adriweb / tiboyce

A Game Boy emulator for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE.

TI-Boy CE

TI-Boy CE is a Game Boy emulator for the TI-84 Plus CE and the TI-83 Premium CE graphing calculators.

Currently only the original Game Boy is supported, no Game Boy Color (and never Game Boy Advance).

This emulator is currently in the alpha state, so while it is intended to be stable, it is possible that it could crash and cause data loss. It is advised to put any important files in Archive memory before running the emulator.

Grab the latest pre-built releases at https://github.com/calc84maniac/tiboyce/releases or check out the build instructions below to build from source.

Features

• Emulates original Game Boy hardware (except audio and linking)
• Emulates real-time clock for certain cartridges
• Save states with compression
• Fullscreen and 1:1 scaling modes (with optional skin)
• Automatic and manual frameskip
• Turbo mode (with speed display)
• GBC-style selectable color palettes for Game Boy games
• Customizable controls

Converting ROM files

The easiest method is to use the online converter here. All conversion is done locally in your browser, so there's no need to worry about uploading copyrighted data.

Alternatively, a command-line utility (tiboyce-romgen.exe) to convert ROM files to TI AppVars is included. There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory containing the utility using cd. Then run the following:

   tiboyce-romgen.exe -t "Game Title Here" path\to\romfile NamePrefix
   

2. Drag-and-drop a ROM file onto the utility, which will then prompt for a game title and a name prefix.

Note that the name prefix provided for the ROM must be at most 5 characters long. This is because the remaining 3 characters are used for naming additional files created by the utility and the emulator itself. The game title provided will be displayed in the emulator's ROM list.

The utility will generate multiple AppVar (*.8xv) files with the given prefix. Send all of them to the calculator in Archive memory.

Running the emulator

Send the TIBOYCE.8xp and TIBoyDat.8xv files to the calculator. Optionally also send the TIBoySkn.8xv file which contains a skin image.

If your calculator is running OS v5.3 or newer, you can keep all of these files in Archive and run prgmTIBOYCE from the prgm menu.

If your calculator is older than OS v5.3, the TIBOYCE program must be unarchived. Run it with Asm(prgmTIBOYCE).

You should now see a list of the ROMs on the calculator. Choose one with up/down and start it with 2nd/enter.

Default controls

Game controls:

• D-Pad: Arrow buttons
• A: 2nd
• B: alpha
• Start: mode
• Select: XTθn

Emulator controls:

• Emulator menu: clear
• Turbo: zoom
• Quick exit (non-configurable): on

Menu controls (non-configurable):

• Choose menu item: up/down
• Change option: left/right
• Select item: 2nd/enter
• Close menu: clear

File Types

The various files used by the emulator are as follows (replace Name with ROM prefix and # with digits):

Name.8xv - The file specifying the game title and how large the ROM is.
NameR##.8xv - Multiple files containing the actual ROM data.
NameSAV.8xv - The contents of the battery-backed cartridge save data.
NameStA.8xv - The automatic save state for this game.
NameSt#.8xv - The manual save state for the given numbered slot.
NameSv#.8xv - The cartridge save associated with a numbered save state.
TIBoyCE.8xp - The executable launcher.
TIBoyCfg.8xv - The current emulator configuration.
TIBoyDat.8xv - The core emulator data, loaded by the launcher.
TIBoySkn.8xv - An optional skin to be displayed in "no scaling" mode.

Note that save states cannot be loaded properly if the associated cartridge save data file is deleted or replaced. When transferring save states, make sure to include both the St# and Sv# files. However, this doesn't apply to games that have no cartridge save data in the first place.

Build Instructions

To build the emulator from source, first grab the latest release of SPASM-ng.

For simplicity's sake, I'll call the name of the executable spasm below. Run the following to produce the emulator files:

spasm -E -A launcher.asm TIBOYCE.8xp

spasm -E -A tiboyce.asm TIBoyDat.8xv

spasm -E -A skin.asm TIBoySkn.8xv

To build the rom generation tool, use the provided Visual Studio solution in the tiboyce-romgen directory, or theoretically you can build the source for any platform with your C compiler of choice.

Issues/Bugs

Report issues/bugs to the issue tracker, found here:

https://github.com/calc84maniac/tiboyce/issues

License

TI-Boy CE - a Game Boy emulator for the TI-84 Plus CE calculator family.
Copyright (C) 2018 Brendan Fletcher

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.