Re: [Tuxnes-devel] Portable TuxNES (was: SDL audio player)

[W. M. P. <mi...@fl...>]

> [...] 
> I would like a NES emulator which is as portable as possible, while
> remaining reasonably quick and light.  Specifically, in this case
> portable means ``able to run on a UNIX-like OS on any architecture''
> to me.  After looking around a bit more, I have a couple of options:
> 
> 1.  Clean up Jim Ursetto's Dreamcast port and re-add TuxNES's SDL, X11,
> etc. renderers.
> 
> 2.  Move Jim Ursetto's C NES interpreter into the TuxNES code tree
> (actually a little different process than step 1 -- TuxNES has changed
> a bit since the fork).
> 
> 3.  Begin working on nofrendo.
> 
> 4.  Fork my own NES emulator because my goal turns out to be incompatible
> with everyone else's.  I'd like to avoid this, of course.
> [...]

I talked to Neil Stevens, the current maintainer of nofrendo, and he
stated, ``No, Nofrendo isn't in active development.''  He went on to
say that the principle author requested a pause in development while he
works on a rewrite.

So I started tearing Jim's ported C emulator core out of TuxNES-DC and
putting it in TuxNES.  I've gotten it working...but its ugly.

I have made a flexible controller, renderer, and sounder interface (based
on Jim's code) for TuxNES.  The next step is a flexible emulator interface
which can attach to either the dynamic compiler (fast..or is it?) or
Jim/nofrendo's interpreter (portable).  This will clean up the code
immensely, but will take some time.

There are a few other problems with the TuxNES code.  It has too many
global variables and some of its functions are too big.  I hope to
clean this up as I continue to mold the controller, renderer, sounder,
and emulator interfaces.  Eventually, perhaps TuxNES will be able to
dynamically load plugins from shared objects.

I'd like to see Jim's Dreamcast code be ported to a clean interface too.

The question at this point is, should I check my current TuxNES sludge
into CVS for others to hack?  Or, should I wait until I've cleaned it up
a bit?  I vote for the former -- I could use some help and comments --
but would like to hear from the real TuxNES maintainers before I tarnish
the CVS repository.

-- 
Mike

:wq