift-equals)CHG:”File open messages”aren’t shown anymore, so you don’t see filenames at the screen bottom anymore 🙂

http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html

I got an e-mail from YiFei this morning containing a link to his latest”GBalpha Walkman”demorom for GBA. It includes a music player and an ebook option for eg the lyrics. The music example is some chinese popmusic by an artist I do not know. Here are a few lines from the mail:

It is a very cool music ROM with very good music quality and synchronous lyric. The music samplerate is 44100Hz/swith one channel. The compression rate is 1:5.32 which is the half of the mp3 compression. The codec is developed by YiFei in China. This rom can run in most GBA emulater (VisualBoyAdvance is recommoned) or on real GBA if you have a Flash Card for GBA. This rom and the GBalpha Walkman software were made by YiFei in China. If you are interest this software or the music player in it, please email to YiFei directly.

The e-mail adress to contact YiFei would be”gbalpha at vip dot sina dot com”. The page is in chinese language but I as non chinese found the rom link in less than 30 seconds. So it shouldn’t be a big problem to get it, otherwise you may send an e-mail directly to YiFei.http://www.fxjh.com

For now the most massive freeware game for Gameboy Advance were the Uranus series by ZoneGN. This isn’t anymore. At a well known emulation news page, they got a game submission”El-Hazard”. The whole rom is nearly 20 megabytes! This romis officialy declared as game, but it’s probably more an interactive story…oh well, here is a copy and paste of the news from zophars.net, btw a big thanks toGuyfawkesfor the news:

We’re looking at a full-sized (32MB) GBA ROM created in the course of about 2 weeks. This game is essentially”El-Hazard for the GBA”, a 4th port for a game that was seen only on two official platforms; the PC-9821 and the Japan Sega Saturn market. The game, which is based on a mostly cult-followed anime series, never had an English/US release and was pretty much squelched in its own markets. (Rare and very very out of print, although it pops up on eBay every couple weeks or so.)The game itself is nothing fantastic as far as technology goes; it barely used the Sega Saturn’s power. However it has literally hundreds of handdrawn, full-color backgrounds and a dynamic storyline based on a menu driven sort of RPG system.My original project was one of pity when I reverse engineered the Sega Saturn version’s data files to create a Windows PC runtime version (EHPC) which is fully documented here:http://www.el-hazardonline.net/cgi-bin/eholpage.cgi?series=PC;menu=6;content=elhazardpc/elhazardpc.htmlIt’s not just an emulation, but a complete, self-contained engine that runs script files and sprite animation files similar to the original Saturn version. It also has internal ability to use a real El-Hazard Saturn CD-ROM if you own it. The GBA version follows this mostly except of course it has a specific set of controls (A=Advance message, B=Turbo advance, START=Enter Option Menu during a dialog)But enough on that; the GBA ROM version is nearly identical to the PC version. Most of the C source used from the original, save for graphics-specific calls, compiled fairly easily under DevKit Advance with minimal changes. The major losses are mostly in color, since all Saturn graphics were 15-bit, and a bit of resolution.The GBA port runs Mode 4 (256 color bitmap mode) and of course the sprites are 16 or 256 color (GBA hardware limitation).This game is a”full”version, not a demo ROM. It contains the full eight”chapters”of the original Saturn version, fully functional save slots, and all necessary graphics/sounds/music as intact as they will ever be on a GBA. This ROM WILL boot from a real GBA BIOS startup in an emulator (i.e. the header appears to be correct), but so far only runs properly under VirtualBoy Advance. It has only been tested on the PC release of VBA 1.15, though I hope it works on the Mac port as well. It has not yet been tested on real hardware, and I suspect it won’t run without tweaking (but I don’t honestly know and will not know until I get a FlashLinker or related tool). There are still a few minor display bugs and a few technical bugs, but it’s otherwise quite playable AFAIK. I unfortunately didn’t have time to play it through nine times myself to test it every which way (which probably would’ve taken another week at least!)

http://www.zophar.net/

I got an email from Steve aka MrMr[Ice] containing a highly optimized version of his previous released Tweakmode 3D Demo. You can get the download at the GBA/Demos section. Thanks for the news mate!

A new shoter game is out! It’s called Mr. Monar! (Thanks toGP32emufor the news)http://www.tailzone.com/

Michel Louvet did it again. Version 0.8 of his Pang clone covers:

– Preliminary Music- Preliminary SFX- Ball are not under ladder anymore- Lot of little annoying bug corrected- Ingame Pause (Press start ingame to pause)- Change of splash screen and title screen- Modified loose life animation (platform don’t diseapear now)- 2 new levels for a total of 17 levels (expect more in the next version)

http://perso.club-internet.fr/michel.louvet/index.html

Bennymarrou submitted his latest GBA demo to the guys at Player Advance. Currently you can control Sonic, jump on enemies and collect coins. Nothing spectacular so far, but see yourself.http://www.playeradvance.org/

Another update of CaSTawayGP. The changes:

Release 11.4 – May 30th————NEW: Added”gamma”variable to config; you can set gamma to 0 through 4 inclusive; anythign else is turned to gamma 0. ex:”gamma 2″NEW: Config bind value”hold-“; simialr to just binding a STKEY except this binds the value as a”hold”key (likepushing”A”on the virtual keyboard). ex:”bind-fl hold-ST_A”This would mean as long as you’re holding left shoulder, you’re holding down ST_A on the ST keyboard.UPD: Included some sample configs in the distribution

http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.html

Seems we can count with a new version of GPPang again in the near future. Those lines were taken from it’s official homepage:

29 May 2003 – GPPang WIP Argg ! Big crash of my computer ! With luck i’ve done a backup of all my devkit and my sources code 5 minutes before the crash ! :)And the good news is : MUSIC ingame ! I must find and implement sfx, before releasing a new version.

http://perso.club-internet.fr/michel.louvet/index.html

Gameboy Advance:1945 by Samuel Adolfsson, 8-Bit 3D Lighting Demo by Robert Parnell, Astrohawk Advance 31-12-2002 by Paul Lay, Berzerk Legends 06-05-2003 by BigRedPimp, Brownian Fade by Decay, Codename – Monkey Bots v0.9 by team Ab Ovo, Deflektor GBA by Foxy, Destined Soul by Edmund Wong, Dragon Tiles v2 by Red5, DrSMS v2.02&v2.03 by Reesy, Dunjunz Advance v1.0 by Daniel Collier, GBA Sound Demo by Brendan Sechter, Hieroglyphic Man by Shen Mansell, Inwaders by GreenGianT, Jewel Crash v0.9 Beta by Daniel Crowley Wilson, Just Another Invaders Game by dox, Keeper v1.1 by Malefactor, Labyrinth (Updated Version) by Rob Blanding, Music Driver Test v0.02 by Magic Touch, Ninja Advance by Cerberus GBA Development, Ninja Bear by DKA Productions, PCEAdvance v2.5 by FluBBa, Plane by tangl_99, PocketGB v0.2a by JustBurn, PocketNES v9.6 by FluBBa, Pong v1.2 by Mark Pereira, Pong-Tor by Tim Cowley, Ports of Call Advance – Concept Demo by A A van Zoelen, Project Future Quest (Old Battle Demo Engine) by ZoneGN, Reversi Advance 19-05-2003 by TeamKNOx, Rotating GBA by Kuja, Snake Clone by Jenswa, The Hand Of God by Kuja, Yet Another Pong Demo by Cerberus GBA Development, ZeroMine Advance 27-05-2003 by TeamKNOxGame Park 32 (GP32):BG Hexa v0.2.1 by bingeun, BG Puyo v0.2.1 by bingeun, BG Tetris v0.2.1 by bingeun, Blister Ball by Brain Postma, Breakout by Brain Postma, BSPlay v0.2 by Brain Postma, CaSTaway GP v11.2&v11.3 by Jeff Mitchell, Connect-4 by clem, Doom v5 by Tom Forsyths&Craig&Guyfawkes, Drop Blocks by Rich, Elf Logic v0.9 by System Gear, Flipit v0.4 by JyCet, Fruit Machine (Preview) by Rich, GP Art v1.0 by Pekele, GPPang v0.6&v0.7&v0.71 by Michel Louvet, iMappy v1.0 by edhel, InfoNES 0.3LQ by Anders Granlund&LQ Soft, Jamidar by Brain Postma, Jatris by Brain Postma, Jump n Bump v0.02a by Michael Heinemann, Nibbles by EpiGP, Park-O-Rama v1.0 by Pascal Bosquet, Pipe Panic (Test Release) by NoBrain2K, Puissance 4 by EpiGP, Speccyal K v0.4b by Tyrell, Speck Invaders by Brain Postma, Tony Targets Beta (27-04-2003) by The Wub, VCS32 v0.1 by Fabrizio Zavagli, Xcade v0.03 by codejedi, XScape by StudioX64Super Nintendo (SNES):Astrohawk 15-05-2003 by Paul LayThis is a very massive update of 71 Files, enjoy!