README.md (view raw)
1mGBA
2====
3
4mGBA is a new emulator for running Game Boy Advance games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack.
5
6Up-to-date news and downloads can be found at [mgba.io](http://mgba.io/).
7
8
9
10Features
11--------
12
13- Near full Game Boy Advance hardware support[<sup>[1]</sup>](#missing).
14- Fast emulation. Known to run at full speed even on low end hardware, such as netbooks.
15- Qt and SDL ports for a heavy-weight and a light-weight frontend.
16- Local (same computer) link cable support.
17- Save type detection, even for flash memory size[<sup>[2]</sup>](#flashdetect).
18- Support for cartridges with motion sensors and rumble (only usable with game controllers).
19- Real-time clock support, even without configuration.
20- A built-in BIOS implementation, and ability to load external BIOS files.
21- Turbo/fast-forward support by holding Tab.
22- Frameskip, configurable up to 10.
23- Screenshot support.
24- Cheat code support.
25- 9 savestate slots. Savestates are also viewable as screenshots.
26- Video and GIF recording.
27- Remappable controls for both keyboards and gamepads.
28- Loading from ZIP and 7z files.
29- IPS, UPS and BPS patch support.
30- Game debugging via a command-line interface (not available with Qt port) and GDB remote support, compatible with IDA Pro.
31- Configurable emulation rewinding.
32- Support for loading and exporting GameShark and Action Replay snapshots.
33
34### Planned features
35
36- Networked multiplayer link cable support ([Bug #1](http://mgba.io/b/1)).
37- Dolphin/JOY bus link cable support ([Bug #73](http://mgba.io/b/73)).
38- Re-recording support for tool-assist runs. ([Bugzilla keyword "TASBlocker"](https://endrift.com/mgba/bugs/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=TASBlocker))
39- Lua support for scripting ([Bug #62](http://mgba.io/b/62)).
40- A comprehensive debug suite ([Bug #132](http://mgba.io/b/132)).
41- OpenEmu core.
42- e-Reader support. ([Bug #171](http://mgba.io/b/171))
43
44
45Supported Platforms
46-------------------
47
48- Windows Vista or newer
49- OS X 10.7 (Lion)[<sup>[3]</sup>](#osxver) or newer
50- Linux
51- FreeBSD
52
53Other Unix-like platforms, such as OpenBSD, are known to work as well, but are untested and not fully supported.
54
55### System requirements
56
57Requirements are minimal. 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.
58
59Downloads
60---------
61
62Downloads can be found on the official website, in the [Downloads][downloads] section. The source code can be found on [GitHub][source].
63
64Controls
65--------
66
67Controls are configurable in the menu. The default gamepad controls are mapped so as to work with a DualShock 3. The default keyboard controls are as follows:
68
69- **A**: X
70- **B**: Z
71- **L**: A
72- **R**: S
73- **Start**: Enter
74- **Select**: Backspace
75
76Compiling
77---------
78
79Compiling requires using CMake 2.8.11 or newer. GCC and Clang are both known to work to compile mGBA, but Visual Studio 2013 and older are known not to work. Support for Visual Studio 2015 and newer is coming soon. To use CMake to build on a Unix-based system, the recommended commands are as follows:
80
81 mkdir build
82 cd build
83 cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
84 make
85 sudo make install
86
87This will build and install mGBA 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.
88
89#### Windows developer building
90
91To 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 ("MinGW-w64 Win32 Shell") and run this additional command (including the braces) to install the needed dependencies (please note that this involves downloading over 500MiB of packages, so it will take a long time):
92
93 pacman -Sy mingw-w64-i686-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,imagemagick,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2}
94
95Check out the source code by running this command:
96
97 git clone https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba.git
98
99Then finally build it by running these commands:
100
101 cd mgba
102 mkdir build
103 cd build
104 cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles"
105 make
106
107Please note that this build of mGBA for Windows is not suitable for distribution, due to the scattering of DLLs it needs to run, but is perfect for development.
108
109### Dependencies
110
111mGBA 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.
112
113- Qt 5: for the GUI frontend. Qt Multimedia or SDL are required for audio.
114- SDL: for a more basic frontend and gamepad support in the Qt frontend. SDL 2 is recommended, but 1.2 is supported.
115- zlib and libpng: for screenshot support and savestate-in-PNG support.
116- libedit: for command-line debugger support.
117- ffmpeg or libav: for video recording.
118- libzip: for loading ROMs stored in zip files.
119- ImageMagick: for GIF recording.
120
121Footnotes
122---------
123
124<a name="missing">[1]</a> Currently missing features are
125
126- OBJ window for modes 3, 4 and 5 ([Bug #5](http://mgba.io/b/5))
127- Mosaic for transformed OBJs ([Bug #9](http://mgba.io/b/9))
128- BIOS call RegisterRamReset is partially stubbed out ([Bug #141](http://mgba.io/b/141))
129- Game Pak prefetch ([Bug #195](http://mgba.io/b/195))
130- BIOS call Stop, for entering sleep mode ([Bug #199](http://mgba.io/b/199))
131
132<a name="flashdetect">[2]</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.
133
134<a name="osxver">[3]</a> 10.7 is only needed for the Qt port. The SDL port is known to work on 10.6, and may work on older.
135
136[downloads]: http://mgba.io/downloads.html
137[source]: https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/
138
139Copyright
140---------
141
142mGBA is Copyright © 2013 – 2015 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.
143
144mGBA contains the following third-party libraries:
145
146- [inih](https://code.google.com/p/inih/), which is copyright © 2009 Brush Technology and used under a BSD 3-clause license.
147- [blip-buf](https://code.google.com/p/blip-buf/), which is copyright © 2003 – 2009 Shay Green and used under a Lesser GNU Public License.
148- [LZMA SDK](http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html), which is public domain.
149- MurmurHash3 implementation by Austin Appleby, which is public domain.