News

NightFox has released the first beta of his arcade game Colors, an alpha version has been released few days ago.

Release notes from NightFox:

I just added pause, bg music and some sound effects.

Welcome to the origins of life, your aim will be to protect your cell during you feed it to reach a high lever of evolution.

Changes:

– Compatibility for FW 3.x / SLIM
– New package, smaller, quicker to copy
– Some speed optimizations.
– Some bug fixes as well.

CreatDir is a little homebrew application, that will recreate all the 3.71 M33 directories on the memstick without the need of formatting the memory stick! This might be helpful for people who are too lazy to recreate the directories manually.

Recently atariland2600 released a game called “Project X”. He now renamed it to “Paint The Town Red”.

Release notes:

Changed the name to “Paint the Town Red” and changed it so you don’t go to the next level when you hit what’s already been painted (in fact, nothing happens. Should you die, or is it OK the way it is now?)

Caissa is a native chess game coded by Boris Ioffe. It’s available on Installer using http://caissa.us as a source.

Thanks to http://www.iphoneskinning.com for the news and the illustration screenshot.

uLibrary is a new library for Nintendo DS. Basically, it is meant to use the 3D GPU to create nice 2D games very easily, using a different approach than existing libraries (quite similar to OSLib).

The 3D GPU provides additional effects over the 2D GPU, like full transparency with alpha channel (objects can blend amongst them), a larger number of sprites (up to 1536 instead of 128), no zoom or rotation limit (2x with the 2D GPU), a larger limit for the sprite size (2048×2048 instead of 64×64). It is also possible to draw primitives like lines, rectangles, etc. allowing nice effects like in Yoshi’s island for example

Changes:

An update to uLibrary, initially only meant to fix the problems with the latest libnds release, but which finally features some nice improvements.

The goal of this project is to create a port of NetHack for the DS utilizing the unique features of the DS to create an easy-to-use NetHacking experience.

Release notes from Abcd1234:

*sigh* And yes, I’ve put 1.12c out. I’m hoping this is the last bugfix release for this version… anyway, this one fixes a more minor drawing problem which shows up in text mode in situations where tiles need to be erased (such as dark rooms, etc).

Virtual Game Maker DS is a game-making software for Nintendo DS coded by Globoeil.

Tutorial and details on it’s homepage.

MaxyPSP updated his PSP-Info application. It gives you various information about your Playstation Portable.

Changes:

Added colors
USb info added
Mac adres fixed
UMD info added

Shortly after Test 1 here comes Test 2 of ZODTTD’s PSX4ALL/PSX4iPhone port for the GP2x.

Release notes:

Here is the direct download link to psx4gp2x v0.1.2 Test 2:
http://www.zodttd.com/psx4gp2x/psx4gp2x_0_1_2_t2.zip

It’s been a long time since a psx4gp2x version has been made, so the change list is very long.
I can tell you that the newly redesigned frameskip has been helping things a lot. Also the dynarec has been remade. Performance has increased quite a lot.

I just got done playing a game on my GP2X @ 266MHz. Buster Bros Collection, with sound on and interlace off, ran at 60FPS steady in-game, and the menus went way too fast, sometimes 120FPS. Frameskip works well on it’s various settings and due to the way it must be designed, it doesnt skip certain frames, so things are kept smooth even on really high frameskips. Wipeout XL is amazing to see! 🙂

While there is still more to be desired, this is pretty exciting news. So my todo list contains:
– Further improve the dynarec.
– Tweak some default settings so compatibility is higher while maintaining performance. Thing includes the psx cycle setting.
– Enable BIOS emulation option in the menu.
– Enable the use of external menu systems. 🙂
– Check if save states are working. Both save states and memory card saves are implemented.

Direct link to discussion thread for chat and support:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=39811