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Here’s a preview of the SMS Plus emulator, with adhoc wi-fi gameplay support (ignore the idiotic clicking - it’s caused by the camera’s zoom lens):

As you can see, a large part of the work is done. There are still some things that need polishing, however:

• Keeping connection alive when a player exits to the menu, and allowing some basic tasks while in menu
• State sync feature, similar to SNES9X TYL
• Timing issues

Cheers,

Akop

This is just a small note to let you folks know that work on wifi netplay is continuing as before.

For fans of fMSX, look forward to an update that will fix the crashing of the emulator when MSX Music/MSX Audio are accessed while disabled in System settings. Because this is a small fix, this release is not planned for the immediate future, but if enough people show interest, a bugfix release will follow. Those who know how to, or don’t want to wait can compile from svn.

While there will be no support for SNA files, as mentioned in an earlier post, there will be a more sensible way to quickly load and run disk and tape images in the next version of Caprice32 PSP.

For those who are interested in why exactly SNA will not be supported, here are the reasons:

1. SNA files are model-dependent. Once a snapshot is created for a 464, for example, it can no longer be used for another model, since the file itself captures the system’s identity
2. SNA files are emulator-dependent. They are of little use to anyone using another emulator
3. For the above two reasons, I do not want to contribute to saturation of SNA files on the web, when much better alternatives (ROM, tape and disk images) are readily available
4. Treating SNA files as regular image files means supporting save states for the SNA file. This just seems recursively silly

This decision is final (sorry); however, if you absolutely insist on loading SNA files, feel free to add such functionality by downloading and compiling your own copy (ah, the beauty of open source software).

I am aware of CPC’s inflexibility with regard to disk loading, however, and as mentioned before, there will be a more sensible way to load, say, Gryzor, and instantly see the title screen, instead of having to cat and run your way through BASIC. So pull up a chair and stick around, this should be interesting, if not fun and (gasp!) useful

Thanks to those who submitted feedback about Caprice32, ZIP and multi-disk support will be added in the next release.

SNA files, on the other hand, will not be supported, and here’s why. SNA files are not proper cartridges or disk images - they’re save state files containing a “snapshot” of memory and CPU registers. The Save State tab provides the same functionality (except as an added bonus, it GZip’s the save states, making them a lot smaller).

If you want to convert an existing SNA file to Caprice32 PSP’s save state format, here’s how to do it:

• Compress the SNA file with GZip
• Pick some PNG image (any in-game screenshot made with Caprice32 PSP will do)
• Concatenate the PNG image with the GZipped SNA file in the following order: PNG image, SNA file
• Rename the resulting file so that it’s composed of the full name of the disk image (including the extension), plus ‘.sXX’ as an extension, where XX is an integer between 00 to 10. Example: 1943.dsk.s00
• Place the file in the SAVEDATA directory, and it will be available when the DSK file is loaded.

If you’re a fan of the fMSX (my personal favorite) emulator, you might be interested to know what the future plans are.

Since the emulator’s recent speed boost (and various new tweaks in the PSP library) has vacated several million CPU cycles, the short-term plans are to compile the emulator with MSXAUDIO and MSXMUSIC support, and make it possible to toggle the emulation on and off while the emulator is running. Currently, fMSX needs to be explicitly compiled with support for the two, and there’s no way to turn any of them off .

Longer-term plans are to implement proper 512-column display for screens 6, 7 and 80-column text mode (the current version simply renders every other column). Plans are also in place to implement FDD (floppy disk drive) and keyboard (CAPSlock, etc…) activity indicators.

Of course, the ultimate plan would be to add adhoc wifi support to the emulator (as well as all the other emulators). Unfortunately, this is currently impossible, as I only have one system.