ParaJVE : Parabellum's Java Vectrex Emulator   

Official Home of ParaJVE ... A travel through the programming of a freeware Vectrex emulator in java!

Wednesday, November 08, 2006  

Version 0.3.2

As promised, here is the latest version.

It includes all the stuff described in the previous post, as well as a slight change made to the dots removal heuristic (you can learn more about this in this old post).

Now that nearly every remaining dot is likely to be demanded by the programmer, their size has been increased a bit, so that they get more in evidence. This is rather useful in games like MineStorm (the inactive mines are clearly visible), or Cosmic-Chasm (now you can see the flashing dot on the caves plan!).

In a future version I'll do more tweaking and set a different optimal size for each game and/or add a dialog where the user can tweak the lines/dots width by his own means.

Enjoy the release!

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Monday, November 06, 2006  

Ah ah !!! I lied again...

... when I said there would not be any update before long : I'm about to release a new minor version soon, that will include two new features :

  • Vectrex analog joystick support (through mouse mapping). HyperChase will be playable at last, as well as PatriotsIII in analog mode, for instance... :)

      Screenshot of the left analog joystick working in the Test Cartridge.
  • Automatic building of ROM binaries by compiling your sources through Frank A. Kingswood's AS09 assembler. Now, executing your own programs gets as simple as selecting the source file and clicking the "Build & Run" button!

    In combination with this, you can also reload external modifications made to the ROM directly from within ParaJVE, without having to restart it : just select the "Rebuild / Reload ROM" menu item and you're done (no matter what kind of ROM you're running - binary or source).
This latter feature was added in an attempt to make ParaJVE more homebrew developers friendly. This great idea was suggested by Alex of Vectorzoa, who has started an effort to involve more people into vectrex creation... If you're interested, run and check this thread at the rec.games.vectrex newsgroup.
 

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