README.md (view raw)
1medusa
2======
3
4medusa is an emulator for running Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack. It also supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
5
6Up-to-date news and downloads can be found at [mgba.io](https://mgba.io/).
7
8[](https://travis-ci.org/mgba-emu/mgba)
9
10Features
11--------
12
13- Highly accurate Game Boy Advance hardware support[<sup>[1]</sup>](#missing).
14- Partial DS hardware support[<sup>[1]</sup>](#missing).
15- Game Boy/Game Boy Color hardware support.
16- Fast emulation for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Known to run at full speed even on low end hardware, such as netbooks[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
17- Qt and SDL ports for a heavy-weight and a light-weight frontend.
18- Local (same computer) link cable support.
19- Save type detection, even for flash memory size[<sup>[3]</sup>](#flashdetect).
20- Support for cartridges with motion sensors and rumble (only usable with game controllers)[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
21- Real-time clock support, even without configuration.
22- Solar sensor support for Boktai games.
23- Game Boy Camera and Game Boy Printer support.
24- A built-in GBA BIOS implementation, and ability to load external BIOS files. DS currently requires BIOS and firmware dumps[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
25- Turbo/fast-forward support by holding Tab.
26- Rewind by holding Backquote.
27- Frameskip, configurable up to 10.
28- Screenshot support.
29- Cheat code support[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
30- 9 savestate slots. Savestates are also viewable as screenshots[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
31- Video, GIF, WebP, and APNG recording.
32- e-Reader support.
33- Remappable controls for both keyboards and gamepads.
34- Loading from ZIP and 7z files.
35- IPS, UPS and BPS patch support.
36- Game debugging via a command-line interface and GDB remote support, compatible with IDA Pro.
37- Configurable emulation rewinding.
38- Support for loading and exporting GameShark and Action Replay snapshots.
39- Cores available for RetroArch/Libretro and OpenEmu.
40- Many, many smaller things.
41
42#### Game Boy mappers
43
44The following mappers are fully supported:
45
46- MBC1
47- MBC1M
48- MBC2
49- MBC3
50- MBC3+RTC
51- MBC5
52- MBC5+Rumble
53- MBC7
54- Wisdom Tree (unlicensed)
55- Pokémon Jade/Diamond (unlicensed)
56
57The following mappers are partially supported:
58
59- MBC6
60- MMM01
61- Pocket Cam
62- TAMA5
63- HuC-1
64- HuC-3
65
66### Planned features
67
68- Networked multiplayer link cable support.
69- Dolphin/JOY bus link cable support.
70- M4A audio mixing, for higher quality sound than hardware.
71- Re-recording support for tool-assist runs.
72- Lua support for scripting.
73- A comprehensive debug suite.
74- Wireless adapter support.
75- OpenGL renderer.
76- HLE support for DS BIOS and DS ARM7 processor.
77- Synthesizing a customizable DS firmware to avoid needing a dump.
78
79Supported Platforms
80-------------------
81
82- Windows Vista or newer
83- OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)[<sup>[4]</sup>](#osxver) or newer
84- Linux
85- FreeBSD
86
87The following platforms are supported for everything except DS:
88
89- Nintendo 3DS
90- Nintendo Switch
91- Wii
92- PlayStation Vita
93
94Other Unix-like platforms, such as OpenBSD, are known to work as well, but are untested and not fully supported.
95
96### System requirements
97
98Requirements are minimal[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat). Any computer that can run Windows Vista or newer should be able to handle emulation. Support for OpenGL 1.1 or newer is also required, with OpenGL 3.2 or newer for shaders and advanced features.
99
100Downloads
101---------
102
103Downloads can be found on the official website, in the [Downloads][downloads] section. The source code can be found on [GitHub][source].
104
105Controls
106--------
107
108Controls are configurable in the settings menu. Many game controllers should be automatically mapped by default. The default keyboard controls are as follows for GB and GBA:
109
110- **A**: X
111- **B**: Z
112- **L**: A
113- **R**: S
114- **Start**: Enter
115- **Select**: Backspace
116
117DS default controls are slightly different:
118
119- **A**: X
120- **B**: Z
121- **X**: S
122- **Y**: A
123- **L**: Q
124- **R**: W
125- **Start**: Enter
126- **Select**: Backspace
127
128Compiling
129---------
130
131Compiling requires using CMake 3.1 or newer. GCC and Clang are both known to work to compile medusa, but Visual Studio 2013 and older are known not to work. Support for Visual Studio 2015 and newer is coming soon.
132
133#### Docker building
134
135The recommended way to build for most platforms is to use Docker. Several Docker images are provided that contain the requisite toolchain and dependencies for building mGBA across several platforms.
136
137To use a Docker image to build mGBA, simply run the following command while in the root of an mGBA checkout:
138
139 docker run --rm -t -v $PWD:/home/mgba/src mgba/windows:w32
140
141This will produce a `build-win32` directory with the build products. Replace `mgba/windows:w32` with another Docker image for other platforms, which will produce a corresponding other directory. The following Docker images available on Docker Hub:
142
143- mgba/3ds
144- mgba/switch
145- mgba/ubuntu:xenial
146- mgba/ubuntu:bionic
147- mgba/ubuntu:cosmic
148- mgba/ubuntu:disco
149- mgba/ubuntu:eoan
150- mgba/ubuntu:focal
151- mgba/vita
152- mgba/wii
153- mgba/windows:w32
154- mgba/windows:w64
155
156#### *nix building
157
158To use CMake to build on a Unix-based system, the recommended commands are as follows:
159
160 mkdir build
161 cd build
162 cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
163 make
164 sudo make install
165
166This will build and install medusa into `/usr/bin` and `/usr/lib`. Dependencies that are installed will be automatically detected, and features that are disabled if the dependencies are not found will be shown after running the `cmake` command after warnings about being unable to find them.
167
168If you are on macOS, the steps are a little different. Assuming you are using the homebrew package manager, the recommended commands to obtain the dependencies and build are:
169
170 brew install cmake ffmpeg libzip qt5 sdl2 libedit pkg-config
171 mkdir build
172 cd build
173 cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=`brew --prefix qt5` ..
174 make
175
176Note that you should not do a `make install` on macOS, as it will not work properly.
177
178#### Windows developer building
179
180##### MSYS2
181
182To build on Windows for development, using MSYS2 is recommended. Follow the installation steps found on their [website](https://msys2.github.io). Make sure you're running the 32-bit version ("MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit") (or the 64-bit version "MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit" if you want to build for x86_64) and run this additional command (including the braces) to install the needed dependencies (please note that this involves downloading over 1100MiB of packages, so it will take a long time):
183
184For x86 (32 bit) builds:
185
186 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-i686-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
187
188For x86_64 (64 bit) builds:
189
190 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-x86_64-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
191
192Check out the source code by running this command:
193
194 git clone https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba.git -b medusa medusa
195
196Then finally build it by running these commands:
197
198 cd medusa
199 mkdir build
200 cd build
201 cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles"
202 make
203
204Please note that this build of medusa for Windows is not suitable for distribution, due to the scattering of DLLs it needs to run, but is perfect for development. However, if distributing such a build is desired (e.g. for testing on machines that don't have the MSYS2 environment installed), running `cpack -G ZIP` will prepare a zip file with all of the necessary DLLs.
205
206##### Visual Studio
207
208To build using Visual Studio is a similarly complicated setup. To begin you will need to install [vcpkg](https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg). After installing vcpkg you will need to install several additional packages:
209
210 vcpkg install ffmpeg[vpx,x264] libepoxy libpng libzip sdl2 sqlite3
211
212Note that this installation won't support hardware accelerated video encoding on Nvidia hardware. If you care about this, you'll need to install CUDA beforehand, and then substitute `ffmpeg[vpx,x264,nvcodec]` into the previous command.
213
214You will also need to install Qt. Unfortunately due to Qt being owned and run by an ailing company as opposed to a reasonable organization there is no longer an offline open source edition installer for the latest version, so you'll need to either fall back to an [old version installer](https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.12/5.12.9/qt-opensource-windows-x86-5.12.9.exe) (which wants you to create an otherwise-useless account, but you can bypass temporarily setting an invalid proxy or otherwise disabling networking), use the online installer (which requires an account regardless), or use vcpkg to build it (slowly). None of these are great options. For the installer you'll want to install the applicable MSVC versions. Note that the offline installers do not support MSVC 2019. For vcpkg you'll want to install it as such, which will take quite a while, especially on quad core or less computers:
215
216 vcpkg install qt5-base qt5-multimedia
217
218Next, open Visual Studio, select Clone Repository, and enter `https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba.git`. When Visual Studio is done cloning, go to File > CMake and open the CMakeLists.txt file at the root of the checked out repository. From there, mGBA can be developed in Visual Studio similarly to other Visual Studio CMake projects.
219
220#### Toolchain building
221
222If you have devkitARM (for 3DS), devkitPPC (for Wii), devkitA64 (for Switch), or vitasdk (for PS Vita), you can use the following commands for building:
223
224 mkdir build
225 cd build
226 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt ..
227 make
228
229Replace the `-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE` parameter for the following platforms:
230
231- 3DS: `../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt`
232- Switch: `../src/platform/switch/CMakeToolchain.txt`
233- Vita: `../src/platform/psp2/CMakeToolchain.vitasdk`
234- Wii: `../src/platform/wii/CMakeToolchain.txt`
235
236### Dependencies
237
238medusa has no hard dependencies, however, the following optional dependencies are required for specific features. The features will be disabled if the dependencies can't be found.
239
240- Qt 5: for the GUI frontend. Qt Multimedia or SDL are required for audio.
241- SDL: for a more basic frontend and gamepad support in the Qt frontend. SDL 2 is recommended, but 1.2 is supported.
242- zlib and libpng: for screenshot support and savestate-in-PNG support.
243- libedit: for command-line debugger support.
244- ffmpeg or libav: for video, GIF, WebP, and APNG recording.
245- libzip or zlib: for loading ROMs stored in zip files.
246- SQLite3: for game databases.
247- libelf: for ELF loading.
248
249SQLite3, libpng, and zlib are included with the emulator, so they do not need to be externally compiled first.
250
251Footnotes
252---------
253
254<a name="missing">[1]</a> Currently missing features on GBA are
255
256- OBJ window for modes 3, 4 and 5 ([Bug #5](http://mgba.io/b/5))
257
258Missing features on DS are
259
260- Audio:
261 - Master audio settings
262 - Sound output capture
263 - Microphone
264- Graphics:
265 - Edge marking/wireframe
266 - Highlight shading
267 - Fog
268 - Anti-aliasing
269 - Alpha test
270 - Position test
271 - Vector test
272 - Bitmap rear plane
273 - Large bitmap mode 6
274 - 1-dot depth clipping
275 - Vector matrix memory mapping
276 - Polygon/vertex RAM entry count memory mapping
277 - Rendered line count memory mapping
278 - Horizontal scrolling on 3D background
279 - Some bitmap OBJ mappings
280 - DMA FIFO backgrounds
281- Other:
282 - Cache emulation/estimation
283 - Slot-2 access/RAM/rumble
284 - BIOS protection
285 - Display start DMAs
286 - Most of Wi-Fi
287 - RTC interrupts
288 - Manual IPC sync IRQs
289 - Lid switch
290 - Power management
291 - Touchscreen temperature/pressure support
292 - Various MMIO registers
293 - DSi cart protections
294
295<a name="dscaveat">[2]</a> Many feature are still missing on the DS, including savestates, cheats, rumble, HLE BIOS, and more.
296
297<a name="flashdetect">[3]</a> Flash memory size detection does not work in some cases. These can be configured at runtime, but filing a bug is recommended if such a case is encountered.
298
299<a name="osxver">[4]</a> 10.8 is only needed for the Qt port. It may be possible to build or running the Qt port on 10.7 or older, but this is not officially supported. The SDL port is known to work on 10.5, and may work on older.
300
301[downloads]: http://mgba.io/downloads.html
302[source]: https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/
303
304Copyright
305---------
306
307medusa is Copyright © 2013 – 2020 Jeffrey Pfau. It is distributed under the [Mozilla Public License version 2.0](https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/). A copy of the license is available in the distributed LICENSE file.
308
309medusa contains the following third-party libraries:
310
311- [inih](https://github.com/benhoyt/inih), which is copyright © 2009 – 2020 Ben Hoyt and used under a BSD 3-clause license.
312- [blip-buf](https://code.google.com/archive/p/blip-buf), which is copyright © 2003 – 2009 Shay Green and used under a Lesser GNU Public License.
313- [LZMA SDK](http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html), which is public domain.
314- [MurmurHash3](https://github.com/aappleby/smhasher) implementation by Austin Appleby, which is public domain.
315- [getopt for MSVC](https://github.com/skandhurkat/Getopt-for-Visual-Studio/), which is public domain.
316- [SQLite3](https://www.sqlite.org), which is public domain.
317
318If you are a game publisher and wish to license medusa for commercial usage, please email [licensing@mgba.io](mailto:licensing@mgba.io) for more information.