UXNGBA
This is a port of the UXN virtual machine for the GBA. It is currently at an early stage, but is capable of running simple demos that make use of the screen or console devices, including the beautiful DVD bouncing.
Building from source
To build this software you need the devkitPro SDK. Once installed, you may need to modify the Makefile to ensure the path is correct, but should work with the default devikit installation methods on Linux and macOS.
DEVKITPRO := /opt/devkitpro
DEVKITBIN := $(DEVKITPRO)/devkitARM/bin
DEVKITTOOLS := $(DEVKITPRO)/tools/bin
LIBGBA_DIR := $(DEVKITPRO)/libgba
LIBGBA_SRC := $(DEVKITPRO)/libgba/include/
LIBGBA := $(LIBGBA_DIR)/lib/libgba.a
LIBGBA += $(LIBGBA_DIR)/lib/libfat.a
LIBGBA += $(LIBGBA_DIR)/lib/libmm.a
If everything is properly installed, you should be able to run make
to compile
the program into a uxngba.gba
rom. If you have mgba-qt
installed, you can
test it with: make run
.
To use a specific UXN compiled rom, you can pass it as the ROM_SRC
make
parameter:
make run ROM_SRC=roms/noodle.rom
If you have compiled a rom already and want to change it, you probably want to
use make clean
beforehand.
Configuration
The output .gba files will embed the rom used for installation. Different roms have different needs, such as the usage of different input methods or the desired audio quality. These options can be selected by defining the right macros on compile time as described below.
Input method order
Uxngba currently supports three different control schemes that can be cycled by
pressing the SELECT button: CONTROL_CONTROLLER
, CONTROL_MOUSE
and
CONTROL_KEYBOARD
. To select the order and available methods set the
CONTROL_METHODS
macro on compile time. For example, noodle doesn't
make much use of the controller scheme, and we may want to use the mouse as the
default input method. This can be achieved with the following command:
make run ROM_SRC=roms/noodle.rom CONFIG="-DCONTROL_METHODS=CONTROL_MOUSE,CONTROL_KEYBOARD"
Audio quality
Audio processing can be computationally expensive and the GBA has limited
resources. uxngba supports 4 audio channel devices simultaneously, and depending
on the demands of the rest of the program, the audio quality can be increased or
decreased. By default, sounds will play on a 18157 Hz buffer, which offers
a good quality-performance compromise. A high quality and low-fi audio modes can
be selected by setting the AUDIO_HIFI
or AUDIO_LOFI
macros:
make run ROM_SRC=roms/audio.rom CONFIG="-DAUDIO_HIFI"
or
make run ROM_SRC=roms/audio.rom CONFIG="-DAUDIO_LOFI"
Text layer
When writing text to the screen (for example using the console device) the text
will be drawn by default on the foreground layer. This can be controlled by
setting the TEXT_MODE
option to 0 for foreground mode or 1 for background
mode.
make run CONFIG="-DTEXT_MODE=1"
Performance metrics
To enable profiling, the PROF_ENABLE
macro can be used. This will display the
cycle count for input handling (INPUT), loop uxn evaluation (EVAL), screen
buffer flip (FLIP) and audio mixing (MIX). If PROF_ENABLE
is set to 0, the
current frame numbers will be displayed, if set to 1, the maximum cycle count
for each section will be used instead. Enabling profiling can have a small
performance impact, so these numbers may not be 100% accurate, but should give
a good indication. Using PROF_SHOW_X
and PROF_SHOW_Y
we can control at which
tile the cycle count text will be located.
make run CONFIG="-DPROF_ENABLE=0 -DPROF_SHOW_Y=8 -DPROF_SHOW_X=8"