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 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
56The following mappers are partially supported:
57
58- MBC6
59- MMM01
60- Pocket Cam
61- TAMA5
62- HuC-1
63- HuC-3
64
65### Planned features
66
67- Networked multiplayer link cable support.
68- Dolphin/JOY bus link cable support.
69- M4A audio mixing, for higher quality sound than hardware.
70- Re-recording support for tool-assist runs.
71- Lua support for scripting.
72- A comprehensive debug suite.
73- Wireless adapter support.
74- OpenGL renderer.
75- HLE support for DS BIOS and DS ARM7 processor.
76- Synthesizing a customizable DS firmware to avoid needing a dump.
77
78Supported Platforms
79-------------------
80
81- Windows Vista or newer
82- OS X 10.7 (Lion)[<sup>[4]</sup>](#osxver) or newer
83- Linux
84- FreeBSD
85
86The following platforms are supported for everything except DS:
87
88- Nintendo 3DS
89- Wii
90- PlayStation Vita
91
92Other Unix-like platforms, such as OpenBSD, are known to work as well, but are untested and not fully supported.
93
94### System requirements
95
96Requirements 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.
97
98Downloads
99---------
100
101Downloads can be found on the official website, in the [Downloads][downloads] section. The source code can be found on [GitHub][source].
102
103Controls
104--------
105
106Controls 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:
107
108- **A**: X
109- **B**: Z
110- **L**: A
111- **R**: S
112- **Start**: Enter
113- **Select**: Backspace
114
115DS default controls are slightly different:
116
117- **A**: X
118- **B**: Z
119- **X**: S
120- **Y**: A
121- **L**: Q
122- **R**: W
123- **Start**: Enter
124- **Select**: Backspace
125
126Compiling
127---------
128
129Compiling 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.
130
131#### Docker building
132
133The 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.
134
135To use a Docker image to build mGBA, simply run the following command while in the root of an mGBA checkout:
136
137 docker run --rm -t -v $PWD:/home/mgba/src mgba/windows:w32
138
139This 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:
140
141- mgba/3ds
142- mgba/switch
143- mgba/ubuntu:xenial
144- mgba/ubuntu:bionic
145- mgba/ubuntu:cosmic
146- mgba/ubuntu:disco
147- mgba/ubuntu:eoan
148- mgba/ubuntu:focal
149- mgba/vita
150- mgba/wii
151- mgba/windows:w32
152- mgba/windows:w64
153
154#### *nix building
155
156To use CMake to build on a Unix-based system, the recommended commands are as follows:
157
158 mkdir build
159 cd build
160 cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
161 make
162 sudo make install
163
164This 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.
165
166If 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:
167
168 brew install cmake ffmpeg libzip qt5 sdl2 libedit pkg-config
169 mkdir build
170 cd build
171 cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=`brew --prefix qt5` ..
172 make
173
174Note that you should not do a `make install` on macOS, as it will not work properly.
175
176#### Windows developer building
177
178To 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):
179
180For x86 (32 bit) builds:
181
182 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-i686-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
183
184For x86_64 (64 bit) builds:
185
186 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-x86_64-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
187
188Check out the source code by running this command:
189
190 git clone https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba.git -b medusa medusa
191
192Then finally build it by running these commands:
193
194 cd medusa
195 mkdir build
196 cd build
197 cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles"
198 make
199
200Please 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.
201
202#### Toolchain building
203
204If you have devkitARM (for 3DS), devkitPPC (for Wii), devkitA64 (for Switch), or vitasdk (for PS Vita), you can use the following commands for building:
205
206 mkdir build
207 cd build
208 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt ..
209 make
210
211Replace the `-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE` parameter for the following platforms:
212
213- 3DS: `../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt`
214- Switch: `../src/platform/switch/CMakeToolchain.txt`
215- Vita: `../src/platform/psp2/CMakeToolchain.vitasdk`
216- Wii: `../src/platform/wii/CMakeToolchain.txt`
217
218### Dependencies
219
220medusa 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.
221
222- Qt 5: for the GUI frontend. Qt Multimedia or SDL are required for audio.
223- SDL: for a more basic frontend and gamepad support in the Qt frontend. SDL 2 is recommended, but 1.2 is supported.
224- zlib and libpng: for screenshot support and savestate-in-PNG support.
225- libedit: for command-line debugger support.
226- ffmpeg or libav: for video recording.
227- libzip or zlib: for loading ROMs stored in zip files.
228- ImageMagick: for GIF recording.
229- SQLite3: for game databases.
230- libelf: for ELF loading.
231
232SQLite3, libpng, and zlib are included with the emulator, so they do not need to be externally compiled first.
233
234Footnotes
235---------
236
237<a name="missing">[1]</a> Currently missing features on GBA are
238
239- OBJ window for modes 3, 4 and 5 ([Bug #5](http://mgba.io/b/5))
240
241Missing features on DS are
242
243- Audio:
244 - Master audio settings
245 - Sound output capture
246 - Microphone
247- Graphics:
248 - Edge marking/wireframe
249 - Highlight shading
250 - Fog
251 - Anti-aliasing
252 - Alpha test
253 - Position test
254 - Vector test
255 - Bitmap rear plane
256 - Large bitmap mode 6
257 - 1-dot depth clipping
258 - Vector matrix memory mapping
259 - Polygon/vertex RAM entry count memory mapping
260 - Rendered line count memory mapping
261 - Horizontal scrolling on 3D background
262 - Some bitmap OBJ mappings
263 - DMA FIFO backgrounds
264- Other:
265 - Cache emulation/estimation
266 - Slot-2 access/RAM/rumble
267 - BIOS protection
268 - Display start DMAs
269 - Most of Wi-Fi
270 - RTC interrupts
271 - Manual IPC sync IRQs
272 - Lid switch
273 - Power management
274 - Touchscreen temperature/pressure support
275 - Various MMIO registers
276 - DSi cart protections
277
278<a name="dscaveat">[2]</a> Many feature are still missing on the DS, including savestates, cheats, rumble, HLE BIOS, and more.
279
280<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.
281
282<a name="osxver">[3]</a> 10.7 is only needed for the Qt port. The SDL port is known to work on 10.5, and may work on older.
283
284[downloads]: http://mgba.io/downloads.html
285[source]: https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/
286
287Copyright
288---------
289
290medusa 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.
291
292medusa contains the following third-party libraries:
293
294- [inih](https://github.com/benhoyt/inih), which is copyright © 2009 Ben Hoyt and used under a BSD 3-clause license.
295- [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.
296- [LZMA SDK](http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html), which is public domain.
297- [MurmurHash3](https://github.com/aappleby/smhasher) implementation by Austin Appleby, which is public domain.
298- [getopt for MSVC](https://github.com/skandhurkat/Getopt-for-Visual-Studio/), which is public domain.
299- [SQLite3](https://www.sqlite.org), which is public domain.
300
301If 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.