is there any good gameboy advance emulators

[andreasaspenberg]

i want to play megaman and bass on pc because it too difficult to complete without state saving. is there any emulators that can run it well.

 

[chobibo]

Visual Boy Advance

 

[andreasaspenberg]

that is trash. it doesnt work well on pentium 4. it runs at around 50% at all times. (specially when fighting bosses.) the latest version doesnt give access to menus in full screen and i cant cancel full screen. a need a better emulator.

 

[axleion]

that is trash. it doesnt work well on pentium 4. it runs at around 50% at all times. (specially when fighting bosses.) the latest version doesnt give access to menus in full screen and i cant cancel full screen. a need a better emulator.

the problem lies in your PC, VBA didn't show such trouble in my old PC.
sadly, the best gameboy advance emulator in current time is VBA.

you can try No$gba for alternative, it support save state and link cable emulation too. however, it lack the turbo mode VBA has to speedup some boring part.

 

[chobibo]

you must be joking, I used it a lot on p4 3.0ghz cpu computer, it worked flawlessly on most games, 100% speed. Oh and I played that game at 100% speed.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

that answers my question. it do however mean that there isnt any good gameboy advance emulators.
as for what chobibo writes it have to be a lie. i had around 50% speed against bosses but decent speeds on the other parts. the speed dropped considerably when the game saved though. it cant be a problem with the pc because i only have issues with running that program at maximum. command and conquer 3 kanes wrath for example runs perfectly.

 

[axleion]

any problem with any emulators on PC usually comes from 4 factor:
- bad emulator
- bad ROM
- bad PC
- bad emulator setting

since you claim your PC isn't the trouble, lets eliminate it from the list,
considering VBA's spec and capability to run perfectly even on low-spec PC, lets eliminate that option too.
now we have 2 options left, either you have a shitty ROM to play or the emulator you use got messed up. if you had try any other ROM and it turns out well, you should redownload your ROM. At least Chobibo and I can confirm VBA can run that game well. consult google to see if those particular ROM is bugged.

try adjusting the emulator setting, see if it got any performance boost.

 

[chobibo]

Why would I lie... must be a new vba build, I used the one from 2004 to play a lot of games, Castlevania, Rockman Zero 1 to 4, Megaman Battle Network, Golden Sun, a lot more.

 

[Dr Super Good]

VBA is the best GBA emulator and will run games easily past full speed. The TAS community uses this branch of VBA as it has recording capabilities required for generating TAS videos. As such I recommend this for you as it is designed for frame advance and other lovely mechanics that make you feel awesome without physically cheating.

Modern versions of VBA may or may not run as fast as older versions. This is because the TAS community has been pressing all emulator developers for maximum compatibility and accuracy over speed. However since a GBA is such a basic piece of hard ware, only the early generation P4 processors may struggle a bit with it. All 2-3 GHz ones should run it fine at full speed if you set the emulator up properly.

My old P4 computer suffered slowdown with VBA not because of a weak CPU, but because of a graphic bottleneck which was causing frame refreshes to take considerably longer than they should. Reducing the window size gave stupidly high speed up which was illogical and I can only imagine was caused by the AGP card doing stupid things.

the speed dropped considerably when the game saved though

This is normal for all emulators unless you use a SSD. To prevent saving from breaking (or triggering DRM) it has to emulate the write characteristics of the cartridge backing storage very accurately which in turn results in very bad compatibility with computer write characteristics. A good example is when I save in games like Final Fantasy 12 it drops a ton of frames despite the rest of the game running at 100% no problem. VBA games did not particularly do that from my recollection but DS games do.

Do remember to turn off graphic filters. Some of the cartoony ones that generate smoothened graphics are inherently very demanding and even top end computers may struggle with them at high resolutions and game speeds.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

the newest version of the emulator didnt have any issues until i switched to full screen. when i did that the menus vanished and i cant open them again. there also isnt a configurations file in the folder to delete.

 

[Dr Super Good]

the newest version of the emulator didnt have any issues until i switched to full screen. when i did that the menus vanished and i cant open them again. there also isnt a configurations file in the folder to delete.

That is because you wanted full screen... Try pressing the standard hotkey combination to get out of full screen mode that all emulators use. I recall it being something like alt+enter but am unable to check up because my computer is not well (not working at all).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

that just cause the emulator to crash and after it is closed it starts up directly in full screen. the fact that the menus cant be used in full screen however makes it a bad emulator.

 

[chobibo]

Just try no$gba.

 

[Dr Super Good]

that just cause the emulator to crash and after it is closed it starts up directly in full screen. the fact that the menus cant be used in full screen however makes it a bad emulator.

It can be, just you have it set to hidden mode. Most emulators support this sort of full screen display mode for improved visual experience (you do not want menus visible when playing a game, do you?).

that just cause the emulator to crash

So changing off full screen causes it to crash... Hmmm it sounds like your computer is pretty messed up. Try doing a virus scan.

I would tell you where VBA stores all its option settings but as previously stated, I cannot access my computer in the immediate future.

 

[chobibo]

@DSG, I think it on the same folder as the executable. You're talking about the .ini right?

image

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i tried to move that file but the emulator still starts up in full screen without menus.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Try opening the ini file in a simple text editor and changing the full screen flag. This problem I could guide you through solving if only I had my computer...

 

[andreasaspenberg]

the ini file is removed entirely but it still starts up in full screen. the other emulator is restricted to 24 bit. it is however completely stable at all times. any way to save states in it.

 

[chobibo]

Are you using no$gba? I think the save state option is selectable in the menu bar, try looking under the file menu, I'm not sure though I don't have it anymore.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i didnt find the option there. i checked all of the menus as well and it wasnt on any of them. if it is in the emulator it must use some kind of hotkey system.

 

[chobibo]

screenshot

 

[Dr Super Good]

In VBA press ESC when in full screen mode to show/hide the menu. If the menu does not appear then your display is incorrectly configured and cutting off the top pixels of the actual display area.

You can also disable fullscreen in the vba.ini file by changing...
video=7
or similar values to
video=0

 

[GhostThruster]

holy crap dsg ur not suggesting him play sc2 instead!

 

[andreasaspenberg]

ESC just close the emulator. i dont have a vba.ini so i cant edit it.

 

[Dr Super Good]

i tried to move that file but the emulator still starts up in full screen without menus.

i dont have a vba.ini so i cant edit it.

So which one is it? Both are contradictory so only one can be true.

Anyway here is how to get VBA working properly.
1. Download the lattest build here.
2. Download and install 7-Zip from here. This is only a file extractor needed to extract from the archive downloaded above. If you own a commercial equivalent that supports 7z file extraction then feel free to use that and skip this step.
3. Extract "VisualBoyAdvanceM1206.7z" to a directory of choice (preferably an empty one).
4. Run the file "VisualBoyAdvance-M.exe".

To toggle full screen mode press Esc.

Happy emulating.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

that version is different from any of the other versions i got. winrar can open 7-zip files.(it have a lot of format support.) i still dont get menus in full screen though so that should be improved.

 

[Dr Super Good]

that version is different from any of the other versions i got.

Considering that is the official latest version (since he original was discontinued in 2004)...

i still dont get menus in full screen though so that should be improved.

Most emulators do not show menus in full screen in case you have not noticed. This is why players generally turn off full screen when they want a menu.

If all you want the menus for is save/load state then you are clearly using the emulator in a stupid and unintended way. This is why save/load state have hotkey commands so that you do not need to waste time dealing with the menus.

Generally I use F1-9 for save states with raw press being load and shift press being save.

 

[BlackEnvyX]

Visualboy never gives me any problems when I'm playing Pokemon Emerald and such, I wonder why it's giving you so much trouble?

What version are you running?

 

[Adiktuz]

A lot of games/emulators don't have menu's when you use FS mode... but seriously, I hate playing GBA games in full screen because they get too stretched... you can try pressing ALT and see if the menu will drop down

and yeah, I had no problems with VBA too... might be some kind of hardware/software problem on your side...

No$, I have had problems with that one...

 

[chobibo]

NO$ has a new version, after a long time.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

is there any that supports 32 bit.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yeh most. VBA for sure.

Any open source one should be buildable for 32 bits.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i mean 32 bit emulation.(running the games in 32 bit.)

 

[Dr Super Good]

I do not understand what you are asking...

Are you referring to 32bit colour output? All modern emulators do that but will still be limited to the colour depth of the underlying platform it is emulating (cannot make a SEGA genesis produce more than 256 colours although the output will still be in 32 bit colour).

Are you referring to x86-32 processor emulators? There are probably a few but considering you have 3 computers that support that I do not see why you would want one.

Are you referring to 32 bit consoles? I am sure most have emulators by now.

Are you referring to a specific hard to emulate feature of the GBA? I thought emulation was at 100% for that by now.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i am referring to 32 bit color depth. all of the gameboy advance emulators i have seen only goes up to 24 bit color depth.

 

[GhostWolf]

The last 8 bits are used for alpha (transparency), not color.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

so what. i want to run gameboy advance games in 32 bit and not 24 bit.(world of warcraft runs in 24 bit though.) where can i find an emulator that supports 32 bit.

 

[Dr Super Good]

so what. i want to run gameboy advance games in 32 bit and not 24 bit.(world of warcraft runs in 24 bit though.) where can i find an emulator that supports 32 bit.

Because it makes no difference at all?

15-bit RGB (16-bit color space using 5 bits depth per channel), capable of displaying 512 simultaneous colors in "character mode" and 32,768 (215) simultaneous colors in "bitmap mode".

So what is the problem? 24 bit colour is more than enough for the 15 bit colour generated by the GBA. Since it is rendered to a surface it will use your native colour mode to display so will output as 32 bit colour anyway as far as the GPU is concerned.

The reality is it cannot generate 32 bit colour output as there is no alpha channel since the emulator is outputting a solid image. 24 bit is the closest it can get without pointlessly wasting memory for a constant value. With glass type desktops you could probably use 32 bits for a sort of transparent emulator but I believe you can achieve the same just by setting the window transparency without 33% more data.

Why use 24 bits instead of 32 bits for anything image related? Space is the answer. If you have no alpha there is no need to waste 8 bits on it. Especially with the GPU this helps as it lowers memory IO usage which improves performance.

Why does my OS say I have 32 bit colour? Because the desktop and windows itself use alpha channels to generate nice blend effects. This is how desktop icons can have smooth edges. If you drop colour to 24 bits you will notice alpha goes and all icons are surrounded by ugly white borders since it cannot blend them well.

 

[Adiktuz]

It's an emulator... it's just meant to emulate, not to really do much improvements on it...

you can try to run it in 32-bit but as they said, it won't matter since the emulated device itself doesn't really utilize the additional 8 bits which is simply for alpha channel...